Explorer Blog - Rappel into volcano.

The Lost World

The great rift; that's a person to the left.

We spent two days trying to secure permission to rappel into the the great rift, one of the largest and deepest volcanic rifts in the world, formed over 2000 years ago by the Yellowstone caldera. The Idaho backcountry was filled with signs warning visitors to watch their step, as hidden cracks fill the snake river valley, some hundreds of feet deep.

It was just one of these cracks we came to seek out, an access point into the world's deepest dormant volcano. Finally with the necessary permits firmly in hand we drove almost a hundred miles out on a dirt road to the great rift itself. The drive was an adventure in itself and when we finally stood at the edge of the rift it seemed small in comparison to the enormous sky and country that surrounded us. It wasn't until later looking at pictures that I could fully comprehend the sprawling void.

The first leg of our journey followed a narrow path the spiralled down the edge of the 'King's Bowl'. As we descended the temperature and light began to drop. We had entered an underground landscape as foreign as the moon. High above on the surface the weather had been warm and dry, but soon we began to encounter dripping water, and before long, a neon green lake with soft, mossy shores.

We made our final descent into the heart of the rift on rope, a sheer drop of 200 feet. As I slowly slid down the final passage, the temperature plummeted and day seemed to turn into night; sunlight was barely visble through a crack high overhead. I finally came to rest at the top of a huge underground snowbank surrounded by another lake, one that had long since iced over. In just a moment my partner landed nearby, we could go no deeper.

As the cold crept in, I reflected on how 2000 years ago this quiet, twilight world of ice and snow had been an inferno fed by the planet's radioactive core; a furnace whose fires would be stoked again someday. A different kind of chill hastened my climb out of the rift.