New Harbour

CIROS 2, drilled in October-November 1984 at the snout of the Ferrar Glacier, struck basement at 167 m sub-bottom, approximately 378 m below sea-level. This gave us our lowest sample yet and the chance to quantitatively measure offset across the mountain front. A vertical sampling profile was taken off the eastern end of the Kukri Hills, starting from the top of Mt Barnes. Another vertical sample line was also taken on the south side of New Harbour, off the peak lying just to the west of spot height 1204 m.

Individual samples were taken from Hjorth Hill, Mt Coleman, Mt Falconer and the south ridge of Mt McLennan as well as Mt Herb (spot height 1097) and spot height 1204 m. This was to try and locate the position of any faults, such as the Bowers Fault (Gunn and Warren, 1962), postulated to run across the front of the Transantarctic Mountains. The topographic expression of this fault can be seen on the east flank of Mt Coleman. The abrupt drop in peak height as one moves east along the Kukri Hills, is possibly further evidence of faulting, as suggested by Wrerm and Webb (1982). Fission-track data from this area should do much towards solving this problem.