Huge amounts of water ran into a low area in the dry, waterless desert that had once been an ancient lake.
VOA: special.2009.08.12
Twenty miles outside the small town of Taos, New Mexico, the dry, flat landscape is interrupted momentarily by a small brown-colored dome that appears amid the low, desert scrub.
In March 1999, Piccard was on the final leg of an around-the-world journey by hot air balloon the first-ever nonstop flight of its kind when his Breitling Orbiter 3 swept low over the Egyptian desert and skidded to a halt on the corrugated plains.
Exposure to extreme cold: the Antarctic Plateau, which will be crossed, is the world's largest and coldest desert with extremely low humidity and the expedition will involve prolonged periods of exposure to extreme cold below -70C.
