The thing about hiking up an active volcano is that you’re basically climbing a geological time bomb while pretending it’s just another mountain. Except it’s not. It’s a crack in Earth’s crust that occasionally vomits molten rock at temperatures hot enough to melt your hiking boots before you even realize you’ve made a terrible life choice.
When Your Guide Says Don’t Worry About the Sulfur Smell
Mount Nyiragongo in the Democratic Republic of Congo holds the world’s largest lava lake—a churning pool of molten rock that’s been bubbling since at least 1882. The hike takes about six hours up steep volcanic rock, and here’s the thing: this volcano doesn’t mess around. In 2002, lava flows reached speeds of 60 kilometers per hour down the mountain, giving the 400,000 residents of nearby Goma approximately zero time to grab their photo albums. Forty-five people died. The lava lake sits just 250 meters below the crater rim where tourists now stand taking selfies.
Turns out standing next to a lake of 1,200-degree Celsius liquid rock makes some people feel alive.
Mount Erebus in Antarctica represents a different kind of madness entirely. It’s the southernmost active volcano on Earth, and hiking it means dealing with temperatures that drop to minus 40 degrees Celsius while simultaneously avoiding the lava lake at its summit. The volcano has been erupting continuously since 1972, throwing lava bombs—chunks of molten rock—up to several meters across. Researchers who study it describe the experience as camping on a freezer that occasionally explodes. The nearest emergency room is roughly 3,500 kilometers away in New Zealand, which seems like poor planning but also perfectly captures the spirit of extreme volcano tourism.
The Mountain That Literally Invented Itself While People Watched
Paricutín in Mexico did something volcanoes aren’t supposed to do: it appeared out of nowhere in a cornfield in 1943. A farmer named Dionisio Pulido was working his field when the ground started heating up and splitting open. Within a week, the volcano had grown 50 meters tall. Within a year, it was 336 meters high. That’s about as dramatic as geological birth gets—watching rock literally bubble up from nowhere while you’re trying to plant corn. The volcano remained active for nine years, burying two entire towns under lava and ash.
Today you can hike across the solidified lava fields to the crater rim. The landscape looks like the surface of an angry alien planet—black volcanic rock stretching for kilometers, with the church tower of the buried town of San Juan Parangaricutiro poking up through the debre like a stone tombstone. It’s beautiful in that specifically apocalyptic way that makes you understand why people write poetry about destruction.
Where the Ground Breathes Fire and Everyone Acts Casual
Mount Etna in Sicily has been erupting for approximately 500,000 years, which means it’s been terrifying humans for as long as humans have been around to be terrified. The ancient Greeks thought it was the forge of Hephaestus. They weren’t entirely wrong—its basically a forge that occasionally buries towns. In 1669, lava flows destroyed part of Catania, a city of 20,000 people. In 2002, a tourist died after falling into a crater during an eruption.
None of this stops thousands of people from hiking it every year.
The trails wind through old lava flows, past smoking vents that smell like rotten eggs, up to craters that glow red at night. Local guides have this unsettling habit of walking right up to active vents and lighting cigarettes off the superheated air. Wait—maybe that’s not casual confidence. Maybe that’s just Italian fatalism meeting geological inevitability.
The Volcano That Makes You Choose Between Freezing and Burning
Cotopaxi in Ecuador sits at 5,897 meters, which means you’re dealing with altitude sickness, freezing temperatures, and the knowledge that this thing last erupted in 2015. The summit is covered in glaciers—huge sheets of ice sitting directly on top of an active magma chamber. When Cotopaxi erupts, the heat melts the glaciers instantly, creating lahars—volcanic mudflows that travel at highway speeds down the mountain. In 1877, lahars from Cotopaxi traveled over 300 kilometers, destroying everything in their path.
The hike starts at midnight so you can summit at sunrise, which sounds romantic until you realize you’re climbing a glacier in the dark while wearing crampons and trying not to think about the fact that 33 climbers died here in the 1996 eruption alone. The view from the top is spectacular—you can see the curvature of Earth, other volcanoes in the distance, the lights of Quito far below.
Then the sulfur smell hits you and you remember: you’re standing on top of geological blowtorch that’s just taking a nap.
