by Steven Bird
Hearing a rope bounce off the wall behind her, she turned and pointed her hand-held flashlight skyward and into the small, tubular vertical fumarole shaft from which she had fallen into this previously undiscovered chamber deep beneath the ice. Seeing Brett’s climbing rope, she shouted, “I’ve got your rope. Come on down. I’ll belay you from here.”
Within a moment, Brett Thompson, the MEVO research team’s professional mountaineer, appeared above her with his feet dangling as he descended into the dark chamber. Brett, still an Alaskan at heart, had been in and around large mountains his entire life. Standing six-foot-two with a slim build and sandy brown hair, Brett had always been popular with the ladies. However, his heart belonged to the extreme environments created by the mountains.
After working as a guide on Denali since his mid-twenties and having climbed the likes of Everest, Kilimanjaro, and the Matterhorn, Erebus seemed like the next logical place for his mountaineering career. It had yet to disappoint him in that regard.
Dropping into the chamber in front of Dr. Graves, he said, “You scared me half to death. That fumarole has to be at least one-hundred and fifty feet nearly straight down.”
“Thank goodness for helmets,” she said, tapping her gloved knuckles on her head. “That, and I tried to ball up the best I could to create drag on the sides of the ice tube to slow my descent. That way, it wasn’t really a fall so much as it was a slide—at least until I reached the opening in the ceiling here. That part was a free-fall.”
“Either way, I’m amazed you're up and walking,” he said, scanning the chamber with his headlight.
“Hand me one of your sample containers,” she said, reaching out to him as she began to look closely at the life-forms that appeared to be thriving on the chamber walls. “We’ve stumbled across something special here. It’s hard to tell exactly, given the conditions, but I don’t think we’ve documented microbes such as these before.”
Handing her the container with the lid removed, Dr. Graves took it and immediately began collecting specimens with her Zero Tolerance brand folding pocket-knife, a gift from her brother that she carried with her at all times. “These walls are almost wet to the touch. What temperature is it in here?”
“I’m showing thirty-three,” Brett replied, looking at his thermometer with his headlamp. “It’s almost warm enough to remove a few layers of gear.”
“Don’t,” she quickly replied. “These chambers have all sorts of gasses flowing through them, and we don’t have any O2 with us. We may find ourselves having to egress in a hurry, and you won’t have those few precious seconds to spare.”
Screwing the lid back onto the container, Dr. Graves said, “Turn around. Let me put this in your pack, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course,” he said, allowing her to stow her precious sample safely in his pack.
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she replied with amazement. “It’s so quiet down here. Everything is so still. In most of the caves and tunnels created by the fumaroles, you can see the light shining through the walls and ceiling from the sun above. You can hear the wind pounding the mountain. But here, there’s nothing. It’s silent.”
Looking around, he said, “Amazing, isn’t it? I’m not sure we’ve ventured this deep before.”
“Of all the trips we’ve made into the ice caves, I’ve never noticed that particular vent.”
“The one you fell into?” he asked.
“Yeah. It’s like it simply appeared.”
“The heat from the mountain mixed with the cold ice above can do some crazy things,” he said. “Helo Cave, and others like it that are close to the surface, appear steady to us because they have the cold to keep them solid. This far into the volcano, though, who knows what hot gasses come and go, cutting a swath through the ice only to have it fill in and refreeze later before we’ve had a chance to discover it.”
Walking over to Brett’s climbing rope that dangled into the chamber, Dr. Graves asked, “Do you have your ascenders?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied.
“Get them set up while I take a few more samples. We’d better get going. Who knows when the next blast of hot gasses will come rushing through.”
~~~~
Looking impatiently at the clock that hung on the wall in the Lower Erebus Hut, Dr. Hunter began to speak when the door opened, allowing a rush of frigid arctic wind to enter, blowing papers off the table in front of him. “Linda, so glad you two are back. How did it go?” he asked, attempting to mask his concern.
“It’s a long story,” she confessed, “but it’s one you’ll want to hear.”
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