The Gazette, two travelers and a sleeping volcano 

While touring Iceland, Gazette readers Bob and Lorraine Nearpass signed up for the Inside the Volcano descent into Thrihnukagigur, a volcano dormant for thousands of years. After a bus ride from Reykjavik, they learned the crater was not the hill behind the tour office but a 3.5‑kilometer trek across black ash and a barren, wind‑scoured path. At the base, they were strapped into harnesses, helmets and headlamps, then sent up the cone to the metal gangway that would lower them inside. At the platform, a tether locked them in for the 213‑meter (699‑foot) drop. Guides warned them to keep their hands inside—the cage would scrape the jagged walls. It did. Rubber bumpers thudded against rock as they descended past streaks of red, gold and charcoal shifting in the floodlights. The floor was a field of boulders with only thin ropes for balance. Floodlights carved deep shadows across the chamber, revealing black scars where pockets of gas had exploded long ago. From the bottom of Thrihnukagigur, looking up through the perfectly preserved cone, they felt the raw force of the earth. Among the many volcanoes in the region, this is the only one known to have left its cone fully intact – a cathedral carved by fire.