Ipala is a small but prominent stratovolcano that extends nearly across the full width of the Ipala graben and rises 750 m above the graben floor. Its summit is truncated by a 1-km-wide crater whose steep, 150-m-high walls tower above a lake. A prominent parasitic cone, Monte Rico, is located on the southern flank; it and other cones on the northern flank lie along a N-S-trending fracture that continues well beyond the volcano's southern flank. The eastern flank is cut by a 17-km long, NNE-SSW fissure that produced a conspicuous line of Holocene cinder cones that fed basaltic lava flows covering about 20 km2. Diaz reported that in 1865 Ipala ejected ash from 24 January to June; he listed no source and the report seems improbable (Incer 1988, unpublished manuscript).