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- Pas de Bellecombe viewpoint — The classic launch point for the hike and the best “first look” into the caldera (Enclos Fouqué). You get an immediate sense of scale: a massive hollow rim with the Dolomieu crater sitting like a bowl in the middle. It’s also where you’ll see the whole landscape change with clouds and light, sometimes even steam from recent activity — dramatic and quick to set the tone for the trail.
- Formica Leo (the little cone) — A perfectly formed miniature volcanic cone near the rim that you can walk around or hop up for a close-up. It’s tiny compared to the main crater but huge on character: the scale, the black sand at its base, and the way wind has swept it make it feel like a moonscape — great for photos and to appreciate how recent volcanic processes shape everything.
- Pas de Bellecombe viewpoint — The classic launch point for the hike and the best “first look” into the caldera (Enclos Fouqué). You get an immediate sense of scale: a massive hollow rim with the Dolomieu crater sitting like a bowl in the middle. It’s also where you’ll see the whole landscape change with clouds and light, sometimes even steam from recent activity — dramatic and quick to set the tone for the trail.
- Formica Leo (the little cone) — A perfectly formed miniature volcanic cone near the rim that you can walk around or hop up for a close-up. It’s tiny compared to the main crater but huge on character: the scale, the black sand at its base, and the way wind has swept it make it feel like a moonscape — great for photos and to appreciate how recent volcanic processes shape everything.
- Cratère Dolomieu — The massive central crater and one of the volcano’s active vents. The raw geology here is the star: layered rock, fresh-looking scarred walls, and, depending on activity, fumaroles or recent lava scars. No other day-hike gives you that immediate, up-close reminder you’re walking on an active planet.
- Plaine des Sables — A wide, red-brown desert of volcanic sand and broken lava that feels utterly unlike the island’s usual lushness. Walking across it is surreal — flat, open, wind-swept — and it’s a great contrast to tropical Réunion, which is why this stretch sticks in your memory more than another forested path.
- Lava textures and recent flows on the Enclos floor — The variety of hardened lava is a hike highlight in itself: smooth ropy pahoehoe, jagged aa, glassy crusts and bulbous flow edges. Inspecting those textures up close (and the occasional steam fissure if activity is recent) is a geology lesson you can feel underfoot — tactile, loud with crunching rock, and very different from any regular mountain trail.
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Hi, I’m Johan (Netherlands 🇳🇱), the creator of TakeYourBackpack. Over the past decade, I’ve backpacked through 80+ countries across six continents, gaining extensive experience with independent travel, long-term trips, and overland routes.