Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
116
Figure 4.9. Flanked by cre-
vasses, Mount Hope stands
at the mouth of Beard-
more Glacier. Shackleton's
reconnaissance route to
the summit is shown in
orange, and his traverse
through The Gateway and
onto Beardmore Glacier is
shown in yellow. The dots
locate campsites in The
Gateway and in front of
Granite Pillars.
The men were up at 5:30 A.M. Socks was tethered and given a day's ration of maize,
the camp was left standing, and the men headed oV with a biscuit lunch in their pockets.
After the first couple of subtly bridged crevasses the men roped up and continued into
an increasingly crevassed terrain that culminated in a chasm eighty feet wide and three
hundred feet deep, similar to what Shackleton had seen at Cape Wilson, but larger. For-
tunately, as the men followed the edge of this tear to the east, it narrowed and finally
pinched out in a snow-covered bridge, which they crossed safely. From there they crossed
more crevasses and several pressure ridges before arriving at smooth blue ice about 12:30
P.M. Here the men refreshed themselves with a couple of biscuits and meltwater formed
at the side of a large granite boulder embedded in the ice, then quickly crossed to the out-
crop of bedrock, and recorded the southernmost landfall on Earth to date (Fig. 4.9).
The rock was granite with a reddish coloration probably owing to its weathering.
The route up the mountain followed the crestline of the elongate massif. Because of the
crumbliness of the granite, finding good footholds was a challenge, and on a number of
occasions one of the men sent a loose boulder tumbling down the slope. Because of the
rounded surface of Mount Hope, Shackleton speculated, correctly, that it had been over-
ridden by ice at a previous time, when it stood higher than today. The rocky lower slope
