Panicked hikers were caught on video scrambling down the side of an Indonesian volcano that suddenly erupted in front of them, sending a plume of ash thousands of feet into the air.
The stunning footage — captured by a government drone earlier this month — shows a group of about a dozen hikers cresting the rim of Mount Dukono when the mammoth cloud of gas and ash rolls toward them with hair-raising speed.
They quickly start rappelling down the side of the steep cone, dropping quickly in a mad dash for their lives.
Miraculously, everyone survived the harrowing adventure, according to the Telegraph.
But it could have been much worse.
As it turns out, the group disregarded a ban on entering a particularly dangerous zone on the mountainous, sparsely-populated island of Halmahera, the outlet said.
Indonesia’s national disaster agency had warned people not to climb Dukono, which has been erupting continuously since the 1930s, because of increased volcanic activity.
“The general public is advised not to climb or visit Mount Dukono as volcanic activity is still high at the moment,” said Priatin Hadi Wijaya, the head of the Centre for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation, before adding that authorities banned people from coming within about 2 miles of the crater.
The climbers went anyway — and the mountain repaid their curiosity in kind.
Indonesia, which sits along the Pacific Ocean’s “Ring of Fire,” is a hotbed of volcanic activity and has about 120 active volcanoes.
