leg along the vfestern side of Ross Island and Beaufort Island had 

 disintegrated to approximately one-tenth surface coverage of predomi- 

 nantly growlers and brash, 



January - During the time the GLACIER remained in McMurdo 

 Sound, from 20 December to 15 January, studies of the changes in the 

 fast ice of the area were conducted by regular flights in the small 

 Otter plane and by helicopter. Little change in the general picture 

 occiirred during that time; the fast ice broke away along the eastern 

 shore of the sound and by 15 January, the fast ice edge ran from 

 Cape Barne south to the western shores of Inaccessible and Tent Islands 

 (Figs 23 C and D) , A large open water area immediately off Cape Evans 

 was not connected with the open v/ater of the sound at that date. 

 A wide, open crack also stretched from Tent Island across to Glacier 

 Tongue o The fast ice edge ran from Tent Island west to the edge of 

 the channel, and from here it swept in a general northwesterly direc- 

 tion to within ten miles of Butter Point, much as it had been in late 

 Octobers 



Several flights were also made to the old ice area south of Cape 

 Armitage and the Dailey Island region. Except for a few hundred yards 

 off Pram Point, where pressure ridges show the old junction line and 

 a twenty-foot difference in elevation, no remnant of the old shelf 

 ice cliff of five to twenty feet in height reported by Scott was 

 apparent. Melt water from the southwest had overrun the area and 

 frozen, snow had accimiilated, and the whole area is now a smooth plain 

 of snow and ice. The only junction lines now visible are the broad 

 V-shaped lines converging on the tip of the morainic mass extending 

 north from Brown Island (Dailey Islands), which represent successive 

 southern limits of the fast-ice break outo 



On 15 January 1957, the GLACIER left KcKurdo Sound, with the 

 ARNEB, GREENVILLE VICTORY, and NESPELET;! in convoy, to rendezvous with 

 the CURTISS north of the pack ice. The scattered and broken pack, 

 v;hich filled a large part of McMiordo So-und north of the fast-ice edge 

 on Sunday, now, two days later, had mostly moved north, leaving an 

 open water channel to a point just southwest of Cape Bird, where some 

 block and brash were transitted. The ship passed west of Beaufort 

 Island. A light concentration of small floes was transitted before 

 leaving the northern edge of the offshore pack fringe at 76032' S, 

 167°00'E (Fig. 25). The ship sailed through open water i^ntil 1530 

 on 17 January, when the southern edge of the Ross Sea pack was entered 

 at 69°50'S, 177°00'E. The extent of the pack was much restricted 

 on this passage, only about 80 miles of thin, rotten ice, two to three 

 feet thick, much honeycombed and from one to eight-tenths concentration 

 being encountered. The same conditions prevailed on the return trip 

 after meeting the CURTISS at about 66050'S, 176°35'E. On leaving the 

 CURTISS, the GLACIER headed northwest from about 69038' S, 177°00'E, 

 going through the same concentrations and thicknesses of ice as had 



47 



