I had been to this geothermal area once before in 2021, but in completely different conditions. At that time it had rained for days and even on that day the clouds were still so low that nothing could be seen of the mountains around it. They could only be glimpsed above the rhyolite ridges.
In addition, I didn’t have a drone with me to approach the fumaroles without damaging or even destroying the mosses. Now I had seen some fumaroles steaming slightly away from the Rhyolite Valley and decided to fly there once with the drone, because access via mossy areas was clearly forbidden. I was amazed that I would see such a colourful landscape in front of me or under the drone with the sunlight. From the side, I had only seen the rhyolite slope and the steam plume behind it.
On the other side of the ridge on which the track runs is a valley built up of rhyolite on both sides, from which fumaroles also steam out in some places. The panorama below shows the whole valley:
Here I also flew to the other side of the valley and took a drone’s view of the opposite direction. What a landscape lay behind me! A thick, black lava flow runs right across the picture!
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