Mount Erebus

A 3,794-metre stratovolcano on Ross Island, Antarctica, the southernmost active volcano on Earth. Erebus has been continuously erupting since at least 1972 — the longest documented continuous eruption of any volcano in the modern era. The summit crater holds a permanent lava lake, one of only a handful in the world. The volcano is named for HMS Erebus, the ship of the 1839-1843 British Antarctic expedition led by James Clark Ross, the first expedition to sight the volcano. The Greek mythological reference to Erebus — the personification of darkness and shadow — was applied to the ship before being transferred to the mountain.

The first ascent came in 1908 by the British Antarctic Expedition led by Ernest Shackleton. The summit team — Edgeworth David, Douglas Mawson, Alistair Mackay, Eric Marshall, Jameson Adams, and Philip Brocklehurst — reached the summit on March 10, 1908, during the antarctic winter approach. The expedition was the first to ascend the volcano and to observe the active lava lake at close range. The descent was complicated by the worsening weather; the team's account of the climb established the foundational mountaineering literature of the Antarctic continent.

The technical difficulty of the standard route is modest. The climb involves a long glacier walk from McMurdo Station at sea level, with several intermediate camps before the summit attempt. The route is essentially a long uphill walk through deep snow, with some moderate ice climbing on the upper crater rim. The fatality rate has been low, though the proximity of the active crater has produced occasional incidents from gas exposure and from rockfall during eruptive periods. In 1979, an Air New Zealand sightseeing flight crashed into the lower flank of Erebus, killing 257 people — the worst aviation disaster in Antarctic history. The wreckage remains on the mountain.

What Erebus represents in the Atlas is the geographic extreme of mountain climbing — the southernmost active volcano, the southernmost climbable peak of any altitude, and one of the most logistically restrictive mountain access in the world. Access is controlled through Antarctic research programs; the volcano is not open to commercial climbing in the way Vinson is. Climbers who summit Erebus are typically scientific personnel attached to research stations rather than independent expeditions.