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The world’s loneliest volcano may hold something truly rare. We went to find it.
26.10.2023 - 17:55 / nationalgeographic.com
On an ice-crusted ridge 3,000 feet above the angry swell of the South Atlantic, Emma Nicholson takes a deep breath behind her respirator, checks her climbing harness, and steps inside the gaping mouth of an active volcano.
It’s a little after 4 p.m. on the wind-whipped summit rim of Mount Michael, which looms over Saunders Island. Located in the uninhabited South Sandwich archipelago, the island is one of the most isolated places a person can travel to on Earth—roughly 500 miles from the closest permanent station on South Georgia and more than a thousand miles from the nearest shipping traffic. In fact, the closest people to Emma and her expedition mates are the seven astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station, which passes roughly 250 miles above them every 90 minutes.
But after years of planning and enduring a tortuous 1,400-mile voyage through turbulent, iceberg-infested seas, the 33-year-old volcanologist is on the verge of becoming the first scientist to lead an exploration inside Mount Michael’s crater, where she hopes to collect new clues about poorly understood processes at work deep within our planet’s plumbing.
But Mount Michael isn’t a volcano that easily gives up its secrets.
At first glance the inner part of the rim seems harmless, giving way to a gentle snow slope, no steeper than an intermediate-level ski run. Emma and her research partner, João Lages, cautiously descend on a climbing rope—their only connection to the outside world—but both understand that somewhere below, this seemingly benign terrain might end in an unstable ice cliff overhanging the inner rim of the volcano.
As they inch their way down, conditions improve: The wind subsides, and patches of blue sky appear overhead. Beyond her face shield, Emma can see a circle of near-vertical walls of ash-covered rock and ice.
Carrying a computer and a heat-sensing camera, João and Emma descend deeper into the mountain. Below them, the gentle ski slope abruptly drops off into a dim void and an unknown distance to the crater’s bottom. As she looks around, slightly wide-eyed, Emma understands she’s standing inside the rim of Earth’s chimney—a place that bears the scars of one of nature’s greatest displays of power.
For a volcanologist, it’s the quintessential career moment, being the first to peer down an obscure portal into the planet’s interior. Only one thing eludes her, the thing that brought her to this godforsaken place: Where is the lava lake?
A reassuring tug pulls against her harness. The rope, Emma knows, is connected to a most trustworthy anchor on the summit: mountain guide Carla Pérez. Over the past weeks, Emma and Carla have become close friends as they shared a cramped ship’s cabin and a
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