Before the storm: The calm landscape shifts in pastel tones in contrast to the fiery red and orange lava waiting to erupt underneath the black surface
As the powerful volcano grumbles beneath their feet, one brave couple refused to let their fear take over and captured these beautiful pictures of lava breaking through the surface. The eruption at the Plosky Tolbachik volcano on Kamchatka Peninsula, east Russia, saw a river of fiery lava flow down the mountain, underneath a bright full moon. These stunning pictures of the volcano were taken by daredevil bloggers Liudmila and Andrey.
The travelling pair were visiting the site with a group of volcanologist and what started out as a quiet lava flow, soon turned into an inferno. ‘We had been standing up quietly, sipping vodka. Lava was flowing past calmly,’ Andrey told Siberian Times.
‘At some point I left to pick up my camera that was lying on the edge of the lava crater. I was just on time to see that it is filling with lava, while the lava stream in the canyon has almost dried out’. Andrey explained his concern to the team who told him not to worry, but they were soon forced to eat their own words.
‘At some point the crater got completely filled – when the lava with a sound of porridge leaking out of the pan started to flow out.’ The experts were still making fun of the pair for being scared, Andrey explains, but shortly afterwards gas erupted from the centre of the crate – a warning that lava was soon to come. The pair describe how even the experts began to panic and the group were forced to escape to safety – with the pictures to prove it. The Plosky Tolbachik volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula burst into activity on November 27 last year after laying dormant for 36 years.
The peninsula has a high density of volcanoes and associated volcanic phenomena, with 19 active volcanoes being included in the six UNESCO World Heritage List sites in the Volcanoes of Kamchatka group, most of them on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The highest volcano is Klyuchevskaya Sopka (15,584 ft), the largest active volcano in the Northern Hemisphere.
