The Mt. Erebus crew (Deb, Burmy and I) met up again last night at the coffee house to drink wine, play crib and talk with a friend of ours (Craig) who just arrived back in town from being weathered in on the mountain for 4 days. We really got a treat, though, because the world's leading volcanologist, Bill McIntosh, whom our friend Craig was "stranded" on the mountain with, happened to show up as well.

So we monopolized his entire evening and picked his brain with all kinds of Erebus questions. We looked through photos and exchanged stories, which he has a lot of, having worked on the mountain for over 30 years. Turns out that in all our hiking, exploring and spelunking, we walked right passed several fumaroles containing chambers with 60 foot high ceilings! Wow! It was probably for the better that we stuck to the 15 footers since the larger ones can be really dangerous. Apparently there are all kinds of caves around the mountain where a repel on a fixed rope of up to 150 feet is required to enter.

It was nice to finally get the straight story on the helicopter crash too. Apparently, in the early 70s this Navy helicopter was taking fresh supplies out to some folks on Byrd Mountain and the passenger on board convinced the pilot to fly up to the top of Erebus, even though it was far beyond the 9,000 foot operational capabilities of the helicopter. They ended up loosing power and taking a hard landing which smashed up the gear.

The two men pitched a tent, which is still buried near by (haha... missed that too) and waited for a rescue (too bad, they didn't find those heated fumaroles). The helicopter blew over that winter and was stripped of parts the next year, even though it still ran okay, which took by surprise the first mechanic who accidentally turned it on while messing around in the cockpit.

~G