Boiling Lake
Interesting facts
- The lake lies on Morne Watt, a 1,224-metre stratovolcano whose last major eruption, about 1,300 years ago, sent pyroclastic flows down its slopes.
- Small steam-driven blasts near the lake in 1880 and 1997 are the only historically confirmed volcanic eruptions on Dominica.
- The eruption of 4 January 1880 scattered ash up to about 10 km away and stripped the rainforest from what is now the Valley of Desolation.
- The lake is roughly 15 metres deep, and since 1876 its water level has dropped or surged in at least eight recorded episodes.
- Edmund Watt and Henry Nicholls, who first reported the lake in 1870, both also published accounts of the 1880 eruption.
- Morne Nicholls, the ridge crossed on the way to the lake, is named after Henry Alfred Alford Nicholls, one of the lake's first recorded visitors.
- In July 2007 the filmmaker George Kourounis became the first person to cross the lake from above, hanging from ropes over its most violently boiling part.
Why it is worth it
High in the volcanic interior of Dominica, at the bottom of a steep-walled basin, a lake of greyish-blue water churns in a constant rolling boil, half hidden by the clouds of steam that rise from its surface. The Boiling Lake is a flooded fumarole: rainwater and two small streams drain into the basin, seep down towards hot magma and are heated until the lake bubbles like a vast pot on a stove. It measures roughly 60 to 75 metres across, which makes it the second-largest hot lake in the world after Frying Pan Lake in New Zealand, and it is usually seen from a cliff-top ledge some 30 metres above its shore.
The first recorded sighting was in 1870, by two Englishmen working on the island, Edmund Watt and Henry Nicholls. In 1875 Nicholls returned with the government botanist Henry Prestoe and measured water temperatures of about 82 to 92 °C along the edges; the boiling centre could not be measured. The lake has never been entirely stable. After a phreatic eruption nearby in 1880 it vanished and was replaced by a fountain of steam and hot water, and between December 2004 and April 2005 its level dropped by about ten metres before it refilled in a single day. Scientists take this to mean that the lake sits well above the local water table and is held up by a constant flow of gas and steam from below.
The lake lies inside Morne Trois Pitons National Park, established in 1975 as Dominica's first national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997 for its volcanic landscape and rainforest. There is no road to the lake. The Boiling Lake Trail climbs from Laudat past Titou Gorge and Breakfast River, crosses the shoulder of Morne Nicholls at around 965 metres and drops into the Valley of Desolation, a barren stretch of hot springs, steaming vents and sulphur-stained streams, before reaching the rim above the lake.
Getting there
The lake is about 10 km east of Roseau, Dominica's capital. The trail to it starts at the village of Laudat, and the walk from the road is about 13 km. The nearest airport is Canefield Airport (DCF), about 11 km away in a straight line.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Boiling Lake is a flooded fumarole located in Morne Trois Pitons National Park, a World Heritage Site on the island of Dominica. The lake, located 6.5 miles (10.5 km) east of Dominica's capital Roseau, is filled with bubbling greyish-blue water that is usually enveloped in a cloud of vapour. The Boiling Lake is approximately 200 to 250 feet across and is the second-largest hot lake in the world after Frying Pan Lake, located in Waimangu Valley near Rotorua, New Zealand.
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