For
two weeks last June, American Justin Funk and Russian Anastasia Tranbenkova
hiked 20 kilometers a day up and down mountains through a moonscape of ash and
volcanic rock in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in Katmai National Park.
The valley, devoid of trees and shrubs that normally characterize the landscape
of southern Alaska, is what remains of the largest volcanic eruption of the
20th century, in which Novarupta volcano buried 100 square kilometers beneath
volcanic deposits as much as 300 meters deep in June 1912.
Students stand on the deposit from an
ash flow from the 1912 eruption of Novarupta Volcano in Katmai National Park
in Alaska. They have the option of going to either Russia or Alaska — or
both — as part of the two-week volcanology field school. Photo courtesy
of John Eichelberger.
Two months later and 3,000 kilometers west, Tranbenkova and another group of
students traveled to another remote site, this one in Kamchatka, Russia. There,
students camped in the midst of two of Kamchatka’s most active volcanoes
— Gorely and Mutnovsky — both of which have explosively erupted as
recently as 1986 and 2000 respectively, and have left geysers, fumaroles and
crusty lava flows in their wakes.
Funk, a senior geology major at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls,
and Tranbenkova, a graduate student in geochemistry at Kamchatka State Pedagogical
University (KSPU) in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatksky, Russia, were participants in
the International Volcanological Field School. A collaboration between the University
of Alaska at Fairbanks (UAF) and KSPU, with support from the National Science
Foundation, the school started in 2004 for Russian, American and Japanese students
to learn about active volcano systems.
Undergraduate and graduate students can go to either the Alaskan site or the
Russian site (or both, as Tranbenkova did). In both locales, they explore and
learn about lava flows, pyroclastic flows, calderas, fumaroles and crater lakes.
Another important component, says John Eichelberger, a volcanologist with UAF
and a co-leader of the field school, is learning how to travel and do fieldwork
in the wilderness — dealing with snow, ice, river crossings, brown bears,
camp-cooking, GPS navigation and severe weather, all while working to bridge
human barriers of language and culture.
“I could spend an entire semester in the classroom and still not learn
as much as I did in the two weeks I spent in the field,” Funk says.
“The conception of the field school envisages joint scientific research
work of young Russian scientists and their colleagues from the United States
and Japan,” says Dmitry Melnikov, a volcanologist at KSPU and a program
co-leader. The students get theoretical and practical knowledge of these unique
geological regions with active volcanic systems, he says.
On most days, the participants hike from 10 to 30 kilometers, sometimes up steep
and muddy slopes, from the base camp (mountaineering tents surrounding a “lecture”
hut) to the “sights” — the craters, geysers and lava flows —
hearing lectures all the way there and back, Eichelberger says. He and the other
professors, as well as the graduate students, teach as they traverse the landscape,
interspersing bits of volcanic wisdom with bear lore and sea shanties.
Before signing up for the school, students should be aware of the rigors of
field camp, Eichelberger says. They have to be in good physical condition, capable
of undertaking long, strenuous hikes carrying substantial weight, and be willing
to camp under grueling conditions.
“It is by far the most physically challenging thing I’ve ever done,”
says Jamie Cundiff, an undergraduate majoring in geology and environmental sciences
at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., who participated in the Katmai
trip last summer. And “primitive” and “remote” don’t
begin to describe the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, she says. “It was
so surreal — it seemed like you were on another planet,” especially
at night, as the sun did not set until after midnight.
The eruption of Novarupta, in the Katmai valley, was as strong as Krakatoa’s
1883 eruption and had 100 times the power of the Mount St. Helens eruption in
1980. Thousands of fumaroles — volcanic vents where gases and vapors are
emitted — punctuated the landscape for years following the eruption, which
also left a 3-kilometer-diameter crater (Katmai Caldera) that now tops a formerly
2,500-meter-high volcano and hosts a 250-meter-deep lake. Getting there involves
a float plane, a four-wheel-drive bus and a 30-kilometer hike.
Getting to the Russian camp location is no small feat either. Mutnovsky volcano
is an otherworldly looking assemblage of massive volcanoes, a caldera, lake-
and ice-filled craters and wildly active fumaroles. Remote though it is, the
area also has the only large geothermal plant in the far north Pacific. Gorely
Volcano comprises a complex of five small overlapping stratovolcanoes within
a large caldera and 11 summit and 30 side craters, some of which contain acid
or freshwater crater lakes. To get there, American students take a four-hour
plane ride from Anchorage to Petropavlovsk, followed by several hours in four-
and six-wheel-drive trucks and then a 10-kilometer hike to the camp, trudging
through snowfields and dust storms, and meadows glowing with fireweed and rhododendron
along the way.
Although both camps take place in the summer — Katmai in June and Kamchatka
in August — the weather can be downright nasty, Eichelberger says. And
it changes quickly, Melnikov adds: Some days are warm and sunny, and some are
cold, rainy and windy. One day in Kamchatka, the group was struck by a strong
typhoon that destroyed their mountaineering tents and left all 30 participants
cramped and sleeping in the small hut where lectures and meals are given. Other
times, the weather forced the students inside the hut for the whole day, and
the professors lectured for nine hours straight — “people weren’t
exactly the friendliest by the end,” Funk says.
But it’s well worth the trouble, the students say. “It was an incredible
experience, extending my knowledge about the geology of volcanic regions and
giving me experience working in an international setting,” Tranbenkova
says.
At first, Cundiff says, there was quite a language barrier (the program does
suggest a working knowledge of English or Russian, or ideally both, but translators
are along on the trip). But the cultural differences and language challenges
led to much laughter as the students figured out what they were saying to each
other.
Learning how to count to 10 in Japanese and how to sing a Russian song or two
became an integral part of the program. “The communication of the students
with each other plays a great role,” Melnikov says. In the end, Tranbenkova
says that her favorite parts of the trips were “getting to know really
special people from different backgrounds.”
“The camp was probably the single greatest experience of my life so far,”
Funk says. “I only hope I get to do more things like that in the future.”
Megan Sever
Links:
Applications for the summer 2005 field camp are due on April 1. See program
Web site for more details.
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