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The allure of Ijen's blue fire and green lake
Deadly scenery: Mount Ijen crater with its turquoise-green sulfur lake as seen from the caldera wall
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Deadly scenery: Mount Ijen crater with its turquoise-green sulfur lake as seen from the caldera wall.
A group of climbers were wobbling along an ascending footpath around midnight with the aim of watching a blue fire. 'Hurry up, don't be too late,' urged the group's leader. The mountaineers struggled harder to reach the edge of the Ijen crater and observe the spectacle in the dark.
According to Surono, a volcanologist at the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry, the blue fire is a natural phenomenon that results from the crater's sulfuric gas igniting as it emerges and comes into contact with the air, without producing smoke.
From the Paltuding gate as the starting point to climb Mount Ijen, the trekkers had a 2.5-kilometer ascent with a maximum inclination of 60 degrees before arriving at the rim of the crater. Their exhausting effort, however, was well compensated by the tranquil night, starry sky, whirring breeze and magnificent caldera walls and green sulfur lake below.
'I've climbed this mountain 15 times. At first I felt put off by the laborious hiking. But as it turned out the Ijen crater was very memorable and has since made me long to return,' said Firdo, a youth from Jember, East Java, who climbed the mountain in a group of 10.
The Ijen crater and Ijen Tourist Park Nature Reserve are spread over both the Banyuwangi and Bondowoso regencies in East Java. Mt. Ijen has an altitude of 2,380 meters with a chain of volcanoes as its peaks, including Mount Merapi. The Ijen crater is the largest traditional sulfur quarry in the region.
The crater is one of the world's biggest and most acidic pits with caldera walls between 300 meters and 500 m high and a total area of 5,466 hectares. Situated in the middle of Java's widest caldera, measuring 20 km across, the crater itself is around 960 m by 600 m, with a depth of over 300 m. This gorgeous crater is adorned with an exquisite turquoise-green sulfur lake.
' Text and photos by Wendra Ajistyatama
