Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
233
the northern, ice-choked coastline of northern Victoria Land, the one that Ross had sur-
veyed in late February 1841 (see Figs. 1.5, 1.9). Beyond Cape North the traverse carried
along the low coastal ranges as far as 158° E to a feature known as the Wilson Hills. From
there the party backtracked to the lower reaches of Rennick Glacier and took the traverse
south along the elongate bluVs and ranges of central northern Victoria Land, closing at
the station on the shoulder of Mount Murchison that Topo North had established the
season before.
Topo East would complete the Transantarctic Mountains survey. Starting at the
Mount KyYn station on the south side of Beardmore Glacier, the first part of the traverse
crossed the drainage basin of the Ramsey Glacier, heading in the highlands between the
outlets of Beardmore and Shackleton Glaciers (see Fig 7.10). On the south side of Shackle-
ton Glacier, the party established a station at the summit of Mount Munsen (see Fig. 7.1),
the peak immediately to the north of Mount Wade, from which the team surveyed the
stretch of mountains between Shackleton country and Byrd country that had remained
unknown until the Condor fly-by in February 1939, during the U.S. Antarctic Service
Expedition. From there Topo East hopped across Liv Glacier and occupied a station at
Mount Balchen, the high, eastern shoulder on the Fridtjof Nansen massif (see Figs. 5.3,
5.5). From this vantage the surveyors looked directly down onto the icefalls that Amund-
sen's party had mastered in November 1911.
The next station was the east corner of Breyer Mesa (see Figs. 5.10, 5.13, 6.2), looking
down onto the savage central section of Amundsen Glacier and across to the grouping
of high summits centering on Mount Astor. From there the parties hopped to Mount
Bowser, at the southwestern end of the cirque, where the Souchez Glacier originates (see
Fig. 6.2). At the head of the cirque about two hundred feet higher and only three miles
around the summit ridge stood Mount Astor, the highest peak in the Hays Mountains,
and around from that on the opposite side of the cirque, Mount Crockett, about five
hundred feet lower. The station commanded a vista across the entire middle and upper
reaches of Scott Glacier. This was Blackburn country, with its spectacle of granite and its
southern exposure. The campsite for work in this area was located on Bartlett Glacier,
about thirty miles to the south.
At the same time a geological party was camped near the head of Scott Glacier on
the snowfield beneath the icefall joining Mount Weaver and Mount Wilber (see Fig. 6.9).
It was there to extend the stratigraphy that Blackburn had measured at Mount Weaver
into the surrounding ranges, and to see whether that could be correlated with the sedi-
mentary sequence in the Ohio Range. Based in a small Jamesway (a portable, modular,
Quonset-style hut with canvas top and wooden floor), the party of four from Ohio State
included geologists George Doumani (leader) and Velon Minshew (Ph.D. student) and
field assistants Courtney Skinner and Larry Lackey. Doumani had been hired during the
IGY as a geophysicist working on Sno-Cat traverses out of Byrd Station, and had crossed
paths with Bill Long in November of 1958 as an opportunistic passenger on the R4D that
delivered Emil Schulthess to the party in the Horlick Mountains. He continued travers-
ing in West Antarctica in 1959-1960. The next year, he signed on as the paleontologist
with a project from Ohio State built around Long's discoveries in the Ohio Range two
