Waiting to take a "Flightseeing" tour of Mount Katmai, the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes (created by the 1912 Novarupta eruption, and other area around Brooks Lake.
At left, a glacier, still covered in ash from the 1912 Novarupta eruption, which had the force of 50 Mt. St. Helens eruptions and released over six cubic miles of ash, covering 40 square miles of the "Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes" at right with ash up to 700 feet deep. It also reduced the peak of Mount Katmai from a height of roughly 12,000 ft to roughly half that!
The actual opening through which the Novarupta volcano spewed astounding quantities of ash (creating the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes in the distance).
