Page 2 - Ryan Skorecki News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

They endured them are, well, horrifying to imagine. they made their journeys in woden ships, 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: ooh. about 22 miles from mcmurdo is cape royds, where a penguin colony of about 2,000 breeding pairs live. marine ecologist dr. david ainley has been studying this colony for 20 years.

People climb around on those things? >> ryan: the mountaineers here you know have drills to practice extricating somebody. >> anthony: there's a steep learning curve to flying down here, skillfully handle 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: vo this is mount erebus, the southernmost active volcano on earth. antarctica was a great mystery for most of human history. o...

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...

>> anthony: there are no roads and few suitable runways beyond mcmurdo. for short hops, the main mode of transportation is helicopter. ryan skorecki gets a lot of flying time shuttling scientists to and from remote fuel camps. >> ryan: so that's mount lister it's probably 60 or 70 miles away and that's over 14000 ft high. >> anthony: it looks close. >> ryan: yeah. look at that massive snow bridge over there. those are some good building sized blocks. >> anthony: how deep are those crest? >> ryan: it'd swallow buildings, it's very impressive. >> anthony: so that's what you don't want to hit wit...

Things? >> ryan: the mountaineers here you know have drills to practice extricating somebody. >> anthony: there's a steep learning curve to flying down here, skillfully handle 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: vo 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 s...