Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
of natural ledges and boulders to spare a tent from being
used for cooking with an oily, smelly, frequently boiling
over blubber stove. Finally, they mounted one of their
sledges across the top as a roof-tree and covered it with
seal skins. They named it Granite House after the edifice
in Jules Verne's topic,
The Secret of the Island
, which they
were carrying with them. Granite House never was a com-
fortable place for relaxing, but it served its purpose as a
kitchen well enough.
Taylor and his group were expecting to be picked up by
the ship
Terra Nova
about 15 January 1912, but the sea ice
never broke out that season, so by mid-January they decided
they must abandon their camp and make their way back at
least as far as Cape Roberts, 14.5 km away at the entrance
to Granite Harbor. They reclaimed the roof-tree sledge and
stacked it with about 260 kg of specimens, including some
unique Gondwana fossils, plus extra clothing, books, and
tins of food to be recovered later. They then used their
better sledge for carrying their needs with them. At Cape
Roberts, they found the sea ice stretching toward the
horizon, so they lightened their load once again by building
a cache with their remaining possessions and tins of food
they thought they could do without. Fortunately, their food
cache saved the life of Frank Browning, a member of a five-
man group that had been forced to winter over for two suc-
cessive years on short rations. Taylor's group then proceeded
southward along the shoreline toward their headquarters at
Cape Evans, 160 km away. They were in luck: eight days
later, on 14 February 1912, they were sighted from the
Terra
Nova,
which sent a boat to their rescue. Within the follow-
ing year, two colleagues revisited Granite House and
brought back their specimens and topics and other personal
possessions [
Marvin
, 1983].
Granite House had no known visitors for the next 46
years. Then, in November of 1946, Professor Robert L.
Nichols of Tufts College and three of his students stopped
there in their man-hauling expedition from McMurdo.
They took numerous photographs and made an inventory
of all the items they found at Granite House. The pictures
proved to be of special interest to me because one of
them showed a stone that looked remarkably like a mete-
orite on the ledge behind Granite House. It was about
25 cm across, subangular, and mostly black except along
the edges where its light interior was exposed. I had an
enlargement made of the meteorite picture and mounted
it among the posters at the March 1981 Lunar and
Planetary Science Conference in Houston. Beside it, I
posted a blank sheet asking for comments. The picture
elicited much interest. A few viewers wrote that it surely
was a meteorite, or probably was a meteorite. A few words
of caution also were expressed, but a strong majority
wrote that it must be examined in the field. (Unfortunately,
my picture, which I carried to McMurdo, was irretriev-
ably lost in transit.)
At about the same time that Cassidy requested a heli-
copter trip to Granite House, two young historians from
New Zealand's Scott Base also requested one. So on 19
December 1981, a helicopter carried me, Ghislaine
Crozaz, Bob Fudali, and two Antarctic historians, Jack
Fry and Jerry Turner, on a brief afternoon visit to Granite
House. As we circled over Granite House, the stone still
looked like a meteorite, but on the ground, that vision
faded quickly. We found a light-colored granite boulder
with a dark surface over most of it. This was, of course, a
disappointment to me. But Granite House with or without
a meteorite was well worth a visit, and since I recently had
been told it had become a tourist attraction subject to
vandalism, I was pleased to learn that it was being prop-
erly documented by New Zealand historians who were
devoted to the preservation of historic Antarctic huts.
1.14.4. The Allan Hills, Continued
On 13 December after remeasuring the location of
each station of the geodetic network across the Allan
Hills Main Icefield, Schultz and Annexstad left for home.
About one week later, on 22 December, Schutt and
Crozaz moved into the camp. Fudali and I joined them in
the next available helicopter, which arrived late in the
morning of 24 December when we all changed partners
in the tents. That afternoon, John Schutt guided us to
nearby Man Haul Bay, where exposures of Permian coal
and shale beds contain petrified wood and
Glossopteris
seeds and leaves. Man Haul Bay is the open space formed
by the Y-shaped arms of the Allan Hills. It is icy enough
to allow easy access to the fossils. Afterward, with the
Sun still shining, we all celebrated Christmas Eve with
nips of Scotch whiskey, an excellent dinner, much singing,
and Fudali on the harmonica.
On Christmas Day, we started measuring the force of
gravity at each marker in the geodetic network, which by
then consisted of 24 stations. This procedure required
readings, at each station, of a gravimeter, an altimeter,
and a thermometer. We completed these three measure-
ments at 19 stations, leaving 5 more for the next day.
When we finished the stations on the net, we measured 8
more stations on bedrock along the Allan Hills, including
one on the top of Peak 2330, which stands like a beacon
at the southern end of the range. The whole party climbed
the peak. We then moved on to nearby Carapace Nunatak,
which has its own small icefield. Carapace is a stunning
sight with vertical crenulated cliffs of pillow lavas and
paragonite lenses. Geodes are plentiful at its base, but we
found no meteorites there.
The results of the gravity survey, reported by
Fudali
and Schutt
[1984, p. 26], show the bedrock just above ice
level at Stations 1 and 2 sloping gently down westward
under the ice for about 110 km from both stations. But
