First person to enter 'Door to Hell' says it's 'like stepping onto alien planet'

14 December 2023 , 10:01

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George Kourounis dropped into the crater (Image: YouTube/@NationalGeographicUK)

An extreme explorer who was the first - and believed to be only - person to enter the 'Door to Hell' crater says it was like stepping on to an alien planet which had another world feeling about it.

Adventurer and storm chaser George Kourounis, on an expedition funded partly by National Geographic and filmed for their channel, visited one of the most extreme places on Earth. More than four decades ago, a gaping, fiery crater opened up in the desert of northern Turkmenistan which was likely caused by a drilling mishap in the area.

Details on the origin of the sinkhole are sketchy, but it is believed that Soviet scientists set the crater on fire to burn off noxious gases after the ground beneath an oil drilling rig gave way. They likely underestimated the amount of fuel beneath the ground, which has now been burning since the 1970s.

The Door to Hell (YouTube/@NationalGeographicUK)

Turkmenistan has the sixth largest natural gas reserve in the world and it is unknown if the fires will ever burn out. But the Darvaza Crater, known as the Door to Hell, still burns today, a "surreal feature in an otherwise barren landscape", according to National Geographic.

Speaking about the expedition, which took place in November 2013, Mr Kourounis said that despite a year and a half of preparations he still felt the nerves as the team waited to go. He told National Geographic: "In order to prepare, there was a lot of practice at first. I was wearing: a heat-reflective suit, self-contained breathing apparatus, the climbing harness that I'm wearing.

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"We had to get it custom-made out of Kevlar, because a regular climbing harness would just melt under the extreme heat. I even went as far as to hire a stunt coordinator who does movie stunts for Hollywood films to light me on fire several times, in order to sort of prepare myself for not panicking being up close around flame.

"When you first set eyes on the crater, it's like something out of a science fiction film. You've got this vast, sprawling desert with almost nothing there, and then there's this gaping, burning pit."

George Kourounis at the edge of the crater (@georgekourounis/Twitte)

He continued: "The heat coming off of it is scorching. The shimmer from the distortion of it warping the air around it is just amazing to watch, and when you're downwind, you get this blast of heat that is so intense that you can't even look straight into the wind. You have to shield your face with your hand just standing at the crater's edge. Here I am thinking, Oh-kaaaay, maybe I've bitten off a bit more than I can chew."

Mr Kourounis added: "It was—"surreal" isn't a strong enough word. When you take your first step off the edge, and you finally put all your weight on that rope, you're trusting every link in that chain of technology and teamwork. When you go out over, looking straight down, it's literally like another planet almost. I described it as a coliseum of fire—just everywhere you look it's thousands of these small fires.

"The sound was like that of a jet engine, this roaring, high-pressure, gas-burning sound. And there was no smoke. It burns very cleanly, so there's nothing to obscure your view. You can just see every little lick of flame. There were a few moments that I just literally had to stop, look around, and drink in the spectacle of where I was.

"I could see my teammates up on the crater rim, just these tiny specks lit by this fire. You feel very, very small and very vulnerable in a place like that."

Kelly-Ann Mills