Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
222
same the second season, with refueling along the route by R4D aircraft, but this time the
train headed south toward the Horlick Mountains, that last bit of outcrop where the East
and West Antarctic Ice Sheets merge and the Transantarctic Mountains terminate. The
party leader was Charles Bentley, a geophysicist and glaciologist probing the depths of the
ice sheet. His second in command was Leonard LeSchank; together they manned the sec-
ond Sno-Cat. The lead Cat was driven by Bill Long, a geologist by training but hired as a
glaciologist, and his assistant, Fred Darling. The glaciologist was given the lead position
in order to spot crevasses. To the end, the front Cat sported four twenty-foot whiskers
composed of redwood four-by-fours with metal dishes wired ostensibly to detect hidden
crevasses. In practice, it worked “about half the time.” The rear Cat was shared by Wil-
liam Chapman, a topographical engineer from the U.S. Geological Survey, who surveyed
ground control for future maps tied to aerial photos, and Jack Long, Bill's brother, who
served as mechanic and kept the whole caravan running.
Bill Long had been on a reconnaissance flight earlier in the season and had spotted a
major exposure of flat-lying sedimentary rocks in the last small range of the mountains.
A goal of the traverse would be to touch ground at that spot for collecting. At a camp 339
miles out from Little America, the party was joined by photographer Emil Schulthess,
delivered by R4D. At that point the train was stuck in a gnarly crevasse field on an ice
stream that spilled across the single escarpment of what remained of the Transantarctic
Mountains. The camp was 16 miles from the nearest rock, 16 miles of hard sastrugi and
Figure 7.7. Shaded-relief
map of the eastern horlick
Mountains. The thin bro-
ken line plots the route
of the traverse party
from Byrd Station as it
approached the moun-
tains. Bill Long and Fred
Darling hiked sixteen
miles to bedrock in the
Wisconsin Range, as indi-
cated by the yellow route.
From a second camp at the
northern margin of the
ohio Range, Long collected
Devonian marine fossils, a
first for the Transantarctic
Mountains, from Mount
Glossopteris. The ascent
route is also shown in
yellow.
