Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
115
Mount Melbourne and here did such a lofty range rise directly up from the shore. Typi-
cally the coast was mantled by a low piedmont or by relatively diminutive ranges, with
the highest peaks set well back into the mountains. In northern Victoria Land, of course,
the highest mountains ascended directly from the sea, but for the next six hundred miles
down to the LongstaV Peaks, as they came to be called, this pattern did not exist. (Nor
do such high mountains occur on the coast throughout the remainder of the Transant-
arctic Mountains. The LongstaV Peaks, and the Holland Range to which they belong,
indeed represent a physiographic anomaly.)
Marshall surveyed this majestic range on November 28, from a latitude of 82° 38′ S.
That night Grisi was shot for the next depot (Depot C). With twelve hundred pounds of
provisions for nine weeks of labor, the party set out the next morning planning on two
men helping each of the two remaining ponies pull the sledges. But the ponies stopped
pulling when the men were in their traces, so they unhooked and let the animals pull
alone. On that day more mountains rose behind the LongstaV Peaks, high, white, blocky,
estimated to be ten thousand to fifteen thousand feet in height. By the 30th more moun-
tains were rising farther to the east of south and the party faced the reality that they
would have to search for a passage through the mountains if they were to reach their goal.
They had been on the trail now thirty-three days, the pulling had been hard, and
already a great hunger gripped the party, but surface conditions had been better and
progress had been significant compared with the traverse in 1902-1903 on which Scott,
Wilson, and Shackleton had been beset by a mist of ice crystals and near-melting tem-
peratures that made pulling almost an impossibility. Even as Shackleton had turned back
in 1902, he had recognized the possibility that the Western Mountains might continue
for hundreds or even thousands of miles in their trend to the south-southeast, and that
any assault on the pole from the Barrier was likely to involve crossing these mountains.
Armitage had shown that it was possible. But still, if the mountains had terminated, and
the Barrier merged into the ice sheet around the end of the last mountain, such a route
would surely have been better than a route through an unknown, crevassed corridor of
the mountains. The time had come for Shackleton's party to face its destiny.
On December 1 the party began to climb across broad, shallow undulations on the
Barrier. That evening Quan was shot and depoted. The next morning the four men took
one sledge, Socks took the other, and they dragged toward what appeared to be a broad
inlet beyond a headland of rock at the coast. In the afternoon a huge array of pressure
ridges and crevasses appeared ahead of the party, extending from the far side of the head-
land across the path and eastward out of sight. The smoothest ice was toward the reddish
hill that stood just to the near side of the disturbance, so the men headed straight for that,
camping about eight miles oV, with the intention of climbing to its two thousand-foot
summit for a view to the south.
Thoughts of what they would find ran through the men's minds as they recorded
their diaries and fell to sleep. The pressure field at the mouth of the inlet was similar to
ones at Barne Inlet and Shackleton Inlet, suggesting that a major glacier might be flowing
through the mountains here. If so, what would its condition be? Would it plunge steeply
or flow smooth? Would crevasse fields of impossible complexity bar the way? They could
only hope that a route would be clear, and so they named their summit Mount Hope.
