Boiling Lake

Boiling Lake is the second-largest boiling lake in the world, and it is situated in Morne Trois Pitons National Park in Dominica. The largest boiling lake in the world is the Frying Pan Lake, located in Waimangu Valley in Rotorua, New Zealand. Boiling Lake is 6.5 miles (10.5 kilometres) east of Roseau, and it is about 200 to 250 feet wide across.

Boiling Lake is actually a lake that boils perpetually, just like a boiling pot of water cooking on a stove. The lake was first sighted by two Englishmen – Edmund Watt and Henry Alfred Alford Nicholls, in 1870. The British government in 1875 commissioned Nicholls and Henry Prestoe, a botanist, to investigate the Boiling Lake.

The investigators could not get to the centre of the lake to measure its hotness since it boiled and bubbled, with a thick cloud of vapour covering the entire area. But they measured the water temperature at the edge of the lake and found it to range from 180 to 197 F (82 to 92 C). They also found that the lake had a depth greater than 195 feet (59 metres).

Researchers found that the lake keeps boiling due to the continuous steam or gas generated by molten magma deep down in the ground below the suspended lake. So the steam or gases escaping via fissures from molten magma below heats up the lake basin above and brings it to a boiling point. The same gases escaping from the fissures deep down to the molten magma create cracks of holes in the grounds and mountains around, with geysers and sprays of sulphur, as well as bubbling steams oozing out.

It is not easy to hike to Boiling Lake from the nearest usable road – a distance of about 8.1 miles (13 kilometres). Hiking to the lake takes about 3 hours and the journey can be divided into three parts. The first part of the journey begins from Laudat to Breakfast River – a trip of about 1 hour; the second part is up Morne Nicholls at an altitude of 3,168 feet and ends at the Valley of Desolation – a hike of about 1 hour; and the third part is the descent into the Valley of Desolation, past various geysers and sulfur springs on to the peak overlook Boiling Lake – another 1 hour trek.

The lake has been known to stop boiling for a number of days with the water level receding. It is therefore not advisable that people attempt to swim in it if this ever happens again. Two people lost their lives from gas poisoning emanating from the depths of the lake when the water stopped boiling.

The first person to cross Boiling Lake from a suspended rope above is George Kourounis, an adventure film-maker, in July 2007.