Video Shows Daredevils Descending into Active Volcano’s Crater
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File photo. (iStock/Thinkstock)(NEW YORK) — Sam Cossman’s video is heating up the Internet.
The video shows Cossman and three other thrill-seekers rappelling 1,200 feet toward a boiling pit of red-hot lava inside the crater of Mount Marum, located on an island in Vanuatu, an archipelago in the South Pacific.
Marum is the world’s most dangerous and inaccessible volcano.
“I’ve just always had a great curiosity for adventures,” Cossman, an explorer and entreprenuer, said Tuesday on ABC News’ Good Morning America of why he took the extreme challenge.
“I’m always interested in challenging myself in new ways and this was something that I came across on the Internet and I just wanted to put a plan in place and make it happen,” he said. “I was really excited to be able to do that.”
The video shows violent waves of lava spewing fiery rocks at the climbers’ feet.
“It’s quite volatile and it kind of ebbs and it flows and it very much takes the form of what looks like water actually,” Cossman said.
Wearing a special suit to protect his body from the heat and acid rain, along with a GoPro camera, Cossman appears to be close enough to reach out and touch the bubbling pool of liquid heat.
“Even with the suit on, you can sit there for a max of about five seconds or so before it’s just unbearable and you have to kind of take a breather and step back by about 20 feet or so,” Cossman said of the heat.
“While you’re looking into the crater it’s about 2000 degrees and there’s just waves of heat hitting you and melting camera gear and melting pretty much anything that the heat comes in contact with,” he said. “It’s a very extreme place.”
The video was posted to YouTube last Thursday. It had been viewed more than two million times as of Tuesday evening.
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