The photo below was taken in the Las Cañadas caldera, which is surrounding the highest peak of Tenerife (Mount Teide). You can see a small hill composed of pumice lapilli and very nicely exposed example of coulée flowing down the mountain in the background.
It is difficult to estimate the width of the coulée but I think I am not very much mistaken if I say that it was between 50 and 100 meters at the widest part.
What is coulée? This word has several meanings. I am referring to volcanic landform, which is an intermadiate stage between lava dome and lava flow.
Lava that forms coulée is too viscous to flow like a normal lava. It should form a dome instead, but sometimes domes form on steep flanks of volcanoes and get deformed by gravitation. This example is composed of glassy lava. The interior of it was still partially molten and moved slowly downhill and dragged along the glassy exterior which got warped like a surface of a huge ropy pahoehoe lava flow.
Coordinates of the coulée and a plain of pumice lapilli: 28° 15′ 54″ N 16° 35′ 22″ W. Altitude 2300 meters.
Leave a Reply