Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
227
engineer would fly to the next site while the rear engineers would occupy the previous
forward site, repeating the entire routine and advancing the traverse.
The operation began on November 6, 1961, but an icy blast of wind brought clouds,
obscuring the line of sight and numbing the men's fingers through their mittens as they
attempted to make fine adjustments to the instrument with screwdrivers. The next day
they added two stations—one at the summit of Mount Discovery, the other atop Mount
Morning. From Mount Discovery the view swept from Ross Island, past White and Black
Islands and Brown Peninsula, and across McMurdo Sound to the Koettlitz Glacier, de-
caying beside the foothills that climb to the massive wall of the Royal Society Range (see
Fig. 1.17). In the opposite direction the view rounded the hooked end of Minna BluV
(see Fig. 4.1), then cut back along the shoreline of the snowy reentrant to the west, which
had not been explored on the ground until the passing of the Trans-Antarctic Expedition
in 1957-1958.
For the next several days, mixed weather mostly grounded the operation except for
two more stations put in around Skelton Glacier, out at the limit of helo range from
McMurdo. On November 11, with the weather clear and calm, the teams jumped into
action early. By the time that they stopped working, it was 9:00 P.M., and they had occu-
pied five new stations. From the last peak they flew down to the ice shelf to a prearranged
location near Cape Murray, and there were delighted to find that the navy had already set
up a camp, and even had rolled out the mattresses and sleeping bags in their Scott tents.
An Otter and a navy HUS helicopter had delivered the gear, food, and fuel for the camp,
along with the personnel to man it. Dinner was a “delicious meatbar stew” complemented
by a two-ounce bottle of brandy for each man.
From this camp the Hueys would work south to the limit of their range, then the
camp would be packed up and be moved by the navy helicopter to the next location.
Throughout the traverse, fuel was delivered in fifty-five-gallon drums by a variety of air-
craft, including Otters, R4Ds, and on two occasions by LC-130 Hercules. The Hueys
refueled either at the base camp or at fuel caches set out by the navy helo. On November
12 the party had another excellent day, logging five more stations, the last of which was
on the crest of the Britannia Range on a summit several miles to the west of the highest
point, Mount McClintock (see Figs. 4.2, 7.13). The entire length of the mighty Byrd Gla-
cier spread below the surveyors in a roughened ribbon of laminar flow, unwavering in the
course it cut through the mountains. One false step from this station and a man could
have plunged nine thousand feet down the south face of the Britannia Range, ice-bound
and bristling with seracs. Barne and Scott had led parties to the mouth of Byrd Glacier
nearly sixty years before, only to be barred from reaching rock by the savage crevassing
where glacier meets ice shelf. That night the Topo South teams flew down to their next
camp at Cape Selborne, close to the point where Scott had cached food in 1902 before
turning his dogs south along the mountain front.
Over the next thirteen days the engineers occupied three more camps and surveyed
eighteen additional stations. The stations followed close to the crest of the Churchill
Mountains with views to peaks on both the plateau and ice shelf sides of the range (Fig.
7.10). Mount Durnford was particularly well placed, with its bold pyramidal mass set out
in front of the main summit line of the Churchill Mountains, aVording a view along the
