So today I went to my first supervolcano...

I hiked into a semi-active volcano near Bandung Indonesia back in 1996. Local people were hard boiling eggs by holding them over steam vents on long sticks with egg baskets woven into them with grasses. It was pretty cool to see. The whole area smelled like sulfur.

I love the smell of the sulfur oxides and the clinkers on the sides of a strato.
We climbed Chimbarazo many yers ago. It was intense.
Whenever Im in Northern California I alwys try to get to the fields of Lassen Peak. Snow fields terminated by little brown yellow vapor pools of sulfitic tuff that looks like red - brown suede.
Ive got some beautiful big arrangements of sulfur crystals from Chimborazo that I climbed down 10K feet to get to the jeep.
The only calderas Ive ever been in were the main of the park at Yellowstone and along a coastal volcano along the Aleutians(I never went inside of that one as it was a major gaseous hole).
We were doing some exploration work for copper and tin in the Philippines when Pinatubo took off. I bought a print of a nuees ardente that was really rolling along the ash fall zone. it was taken by some chopper pilot

Gonna do grad work in vulcanology?

Wow! That is really awesome! I think that's a pretty great idea haha! At least you don't have to worry about the egg smell since the whole area is just one big sulfur pit

Definitely heading towards Vulcanology, though concerned a little about job prospects since every advertised job seems to require so many years of experience!
Ahhh, Chimbarazo! I did that climb too when I used to live in South America!
Those sulfur crystals sound absolutely amazing! You have some incredible experiences I can only hope I'll get the opportunity to do the same. Yellowstone is a definite goal for me to visit, although since everyone knows about it, it takes away the wonder a little for me
Toba is a must, there are a few extinct calderas of ancient supervolcanoes that are also on my list for visit.
How was it at Pinatubo? That was the 93' eruption? I've never been near an active eruption zone, but call me crazy... it's a goal of mine

I know a few vulcanologists at our USGS. Usually theres a strong recruitment program because you spend a lotta time in the field at first. Ithink that vulcanologists or geophysicists who havent paid their dues in the field and only elect to play with models are WUSSIES!!.
(Just kidding)

If I was in a grad program under some vulcanology program, Id make sure to get a strong additional course level of economic geo (such as hydrothermal deposition ). Id want to be a super experimenter in Pegmatites and Peridotites.

Im pretty much retired except for a few mining projects and I gotta say Id do it all again. Theres a lot of places youll see that you didnt even know existed, and you have enough free time and cash to do side exploration.


Pinatubo was erupting but NO i was many miles out of range of all the Peleian Clouds (Qlthough many of the chopper pilots had their busses full of geologists who wanted to fly around the caldera before they declared it off limits and threatened pilots who were even thinking of taking geoadventurists around the site.
My pix are of beautiful sunets and volcano thunderstorms at dusk. The colors and the flashes were outstanding even from 20 miles away