Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
36
Figure 2.3. Bathed in the
glow of a midnight sun,
Mount Discovery stands
sentry at the far southwest
quadrant of McMurdo
Sound.
from Mount Discovery is a long ridge, maybe a thousand feet high and tens of miles in
length, which ends in a steep bluV. It is geologically analogous to Hut Point Peninsula,
on whose distal tip you are standing, each being a lengthy fissure along which volcanic
lavas erupted. In front of the bluV are two low islands, White and Black, one mostly snow
covered, the other not (see Fig. 1.17).
If you look really hard beyond Minna BluV, you can see low mountains behind and
to the south of Mount Discovery. They appear to diminish and then terminate at a large
glacier. Shackleton, Ferrar, and Wilson also saw this view on their trek to White Island
in fall 1902. From the end of the mountains a perfectly straight line marks the hori-
zon across the entire southern quadrant (Fig. 2.4). The Parry Mountains that Ross had
mapped do not exist. This was clear from the first day at Winter Quarters Bay, when Scott
and Skelton hiked around the foot of Observation Hill and came back over the Gap be-
tween Observation Hill and Crater Hill. It may be that the ice shelf continues around the
low end of the mountains and that they are in fact a major archipelago extending from
Cape Adare to south of McMurdo Sound. This is what Scott had hoped to discover, be-
cause it would make for easy pulling toward both the South Pole and the Magnetic Pole.
Through the long winter night, everyone on Discovery had been pondering what lay be-
yond the horizon, and they were anxious to explore.
Look back now to the mountains across the sound, to the Royal Society Range
(Fig. 2.5). Ferrar estimated them to be upward of twelve thousand feet in elevation,
with a summit ridge that is nearly horizontal. Dropping from the summit line is a mas-
sive, snow-covered wall partitioned by steep spurs, descending into an intricate array of
foothills on the opposite shore. A short distance to the right is the end of a valley with
thin glaciers pouring down its bare-rock northern wall (see Fig. 2.2). The embayment in
front of this is New Harbour, seen from Discovery in spring 1902, when she steamed into
