Turnpike Bluff

Turnpike Bluff
Highest point
Coordinates	80°44′S 30°4′W

Turnpike Bluff (80°44′S 30°4′W) is a conspicuous rock formation in the Shackleton Mountains of Antarctica.[1]

Exploration

Otter Highlands to the southwest of Blaiklock Glacier. Turnpike Bluff in southwest

First mapped in 1957 by the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, and so named because it marks entry to a crevassed area of Recovery Glacier through which the Expedition's vehicles had difficulty in passing on their journey from Shackleton Base to the South Pole in 1957.[1]

Location

Turnpike Bluff is in the south of the Otter Highlands, to the north of the Recovery Glacier.[2] It lies five nautical miles (9 km) southwest of Mount Homard, at the southwest extremity of the Shackleton Range.[1]

Geology

The Turnpike Bluff Group is a sedimentary sequence of rocks exposed on the south flank of the Shackleton Range. The sequence includes basal clastics and quartzite, followed by carbonate-bearing clastics with Riphean age stromatolite colonies, and capped by over 1 km of greywacke and quartzitic arenite, alternating with pelite. The sequence is underlain unconformably by an Archean granitoid basement (1400 Ma). Metamorphism occurred at 526 Ma.[3] The group contains four formations, named after Wyeth Heights, Stephenson Bastion, Flett Crags and Mount Wegener.[4] These are features along the southern margin of the Shackleton Mountains, from west to east.[2]

References

1. Alberts 1995, p. 765.
2. Shackleton USGS map.
3. Paech, Hahne & Vogler 1991, pp. 123–128.
4. Clarkson 1983, p. 109.

Sources

• Alberts, Fred G., ed. (1995), Geographic Names of the Antarctic (PDF) (2 ed.), United States Board on Geographic Names, retrieved 3 December 2023  This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Board on Geographic Names.
• Clarkson, Peter D. (1983), "Geology of the Shackleton Range II The Turnpike Bluff Group" (PDF), British Antarctic Survey Bulletin, no. 52, pp. 109–124, retrieved 10 December 2023
• Paech, H.-J.; Hahne, K.; Vogler, P. (1991), Thomson, M.R.A.; Crame, J.A.; Thomson, J.W. (eds.), Crustal development: the Transantarctic Mountains, in Geological Evolution of Antarctica, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 9780521372664
• Shackleton Range, United States Geological Survey, 1983, retrieved 4 December 2023  This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the United States Geological Survey.