Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
83
On December 6 a hard pull up the steep, rolling snow surface put the party in a
straight, snow-filled valley that ran for about two miles across the glacier tongue. But be-
yond that, the surface became hummocky blue ice again, with numerous crevasses and
steep rolls and ridges up to forty feet high in places. The men managed to piece together
a route that zigzagged into the field. The next day they found conditions to be just as bad.
David described what he saw while searching for a route: “The surface still bristled with
huge ice undulations as far as the eye could reach. It was just as though a stormy sea had
been frozen solid, with the troughs between the large waves here and there partly filled
with snow, while the crests of the waves were raised by hard ridges of drift snow, termi-
nating in overhanging cliVs, facing north.”
As the party neared the edge of the ice tongue, smoother snow conditions mirrored
those on its south side. By the morning of December 11, the men had finally descended
from the Drygalski Ice Tongue onto the fast ice that bordered the shore. That evening
they camped next to a high mound of boulder-mantled ice, which the three climbed after
dinner to take in the scene.
Consider the view they had—a magnificent scene it was! The coastline arched grace-
fully out to the north-northeast about sixty miles to Mount Melbourne, the perfect trian-
gle that stood prominently on the horizon (Fig. 3.11). The thin line that ran out from it on
the right was Cape Washington. OV to the west of Mount Melbourne around the deepest
part of the reentrant were some formidable mountains. They appeared to be peaked and
cut deeply by valleys. Maybe Scott didn't have a good view up to the northwest when he
steamed through on the Discovery. Regardless, the mountains to the north were beautiful
to behold. They might be seven thousand or eight thousand feet in altitude. What would
they be like close up?
From those mountains, a steep escarpment ran down the coast, bare of snow in its
upper slopes. The last buttress on this cliV (Mount Nansen) stood more than eight thou-
sand feet (see Fig. 3.11). Then came Reeves Glacier, with its tiers of icefalls spilling from
the mute plateau. The dark, beehive-shaped nunatak in the middle of the glacier was the
one noted as a landmark by Scott in the summer of 1901-1902. Left of that was a broad,
flat-topped buttress, with the highest point at the northern end named Mount Larsen.
This side of that was another, smaller glacier (Larsen Glacier), and then a continuation
of the buttress, which at its termination banked the vast glacier feeding the Drygalski Ice
Tongue (later named David Glacier).
All the way from Mount Melbourne to within about a mile north of this vantage
were the inky black waters of Terra Nova Bay. The party appeared to be in a section of ice
that was fast to the shore in a sort of pocket between the Drygalski Ice Tongue and some
bare bedrock islands about halfway up the coast (Inexpressible Island). It was hard to tell
whether that ice was from the glaciers spilling over the mountains to the northwest or
was sea ice that has survived many seasons since the last deep breakout.
On the Admiralty chart the stretch to the north of Drygalski Ice Tongue was indi-
cated as “low sloping shore.” But there did not appear to be a “low sloping shore”—only
the old ice at the near end of the bay. This could be a problem when Nimrod came looking
for the party at the beginning of February.
The conversation among the party members was of possible routes onto the plateau.
 
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