Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
151
four-mile distances, and were feeling in such good condition that they did the run back
to Little America in one long day.
The same week a sledging incident occurred closer to home. While making a run back
from the cache left by the ships, a young surveyor named Quin Blackburn was caught in a
sudden squall that brought forty-mile-per-hour winds and thick, blowing snow. Another
team, hurrying back along the flagged route to Little America, had seen him disappear-
ing into the drift unable to hold his dogs on course. They also reported that he had not
been carrying a sleeping bag, which added to the alarm as time passed and he didn't ap-
pear. A search was mounted, which as the hours dragged on came to involve nearly every-
one at the base. When Norman Vaughan's group finally found him he was in the lee of
his sled in a hole dug in the snow, snugly surrounded by huskies and covered by gasoline
cans. Blackburn had been out for eight hours but was none the worse for wear. Byrd duly
noted his poise and would enlist this surveyor on his second Antarctic expedition, when
he would have him lead a traverse into the very heart of the Transantarctic Mountains.
Like the British before them, Byrd's expedition held high the banner of science. In-
cluded were a physicist, a meteorologist, a biologist, and a geologist, as well as several
surveyors and topographers. The geologist, second in command of the expedition, was
Laurence M. Gould, then assistant professor of geology at the University of Michigan,
who had come to polar exploration through a University of Michigan expedition to the
Greenland ice cap in 1926 and the Putnam Expedition to BaYn Island in 1927. Gould's
principal undertaking of the expedition was to be an investigation of the geology of the
Queen Maud Mountains and Carmen Land beyond, as leader of the ground party in sup-
port of the polar flight.
During the spring the geological party and a supporting party (led by Walden) each
completed two runs, laying a series of depots to 81° 45′ S. The final departure of the geo-
logical party was on November 4, 1929. In addition to Gould, who was responsible for
navigating, cooking, and geology, the party included Edward E. Goodale; George A.
Thorne, topographer; J. S. O'Brien, surveyor; Fredrick E. Crockett, radio operator; and
Norman D. Vaughan, chief dog handler. Each of the men except Gould handled a team
of dogs. The first two weeks were easy going, with reliance on the well-stocked line of
depots. On November 18 the party was buzzed by the Floyd Bennett , on its way to lay-
ing a depot at the foot of the mountains. As the trimotor passed, Byrd dropped a packet
of messages attached to a small parachute. While flying between 81° and 82° S, Byrd
searched with binoculars to the west in vain for the “Appearance of Land” with its two
snowy peaks that Amundsen had mapped (see Fig. 5.7) and included in Carmen Land in
his narrative.
As the plane continued south a line of faint mountains appeared to the southwest,
more than 150 miles away, “bending in a broad sweeping curve to the east” and eventually
crossing the line of flight. Byrd recorded, “Slowly, now, the Queen Maud Range came into
view: first a few lone peaks dancing above the cylinder heads in the arc of the propeller;
than dark shoulders of rock draped with snow; then, finally, a solid mass of mountains cut
and riven by glacial streams [Fig. 5.9]. Here, indeed, is what we had come so far to see.”
In a great panorama of increasing detail the mountains materialized before the
advancing plane, but for much longer than Byrd expected none of the landmarks that
