Mount Longonot

Today I climbed my third dormant volcano in one month.

The students on this trip are really intense about outdoor activities. A good number of them belong to the Outdoor Club at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York where they frequently do cross-country skiing, sub-freezing camping trips, and ridiculous hikes. So my day was pretty tiring, but totally worth it.

Mount Longonot is a 9,000 ft. dormant stratovolcano with a crater on the top that is about three miles wide and about 1,000 ft. deep. Most of the group climbed to the top and hiked around the entire crater. Me and my friend Nick spotted some steam rising from a place halfway to the bottom of the crater and decided to try and climb down. Most places along the rim were sheer cliff faces or drop-offs, so we were lucky to find a place where we could climb/slide down for most of the way, although it was still immensely steep.

As we neared the source of the steam, we noticed the ground getting warm. The temperature at the ridge had been below 40 degrees and the ground was becoming MUCH warmer. The closer we got, the softer the ground became and the vegetation began changing drastically. Suddenly I felt like I was in Jurrasic Park. I saw ferns and some of the ground was highly unstable. At the source, a hole emitted concentrated, white steam that we estimated was about 120 degrees. We could only keep our hands over it for a few seconds at the most. We chilled at the site for a little while wondering how many people had ever made the hike down there. By the end, I was sweating profusely and wondering how I could have been shivering under a jacket only an hour or so before.

The way up was at least twice as challenging because we had made several jumps of ten feet or more on our way down. This meant that we had to literally rock climb our way up several sections. When we reached the rim again, the rest of the group was on their way around, so we hung out near the trail leading back down the volcano itself. Then, we decided to run down instead of walk. Let's just say I think I'll be sore tomorrow.