Lava flow trail stop 7

Miniature Volcanoes

One of the largest hornitos along the Bonito Lava Flow trail.

Picture a kettle of hot, bubbling spaghetti sauce. In your imagination, can you see the bubbles rise to the surface, then spatter blobs of red sauce in a ring around the bubbles? That's the process that formed these spatter cones or hornitos ('little ovens' in Spanish) on the surface of Bonito Lava Flow.

This mound was formed by glob after glob of lava falling along the edge of a spatter cone.

One to fifteen meter (3-50 feet) high spatter cones form a string of lumpy beads along a once-active vent system near the base of Sunset Crater Volcano. Like bubbling spaghetti sauce, they form when gasses escape from molten lava beneath the crusty, solid surface of a flow.

If you look closely at this spatter cone you can easily see where individual 'spatters' fell with a SPLAT! onto the ring of solidified lava. Their heat welded them to the older spatters, gradually building the miniature volcanoes you see here.

TAKE A SIDE TRIP: Spatter cone in action

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