(bright music)
- Whoa, there it is.
- [Arlo] This is Mount Erebus in Antarctica.
- [Jessie] There is hot magma right
pretty much beneath our feet.
- [Caitlin] The southernmost active volcano in the world.
- [Jessie] So it's this pretty hulking mass of a volcano.
It just makes you get a sense of how small you are
in the grand scheme of things.
- [Arlo] It's the most extreme Antarctic Extreme.
- [Caitlin] Mount Erebus is located on Ross Island,
just a few miles from the largest research station
in Antarctica, McMurdo Station.
(upbeat music)
- [Arlo] Almost everywhere we went,
the volcano loomed over us.
- [Caitlin] Ross Island is a volcanic island
made up of jagged rock, treacherous glaciers,
and cracks that can be hard to find.
So, flying is the only practical way to get there.
- But that doesn't mean it's easy.
We've been delayed over and over and over again.
- We've been here two weeks trying to get this flight off.
- [Arlo] Conditions have to be perfect
to fly up to Mount Erebus
because we do not want to get stuck up there in bad weather.
The remnants of what can happen if we do are still visible.
- [Caitlin] How high are we now?
- [Pilot] We're at 12,000.
- [Caitlin] Almost there.
The volcano is 12 1/2 thousand feet high.
So we use canisters of oxygen to help us breathe.
- [Arlo] When I open the window to take photographs,
my fingers go numb.
Extreme cold at this altitude is no joke.
- [Caitlin] At Erebus's summit is a crater
billowing with gas, mostly water vapor and carbon dioxide
from the volcano.
Did you see any bubbling lava?
- No bubbling lava, a lot of vapor.
- Sometimes you can spot a bubbling lava lake.
It's one of only eight volcanoes in the world
that has one.
And this is one of the reasons scientists want to come here.
Today, we're landing on the flanks
of the volcano with Jessie Crane,
who's spent three seasons studying the volcanic gases
on Mount Erebus.
Negative 30 degrees, oh my god.
This is probably the coldest weather
I've ever been in in my entire life.
The first thing I notice
when I get out of the helicopter, my snot is freezing.
- [Jessie] And so is your hair.
- Oh gosh, is it gonna like break off? (laughs)
- [Arlo] When I got off the helicopter,
the first thing I noticed was that something wasn't right.
I felt dizzy, I started to have tunnel vision,
and I was completely zoned out.
- [Caitlin] At first, I thought Arlo was just spellbound
by the view or something.
It took me a little while to realize
he was actually suffering from altitude sickness.
- [Arlo] I couldn't think, I was just dazed.
- [Caitlin] And we're not even at the summit
where much of the science is done.
- [Jessie] It's not so bad being up there,
but you have to hike another 2000 feet, uphill.
- At altitude, yeah. - At altitude, in the cold.
So it can be pretty tough.
- [Caitlin] Turns out, getting to the crater rim
can be treacherous for another reason, too.
- [Jessie] It actually has
pretty regular Strombolian eruptions.
That's where a volcano just builds up some pressure
on the inside and then it goes pop,
and it blows a bunch of lava out the top of it.
- [Caitlin] Strombolian eruptions get their name
from the Stromboli volcano in Italy,
which regularly has this type of eruption.
They're relatively small eruptions,
and release the pressure from inside the volcano.
But these small eruptions are also what keeps McMurdo safe,
since pressure is released in small spurts
instead of big disasters.
- [Jessie] It's not building up a ton of pressure
so it's not like Mount St. Helens.
It's just off-gassing a little bit at a time,
and you can see from looking around
that it has had eruptive periods
that have lava flow associated with them.
That's how the volcano was built, one lava flow at a time.
- [Caitlin] While the most visible activity
is at the crater, we're actually standing right next
to another scientific marvel.
(gentle music)
- [Jessie] Sort of like a hollow, upside down icicle.
These are fumaroles, we call them ice towers.
- [Caitlin] Fumaroles are normal volcanic features.
On most volcanoes, like this one in Hawaii,
they look just like steam seeping out of the ground.
- [Jessie] You get all of that gas, water vapor,
and carbon dioxide coming up through the side
of the volcano, but here, when it hits the air,
that steam freezes.
- [Caitlin] These towers are fascinating
because they're castles for exotic bacteria
that can survive in the dark, steamy,
and nutrient-poor environment.
It looks like something out of Dr. Seuss.
- [Jessie] It does look like something out of Dr. Suess.
Yeah they're crazy, and every one of them
sort of has its own personality.
- [Arlo] It seems crazy that anything can live here,
in these high altitude volcanic ice towers.
But it also seems pretty weird that in this land of ice,
there's an active volcano.
How did this volcano come to be?
- [Jessie] We're sitting on top of a large feature
called the Terror Rift.
And that's the source of the volcanism.
That's why there's magma coming up near the surface
and feeding this volcano.
- [Caitlin] There's actually a rift zone
that runs across Western Antarctica.
A rift is where a continent
is stretching apart and thinning,
which allows hot magma to come close to the surface.
That's why there's a volcano here
that's emitting carbon dioxide.
No matter how cold it gets on the surface of Earth,
the inside of the planet is still hot.
And that's a really good thing
because many scientists think that hundreds of millions
of years ago, the whole world was covered in ice.
But because volcanoes like this one
continue to churn away under the ice,
they finally put out enough CO2 to heat up the planet again.
So this place isn't only spectacular
to visit and study today,
but it's also kind of like a window into our planet's past.
- [Arlo] And for me, this was a glimpse
into just how extreme the conditions can be
for the scientists who come here.
Fortunately, I recovered pretty quickly
once I got back in the helicopter.
(gentle music)
- So we just got back from probably
what was the most amazing helicopter flight
of either of our lives.
- No no no. - Our entire life.
- Not the most exciting helicopter ride of our lives.
The most exciting moment of our lives!
This is the greatest, we've peaked, this is it.
(ethereal music)
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