Panicked hikers were caught on video climbing down the slope of an Indonesian volcano that suddenly erupted in front of them, sending a cloud of ash thousands of meters into the air.
The stunning footage – captured by a government drone earlier this month – shows a group of about a dozen hikers climbing to the top of Mount Dukono as the massive cloud of gas and ash rolls toward them at hair-raising speeds.
They quickly begin abseiling down the side of the steep cone and plunge into the depths in a wild run for their lives.
Miraculously, everyone survived this horrific adventure, reported the Telegraph.
But it could have been much worse.
As it turned out, the group had violated a ban on entering a particularly dangerous zone on the mountainous, sparsely populated island of Halmahera, the newspaper said.
Indonesia’s national disaster management agency had warned the population not to climb Dukono due to increased volcanic activity, as eruptions have occurred there repeatedly since the 1930s.
“The public is advised not to climb or visit Mount Dukono as volcanic activity is currently still high,” said Priatin Hadi Wijaya, head of the Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Risk Reduction. Authorities have also banned people from coming within three kilometers of the crater.
The climbers set off anyway – and the mountain rewarded their curiosity in kind.
Indonesia is located on the “Ring of Fire” in the Pacific Ocean and is a hotbed of volcanic activity. There are around 120 active volcanoes here.
