Mountain · Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
La Soufrière
La Soufrière is the highest mountain of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, an active volcano of 1 234 metres. It fills the northern end of the island with steep green slopes and a wide crater.
Picture credit: DavidMPyle (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Kevin Gabbert - User: (WT-shared) Kevin James at wts wikivoyage (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is La Soufrière?
La Soufrière is part of the Volcano in the north of Saint Vincent.
You will find it in: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Summit: 13.333° N, 61.183° W
The story behind it
La Soufrière is a young volcano built from layer upon layer of lava and ash, and it still wakes up from time to time. Its name comes from the French word for sulphur, because of the yellow crusts and the smell of rotten eggs around the hot ground near the crater. Rain falls almost every day on the upper slopes, feeding a thick forest of tree ferns and tall trees where parrots that live nowhere else in the world fly between the branches. Farmers grow bananas, coconuts and root crops on the rich volcanic soil lower down, since ash makes fields fertile once it has weathered. Scientists keep instruments on the mountain to listen for earthquakes and measure gases, and when signals change, families living nearby are moved to safer parts of the island.
Find it on the globe
La Soufrière is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How high is La Soufrière?
The volcano reaches 1 234 metres above sea level and is the highest point of the country. Because eruptions can change the shape of the crater rim, the summit height is checked again after big events.
Which country is La Soufrière in?
The volcano stands on the island of Saint Vincent, which belongs to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean Sea. Several other islands in the region carry a volcano with a similar name, which is easy to confuse.
Can La Soufrière be climbed?
Footpaths climb through the forest to the crater rim and the walk takes several hours in hot, damp air. Access depends on the state of the volcano, so the paths are closed whenever the authorities raise the alert level.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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