When you think of a volcano, you think of bubbling lava, steam, smoke, and heat.
But there’s a large volcano in the last place you would expect to find heat, Antarctica, the coldest continent!
Mount Erebus is the earth’s most southerly volcano. It’s located less than 900 miles from the South Pole. It’s not really on the continent of Antarctica, but on an island just off the coast of the continent. The ice pack that covers Antarctica connects Mount Erebus’s island with the Antarctic mainland.
This snow-covered, 12,450-foot peak was discovered in the middle of the 19th century, but no one climbed the mountain until 1908.
Climbing Mount Erebus is more dangerous than climbing many other peaks of its height, as Erebus is still an active volcano, it last erupted in 1978!
