Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
174
tional thirty-three miles, stopping twelve miles out from Supporting Party Mountain.
At that camp they cached supplies in a depot for the return and marked out a one-mile-
square area as an emergency airfield. The party had been regularly killing dogs and either
caching them or eating them. When they arrived at “Mountain Base Depot” they had
twenty-seven, and there shot another nine for the return.
At last the mountains were at hand. Looking oV to the east, the south, and the west,
Paine recorded, the “grand panorama of black faces, jagged peaks, bold contours of a con-
tinent submerged by the rigors of a glacial climate, and all subdued by a mellow purple
haze. Sometimes it is more Maxfield Parrish than the artist himself. But we must get to
them.”
Another blizzard pinned them down until November 26, when they were able to
move in to the base of Supporting Party Mountain, the farthest reach of Gould's party
five years before. From here on the party had two teams of nine dogs, with Blackburn
skiing out in front looking for crevasses, followed by the dog drivers—first Paine who
navigated the traverse, followed by Russell. The next morning Blackburn was up early
collecting specimens of rock on the spur behind camp, and taking pictures with the Zeiss
and Leica. The rocks were a highly contorted black schist, a metamorphic rock with an
abundance of the black mica, biotite. Red crystals of garnet and veins of white quartz
were also laced through the rock. Like Gould before him, Blackburn noted the occur-
rence of these metamorphic rocks and collected them, but their complexities were beyond
the scope of such a fast-moving, exploratory expedition, and they lacked any trace of fos-
sils that might have been preserved in the sediments before their metamorphism, so in-
herently they could add little to the geological story.
Later that day all three men climbed to the summit of Supporting Party Mountain,
where they found the cairn erected by Gould's party. Blackburn copied the note that
Gould had written and took the original back with him, later presenting it to Gould. He
also left a note of his own:
Base of Queen Maud Range
Marie Byrd Land
Antarctica
Nov. 27/3 4
This note is left here by the Queen Maud Geological Party of the Byrd Antarctic
Expedition II. We are here to conduct a geological reconnaissance if the short time at
our disposal we find a feasible way up for our dog teams. Otherwise we may proceed
up Thorne Glacier or work to the east. In any case our plans call for arriving back at
our mountain base 14 miles out on the Barrier on December 23 and returning then
to Little America.
Our camp is situated at the N.W. base of this peak in honor of which we are call-
ing it Supporting Party Mt. Camp. Clouds obscuring most of the view but there are
indications of clearing to the N.E.
Stuart D. Paine
Quin A. Blackburn
Richard Russell
