Four Hours on a Volcano for Ninety Seconds of Light

The trailhead sign at Mt. Batur says two hours to the summit. It lies, politely, in the way trailhead signs do everywhere.

Leaving at Two in the Morning

You start in the dark with a head torch and a guide who has done this four hundred times and still stops to look up. The path is loose volcanic scree for the first hour, then steps cut into the rock, then scree again. Nobody talks much.

The Ninety Seconds That Matter

Sunrise over a caldera is not a slow event. The cloud sitting in the crater turns from grey to pink to gold and back to nothing in about a minute and a half, and if your tripod is not already level you have missed it. I shot this one at f/8 and 1/500s, bracketed, and used the middle frame.

The walk down takes longer than the walk up, and every single person does it grinning.