Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
213
environment for at least the following fifty years, which included a moratorium on min-
eral exploration and exploitation, environmental impact statements for any activity in the
Antarctic region, and guidelines for tourist operations on the continent.
In the fifty years since the IGY, Antarctic research has progressed with the issues of
the day. Geologists have constrained reconstructions of Rodinia, the supercontinent pre-
dating Gondwanaland. Upper-atmosphere physicists and astronomers have built a tele-
scopic array at the South Pole to measure the influx of neutrinos. Biologists monitor
evolving ecosystems and marine food stocks. Glaciologists continue to assess the mass
balance of Antarctic ice with the backdrop of disintegrating ice shelves, and they drill and
sample layers to the bottom of the ice sheet with the intent of unraveling paleoclimate, all
in the context of climate change and global warming.
During the IGY and in the years immediately following, numerous U.S. and New
Zealand field parties fanned out from McMurdo Station and Scott Base, surveying the
terrain and mapping the geology throughout the Transantarctic Mountains. The most
high-profile operation in Antarctica during the IGY was the Commonwealth Trans-
Antarctic Expedition under the leadership of Vivian Fuchs, which put in at the edge of
the Filchner Ice Shelf. From there they staged a traverse with tracked vehicles across the
ice cap to the South Pole, where they were greeted by a New Zealand party led by Ed-
mund Hillary that had laid depots out from Scott Base in support of the British. The
New Zealanders had found a suitable route for tracked vehicles through the Transant-
arctic Mountains via Skelton Glacier, in the reentrant to the southwest of Minna BluV,
which had gone largely unexplored by the early expeditions headed to the South Pole.
The New Zealanders spun oV two dog sledge parties from the South Pole traverse
to explore the plateau side of the Transantarctic Mountains as far south as Beardmore
Glacier. The first worked along the uplands between Skelton Glacier and the western
end of the Britannia Range, climbing prominent peaks and surveying the surrounding
terrain before forging a passage down Darwin Glacier to the Ross Ice Shelf. The second
party mushed southeast toward the head of Nimrod Glacier and then continued south-
east along the flank of the Queen Elizabeth Range before returning across the plateau to
rejoin the Trans-Antarctic Expedition.
New Zealand also fielded a party during the IGY that for the first time explored the
interior of northern Victoria Land. The party of eight, consisting of four geologists, three
surveyors, and a stores oYcer, all with considerable mountaineering experience, man-
hauled up the Tucker Glacier from Hallett Station (see Fig. 1.5). These were the first per-
sons to see beyond the imposing frontal wall of the Admiralty Mountains, first sighted by
Ross's expedition more than one hundred years before. Tucker Glacier has carved a spec-
tacular valley flanked by snow-clad buttresses of the Admiralty and Victory Mountains,
whose summits soar to elevations above eleven thousand feet (Fig. 7.3).
The geologists and the surveyors mostly worked independently. The surveyors occu-
pied a series of ten survey stations on peaks climbed on opposite sides of the glacier. The
geologists did less climbing but traveled twenty miles farther up the Tucker, stopping at
a distance sixty-six miles up from the mouth of the glacier. From their last camp they dis-
covered two magnificent peaks, Mount Black Prince and Mount Royalist, in the heart of
the Admiralty Mountains (see Fig. 1.6).
