378 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1949 
FIRST LONG SOUTHERN FLIGHT 
On November 21 rifts began to appear in the overcast to the south- 
east, and by 9 a. m. we were delighted with a cloudless sky. Weather 
reports radioed from the main base, the plateau weather station, and 
the sledge party, now 200 miles to the south of us, indicated that this 
was a perfect day for a long southern flight. The twin-engine, 
trimetrogon-equipped Beechcraft, Hd Sweeney, and the single-engine, 
cargo-carrying Norseman, Nana, had been ready for many days. 
By 9:20 a.m. the Norseman, with Adams as pilot and Schlossbach as 
copilot, was heading south, carrying five drums of gasoline as cargo. 
The heavily overloaded plane required a long run to get off the well- 
packed surface. Joyously I watched it head south with its precious 
cargo for the rendezvous in the Mount Tricorn area. Our attention 
was now turned to the Beechcraft. 
The surface temperature was —15° F. As the engines of the Beech- 
craft were being warmed up, the fuel pressure lines from the car- 
buretors to the instruments on the dashboard were found to be frozen 
solid. Robertson was able, however, to fix them without much delay, 
and with Lassiter as pilot, Latady as aerial photographer, and myself 
as navigator the faster Beechcraft took off from Cape Keeler, an hour 
and a half after the Norseman. 
The visibility was perfect. Seaward I could see a 20-mile-wide 
strip of sea ice attached to the land, then a stretch of open water, 
and beyond that a belt of heavy pack ice which extended to the 
horizon. Mount Thompson, 5,600 feet high, was sighted close to 
Cape Eielson. To the west of our flight track, in the center of the 
Palmer Peninsula plateau, I saw several high, well-defined mountains 
south of the previously discovered Mount Andrew Jackson. These 
new mountains I named Mount Russell Owen, the Vincent Gutenko 
Mountains, and Mount Coman. They rose high above the plateau, 
and I estimated their heights to be more than 10,000 feet. Continuous 
radio contact was maintained between the two planes. Our rendez- 
vous was 3,000 feet above Mount Tricorn at the head of Wright 
Inlet (pl. 7, fig. 1). The Norseman reached there after a flight of 
3 hours and 15 minutes; the Beechcraft took only 2 hours and 30 
minutes. We had no difficulty in spotting the Norseman, and together 
the two planes flew south along the coast line at 4,000 feet (pl. 8, 
fig. 1). In a few minutes we were 15 miles south of Mount Tricorn. 
Beneath us lay a snowy inlet, extending about 10 miles in a south- 
westerly direction, with rock exposures at the head. This inlet, 
which I named Keller Inlet, could not be seen until we were directly 
over it. About 30 miles south of Mount Tricorn was another inlet, 
which, upon examination, proved to be Nantucket Inlet (map, 
fig. 2). Its northernmost headland I named Cape Fiske, its southern- 
