Masaya pit crater

Masaya pit crater, located centrally within the Masaya cone, is now vegetated but probably formed after the late sixteenth century, as it was not described in its present state by Oviedo (1855) writing in 1525. It has nearly vertical upper walls of scoria and lava above steep scree slopes that lead to a flat base and a 10-m-high spatter cone. This cone is fresher than the rest of the crater and was probably erupted concurrently with the 1772 lava flow. East of Masaya pit crater is a lava-filled crater, which is probably the "funnel shaped" crater that Oviedo (1855) mentions, and which was probably filled sometime between 1529 and 1670. The "funnel shaped" nature of this crater, and the local abundance of scoria, suggest that it originated from pyroclastic cone-building activity rather than pit collapse. (Excert from Rymer et al., 1998).