Etna, South East cone 2nd/3rd of April A walk to the flows and how to scream clouds away A.Heidl, Th.Boeckel

The good weather condition in the evening of the 2.april.2000  made it possible to get a view into  the Bocca  Nuova and the glowing main eruption tubes of Mt Etna. (the other tube was not visible from my position ).When you stand close before this gate to inner-earth you feel the" breathing" under a voluminous rumbling sound which put the hot gases about 50m  into the atmosphere ( This tube is also the cradle of the gas rings!!!!) The intensity of breathing dragged small peaces of magma along and threw it about 20m out of the vent inside the BNIn the night of  the 2/3 of april (2.00 h) Andreas Heidl who made observations during the whole night on the roof of the Td'F recognized one eruption from the Bocca Nuova over an apprx. height of 100m .My further summit-walk took me to the north-side of the SE-cone. The next pictures shows a lavaflow at the base of the SE.

The nearly white and very liquid lava ( temperature 1069 C° *),  ran out of a small cave under a shiny bright colored big rock. The flow had the length of 200 m and 1,5 m width. The position was maybe where we saw the big magma side-fountain at the 6th of april.

* (measured at the 04.03.1999, information from Ulrich Kueppers )

Now, here begins a very funny story about a very lucky observation. After my summit walk at the 2.4.00 the weather conditions changed completely into its worse. During the whole night and day of the 3rd april we got the real wash-house feeling with a continuous snow- storm up to 100 km/h.

the ghost refugio

So, we had to stay again in the musty smelling basement for hours (2), when suddenly at 16 pm Gertraud Keim recognized the sound of an eruption. For me, this sound was very hard to distin- guish from the loudness of the strong storm. But five minutes later there was a clear eruption noise to hear and everyone was very sad and angry ,because you couldn't see more than 20 meters. So we went to the eastside of the refugio where you may could see the SE-cone. Believing to a wonder, I took my camera with me.

The noise of eruption was getting more louder and at this moment I was very angry and threw a lava rock in the direction of the SE-cone, and one the ground, because we stood there like idiots hearing clearly the volcano....... but no chance to get a little sight.But then I began to scream into the cloudy sky " open up, please...open up!!!........until everyone  was shouting and begging for the blue sky.

And here is the wonder,.... it happened!!!

After 20 hours no sight, the blue holes in the sky became bigger and bigger and at the end the SE-cone was free. We looked each other with smiling faces, and couldn't believe this lucky chance. Notice,that one hour after the event there was again 40 hours snowstorm and no sight.

The more or less evidence-photos above are showing the paroxysm which had the duration of 35 minutes. This eruptions had been much weaker ( maybe 200m high ) as the event at the 6th of april, but the impressions of the very fast clouds hunting around the SE-cone mixed with the red magma- fountains and the roaring sound displaced us to the genesis of our earth. Icy antenna of the T'dF

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