Deep beneath the silent icecap of Eyjafjallajokull in Iceland....a cataclysmic seismic event was unfolding...On the morning of 21st March 2010...molten magma a thousand feet under the glacier was building up pressure and forcing it's way through fissures in the earth's crust beneath the glacial ice cap.

My phone rang at home...It was my friend Jon Magnusson from Reykjavik, he said "John, hurry here to Iceland...this eruption is becoming huge..it is lighting up the night sky...you must see this"

As a professional photographer of wild places across the world, I knew this adventure was going to be both unique and arduous....so what could be more elemental...more spectacular than this....witnessing the birth of a mountain. And here it was again, a chance to experience the wild again...in all her powerful and most dangerous majesty.

The next few days would be very challenging.....The conditions at first would be extremely cold on the ice cap...then increasingly hot as we approach the molten lava fields. I considered what kit to take and chose my Rohan Pinnacle Jacket and Pinnacle Bibs and trusty Nightfall Jacket.

I boarded a plane...and soon we were driving across the Eyjafjallajokull Ice Cap...Freezing temperatures had sent billowing steam high into the heavens. The glistening ice belied the stirring powerful forces at work beneath me.

After two hours crashing and slithering across this icy terrain, the ominous black volcanic cone appeared above the ice.

We approached with great caution, the night sky already aflame with unearthly red and yellow light glowing overhead.

Before me now was a wonder of the natural world...in the darkness of this sub polar night towering plumes of erupting lava exploded into the sky...showering fiery rocks across the surrounding ash and ice. Boiling hot molten rock was gushing down the volcanic cone...making a grotesque and twisted lava landscape...that creaked and groaned as it cooled before my eyes.....Smoke and steam billowed forth as the lava ridges crawled by gravity down the new mountainside......Brand new landforms were being created before my eyes....and I would make the first human footsteps on this wild and virgin place.

Like a scene from Dante's Inferno, I struggled across the cooling ash and rubble with my camera.....loose rocks clattered and rolled aside....my boots sank in the steaming lava sands...amidst a stench of sulphur.

All around were thin streams of boiling lava....I carefully balanced over the fissures to make more photographs......aware of great danger here.....and to look into the fiery heart of the earth.

We worked quickly with my camera because my mountain boots were becoming very hot on the cooling lava. Was it sulphur I could smell, or burning rubber!

For two days we explored the volcanic basin that was growing and growing. During the day we erected a small tent to shelter from the cold strong winds and by night return to a tiny wooden cabin on the glacier, a safe haven from the violence of nature in the raw.

During the early hours next day a strange shuddering awoke us. A small earthquake rattled the hut windows...we were to learn later that it was recorded as 3.9 on the Richter Scale. Down at the volcano something had changed.

The landscape had become a silent desert of ash and rock, wisps of gas swirled from cooling vents...the earthquake in the night had silenced the eruption...the volcano had returned to sleep.

It was snowing hard now so we decided to leave and I would return home to England. At the airport in Reykjavik a security official said to me "Have you been to the volcano?"

"Yes, incredible!" I answered "one of nature's finest sights"

"Ah haa!" he went on..."Have you heard about the new explosions this morning, a huge new volcano has appeared nearby!"

I wanted to turn back and return to the ice...but no, too late for me now, I flew back to England not realising that this would be the last flight out of Iceland for some days!

Little did we know that in less than 24 hrs our volcano would awaken into a giantess, a cloud of volcanic ash that would cause mayhem in the airspaces of the northern hemisphere.

It is with enormous thanks to Rohan...and especially my friends in Iceland Jon Magnusson and Siggaddur Saemunsson for their help to make this project come alive.

John Beatty
www.wild-vision.com
www.speakersfromtheedge.com