Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
196
Figure 6.14. Intermittent
stratus clouds billow over
the summit of Grizzly Peak
in the foreground and over
the foothills of the Hays
Mountains on the far side
of Scott Glacier. In the dis-
tance the shadowed face
of the Faulkner Escarpment
demarcates the eastern
margin of the nilsen
Plateau.
go on to have a long and distinguished career in movies and television, was shortened to
Mount Wyatt, with the citation in the oYcial gazetteer of names reading, “for Jane Wy-
att, a friend of Richard S. Russell, Jr., a member of the party.”
December 16 was “a day of mist and rolling clouds,” with intermittent, light snow.
The peaks across the glacier were mostly obscured, but they appeared enough for Black-
burn to triangulate at Stations 7 and 8. On December 17 the party reached the depot at
Mount Harkness after passing through about a mile of heavy crevasses. From there they
pulled about three miles up to the east into the center of the amphitheater of peaks that
they had spotted on their southerly traverse (Fig. 6.15; see Fig. 6.5). The sastrugi all but
disappeared, indicating the wind seldom reached into the sanctuary. Paine called it the
“most attractive of all spots the world over.” The peaks that rimmed the amphitheater
evoked the notion of a Gothic cathedral, the men agreed. Both Blackburn and Paine men-
tion the resemblance in their journals. Blackburn: “This gathering basin is walled by tow-
ering peaks which, due to the apparently vertical jointing of the brownish granitic rock,
have assumed huge towering spires buttressed after the manner of gothic cathedrals.”
Paine: “To our north and south are granitic peaks with nearly vertical cleavage, making
them stand up like walls or pinnacles like organ pipes. To N.E. five miles away is a row
of these gothic pinnacles perhaps 800 feet high above us, standing like immense gothic
towers all in a row” (Fig. 6.16).
