Cold-Weather Explorers

Two days from today will mark a milestone anniversary of cold-weather exploration. On December 14, 1911, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and four companions became the first men to reach the South Pole. (I've often wondered why none of those four other men is given credit for being the first.)

Roald Amundsen

Amundsen was born July 16, 1872, and, coming from a farming and seafaring family, he was early an enthusiast of cold-weather exploration. Being the first man to reach the South Pole was but one of his "firsts." He also was the first man to navigate by boat the Northwest Passage (the route through the Arctic linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans) and the first to fly across the Arctic Ocean.

In 1928, Amundsen's plane disappeared somewhere in the Barents Sea while he was searching for a missing person. Neither his body nor the plane were ever discovered.

Reading about Amundsen's exploits reminded me of the activities of a relative of mine, J.N. Standifer, who also was a cold-weather explorer.

A former Marine (yes, I know that "once a Marine, always a Marine," but I think you know what I mean: he wasn't serving at the time to which I'm now referring), Uncle J.N. worked as a cartographer for the U.S. Geological Survey. He spent more than 15 years with the USGS, but none of his experiences with that organization matched those of 1967-68, when he was working in Antarctica.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey Scientific Activities in the Exploration of Antarctica: 1946-2006 Record of Personnel in Antarctica and Their Postal Cachets: U.S. Navy (1946-48, 1954-60), International Geophysical Year (1957-58), and USGS (1960-2006), [How's that for a title?!] His "Primary Assignment" was listed as "Aerial mapping photography liaison." According to The Antarctic Journal of the United States (July-August 1968) the primary base of his studies or exploration area was Roosevelt Island.

An article in the Knoxville News-Sentinel during J.N.'s time in Antarctica reported his assignment in more down-to-earth terms: "to discover what part of the world's most remote continent is land and what part is ice" and "to produce the first maps of desolate sections of Marie Byrd Land, an outlying area which Admiral Richard Byrd named for his wife."

In the process of doing his job, J.N. had a specific area in which he explored named for him--Standifer Bluff. It is described as a "conspicuous rock bluff, a component of the Smith Bluffs which form the northwest coast of Dustin Island, standing 10 nautical miles ... west-southwest of the north tip of the island." It was "named by US-ACAN for J.N. Standifer, USGS photographic specialist in Antarctica in the 1967-68 season."

Amundsen and Uncle J.N. might have relished the cold weather of Antarctica, but I'll take the much milder climates of the South! (And to think that winter here is just beginning! BRRR!)