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montserratmagazine
Capture in motion.
Location: The Belham valley.
Photographer: @oliviaisobella Writer: MMP Team.
On a clear day, the volcano shows in its purest detail. The mountainous landscape with an emerald of green wrapped around it. The Soufriere Hills of Montserrat, complex and remains active for almost 24 years since the devastation hit in 1995 - 1997. As this tragedy impacted so many lives, we witness a unity of an island, future development and opportunities for the people of Montserrat. We continue to move forward, bringing inspiration and prosperity for generations to come.
earthstory reblogged
Montserrat
Carretera C-55
© 2017 Oscar Alcañiz - Please, do not erase this text if you reblog this picture
Source: akcanzi
tao_of_travel—//—//—//—//—//—//—//—//—//—//—//—/ Funny story: One of the best day trips I ever took was to Montserrat Monastery. One of the biggest mistakes was that I hiked, with no water mind you, to Sant Jeroni (Saint Jerome) which is the highest peak of Montserrat. 🤔😩🌊 Along three hours into the hike and people are becoming more and more scarce. At this point I have my shirt off and it feels like the Catalonian sun is sapping energy out of me with every step. In the distance I spot a couple and yell to them in Spanish, the little that I know. “Hola ayuda. Dame un agua por favor! The lady poured water into my hands, which i fastened into a cup, and I drank that water like if it was from god himself. As I am gorging myself with water, the lady looks at me and says in English. “You poor chap, are you lost?” I say “no, I just didn’t come prepared” the husband flips out that I can speak English, calls me “mad” and grabs the water and walks off enraged. Let’s just say I was feeling extremely spiritual by the time I reached the top. 😂😵
Sunrises, fog, clouds, sunsets, and shadows over the hills of Montserrat, Spain.
MONTSERRAT MOUNTAINS
Montserrat mountain range is a singular massif situated near the city of Barcelona, in Catalonia, Spain. The incredible rock formation is famous for its peculiar jagged peaks and rounded ‘needles’, inspiring its name Montserrat, meaning “serrated mountain” in Catalan. Rising sharply to the west of the Llobregat River, the mountain range is 10km (6.2 miles) long and 5km (3.1 miles) wide. The summit, Sant Jeroni (Saint Jerome) stands at 1,236 metres (4,055 ft) above sea level, closely followed by tall peaks Montgrós and Miranda de les Agulles. In 1987, Montserrat was declared Spain’s first National Park to guarantee its conservation.
Aside from the rock formation itself, Montserrat is famous for the old Benedictine Monastery, Santa Maria de Montserrat, which sits nestled between the peaks. The monastery includes a basilica as well as a famous statue of the Virgin Mary, known locally as ‘La Moreneta’ – the ‘Dark One’ – owing to her dark complexion. The monastery was founded in the 10th century and still functions today as home to over 150 monks and is open to the public most days, with visitor tours organised daily. It can be reached by road, train or cable car, providing a popular tourist attraction all year round. From its highest point, almost all of Catalonia can be seen, and on a clear day the island of Mallorca is visible.
Montserrat is composed of materials of the Cenozoic or Tertiary Era, meaning rocks aged between 35 and 65 million years old. The mountain’s remarkable appearance is due to events that unfolded some 45 million years ago, back when most of the area was submerged underwater and formed part of a large delta that poured into the sea.
The rivers that formed the delta carried large rocks and pebbles that gathered in the delta itself, as did limestone as a result of decaying organic material. Then, some 25 million years ago, there was a shift in the Earth’s plates, resulting in the sea being pushed further out and the area around Montserrat being pushed upwards.
As a result, the land was exposed to air, leaving the formation of rocks and limestone to suffer the effects of the weather. Over the course of the next few million years, the rainwater and wind carved shapes into the soft limestone, forming potholes and caves. As the fractures and holes widened, the ‘needles’ got more isolated and rounded, producing the incredible system of curves and peaks that is Montserrat today.
-- Beth
Image Credits: Rick Steves
Rick Steves https://community.ricksteves.com/…/a-visit-to-montserrat-th… Alex Williams https://thecaminoprovides.com/…/05/19/montserrat-visit-rep…/ Wikimedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/…/File:Montserrat_mountains3.…
Reference Credit: Culture Trip https://theculturetrip.com/…/discover-the-incredible-monts…/
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earthstory reblogged
This is the caribbean island of Montseratt in the West Indies. In the 17th century, Britain colonized the island and held on to it ever since. But the British didn’t consider the consequences of building their paradise around a volcano (probably because they were too busy benefiting from the sugar and rum economy they built entirely on slave labor).
In 1995, the Soufrière Hills volcano woke up. The island’s capital city of Plymouth was buried in more than 12 metres of mud. The island was mostly wiped out except for a small unaffected area on the northern tip. With it’s most recent eruption in 2010 and another expected next year, most Montserratians started new lives in the UK where they were granted full British citizenship. Only a few thousand residents remain, rebuilding life on the northern tip, forbidden to visit their old homes in the restricted southern exclusion zone. Under a thin layer of earth, Monserrat is still burning underneath. This is what it looks like…
Volcano steaming, clear day on Montserrat Island
A couple days ago I posted this aerial view of the pyroclastic flow path on Montserrat Island. Here’s a panoramic video of that same site, starting at the volcano’s summit and heading down to the ocean. Apparently this was also the former site of the island’s airport.
Montserrat Mountains
This view can be found in the Montserrat Mountains, near Barcelona, Spain. The rocks are Eocene-aged sediments, a kilometer+ thick unit called the Montserrat Conglomerate. A large river system carried sediments to what is today the east coast of the Iberian Peninsula. The sediments at any specific spot changed over time as sea level came in and out, so the main conglomerate also interfingers with more fine-grained rocks and limestones. Where limestone is present along the vertical fractures (joints), it dissolves more easily, creating the “serrated” pattern of the Montserrat range. The rocks were uplifted into mountains during the last 10 million years as the landmasses around the Mediterranean collide.
The buildings inside the range are a Benedictine Abbey, accessible to visitors by road, rail, or by a hike with an elevation change over a kilometer.
-JBB
Image credit: Lester Maceren https://flic.kr/p/HZcDFF
More: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0012821X9390064G http://bit.ly/1WKD8Us http://geographyfieldwork.com/CovesdelCollbato.htm https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=17898.0 http://epod.usra.edu/blog/2014/10/montserrat-mountains.html http://geographyfieldwork.com/MontserratFormation.htm http://www.ub.edu/geologia/summerschool/geologicalCatalonia.html http://bit.ly/1WKDvy9 http://bit.ly/1xVGfeJ
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Geologic Ghost Town. In 1995, the Soufrière Hills volcano on the Caribbean Island of Montserrat began erupting and it hasn’t stopped since. The eruptions put so many lives in danger that much of the island’s population was evacuated and the south half of the island was declared an exclusion zone because of the ongoing risk of pyroclastic flows.
This drone-captured video on the south side of the island captures the volcanic material, including pyroclastic flows in channels and a volcanic delta, along with the destroyed remnants of the community.
earthstory reblogged
qingtravels
Slow and spectacularly shot trip to Montserrat, in Spain, a place whose name translates to “Saw edged mountain” from latin.
Montserrat, Mountain, northwestern Barcelona provincia (province), in the comunidad autónoma (autonomous community) of Catalonia, Spain, lying just west of the Llobregat River and northwest of Barcelona city. Known to the Romans as Mons Serratus (“Saw-Toothed Mountain”) and to the Catalans as Montsagrat (“Sacred Mountain”), it is famous for its unusual appearance and the Benedictine monastery of Santa María de Montserrat, which houses an ancient wooden statue of the Virgin and Child that was supposedly carved by St. Luke, taken to Spain by St. Peter, and hidden in a cave during the Moorish occupation. The statue was found in 880 and has since been venerated by numerous pilgrims, who attribute many miracles to the intercession of the Virgin Mary.
Jagged, barren pinnacles of reddish sandstone and conglomerate, formed by erosion, rise from the mountain’s huge base, and it is cloven by ravines; the monastery stands on the edge of the widest of these, the Malo valley, at 2,400 feet (730 metres). Remains indicate that the mountain was inhabited in prehistoric times. Christian hermits of Santa María were residing on Montserrat when in 888 the Benedictine monastery of Ripoll was granted jurisdiction over them. From the 11th to the early 15th century, a regular priory flourished there, and it obtained independence as an abbey in 1410, the status of which it has held almost continuously ever since. The present basilica was begun in 1560 and the monastery in 1755, though these were extensively rebuilt after their destruction by French troops during the Peninsular Campaign, in 1812.
Rolling along the Montserrat Rack Railway, which runs all the way to the Monastery on the top of the mountain in Mountserrat.