Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
190
Mountains, they split into three streams: two follow the descending glaciers on
either side of the mountains, and a central stream shoots across the flat summit
and plunges off the lip of the escarpment.
From our camp on the glacier we looked up to the escarpment. On days when
the wind was light and there was only a trickle of granular, blowing snow around
base camp, we could see a churning plume of wind and snow plummeting from
the escarpment lip high above (Fig. S.11). We would watch it and imagine that
somewhere back from the edge beyond where we could see there was a valve
that tapped the source of all winds, screaming as it released its jetted fury.
Figure S.12. Blowing snow drifts over base camp in the La Gorce Mountains, December
1980. The northern escarpment of the La Gorce Mountains is visible to the left rear. The
Scott tent in the middle of the image served as the cook tent for our four-man party, while
we each had an individual mountain tent for sleeping (not in view). To the left of the Scott
tent are two nansen sleds with triwall cardboard boxes containing food. Two snowmo-
biles, one covered, the other with its windshield exposed, sit behind a third nansen sled.
On the right, a member of the team is taking a shovel out of a wooden box mounted on
a nansen sled to dig an entrance to his sleeping tent. Behind that is another nansen sled
with a shock of bamboo poles and flags for marking trails.
