Watch out! Danger ahead.

This dangerous place is actually one of the coldest places on earth, being Antarctica' Mount Erebus. Perhaps few of us have even heard of this place and I doubt that most of us will never ever visit there. I certainly won't, but the worth of general knowledge is great, for those who want to enlarge theirs, it offers great fulfillment and creates an interesting person to associate with.

Mount Erebus is the most southerly active volcano on the planet. Its beginnings date back to over a million years ago. It stands at about 12 and a half thousand feet above sea level. Its slopes are covered with snow, ice glaciers, crevasses and occasionally lava flow. Steam rises from its summit a tell-tale of what lies within. I like the way Olivia Judson describes it: " If Erebus were a dessert, it would be a reverse baked Alaska, frozen on the outside, seriously hot in the middle."

An expedition led by Sir James Ross in 1841 named this monstrosity after one of his ships, H.M.S. Erebus which was named after the Greek God of primeval darkness. Rather fitting for sure. No one reached the summit until 1908. This was done by members of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod expedition. Shackleton led a team to within a hundred miles of the South Pole, but then went back so that everyone would get home alive!

His team hiked up Erebus and it took them five plus days to reach the top. This experience included a blizzard that was so severe that they were forced to stay in their sleeping bags for more than 24 hours with nothing to drink, exposed to temperatures of minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. One man collapsed with exhaustion and another had an extreme case of frostbite, he lost a big toe.

The biology of Erebus is not well documented. The reason for this is that most life forms here are microscopic. Studying these microbes is problematic. If it couldn't grow it in a laboratory, you couldn't describe it. Those microbes don't take to laboratory life. It certainly not the ideal place to hike as heat from the volcano melts the ice, creating patches of hot moist soil. They are tiny islands of heat in a sea of extreme cold.

The soil can reach temperatures of 150 degrees Fahrenheit, but the air above not. If you move a few feet away from a hot spot, the temperature drops sharply. The acidity changes as well. At the Hotspot the soil is relatively neutral, but a little distance away, it's horribly acidic. Lifeless, cold, hot, acidic. Rather unfriendly to life. If you don't finish your food within minutes, it will freeze, you'll have to chip your cereal out of the bowl.

Today studying this interesting, challenging place is of course easier. Take a helicopter ride to the summit, less arduous than hiking. Even so, you'll need: long underwear, 2 pairs of fleece trousers, 2 fleece jackets, a pair of windproof overalls, a light jacket of synthetic down, a heavy jacket of real down, a windbreaker, socks and boots ,9 pairs of mittens, balaclava, goggles, sunglasses, widemouthed waterbottle etc.

There are places like this that have not yet been explored or are busy being explored. With a question, how can this be useful to Earth's population. My opinion is that we, each one of us should study on how to heal what we have destroyed in a big way: Earth. Instead of the trillions spent on delving into space, it would be far more important to start in our own home. EARTH!

Sources : Wikipedia, National Geographic, World book of knowledge, Websters.