Piton de la Fournaise

PeaksRéunion

Fragile nature — stay on the trail, leave no trace.

A volcano on Réunion in the Indian Ocean erupting over 150 times since the 1600s, walked across its lava fields to look into the crater.

September·Peaking now

May–Oct

The dry austral winter brings cool, near-cloudless mornings over the Enclos, when the Pas de Bellecombe trek to Formica Leo and the Dolomieu rim is at its best. Dawns above 2,300m can freeze; start early, before cloud blows in from the east.

Year-round One of Earth's most active volcanoes erupts on average about once a year, in no fixed month; the dry season, May to October, is firmest for the caldera trek — check its status first.

Piton de la Fournaise, on the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, has erupted more than 150 times since the 1600s, and between eruptions you can walk out across it. The road up leaves the green farmland and crosses the Plaine des Sables, a floor of rust-red volcanic sand with a single dirt track over it, then stops at a balcony on the caldera rim. From there a steep metal staircase drops you down the cliff onto the caldera floor, and the whole green island disappears behind the wall. Ahead is a plain of hardened black lava running kilometres toward the summit cones, coiled and folded where it set. Splashes of paint on the rock are the only markers. From the middle, the staircase you came down is a thread on the far wall. Formica Leo sits alone out there, a small scoria cone from an eighteenth-century eruption, ten minutes to the rim, with a twin crater below you tinted red and ochre. It is named after the ant-lion larva, which digs a funnel-shaped pit in sand to trap ants. Further on is Dolomieu, the summit crater, whose floor dropped more than 300 metres in a single collapse in 2007. Sulphurous steam still leaks from cracks around the edge, and the walls fall away into a pit too wide to take in at once. Réunion is really two volcanoes stacked on the seabed, and this is the young one, still rising. It wakes roughly once a year on no calendar, and when it does the trails shut and the whole thing moves outside. Lava fountains and glowing rivers burn orange against the dark, and on the eastern flank the flows run down the Grand Brûlé, cross the coastal highway and pour into the sea, cooling into new black rock at the island's edge. That road has been buried and rebuilt again and again. Islanders do not treat any of this as a disaster: they drive up, park along the mountain roads with their families, and wait for the ground to catch fire.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Check the volcano's alert status before you set out — eruptions close the Enclos trails without warning, and the OVPF observatory posts the live access rules that decide how far you can go.
Start at first light — mornings are clear, but by midday cloud blows in from the east and swallows the caldera rim, so the whole crater view can vanish before noon.
The drive is half the experience — stop to walk out onto the Plaine des Sables; its single dirt track over red volcanic sand is rough but fine in an ordinary car.
Carry far more water than feels necessary — the trek from Pas de Bellecombe across the lava is long, shadeless and above 2,300 metres, and there is nowhere to refill along the way.

Things to do

1
Trek across the Enclos lava fields
From the balcony at Pas de Bellecombe a steep metal staircase drops you straight down the caldera cliff onto the floor of the Enclos Fouqué, and the green island you drove up through disappears behind the wall. From there a marked trail crosses a sea of hardened black lava that runs for kilometres toward the summit cones. Splashes of paint on the rock are the only route markers, and the scale of the empty plain only registers once you are out in the middle of it.
2
Climb the Formica Leo cone
Scramble up the little scoria cone that sits alone on the lava plain, left by an eruption in the eighteenth century. From its narrow rim you look straight down into a small twin crater tinted red and ochre — a miniature of the giant volcano rising behind it.
3
Look into the fuming Dolomieu crater
Reach the rim of Dolomieu, the summit crater whose floor dropped more than 300 metres in a single collapse in 2007. Sulphurous steam still leaks from cracks around the edge, and the sheer walls fall away into a pit far too wide to take in at once.
4
Watch a night eruption from the roadside
When Piton de la Fournaise is active, lava fountains and glowing rivers burn orange against the dark, sometimes visible from viewpoints and roads far below the summit. Réunion turns out to watch: families park along the mountain roads and wait for the earth to catch fire. Eruptions are unpredictable, so this is the reward for being on the island at the right moment.

Watch

Nearby

35 km