Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
182
The temperature on the morning of December 2 had dipped to 2° F when the men
awoke to find their tent and sledges drifted in. Beside Mount Harkness they left their final
depot, man food, dog food, and gasoline, and with lighter loads they pushed south into
the thinning air. At the next granite spur that reached down to Scott Glacier, the pres-
sure ridge was so large that it was insurmountable, so they headed southwest out onto the
glacier toward a prominent peak, Mount Gardiner, on the west side of the glacier.
This day was the most taxing of the Scott Glacier traverse. After leaving the first
pressure ridge, the party followed a long slope that led to another pressure ridge in mid-
stream. Blackburn records that beyond this the party
picked a way through the maze around big gashes, seracs, rolls, ice holes and ridges
with Stew and Dick skillfully guiding dogs and sledges until the way ahead was
barred by huge pits, holes, ridges and rolls. Thence we backtracked about 4 miles,
worked out to the eastward and came out onto a long undulating slope of hard, low
sastrugied snow. Thence we worked up glacier toward the mountains on the east
until shortly past six P.M. and camped [Fig. 6.6]. Faced a stiV down glacier wind from
about 11:30 A.M. till about 4:30. Then followed a calm when the weather seemed very
warm so that the icicles disappeared from our faces and we perspired.
Speaking of the crevasse fields encountered that day, Paine wrote in his diary, “A
grander evidence of the overwhelming natural forces at work in this region is nowhere to
be seen. It makes our petty cares + ceremonies + don'ts seem pretty trivial to the powers
in motion here.”
After a calm start the next day the breeze from the south sweetened again, gaining
strength throughout the day. The katabatic winds that pour through Van Reeth and
Robison Glaciers were veering onto the party and heading down Scott Glacier, so that as
Figure 6.6. On December 2,
1933, after a horrific day of
route-finding through cre-
vasses, the party camped
on Scott Glacier abreast
of Mount Russell, pictured
here in the foreground,
with its fractured umber
face of pure granite. To the
rear the ridgeline rises to
the blocky western wall of
Mount Blackburn, the most
dominating massif on the
eastern side of Scott Gla-
cier. Prominently displayed
midway up Blackburn's
face is a thick succession of
Beacon sandstone sitting
on the old erosion surface
on the granite.
