Taylor Valley
Encyclopedia
Transantarctic Mountains
The three largest mountain ranges on the Antarctic continent are the Transantarctic Mountains , the West Antarctica Ranges, and the East Antarctica Ranges. The Transantarctic Mountains compose a mountain range in Antarctica which extend, with some interruptions, across the continent from Cape Adare...
, Victoria Land
Victoria Land
Victoria Land is a region of Antarctica bounded on the east by the Ross Ice Shelf and the Ross Sea and on the west by Oates Land and Wilkes Land. It was discovered by Captain James Clark Ross in January 1841 and named after the UK's Queen Victoria...
, located west of McMurdo Sound
McMurdo Sound
The ice-clogged waters of Antarctica's McMurdo Sound extend about 55 km long and wide. The sound opens into the Ross Sea to the north. The Royal Society Range rises from sea level to 13,205 feet on the western shoreline. The nearby McMurdo Ice Shelf scribes McMurdo Sound's southern boundary...
at approximately 77°37′S 163°00′E. The valley extends from Taylor Glacier
Taylor Glacier
The Taylor Glacier is an Antarctic glacier about long, flowing from the plateau of Victoria Land into the western end of Taylor Valley, north of the Kukri Hills, south of the Asgard Range...
in the west to McMurdo Sound
McMurdo Sound
The ice-clogged waters of Antarctica's McMurdo Sound extend about 55 km long and wide. The sound opens into the Ross Sea to the north. The Royal Society Range rises from sea level to 13,205 feet on the western shoreline. The nearby McMurdo Ice Shelf scribes McMurdo Sound's southern boundary...
at Explorers Cove
Explorers Cove
Explorers Cove is a cove at the northwest head of New Harbour, Victoria Land, on the west side of McMurdo Sound, where the Taylor Valley hits the seashore. The name was applied by Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names in 1976 in recognition of the large number of explorers that have worked in the...
at the northwest head of New Harbour in the east and is about 29 kilometres (18 mi) long. It was once occupied by the receding Taylor Glacier, from which it derives its name. Taylor Valley contains Lake Bonney
Lake Bonney (Antarctica)
Lake Bonney is a saline lake with permanent ice cover at the western end of Taylor Valley in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Victoria Land, Antarctica.It is long and up to wide...
in the west (inward), and Lake Fryxell
Lake Fryxell
Lake Fryxell is a lake long, between Canada Glacier and Commonwealth Glaciers at the lower end of Taylor Valley in Victoria Land, Antarctica. Mapped by the British Antarctic Expedition under Robert Falcon Scott, 1910-13, the lake was visited by Professor T.L. Péwé during USN Operation Deep Freeze,...
in the east (coastward), and Lake Hoare
Lake Hoare
Lake Hoare is a lake about long between Lake Chad and Canada Glacier in Taylor Valley, Victoria Land. Its surface area measures . It was named by the 8th Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition , 1963–64, for physicist R.A...
, Lake Chad
Lake Chad (Antarctica)
Lake Chad is a small lake lying east of the mouth of Suess Glacier in the Taylor Valley of Victoria Land. It was charted by the British Antarctic Expedition, 1910–13, under Robert Falcon Scott, and named by them after the Lake Chad in Africa....
, Lake Popplewell, Mummy Pond
Mummy Pond
Mummy Pond is a pond between Suess and Lacroix Glaciers in Taylor Valley, Victoria Land. So named by T.L. Pewe, U.S. geologist who visited the area in December 1957, because of the mummified seals found around the pond....
and Parera Pond close together between the two. Further east of Lake Bonney is Pearse Valley
Pearse Valley
Pearse Valley is an ice-free valley long, lying immediately west of Catspaw Glacier, at the south side of the Asgard Range in Victoria Land. Named by Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names for John S. Pearse, biologist at McMurdo Station, 1961, and the season 1961-62....
. Taylor Valley is separated from Wright Valley in the north by Asgard Range
Asgard Range
The Asgard Range is a mountain range in Victoria Land, Antarctica. It dividies Wright Valley from Taylor Glacier and Taylor Valley, and was named by the Victoria University of Wellington Antarctic Expedition after Asgard, the home of the Norse gods....
, and from Ferrar Glacier
Ferrar Glacier
The Ferrar Glacier is an Antarctic glacier about long, flowing from the plateau of Victoria Land west of the Royal Society Range to New Harbour in McMurdo Sound. The glacier makes a right turn northeast of Knobhead, where it is apposed, i.e., joined in Siamese-twin fashion, to Taylor Glacier...
in the south by Kukri Hills
Kukri Hills
Kukri Hills is a prominent east-west trending range, about long and over high, forming the divide between Ferrar Glacier on the south and Taylor Glacier and Taylor Valley on the north, in Victoria Land, Antarctica....
.
Taylor valley was discovered by the BrNAE
Discovery Expedition
The British National Antarctic Expedition, 1901–04, generally known as the Discovery Expedition, was the first official British exploration of the Antarctic regions since James Clark Ross's voyage sixty years earlier...
(1901–04), it was more fully explored by the BrAE (1907–09) and the BrAE (1910–13), and named after Australian Geologist Thomas Griffith Taylor
Thomas Griffith Taylor
Thomas Griffith "Grif" Taylor was a British / Australian geographer, anthropologist and world explorer. He was a survivor of Captain Robert Scott's ill-fated Terra Nova Expedition to Antarctica .-Early life:...
.