Distant mountains floated in the sky as enchanted cities, and often the whole white world would dissolve into a gold, silver and scarlet land of Dansanian dreams and adventurous expectancy under the magic of the low midnight sun.

—H.P. Lovecraft

The black, brooding Warren Ranges draped in a light snow mantle, its peaks hung with stagnant fluffy clouds, is truly an awe-inspiring sight to behold. Add the hazy midnight light of a clear summer Antarctic night, and one can empathize with Lovecraft's timeless words.

It was lightly snowing when we woke up on the morning of Sunday, 8 December, the temperature at a comfortable 18°F. After chatting with the others, who wanted to stay inside and rest for the morning, I decided to head up Mt. Ritchie alone to search for fossils. Mt. Ritchie was one of the most important fossil sites in the whole region, the thickest outcropping exposure of Aztec Siltstone that had been discovered so far.

I packed a good variety of snack foods and a thermos of hot orange drink in my large backpack, then bundled up in my thickest gear in case the weather turned foul. At 9:20 A.M.I left the camp in a fresh 20-knot wind and headed off, slowly pacing up the treacherous rocky scree slopes. I noted the first in situ fish fossil bed about two hours later, when I was standing some 30-40 meters down from the top of the exposed section. This was a totally unexpected find as the previous VUWAE expeditions had only found fish fossils at the very top of the mountain. I wrote down the locality with sketches of the cliffs above and below me to try and accurately determine the exact position of the

new finds. After collecting a few samples I decided to make more of this site on the way down, just in case better material was waiting ahead of me. I had learned by now to take the chance and push on in search of new discoveries if the weather was on my side. At that time I was awfully suspicious of just whose side the weather was on, but took the risk anyhow.

It was tiring work walking up the rubbly ice-cemented scree because it was loose and moved easily underfoot with each step, but I was excited at seeing so many fragments of fish fossils almost everywhere around me. It took about three hours to reach the top of Mt. Ritchie. The summit consists of a near-perfect pyramid of black volcanic rock sitting on greenish Permian glacial deposits.

I had also been assigned another mission that day: to find a long-lost pen. When Alex Ritchie was there in 1971 with VUWAE 15 he lost his silver Parker pen, a special gift from his mother, so he had asked me if I would have a good look around for it on the top of the mountain. After several trips to the peak all I found were some scraps of newspaper, dated 1970, which they must have used to wrap their fossils; but alas, no silver pen. Later, I learned from Alex that I had my localities mixed up as he had lost his pen on the mountain range near Alligator Peak. The buried treasure of the Ritchie clan resides there to this day.

But the treasure I did find was in the form of a beautifully preserved large set of fossil fish jaws belonging to an acanthodian. Acanthodians were spiny, shark-like fishes that died out at the end of the Paleozoic Era some 250 million years ago. These jaws are a rare find and my preliminary study of them indicates that they could belong to a new undescribed species. The upper and lower jaws were preserved together in natural articulation, and I suspect that probably the whole fish, maybe a meter or so long, was once buried there 380 million years ago, possibly in a shallow lake environment. Since being exposed through the earth's upheavals on the top of a mountain in Antarctica, the rest of the fish's body had now unfortunately been eroded away. The harsh winter bombardments from ice and sand particles in fierce storms, and from the freezing and thawing action of ice, quickly break up layers of fine-grained rock. Many of the surfaces of the rocks there had a polished appearance that testified to the extreme power of na-

ture that reigns during those winter blizzard months, year after year, for countless thousands of years.

Despite the wonderful discovery, the day did not go as smoothly as I'd expected. Many times I slipped over on the steep icy slopes, losing my footing and crashing down on the rubble. At one time I came to sheer vertical cliffs and could go no further, so had to backtrack a fair way to try another approach. By the time I was into the richly fossiliferous layers near the top of the mountain, I rapidly filled up my backpack with specimens, which soon became very heavy. It was like being a little kid in a candy store. There were so many specimens I wanted to collect but I only had limited time and enough space to bring back the most important finds.

Somewhere near the top of the mountain I found myself on a steep ice slope. I tried to get to some prominent beds of sandstone separated by a thick layer of compacted icy snow. Eventually, by digging foot holes in the ice with my ice pick, I was slowly able to crawl up to reach the summit where the sandstone ledge jutted out. I spent some time following this ledge until it petered out, then found I was surrounded by steep snowy slopes below me, with rocky ledges maybe ten meters further down. Rather than go all the way back, I could see some interesting outcrops further below, so began carefully stepping onto the white slope. Instead of finding soft snow, which I expected to sink into, it was mostly solid ice with a fine snow layer on top. I immediately lost my footing, slipped and, burdened with the heavy backpack full of rocks, found myself sliding down the slope, rapidly accelerating towards the rocks. I braced myself, then crashed heavily into the rocky ledge. Dazed and sore, I got up, straightened myself out, ate a little chocolate, as one always does in times of stress in Antarctica, and kept moving on. There was a continuous dull aching from my legs and side that remained for the rest of the day.

It hadn't stopped snowing all day and the weather appeared to be rather unpredictable. At this point, late in the afternoon, I decided to call it a day and head back to camp. I arrived safely back two hours later, a bit tired, my legs aching from carrying a really full pack loaded with fossils and my body still sore from the fall. Nonetheless, I was

pleased with the day's discoveries. It had been a most exhilarating day to say the least.

That night we ate very well, fuelled by “freshies,” the fresh foods dropped in from Scott Base at the re-supply, which incidentally included a reasonably decent bottle of Australian red wine, a Saltram's Cabernet Merlot.

The weather had grown worse by the next morning. Icy winds gusted at between 20 and 40 knots. Brian, Margaret, and Fraka decided to stay at camp again, so I packed my gear to head up the mountain alone once more. About one-third of the way up I made an unexpected discovery of another layer of fish fossils, surprisingly low in the section. Amongst the specimens I collected there were fragmentary plates of phyllolepid placoderms, an interesting discovery that hinted at the group being further down in the section rather than restricted to the top few meters, as I had previously read. I also collected some superb acanthodian fin-spines and various isolated bony plates of the placoderm Bothriolepis, including some very large plates of the gigantic species Bothriolepis mawsoni, named in honor of Sir Douglas Mawson by my colleague Gavin Young. Bothriolepis mawsoni was the largest of all the southern species of this genus. Its huge bony plates suggested this fish was almost a meter long from snout to tip of tail.

In the early afternoon I climbed to the peak of Mt. Ritchie, and standing there was briefly able to enjoy the splendid view out over the Skelton Névé. The winds were now howling around me, dangerously strong, so I had my lunch tucked tightly in a wind shelter, a hollowed out cavern at the base of the Permian Sandstones. I made myself a dehydrated lamb meal by adding hot water from my thermos to a packet of dried food, and although it was still a bit chewy it went down a treat.

I spent the rest of the afternoon collecting more specimens from the top layers of Mount Ritchie before returning to the newly discovered sites in the lower layers that I had found on the previous day. Here, 120 meters from the base of the section, was the lowest layer so far discovered at Mt. Ritchie containing fish fossils, so I suspected the faunal assemblage should be quite different from the better known fish faunas at the top. This turned out to be true as no sharks' teeth had

been found from the top layers, yet these were quite common in the lower sites.

That night I returned once more triumphantly loaded with a full pack brimming with fossils and we were all in high spirits as we could feast once more on the fresh food supplies. We ate fish served with a salad and baked potatoes, followed by a dessert of real strawberries in mock cream (made up from powdered milk). I slept deeply that night in anticipation of another day's collecting.

We awoke to an average kind of day, about 14°F, an overcast sky and moderate winds. All of us were all keen to go exploring for new fossil sites, so our immediate plan was to first make a quick reconnaissance trip over to the Boomerang Range, about eight kilometers away from our camp towards the southern end of the range. On arrival we quickly found that the only outcrops of Aztec Siltstone were exposed facing out to the Skelton Névé. There was no easy access to get to these layers from the Deception Glacier because of a very steep ice cliff on the other side.

Huge gusting winds, roaring up off the cliff face of the Boomerang Range, blasted billows of fine powdery snow high into the air like a tormented geyser. In the lee of the ridge, though, it was quite still. Brian walked over to the blasting wall of snow and looked over the edge of the scarp. He braced himself and could only peer momentarily into the strong winds. We decided then to work elsewhere, so we rode over to the other side of the glacier to some rocky bluffs just south of Mt. Ritchie. One of these small cliff sections, informally named Mt. Kohn by VUWAE 15, had yielded some interesting fish fossils, so we decided to search there and measure a section through its exposure of Aztec Siltstone. The steep ice slopes on Mt. Kohn, combined with the winds increasing in strength, required us to use instep crampons over our boots to get up the scree slopes.

I scrambled up most of the 130 meters of outcropping Aztec Siltstone here and found some good specimens, including a fossilized impression of a distinctively ornamented acanthodian cheekbone belonging to the genus Culmacanthus. Culmacanthus was the first new genus of fossil fish I had ever described, back in 1983. It was based on some very well-preserved specimens from Mt. Howitt, in the central moun-

tainous region of Victoria, and I named it after the Aboriginal word culma, meaning “a spiny fish” because of its enormous fin-spines. Gavin Young first discovered Culmacanthus plates in Antarctica and placed these in a new species, Culmacanthus antarctica, in 1989, further emphasizing the close links between the Australian and Antarctic fossil fish faunas. To date, the genus has only been recorded from these two continents.

Mt. Kohn has an interesting story attached to its name. Barry Kohn was a geologist who was deputy leader of the 1970-71 VUWAE 15 expedition on which Alex Ritchie and Gavin Young collected fish fossils. Anyhow, while working on this treacherous slope, which is very steep and icy as I mentioned, Barry was unexpectedly blown off a ledge near the top of the section by strong winds. He fell about 30 meters, bouncing down the jagged scree slope. He was badly cut and broke his collarbone, so had to be airlifted out by helicopter. He recovered back in the hospital at McMurdo Base and later rejoined the expedition. Since that day the mountain was nicknamed by the VUWAE team in his honor as “Mt. Kohn-descending.”

We tried to get to the western side of Mt. Ritchie later that afternoon but there were too many crevasses, so we headed back to camp. The following day was fine and warm, at 18°F. After packing up camp we sledged the ten kilometers north from Mt. Ritchie to our depot at the base of the Warren Range, taking a wide course around the small crevasse field that we had stumbled into on our way down. The retro to go back to base was left alongside some spare drums of helo fuel, making a neat pile of boxes and waste bags to be picked up by the choppers at some later date.

With the sledges repacked we set off up the Deception Glacier around 4:30 P.M.The south end of the Warren Ranges didn't look too promising for us because snow covered much of the rocks, so we decided to leave this section and move on further north. It soon became difficult towing the now heavily laden sledges up the glacier. One sledge carried all the fuel drums, seven in all, each weighing 64.5 kg; the other sledges carried over eleven food boxes plus the kitchen boxes, tents, and our personal gear. Despite having to relay sledges up the slope at the head of the Deception Glacier where the slope was too steep, we

had an easy journey back and arrived at a good camp site at around 8:00 P.M. not far from Moody Peak.

It was indeed a very scenic place to spend the night. Dark dolerite mountains of the Warren Range had a light snow cover that accentuated the flow banding in the rock. This is a feature of volcanic rocks formed by separate episodes of molten rock cooling in stages, a result of convection currents within the molten rock mass. The strongly contrasted white layers of fresh snow on the towering jet black rocky crags was an extraordinary site when coupled with the sun shining from a hazy blue sky punctuated with occasional fluffy cumulous clouds.

After dinner that night we stumbled upon an amazing discovery: how to make the drink Irish Cream by mixing very cheap Scotch whisky with a quantity of thickly reconstituted powdered milk and sugar. We dubbed this drink “Deception Irish Cream” mainly because we were camped on the Deception Glacier, and also because we couldn't tell the difference between our concoction and a certain well-known brand of the same drink. . . .

This recipe is included in Appendix 2.