Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
170
few hours that would occupy a ground party for an entire season. Aerial photography also
proved its worth for cartography, but ground truth for accurately recording elevations
remained the domain of the surveyor. Gould's party provided that control, and in the
course of its journey along the mountain front extended the known limit of the Trans-
antarctic Mountains another sixty miles beyond Amundsen's sighting (Figs. 5.18, 5.19).
Although Gould speculated that the mountains terminated at about the limit of his
view, the Horlick Mountains (Fig. 5.20), being the true termination of the Transantarctic
Mountains 150 miles east of Supporting Party Mountain, were vaguely spotted during
Byrd's Second Antarctic Expedition (BAE II) on November 22, 1934, from the endpoint
of a flight from Little America to the southeast across the Ross Ice Shelf. What no one yet
realized was that at about the mouth of Scott Glacier the ice shelf is grounded, and from
there the West Antarctic Ice Sheet steadily rises in elevation, finally merging with its East
Antarctic counterpart and overriding the mountains completely.
Finally, Gould's party demonstrated the nonexistence of Carmen Land. As the Parry
Mountains had been to Ross, so was Carmen Land to Amundsen. But who was Carmen,
the namesake of the phantasm? Amundsen never said, and historians have yet to deter-
mine. Was she the fiery gypsy of Bizet's opera, conjured to counter the gripping cold of
the polar march, or perhaps a mysterious woman of Madeira who had shared her warmth
with Amundsen on that last night in port? All that may be said is that whoever she was,
she remains as ephemeral as the land that was given her name.
