Qualla: Lonquimay (volcano)

Lonquimay (volcano): Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gukanzu, CC BY-SA 4.0. On Christmas Day in 1988, Lonquimay gave Chile a gift no one wanted. A vent split open on its flank and began to erupt, and the timing earned the event a name that has stuck ever since: Navidad, Christmas. For thirteen months the mountain poured out lava and ash, and when it finally fell quiet in 1990, the landscape had changed. Where there had been an open slope, a brand-new cinder cone now stood, born of that long winter of fire and named for the day it began.

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Image: Gukanzu | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lonquimay (volcano): A Truncated Cone in the Cordillera

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lutz Maertens 15:33, 24 January 2008 (UTC), CC BY-SA 3.0. Lonquimay reaches 2,865 metres in the La Araucania Region of Chile, a snow-capped stratovolcano shaped like a cone with its top sliced off. Its rock is mostly andesite, with streaks of basalt and dacite woven through, the record of countless eruptions stacked one atop another sin...

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Image: Lutz Maertens 15:33, 24 January 2008 (UTC) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lonquimay (volcano): The Birth of Navidad

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cmanagercorralco, CC BY-SA 4.0. The 1988 eruption was, in geological terms, an act of construction. For three weeks beforehand the ground had trembled with rising magma, and when the flank vent finally opened on December 25 it began not to destroy the mountain but to add to it. Over thirteen months the eruption...

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Image: Cmanagercorralco | CC BY-SA 4.0

Lonquimay (volcano): A Mountain at Its Limit

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ratoncolilargo, CC0. Scientists who have modelled the inner architecture of Lonquimay have reached a striking conclusion: the volcano has essentially grown as tall as it ever will. The plumbing beneath it now favours the flanks over the summit, which is why Navidad erupted from the side rather than t...

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Image: Ratoncolilargo | CC0

Lonquimay (volcano): The Cost on the Ground

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Farisori, CC BY-SA 3.0. For the people living below, the eruption was measured not in cubic kilometres of lava but in loss. The ash that drifted from Navidad carried a heavy load of fluorine, and as it settled across some 800 square kilometres of grassland it poisoned the pasture. Livestock that grazed ...

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Image: Farisori | CC BY-SA 3.0

Lonquimay (volcano): The Quiet Years

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yiyo Zamorano, CC BY-SA 4.0. Most of the time, Lonquimay does none of this. The snow gathers on its truncated cone through the long austral winter, and the araucaria forests of Malalcahuello-Nalcas stand undisturbed at its feet, their thousand-year-old crowns indifferent to a mountain that erupts only on the...

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Image: Yiyo Zamorano | CC BY-SA 4.0