Mt EREBUS: lava bombs, crystals, caves! Finally!

Hi all,

I finally made it up to Mt. Erebus, the 12,800' active volcano that explains the existence of Ross Island. I went up for area familiarization for Search and Rescue, and to help them with camp close-out. After acclimatizing for a day at a lower camp, we were flown to the hut on the caldera, which is the lower angle break in the mountain's profile.

My time up there constituted some of the most amazing experiences I've had. The lava lake, only 42m across but 1000' down in the 1000' diameter crater, is spewing lava bombs for the first time since I graduated from high school. I learned the protocols for what to do when there's an eruption: drop your pack if it's heavy, face uphill, and look up in the air for bombs falling toward you. The ones that barely make it out of the crater could come at you horizontally, so you have to watch out for those too.

But realistically, one's chances of getting hit are quite slim and approaching zero along certain parts of the rim. Only a VERY small percentage of terrain is hit in any one eruption, even if you include the bouncing and skidding of bombs along the surface (which, by the way, is largely composed of 1984 and much older bombs that have disintegrated in the acidic steam, leaving the Erebus crystals covering the ground in between the bombs).

The volcanologists up there have seismometers all over the mountain, as well as cameras on the rim watching the action and showing it in the hut and in the lab in McMurdo. They had a pretty good idea of how many hours between eruptions (one or more per day) and how big was big, so we could time our rim visits to minimize the chance of being there during a big eruption. Sometimes the active steam vent erupts, emitting a lot of steam, but no bombs. Normal eruptions sound much like avalanche bombing... a large deep reverberating BOOM!

At times we were on the sides of the mtn and upon returning to the hut we discovered via the seismometers that we'd missed an eruption so we'd replay the video and see how big it was. One time you could see lava flying toward the camera: a blob getting bigger fast, then dropping out of sight right in front of the camera. Then you could see steam rising from the bomb in the snow below the camera. Later I checked it out and the bomb, about the size of a cat, had hit the vertical snow of the rim just below the camera, slid down a meter, and was still there stuck in the vertical snow. Crazy.

On the video in the hut you can sometimes see shock waves from the boom, and Nelia and Bill report that the force of a big eruption can knock you down if you're on the rim.

They grantees were, among many things, collecting smaller bombs to later examine their chemical composition and to determine the extent of this year's bomb throwing (ie how big is "bomb alley"). Fresh bombs are covered with a tannish gold fine hairiness of volcanic glass. Sharp. Some of these fibers fly out of the crater alone and land on the snow as "Pele's hair" (volcano goddess). Smaller bombs are irregular in shape, but the bigger ones, like from 1984, are bulbous. The larger of those have collapsed, leaving a shape much like a red blood cell. The biggest '84 bomb they know of is 11m across, and the biggest this year 3m long. Wouldn't want to find myself calculating the trajectory of something that big. And hot.

Then there are Erebus crystals. They are wonderful for their shape, not for being translucent or dramatically colored. I'll send photos soon. The crystals are a type of feldspar (but different shaped) are thought to slowly form within the convective currents deep within the lava lake.

The first day I went to the rim I found myself rather quiet, trying to absorb everything. There was so much to wrap my brain around. That day the view of the lava was largely obscured by steam, but I sat and stared, and did get good glimpses occasionally. I even saw some orange bubbles rise up like burps out of the highly viscous molten earth. To see pre-rock, full-on live lava gurgling in slow motion, steaming, hissing, and building up pressure, blew my mind. We were on a safe part of the rim, so of course I wanted to see an eruption, but just being there was spellbinding.

Pulling with my ice axe, I later opened up an '84 bomb, now cracked on the outside and hollow from the gases, expanding due to pressure release, having escaped the lava but to the inside because the outside was cooling. The rock on the inside was shiny black, absolutely smooth, much like black shiny taffy where it had been stretched into long fibers. Where it hadn't, it was pocked with large holes where the gases had accumulated.

The outside of the bomb was quite different having been much eroded by the acidic plume. No longer was the bomb irregular, but rounded and all the Erebus crystals were light colored, standing out on the slightly darker surface except where they were obscured by green/yellow sulfur deposits.
I have to admit I have learned to love the smell of sulfur. Between Mt. Baker, Yellowstone, and now Erebus, how could I not? It means I'm in a deeply dynamic place, the smell of live hot earth...

I spent New Year's up there. Five minutes before 2006 we were in the hut playing a game and as always keeping an eye on the monitor showing the crater. BOOM, a big one went off so we hustled to the window to see the action. In two places the snow was steaming... but Bill suggested we finish the game. Afterward, we all jumped on snowmachines, and zipped on up there like little kids giddy with anticipation (some more than others).

I pulled hot lava, like very stiff taffy, out of a fresh hot bomb. This was something I'd heard about and greatly hoped to do, but certainly had no expectation. Bill waited 22 years for this experience. The bomb was about 1.5m x .75m, and still too hot to touch, or so we assumed (too sharp anyway). It had left a 5' round crater in the snow, then bounced out and had slid to it's final location, melting snow along the way.

Bill let me hack into it first, and yes, it was glowing orange inside. I was surprised how stiff it was, one had to lean on the ice axe to pull taffy, which cooled as it was exposed to the cooler air. You could see red-hot Erebus crystals suspended in the lava, re-orienting as pulling taffy brought them into the light of summer. One had to be careful while pulling so hard: good footing in the snow standing over the bomb was important. Bill said the lava was probably about 800+degrees Celcius (8x boiling). You wouldn't try to touch the outside anyway because the fibers are so sharp. With the heat, definitely leather-glove terrain. It was wild.

We hacked and pulled taffy till they got bored with it. We separated out crystals to let them cool in the snow (they are covered with black shiny roughness), and kept some cooled examples of the taffy pulls, complete with imprints where the ice axe pick had been.

I was cognizant that this is likely an experience I'll not have again in this lifetime. Hot live molten earth, rock in the making (weird rock as it is), the real thing. Almost surreal. Since coming here, I'd fantasized about simply seeing the orange lava lake; pulling taffy only became possible this year, an experience too wild to hope too much for.

I have to admit that, along with certain other members of their group, I didn't exactly avoid opportunities to hang out at the rim in the hazard zone. I knew I'd be able to keep my head about me and dodge, but wanted to experience it, to viscerally feel the power of the mountain vomiting. It didn't happen, but I did watch/hear/feel an eruption, from the moment before the enormous bubble arose, to the bombs flying as high as us but then falling back into the crater. I also saw deep in the crater little lava-gas bubbles fling orange bombs onto the cliffs above the lava lake, which was covered with layers of bomb-lava much like the accumulation of candle wax drippings. Expert consensus was that the lava in the lake is viscous enough to walk on (hold your breath!), but not enough to ride a horse on.

I have a bit of a geology background, and made a point to build on that as it pertains to Erebus (and other volcanoes), talking with Nelia and Bill who were exceptionally generous with their time and expertise. Truly fascinating.
Would you believe these are not all the charms of Mt Erebus? Steam sneaks out of the mountain in many locations, and slowly melts its way out of the deep snow/ice above which slowly moves downhill, leaving marvelous caves to explore (and fall into if you're not careful walking or snowmobiling around). Our last night, Bill attached a ladder across his snowmobile, and we all headed to a new cave, the entrance of which we checked out earlier.
We needed headlamps. One doesn't normally bring a headlamp to Antarctica in summer, so I was relieved when Bill, with a smirk, pulled one out of his pocket for me.

Yup, this was also incredibly cool. Much like my first time on the rim, I wanted to be alone to absorb it all, as best I could, privately. I also wanted to explore every single alcove, tunnel, corner, and nook in the cave system. I wanted to make a mental map of the cave as well, get to know it. This one was shaped like a circle with a long tail ending at some fumeroles, hollow towers of frozen steam that later we climbed out through. I basked in the wonderful hues of blue in thinner parts of the roof overhead, and admired the Erebus crystals showing up so clearly in the rock (not bomb-rock, but an ancient lava flow). These caves are relatively warm and quite humid.

I looked for little squeeze slots that might lead to bigger chambers. I did indeed find one unobvious narrow hole in particular, which led into a secret magic crystal chamber. I left my axe outside so that they wouldn't get worried as to my location, and squeezed my narrow frame down. It opened up into a room with, I pause as I write, incredible crystals, a type of faceted crystal, but centimeters across and deep and all over the ceiling, walls, and some on the rocks as well. It was like being in cathedral art gallery, I was very careful not to bump the walls and destroy these fantastic shapes. Turns out they are quiet durable. I picked one, plucked like a wild huckleberry, off the walls to feel it and take photos of an isolated one. They are three dimensional, and when I dropped it (gasp!), it remained intact. I went further into this closet-sized room, and found another alcove with different crystals. And can you imagine how quiet it is?

Hmmm. How to get an NSF grant to study how/where the different crystals form...

There was a bulb of ice, absolutely clear transparent ice, hanging 2' off the ceiling. I could see my hand perfectly through 6" of this ice. I've never seen anything like it, didn't realize ice could actually form like glass, for real.
Another crystal chamber sported enormous dangling crystals of shapes I've also never seen before, even in crevasses, and different than the last. And fibrous hair crystals grew up from a rock. Again, mind-blowing. I was grateful for aloneness to just be with it. I've not seen crystals like these in photos in avalanche books either.

Then there was another room that the others discovered, guarded by more clear-glass ice, but this time in stalagmites sticking up from the floor a meter or so, a couple having formed together. These were named the kachinas and this is now the Kachina Cave. Behind the guardians, in their own room, were the largest crystals I have ever seen. I kid you not: these needle-like crystals, somewhat intertwined (grew at angles into and across each other) were 12-15" (yeah, fifteen inches) long, hanging off the ceiling. Unreal. Some were lying on the floor, so I could handle and inspect them for the secret of their magnificence. They did not reveal it.

No doubt they have formed very slowly in a consistent humid environment over much time, with no disturbances such as air movement. Presumably this explains... something?

Whatever. They were simply magical. Delicate, exotic, varied, a gift to see them. How many crystalline forms can the humble water molecule take?
I reread this and laugh. Yes, despite sounding like a child, it is true that I am nearly 40!

And I did take photos, which will give you the most basic idea at least.
Ok, a bit more about station life. Life in the Antarctic Program, even mine, is not all about drooling over volcanoes, crystals, and penguins. I do have days where I'm in the office or building almost the whole day, including hours in front of the computer on various projects including running the Secondary SAR team trainings. And last week my boss was away again so I was acting supervisor which kept me hustling.

Recently a congressional delegation visited for a few days. Among others, Johns McCain and Sununu were issued big red jackets and given first class treatment as they checked out how the NSF Office of Polar Programs spends your tax dollars.

One place this money is going these days is into ships. The ice has not gone out this year despite the mega-berg B-15 finally leaving. During it's presence, the ice became thicker each year, seriously affecting local penguin and seal populations as well as needing more time to weaken, break up, and "go out".
Sea ice desalinates over time. What this means is that now the ice itself has to reach 32 degrees F to melt, not 28.5, the temp at which sea water freezes here.

It looks like that berg set into motion a chain of events, a negative feedback loop that will last who knows how long, leaving the NSF with serious difficulties getting ships in to resupply the station. The ships are nearby and have been in and out of the channel varying distances, but the channel in the ice is packed full of ice pieces (refreeze) and won't clear because it's long and wiggly. The compression in the ice that greatly affected sea ice travel earlier in the season is now slowly narrowing the channel. The US icebreakers are out of commission, and the contracted Russian icebreaker broke a propeller... on goes the drama. We are all most eager to see what will happen. The costs this year have increased about 650%, thus far. It's pricey to have the fuel and resupply vessels just sitting there, as well as the Russian ship. Not to mention 70 tattooed Navy cargo handlers hanging around McM waiting for work to do.

But seeing Russians occasionally in the galley is quite interesting. It seems the women are tall, wearing stiletto heels arm and arm with a short guy wearing a fur hat, and they stare straight ahead (can't blame them as we stare at them!). Fun to have a little cultural exposure right here in "Mactown".

The contractor continues to tighten the noose on the local population; too bad their contract was renewed last year. There are fewer and fewer opportunities to get out of town for most people, ridiculous safety rules (see Oct or Nov update), more and more paperwork, less and less trust in us and they discourage thinking, especially creatively. They are trying to reduce the number of people who receive evaluations of "exceeds expectations" to save the extra 2% you get on your bonus for that, and also refuse to rectify the alcohol-ordering error so created a season long shortage of alcohol. The dishwashers are getting more carpal tunnel than ever. People are afraid to get injuries treated because injuries affect future employment. Our dept is particularly understaffed and this year, under-vehicled, which has caused a number of problems that are not unique to us.

Morale is low; people are exhausted, burned out, and especially eager to leave this year. RPSC sent out a survey trying to find out why so many senior full-time people haven't been returning. Next year will be interesting as things have deteriorated further this year.

I, however, live a pretty insulated life down here. I am in Direct Science Support, an enclave of rationality. Better yet, my boss (and his boss) have little tolerance for crap, so hold the line pretty well, advocating for reality, and keeping our jobs overall quite doable and even enjoyable. As the Field Safety Department, many of the industrial safety rules don't apply to our terrain. We are permitted to operate under the safety guidelines of mountaineering and guiding, which of course is something we know about and they don't. As long as we maintain our safety record...

Our new folks (all 3) have been really great, yea. And now that our dept is 40% female for the first time ever, our little culture shifts further. We all work together well and avoid much of the politics and pettiness I hear of in many larger departments.

As you can imagine we are rather tight-lipped about the opportunities we have. I have only told two people, including Larry, the details about Erebus. Fortunately Larry also gets out with some regularly to build field camps for the researchers. They work fast so they can explore before the helo returns. He is there without the grantees being around, while we are there with the scientists. Both have their advantages, but I think I prefer getting to learn from the grantees, some of whom are wonderful.

I am doing well. I am scheduled to fly north on Feb 17th, and plan to spend 4 days in Christchurch (NZ) before heading home to ski Ski SKI with Larry. What's the snowpack been like? Tell me about seeing animal tracks in the forest snow, hearing the trees crack in the cold, and making graceful turns in deep powder... (I have goosebumps!) (What a flake).

Take care of yourself, and feel free to drop a note or photo now and then.

Love and late winter thaws, Susan