Mt. Erebus

Last week I joined a crew that consisted of: 2 of my favorite carpenters, 1 field support magician (who happens to also be one of Antarctica's most amazing woman) and 2 hilarious alternative energy boys, up at the Lower Erebus Hut (LEH) for maintenance and the close of the camp where scientist research this incredible volcano. We spent two days acclimatizing at FANG camp, took that camp down and shuttled up to LEH by snowmobile. While there we worked hard but made time to explore the amazing landscape around us, hiking the rim of the volcano itself as well as exploring ice caves and fumaroles surrounding the volcano. This was certainly the highlight of my season, and of all my seasons since I started coming down to the ice three years ago.


The trip started with a helicopter ride up to FANG camp where we spent two days acclimatizing to the elevation. Fang camp sits at about 9,000 feet, and we could really feel the altitude up there. The scenery was beautiful from Fang ridge we could see the open ocean water and icebergs, the Transantarctic mountains and Mt. Terror, another volcano by Erebus. After two days, we took down the 4 scott tents and packed up the camp to picked up by helo's and taken down to McMurdo for the winter. We then rode snow machines up to LEH.










Flying above Mt. Erebus, hiking the rim of Erebus, and exploring ice caves and fumaroles :)










































A little info on Erebus:

Mount Erebus is the world's southernmost historically active volcano. The volcano is located on the western half of Ross Island, with a summit elevation of 12,448 ft, and is located on Ross Island. Mount Erebus is currently the most active volcano in Antarctica, the summit contains a persistent convecting phonolitic lava lake, one of five long-lasting lava lakes on Earth. Characteristic eruptive activity consists of Strombolian eruptions from the lava lake or from one of several subsidiary vents, all lying within the volcano's inner crater. The lava lake crater is 160 m in diameter and 100 m deep. It is located in the Main Crater (500 by 600 m diameter, 120 m deep). Lava bombs ejected from the lava lake are on average 30 cm to 2 m in diameter and usually land on the Main Crater floor and rim.