MEDIA RELEASE
Erebus The Ice Dragon: A portrait of an Antarctic volcano
COLIN MONTEATH
Published by Massey University Press, 10 August 2023, RRP: $65.00
Antarctica is a remote and hostile place; it is also majestic and awe-inspiring. For decades, the icy continent has laid down the gauntlet to polar explorers, mountaineers, scientists, and creatives daring enough to venture so far south. Their various endeavours have led to some amazing discoveries, insights, and artistic creations.
Erebus the Ice Dragon, proudly published by Massey University Press in August, is the first book to systematically bring together every aspect of the mountain’s story, including the latest scientific discoveries, by Antarctic veteran and alpine pioneer of some 30 years, Colin Monteath. He weaves history, science, art and adventure into a spellbinding story of a forbidding and beautiful place.
‘Erebus The Ice Dragon is the first Antarctic book to focus on a single mountain,’ Monteath says. ‘I had to cover many aspects of the volcano’s history from its discovery in 1841, the early climbs and science during the Scott and Shackleton era then on through the evolution of more sophisticated science starting in the 1960s.’
Erebus is a truly unique geological phenomenon — an active volcano sheathed in ice, with hundreds of ice caves, huge steaming towers around its summit, and a lava lake. For many New Zealanders, it is also a place of destruction and despair, wrought by a single momentous accident which ended in tragedy for the passengers and crew of Air New Zealand flight TE901 on Ross Island.
‘Throughout the writing of Erebus The Ice Dragon I knew that I had to create a chapter on the 1979 air crash. Nervous about what was appropriate to say 43 years down the track, I kept pushing the chapter to the end in my mind. Then the idea hit me of involving three other friends, Rex Hendry, Hugh Logan and Harry Keys, each of whom also played a vital role in the recovery operation . . . Hopefully, our reflections will help readers to understand what actually happened in the build-up to those tourist flights as well as the recovery phase controlled by Scott Base and McMurdo Station,’ says Monteath.
He also pays tribute to the extraordinary individuals who took part in the gruelling recovery operation after TE901 went down, not least the mortuary workers who worked so tirelessly. The book is stunningly illustrated with more than 200 striking images — photographs, illustrations, diagrams and maps — curated from Monteath’s lifetime of working and voyaging in the area. Dr Adele Jackson contributes an invaluable final chapter, looking at how Erebus has inspired the many writers, musicians and artists who have visited the continent.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Colin Monteath is a polar and mountain photographer and writer who lives in Christchurch. From 1973 he worked in Antarctica for 32 seasons, and in 1978 made the first descent into the Inner Crater on Erebus. In 1979 he helped coordinate the recovery work following the Air New Zealand crash. He has made numerous first ascents in the Transantarctic Mountains, and in 1988 became the first New Zealander to reach the highest summit in Antarctica, Vinson Massif. He is the founder of the photography library Hedgehog House New Zealand and the antiquarian polar and mountain bookshop Barking Mad Books. Colin has worked on numerous book projects on the polar regions, including the Reader’s Digest Antarctica: Great Stories from the Frozen Continent (1985), Smithsonian Institution Press’s Wild Ice: Antarctic Journeys (1990), and Antarctica: Beyond the Southern Ocean (1996).
