Almost every year the Joint Antarctic Search and Rescue Team (JASART) conducts a snowmobile-assisted ascent of Mt Erebus, at 12,441 feet. We make this ascent for several reasons: lots of scientists work on the mountain, so they depend on helicopter support for supplies and for emergency evacuation in the event of injury or altitude illness. There are many days when helicopters can not fly to the hut high on the shoulder of Erebus (at 11,000 feet). Wind and cloud layers make the upper mountain a dangerous place to fly. Therefore, snowmobiles may be the only means to get up the mountain if an emergency arises. We are also interested in the ascent because - like many things down here - it is a logistical challenge to put such a trip in order. Ten of us made the ascent, so that means ten snowmobiles, lots of premix two-stroke gas, a fuel drum and hurdy gurdy, extra cargo sleds, survival bags, high altitude medications, etc... etc... etc...
We left McMurdo last Sunday at 8:00am, and returned the next morning at 3:00am. The journey is 100 miles round trip, but it also involves ascending from sea level to 12,500 feet (but at this latitude the pressure altitude is frequently over 14,000 feet).
The first part of the journey was along sea ice routes that most of us know well, but near Cape Royds, a sea-ice crack had opened up, about four feet wide. It was full of water and seals were everywhere. We brought bridging timbers for this challenge, and drove our ski-doos across.
Our ascent up thousands of feet of low angle sastrugi on Erebus's shield-volcano flanks began soon afterword. We had to stop at 9000 feet to change out the jets on the two-stroke engines, due to the dramatic difference in engine performance at altitude. From that point, we drove through the Fang camp - the normal first acclimatization and work camp for scientists on the mountain, and on up to the Lower Erebus hut (LEH) where another group of scientists were living and doing research - but at 11,000 feet we were all feeling the thin air. Not far above, we parked our ski-doos for a short walk up to the rim of the crater. The morning weather forecast had said current conditions were -40˚F with a windchill of -50˚F. When we got there it was absolutely calm. Not a breath of wind. Who knows what the real temperature was, but it was quite comfortable. Steam blew from the bottom of the crater, and rose in a vertical column, undisturbed by any breeze above the crater rim.
There are lots of unique facts surrounding Erebus. It is the southern-most active volcano on earth. It has one of only a few active lava lakes on earth. Erebus lavas posess a distinct chemistry: Anorthoclase phenocrysts (large, nicely shaped crystals) are said to exist only on one other volcano on earth, somewhere in Kenya. Anorthclase is a somewhat rare form of alkaline feldspar in which sodium replaces a bit of the potassium. The crystals are possibly a few thousand years old, floating around in the magma chamber and occasionally ejected out with fresh basalt lava in the form of bombs - small blobs of debris that are ejected in liquid-form, but land around you in sold glassy form as you run quickly down the flanks of the volcano covering your head. No bombs have burst out since last January.
We stood on the rim for almost an hour, watching the lava lake bubble and swirl. Many of us had an uncontrollable urge to hurl something flammable down into the crater, but none of us had anything worth giving up. I didn't want to sacrifice my backpack or camera to Erebus, and fortunately no one wanted to sacrifice me. No one in our group wanted to reveal whether or not they were a virgin, for fear of an immediate tossing into the crater. One kiwi member of the team said "virgin? That depends on how you define 'virgin', huh huh. There are at least a a few things I still haven't tried..."
We walked back down to the ski-doos, picking up hand-fulls of "erebus crystals" along the way. My pockets swayed heavily with them by the time I got to my machine. The landscape was stark and surreal. Kind of like Mt Doom from middle earth.
The kind folks at LEH cooked us a fine meal, and none of us were too sick to eat it. So we all kept our dinner down and explored the fumaroles behind the LEH camp. A network of caves below the ice connects several entrances. The ground beneath our feet was warm and damp, and the ice above our heads glowed irridescent blue. It felt like entering Superman's fortress of solitude, which I always thought was located near the North Pole. I guess given his flying speed he could have commuted from here.
By the time we made it to our machines it was probably almost 8:00pm. We began our descent of the mountain, changing our jets out once again at Fang for the lower mountain-rodeo. Had the snow been smooth we probably could have descended to the sea ice in 30 minutes, but as it was, we had large bumps of windblown snow, and a lot of fog to deal with. We made it to the sea ice at 1:00 am, were each one of us ceremoniously did donuts on our ski-doos for a number of minutes. A large cloud of two-stroke exhaust hung above our heads. Our carbon-footprint-guilt eventually got the better of us, so we finished rigging sastrugi our cargo sleds, and drove back to McMurdo, bridging the crack at Royds once again. A strange low-elevation lenticular cloud hung over the southern edge of the Hut Point Peninsula as we drove south into it. A dramatically textured snow and ice landscape flew below me at 50 mph while a sheet of clouds swirled above my head at less than a hundred feet. It was a surreal scene from a sci-fi film. I just can't remember which one.
The starting line at the McMurdo transition
Fueling up at Backdoor Bay - Cape Royds
Ascending the lower flanks of Erebus
At 9000' we had to re-jet the engines to burn on thinner air and less fuel.
Nearing the 9000' Fang camp with the still-frozen Ross Sea in the distance
Our 10 skidoos overwhelmed the three tents and occupants at Fang Camp. The scientists are detonating explosives and recording the seismic activity on dozens of sensors around the mountain in order to gain a three-dimensional perspective of the structure of the volcano.
afternoon tea time at LEH.
LEH from the outside.
The final ascent to the summit crater
Hot Lava!
A group of scientists were taking a stroll circumnavigating the crater rim
Group portrait on the summit. I have been doing these kind of shots a couple times this year and I enjoy them. I add a fisheye lens to my Nikon body, then strap it via a mini-tripod to the end of a ski pole, then hold it about six feet above our heads.
Anna presents our dinner spread at LEH
The shot above and the next two below are from the inside of the fumaroles at LEH.
Danny hopes the ceiling doesn't collapse.
Danny checks out a crashed coast guard helicopter from 1971.
On the descent, Joe Harrigan collects his timelapse camera rig.
Erebus's upper cone and lower shield flanks.
Joe takes a swig of water on hour 18. I shot this photo at 12:04am, with the sun fairly high in the ski to the south of us. Most of us were feeling pretty worked by this point - we had been bucked around by large sastrugi mounds, choked by 2-stroke exhaust, blasted by constant high elevation sunlight, sleep deprived, and oxygen-deprived. Only an hour back to MCM.
Just about down onto the sea ice where our extra fuel depot waited. Just moments to go before a donut-rally.
We paused briefly on our way home to view our ascent route of Erebus again. It climbes around the left side, then comes up to the summit from behind.
The Barne Glacier is a beautiful land-mark. It also juts into the sea ice, exerting enough force to consistantly crack the sea ice in a few places. These cracks are getting too wide to drive over currently. But they are always surrounded by wildlife.
An adelie saw us and became curious. It waddled a few hundred meters just to see what we were all about.
Saturday, December 20, 2008 at 02:08AM 
