Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
216
Figure 7.3. Mount Trident,
its 8,384-foot summit
shrouded in stratus cloud,
rises out of Tucker Glacier.
The dark peak with vertical
bedding that buttresses
Mount Trident was named
Trigon Bluff by the New
Zealand survey party that
climbed it during the Inter-
national Geophysical Year,
surveyed the lower reaches
of Tucker Glacier from
there, and left a surveying
beacon.
The IGY also saw considerable activity by surveyors and geologists in the mountains
and the ice-free valleys to the west of McMurdo Sound. Helicopters carried men into
Taylor Valley and for the first time into Victoria Valley. In 1958-1959, Wright Valley was
studied and mapped for the first time (Fig. 7.4).
A third spin-oV of the Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1957-1958 was a survey party
consisting of two geologists, Bernard Gunn and Guyon Warren; a surveyor, F. R. Brooke;
and a mountaineer-dog driver, M. H. Douglas. The party left Scott Base with two dog
teams on October 4, 1957, and over the next 127 days traveled more than one thousand
miles, literally circling the Dry Valleys. They worked up along the coast, closely follow-
ing the route of David's party in 1907, with Gunn and Warren reaching as far north as
Mawson Glacier, where they climbed Mount Gauss (see Fig. 3.8). Returning to Granite
Harbour, the combined party traversed across the Wilson Piedmont and up Debenham
Glacier (see Fig. 3.13). From a camp at Killer Ridge, Warren and Brooke took a three-
day side trip to the south, where they climbed Mount Mahoney and surveyed from its
summit. To the south the vista opened into a vast arena of bare rock (Fig. 7.5). This was
Victoria Valley, photographed in passing from the air, but not until now witnessed and
surveyed from the ground. Beneath the men a small frozen lake was fed from the disin-
tegrating snout of Victoria Upper Glacier, a tributary in retreat pouring feebly from the
plateau. From Killer Ridge the foursome sledged onto Mackay Glacier, passing the famil-
