Never a dull moment for scientists doing field work in Alaska! Fortunately these folks were well prepared and kept their wits about them.
Stuck atop an Alaska mountain in a helicopter with ice-encrusted rotor bladesOvernighting near a steaming volcanic crater in a vessel weighing less than a compact car was not what anybody wanted, but it was a circumstance each had thought about before it occurred. Their foresight, experience and calm allowed them to survive 48 hours on top of Mount Mageik. Theirs is a story of a rare circumstance but something that’s always a possibility when scientists perform fieldwork in remote spots.
Alaska has a large number of active volcanoes. Anchorage has been dusted by ash several times in the years I have lived here. These eruptions have serious implications for air travel. In 1989
KLM Flight 867 had all four engines shut down, fell 14,000 ft, and almost crashed before the engines could be restarted, after flying through an ash cloud from Mt Redoubt. The
Alaska Volcano Observatory in Anchorage, and the
Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks do important work monitoring and researching these volcanoes.
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