Mount Merapi, Indonesia THE TOWERING 2,910M VOLCANO in central Java counts as one of the country’s most active – and most deadly. In late 2010, a devastating eruption claimed the lives of more than 350 people and displaced a further 320,000. “The volcano is still active,” says Lohmann, whose photograph depicts an ongoing effort to carve a road for Jeeps through an ash-strewn riverbank. “Even though it’s now forbidden, the people who had been living in villages close to the volcano still go back. They have nowhere else to go.” They are, in part, drawn back to this volatile area by the financial prospect that tourism offers. 84 DEPARTURES
Mount St Helens, United States Mount Stromboli, Sicily “I LOVE STROMBOLI – there’s always something going on,” says Lohmann, who took this rare photograph of two different types of volcanic activity – the eruption of a lava fountain and a lava flow – in a single shot. Indeed, so reliable is the activity of the over 900m-tall volcano, dubbed the “Lighthouse of the Mediterranean”, that Lohmann offers a 100 per cent money-back guarantee to those she takes on small-group excursions to the glowing heart of the mountain if they don’t see an eruption. THE 2,550M-TALL STRATOVOLCANO is still recovering from a cataclysmic eruption more than four decades ago. In May 1980, the vast glacier that once covered the volcano evaporated almost instantly, and now, a new glacier is slowly re-forming in its place. In 2017, Lohmann joined a research team which ventured into the glacial caves being formed by Mount St Helens’ hot volcanic gases. “It was actually really cool – but also quite dangerous,” says Lohmann, who points out the gas mask worn by expedition leader Eddy Cartaya in her photograph. “We didn’t really know what kind of [potentially poisonous] gases we’d find there.” 85 DEPARTURES
