Return To The Antarctic

In the 1957–58 season the Northern Party of the Ross Sea group, Trans-Antarctic Expedition, explored the McMurdo Sound region to as far north as Mawson Glacier, and the New Zealand Geological Survey Antarctic Expedition prepared maps and descriptions of the region between Cape Adare and the Lady Newnes Ice Shelf. Most of the region extending for 200 miles from the Mawson Glacier to the north end of the Lady Newnes Ice Shelf remained unexplored.

Plans were made for the exploration of this coastline by a New Zealand party in the 1958–59 season, supported by the United States Naval Support Force, Antarctica. Two groups of six men would be landed by U.S. Navy ice-breakers and helicopters in the vicinity of Terra Nova Bay and Wood Bay, and would thereafter work by man-hauling.