LAVA FLOW TRAIL
STOP 7
Miniature
volcanoes |
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| One
of the largest hornitos along the Bonito Lava Flow trail.
|
 Picture a kettle of hot, bubbling spaghetti sauce. In
your imagination, can you see the bubbles rise to the surface, then spatter
blobs of red sauce in a ring around the bubbles? That’s the process that
formed these spatter
cones or hornitos ('little ovens' in Spanish) on the surface
of Bonito Lava Flow. |
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| This
mound was formed by glob after glob of lava falling along the edge
of a spatter cone. |
One to fifteen meter (3-50 feet) high spatter cones form
a string of lumpy beads along a once-active vent system near the base
of Sunset Crater Volcano. Like bubbling spaghetti sauce, they form when
gasses escape from molten lava beneath the crusty, solid surface of a
flow.
If you look closely at this spatter cone you can easily see where
individual 'spatters'
fell with a SPLAT! onto the ring of solidified lava. Their heat welded
them to the older spatters, gradually building the miniature volcanoes
you see here. |
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