5-21-18
The cold that had dogged me since Palermo had finally overtaken me. I burned through packet after packet of tissues. My eyes were dry. My throat was sore. Every muscle ached. And I was planning to climb one of the world’s largest and most active volcanoes.
As I picked my way along the packed thoroughfares and buzzing roundabouts of Catania, the black bulk of the volcano, crowned by broken clouds, filled the horizon. Then tumbled mounds of basalt replaced the trees along the road, and the golden fields of eastern Sicily shimmered in ever-widening vistas at each curve.
I finally pulled into Rifugio Sapienza, hurried to the guide center – and was told that the summit tour for the day would probably be cancelled on account of bad weather. For nearly two hours, dark clouds boiled on the summit as I waited with a growing crowd of other would-be hikers. Just as I was ready to give up, it was announced that the excursion would run after all. We all scrambled to sign release forms and pick up helmets. Then, with a scuffle of hired boots, we made our way by cable car and jeep to the elevation of 9000 feet, and began the two-hour hike to the summit craters.
The first hour was ghostly. Fog streamed over a landscape of blasted rock and blowing ash, creeping upslope toward the shrouded summit. Gaps began to open in the clouds a few hundred feet below the craters, affording brief glimpses of long black slopes hissing with fumaroles.
Finally, after a steep climb over sulfur-stained rock, we reached the rim. Every fifteen or twenty seconds, a dull roar could be heard over the wind, and the earth shook slightly. Steam, smoke, and cloud twisted madly overhead, alternately mirroring and obscuring the tumbled slopes below.
The guide directed us to the upwind side of the crater. For a few precious minutes, the black crater rim, punctuated by pillars of steam, was visible. Downslope, the whole of eastern Sicily stretched tan and umber to a glistening sea.
The hike back down was less dramatic. Much of the fog had cleared, revealing Etna’s multitudinous vents and craters. After sliding a thousand feet down an ash slope, we ate lunch (in my case, a peanut-butter sandwich) around a dormant minor crater.
Then, slipping over patches of snow, we made our way down to a cliff overlooking the Valle del Bove, whose black basalt walls contrasted dramatically with the fields and sea below.
Another series of slopes brought us back to the cable car, and thence to the Rifugio. The mountain filled my rearview mirror almost the whole way back to Syracuse.
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