Dispatch #39 - Climbing Inside the Amboy Crater
ou first spot the Amboy Crater from Route 66 as a dark speck rising from the flat Mojave floor. At that distance it barely registers, a small interruption in an otherwise endless horizon. But mile by mile, it grows as you pass ghost towns with names like Klondike, Siberia, and Bagdad, until the black cinder cone dominates the landscape, looming in full view, as if it could wake up at any moment.
Nearly 79,000 years ago, it did exactly that. Molten lava erupted from what is now a quiet, extinct volcano, spilling across the desert and carving out the basalt plains that still surround the cone today. The most dramatic remnant of that eruption is the breach on the crater’s western side, where lava once surged outward. Now, that break in the cone serves as the gateway into the crater itself.
As you approach the crater’s edge, the scale snaps into focus. What looked like a simple mound from the highway suddenly drops away beneath your feet, revealing a vast, bowl-shaped interior. Walking down into the crater feels strangely intimate, like stepping into the hollowed-out heart of the earth. It’s dreamy and otherworldly to realize you’re standing inside the center of an extinct volcano, tracing the contours left behind by fire and time.…
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