passing 8,500 so we ll go another 4,000. you re going to see the main crater in just a second. anthony: the conditions endured by the first british antarctic explorers like scott, and shackleton and norwegian amundson and the lengths of time they endured them, are well, horrifying to imagine. they made their journeys in wooden ships, then man hauling equipment across glaciers, ice floes, mountains and frozen seas surviving on penguin meat when rations ran out. ryan: you might start to smell some sulfur. you smell it? anthony: yeah i smell that sulfur. what s our altitude now? ryan: 13, two. anthony: oyour honor. about 22 miles from mcmurdo is cape royds, where a penguin colony of about 2000 breeding pairs live. marine ecologist,
you know have drills to practice extricating somebody. anthony: there s a steep learning curve to flying down here, skillfully handling gale-force winds, reduced control at high altitudes and the unpredictability of extreme turbulence around mountains and active volcanoes. ryan: slowly but surely climbing and it s minus 20 outside. anthony: erebus and that s ryan: mount terror. anthony: this is mount erebus, the southernmost active volcano on earth. antarctica was a great mystery for most of human history. only a theory, a great white space at the bottom of the world. ryan: we re just passing 8,500 so we ll go another 4,000. you re going to see the main crater in just a second. anthony: the conditions endured by the first british antarctic explorers like scott and shackleton and norwegian amundson and the lengths of time
they had to build it using trusses and pieces that could fit in the confines of an lc-130. male pilot: it s a fun job, and it s important to scientists, it s fantastic. anthony: in just a few hours, we cross the ross ice shelf, fly up the beardmore glacier into the heart of antarctica, the polar plateau. how many miles from mcmurdo to the pole? around female pilot: 735 miles. anthony: scott walked that? what was going through his mind? male pilot: they loved to suffer. anthony: the first explorers who got here or came close, raced across the continent, striving to be the first. amundson made it before anyone in 1911, beating scott by only 34 days. amundson wisely used huskies to pull his sleds across the ice. scott didn t and his team never made it back alive. the south pole. what you might not know or be prepared for is the south pole is high, like 9,000 feet above
crater in just a second. anthony: the conditions endured by the first british antarctic explorers like scott, and shackleton and norwegian amundson and the lengths of time they endured them, are well, horrifying to imagine. they made their journeys in wooden ships, then man hauling equipment across glaciers, ice floes, mountains and frozen seas surviving on penguin meat when rations ran out. ryan: you might start to smell some sulfur. you smell it? anthony: yeah i smell that sulfur. what s our altitude now? ryan: 13, two. anthony: about 22 miles from mcmurdo is cape royds, where a penguin colony of about 2000 breeding pairs live. marine ecologist, dr. david ainley, has been studying this colony for 20 years. anthony: so you re tagging the young ones? david: right. anthony: do you follow them
endured by the first british antarctic explorers like scott, and shackleton and norwegian amundson and the lengths of time they endured them, are well, horrifying to imagine. they made their journeys in wooden ships, then man hauling equipment across glaciers, ice floes, mountains and frozen seas surviving on penguin meat when rations ran out. ryan: you might start to smell some sulfur. you smell it? anthony: yeah i smell that sulfur. what s our altitude now? ryan: 13, two. anthony: about 22 miles from mcmurdo is cape royds, where a penguin colony of about 2000 breeding pairs live. marine ecologist, dr. david ainley, has been