Holy shit... This makes my chicken skin wrinkle. I can barely stand it when it's over 70 degrees out. One hiccup from Mother Nature and they're BBQed.

http://vimeo.com/105192180



Apparently this is the dude that guides these:

http://www.emergency.co.nz/archive/marum2010.html

To bad Frodo didn't see this guys expedition, it looks a whole lot easier the in the movie.

Marty

Zzz wrote:Holy shit... This makes my chicken skin wrinkle. I can barely stand it when it's over 70 degrees out. One hiccup from Mother Nature and they're BBQed.

http://vimeo.com/105192180

Apparently this is the dude that guides these:

http://www.emergency.co.nz/archive/marum2010.html

Holy mackerel!! No way in the world you'd find me down there - no matter how many virgins they'd just thrown in!!

The sheer SCALE of that rolling boil of lava behind the guy in the fire suit is just staggering. Wow.

Anything to do with the dynamics of our planet is truly fascinating, volcanoes being one of the most dramatic. To think, out existence floats on rafts of tectonic plates floating on a billion cubic kilometers of molten rock. We survive in such a narrow zone. Above us, only just a few miles, our atmosphere is rarefied and bitterly cold. below us, just a few miles it is unbearably hot. I think i would relish crawling down into that hole, to see the fury that just lies beneath our feet. Life.... our existence, is unmistakenly amazing.

Cool, sort of. I thought it was a base jumping video at first. There is no shortage of energy, lot's of BTU's right there, just a matter of getting it where it's needed. In the short time that video showed, we all could have heated our homes for a lifetime. Marshmallows should been supplied to the guy in the shake and bake suit.

I once attended a training session that was attended by a bunch of folks from a whole bunch of different government agencies. We were told ahead of time to bring a power point presentation on what we did at work in our agency, and that these would be viewed and critiqued at the session.

We'd just got done changing out a number of radio collars on black bears in a study we were running......so, my presentation was about using a skiplane to get to locate a black bear's den in winter, land, then snowshoe in to the den site, and dig the bear out of her den. We then tranquilized the bear, drug her out of her den, checked her cubs, changed her radio collar, weighed her, etc, then put her back in her den, covered her up and flew home. Simple job.

After my presentation, a lady in the group asked (rather redundantly, since I'd already shown a photo) if we ACTUALLY crawled down a hole with a live bear in the bottom of it. Yup. She then explained to the attendees that I was in fact a total nut job, and that NOBODY in their right mind would crawl down a hole with a bear in it, even if the bear was tranquilized. I tried to explain that since I was the PILOT, I was far too important to this evolution to actually crawl down one of those holes, but I was certain to carry with me a biologist who was my "hole man". Made no difference....she ranted on and on.

Three nights later it was HER turn to show her little program. Opening slide was a picture of a Bell Jet Ranger (shut down, rotors NOT turning) with the pilot and THE LADY standing in the crater of Mt. St. Helens......and it was smoking enthusiastically.

I interrupted somewhat rudely, and asked precisely WHEN that photo was taken......with a little hesitation, she spit out the date. I then asked when the big sucker exploded.....her response was that it actually didn't explode, it "Erupted"......the day after her photo was taken......Erupted my ass, that thing blew half the state of Washington into Idaho.....So, I commented that I'd much rather wrastle a bar than a volcano.

Volcanologists and volcano junkies are FRUITCAKES, and they should all be institutionalized.....opinion only.

MTV

mtv wrote:I .

Volcanologists and volcano junkies are FRUITCAKES, and they should all be institutionalized.....opinion only.

MTV

Ageed!!

Total fucking wack jobs!!!

Edit: Interrupted before completing post.
Continued...
Probably the way many people feel about us who don't understand our passion. Don't really like passing judgment on how others get their kicks.

That vid is crazy. Balls of steel.

Years ago I had to drop off some Italian volcanologists on top of Mount Nyiragongo in northern Zaire. This was after the Rwanda massacre and there was a million refugees living on the flanks above Goma, and the UN was concerned the volcano was going to blow "at any time", geologically speaking.

I stripped everything out of the Bell 212 I could, minimum fuel, and was able to find a place to toe on right on the crater rim. 11,500' and hot as hell. I remember seeing lava through the chin window between the pedals. They asked me to fly down into the crater for a close recce, but I wasn't sure that the air down there would keep the PT6's powered (didn't some helicopters in Hawaii come to grief this way?), so I declined that additional adventure.

In 2002 it blew and the lava flow covered half the runway at Goma.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/27/us/ca ... lcano.html

The helicopter had an engine flame out while flying inside the crater. Engines don't breathe sulfur dioxide any better than we do.

Could go like this...

These guys are miles away