Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
112
Figure 4.8. Viewed along
the axis of the chasm from
west to east, this is the
chaos of crevasses that
prevented Barne's party
from reaching bedrock.
ity on November 20, Barne sketched and Mulock surveyed the mountains to the north
and west. In the afternoon the party pulled toward the cliVs, but within a mile the glacier
surface had become so rough that it jeopardized the runners on the sledges, and the men
retreated to the east.
Two days later they tried to reach rock again (see Fig. 4.7). This time roped up and
without the sledges, the party headed into some of the most savagely crevassed ice on the
continent (Fig. 4.8). This part of the glacier was blue, with at least 50 percent of its sur-
face regaled with stubby, lens-shaped crevasses both open and bridged. These were rela-
tively easy to negotiate, but longer and wider crevasses also crossed the area, requiring
careful probing and many detours. At places it was necessary to climb down into an open
crevasse in order to cross it. After about three miles of maneuvering an increasingly haz-
ardous landscape, the men were stopped by a chasm that dropped oV perhaps eighty feet
and was filled in its depths by a jumble of seracs. It was as if the glacier had opened from
below, and into the abyss had fallen the surrounding ice.
The feature that Barne's party witnessed was similar to what Scott's party had en-
countered in its attempts to reach Cape Selborne and Cape Wilson. Where the outlet
glaciers of the Transantarctic Mountains enter the Ross Ice Shelf, their movements make
great tears along the marginal interfaces, with openings that run deep into the floating
ice.
Thwarted by this frozen moat, the party returned to camp, but the glacier oVered a
consolation prize in the form of a medial moraine with a sparse line of boulders that was
streaming down from one of the rocky points to the west. The rock was granite, both
pink and gray, as had been found at Granite Harbour. This was the proof of the continu-
ing continentality of these rocks with those in the McMurdo Sound area. Ferrar would
