Private Air New York

www.privateairny.com Private Air | Winter 2019/2020 40 POSTCARD I STOOD ON THE EDGE OF A LAVA LAKE AND WITNESSED THE HEARTBEAT OF THE PLANET W hen I was a boy, my father had a great interest in the outdoors and weather, and whenever there was a flood or storm, Dad would take us out in the car to watch it. Once I was old enough to drive, I bought myself a Land Rover, and that enabled me to go a lot further afield, chasing severe weather warnings whenever they were issued in New Zealand. I would be in the thick of it, right there in the flooding and the chaos. In 1995 a volcano erupted on the North Island here in New Zealand, and I went straight there and climbed up the volcano while it was erupting. I got into a spot of trouble because it had been closed off, and I wasn't supposed to be there. But my shots got used all over the world, and at that point, I realized that there was a market for volcano footage. Marum Crater is on the volcanic Ambrym Island in Vanuatu, out in the middle of the South Pacific, and it had been something that had fascinated me since the late 90s. From the rim, you can see this incredible lava lake bubbling away inside, about 400m down. ere are only four or five volcanoes like this in the world. I'd been trying for about 15 years to get down into the crater because I wanted to stand on a ledge about 30m above the lava lake, but every trip my team and I had made been unsuccessful, mainly because of the weather. e storms can be ferocious in Vanuatu, with hurricane-force winds and torrential rain, and that makes the climb down into the crater even more difficult and dangerous. It's not easy to get to either: you first fly to Port Vila in Vanuatu, then you use a helicopter and a fixed-wing plane to take you 160km to Ambrym. Hardly anyone goes there. It was 2012 when I finally got down into the crater. We'd already set roped about halfway down in the build-up to that day during a period of good weather, and then we had to put a whole load of bolts into the rock to enable us to keep going because you can't just go down on one 400m-long rope. If you did, there'd be too much movement on the rope, and you'd be bouncing up and down, dragging rocks down on top of you. Rigging the ropes is very tiring because you're wearing a gas mask to protect you from the noxious fumes and carrying a lot of heavy gear. It's hot, too – within a few hundred meters of the lava lake, you can really feel it. When I finally got the bottom, I didn't have my heat suit on because I only intended to rig roped and then go down the next day to do some filming. But when you've been trying for so many years and suddenly get that close… I decided to try and get as near as possible without the heat suit. I walked over to the edge of the lava lake and looked in. ere's nothing to describe what I was looking down at – the best I can think of is that it's like looking at the Sun. You can only really stand it for six or seven seconds because it's 1,050°C, so I put my fire brigade heat suit on and my air tanks, and then I could stand there for ages. You can't really feel the heat By: Geoff Mackley

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