Page 8 - My FlipBook

10 AWESOME NATURAL WONDERS AWESOME NATURAL WONDERS 11
AWESOMENESS

MOUNT Huge, bulky, and brooding, Mount KILAUEA

EVEREST Everest is an unbelievable sight— How would you like to stand on the world’s most active volcano?
and even more magnificent
if you get to the top!
Well, actually, you can! It sounds scary, but because Kilauea, in
Hawaii, is constantly erupting, it’s safer than some other volcanoes.
It usually releases its lava in a constant, gentle flow, instead of
building it up until it bursts. But Kilauea is still pretty awesome!

ALWAYS ERUPTING INTO THE WAVES
Kilauea is quite low for a mountain. Kilauea is close to the sea, and
It’s a type of volcano known as a a lot of its lava flows down to
The jagged edges jutting into the air on
Everest’s slopes are awesomely dangerous. shield volcano. The lava that flows the shore. There, the lava crackles
from it is runny and spreads out and explodes as it plunges into the
quickly, making the volcano wide cold water, and cools superfast.
You can’t stand anywhere higher on the earth than on the top of and smooth. That makes Gradually, hardened lava from the
Mount Everest. The world’s highest mountain is a massive, snow- it easier for tourists to visit the volcano builds more and more new
and ice-topped chunk of rock in the Himalayas, a huge mountain volcano and get quite close to the land in the water.
range that lies in the middle of Asia. lava flows. It has several openings,
or vents, where lava escapes.
BREATHTAKING STILL RISING One of the vents, called Pu’u O’o,
At 29,035 feet (8,850 m) high, has been erupting nonstop since
Everest’s peak is an awesome The Himalayas were created 1983. The lava usually streams
place to be. It’s also icy cold, when two landmasses, India downhill like a river, but it can
battered by hurricane-force winds, and the rest of Asia, also spit and splatter.
and the air contains less oxygen crashed into each other
than it does at sea level. So unless 50 million years ago, Red-hot lava flows from Kilauea
Volcano, Hawaii.
you have an oxygen mask, it’s very pushing the land up into a
hard to breathe up there. mountain range. The land is AWESOMENESS
still moving, and so the
CLIMBING EVEREST Himalayas are still growing.
In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and It may not be the noisiest or most
explosive volcano, but Kilauea lets
Tenzing Norgay were the first to Climbing Everest is dangerous. You you get up close to awesome real-life
reach the top of Everest and make have to travel across steep ice eruptions and lava flows.
it back home. Since then, another slopes, use ladders to cross
3,000 people have managed it. crevasses, and keep yourself warm.

DEADLY RIVAL 28,251 feet (8,611 m) tall, K2 in
Pakistan and China is the second-highest mountain in the
world. It may be only the second tallest, but it is harder to
climb. It’s killed a quarter of those who’ve tried to climb it.