It is true that I am very proud of a small mountain named in my honor in Antarctica. Trust me, I did not do anything heroic such as saving a group of Emperor penguin mountaineers who had fallen into a crevasse to earn the honor. One major purpose of this blog is way more than a story of an unimpressive black pimple currently sitting amidst a sea of ice, at 1,800 ft. (550 m.) above sea level, and not much above the surrounding ice sheet. The fact of the matter is that it’s still there and will always be there long after the surrounding ice field is gone. I joke that as it becomes more prominent, an old Antarctic friend’s glacier is disappearing. Greegor Peak is a deeply personal testament to climate change and all the global and personal changes that are going to occur over the coming years.
The little mountain is in the Ford Ranges of Marie Byrd Land in West Antarctica. Marie Byrd Land was named after Marie Byrd, the wife of the great Antarctic explorer, Admiral Richard Byrd. It is west of McMurdo Station 711 mi, the main U.S. Antarctic Research Program (USARP) base of operations. Direct from Boise, Idaho, where I live, to Greegor Peak, is 8,241 mi. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is of tremendous concern due to its abnormally high rate of melting, especially the Thwaites Glacier, also called Doomsday Glacier because of its potential to raise sea level. It is not far from Greegor Peak.
Thwaites Glacier
Following is the description of Greegor Peak from the internet:
Greegor Peak (76°53′S 145°14′WCoordinates: 76°53′S 145°14′W) is a peak 550 metres (1,800 ft) high 3 nautical miles (6 km) west-southwest of the summit of Mount Passel in the Denfeld Mountains of the Ford Ranges, in Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica. It was mapped by the United States Antarctic Service (1939–41) and by the United States Geological Survey from surveys and U.S. Navy air photos (1959–65). It was named by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names for David H. Greegor, a biologist with the United States Antarctic Research Program Marie Byrd Land Survey II, 1967–68.[1]
I had been in Antarctica during the Antarctic summer, from December 17, 1967 to February 22, 1968. I was there as a graduate student from Ohio State University, helping a botanist from OSU, Dr.Derry Koob, collect non-vascular plants (mosses, lichens, algae). I had just finished an MS in paleoecology from OSU as a graduate student of Dr. Paul Colinvaux, renown paleoecologist, and I was free before going to University of Arizona in the fall of 1968 for my doctorate.
Over three years later, I received the following letter from the National Science Foundation dated April 30, 1971, making the name, Greegor Peak, official.
NSF Letter of Confirmation
The story of Antarctica and Greegor Peak is an example in a long list of experiences of my life, from one amazing adventure to the next, many of those serendipitous or coincidental, or “right place, right time,” literally almost from birth to the present. During those 77 years, I came close to death twice that I can remember. From these personal stories, some already written eventually will be collated into an short autobiography which I’ve been working on since January 24, 1943. It will be published as a book, similar to “Going to Mexico,” the number 1 bestseller somewhere, still flying of the shelves and swan diving into the trash, is still available for a limited time only on Amazon. Meanwhile, as I write them, I will post excerpts from the stories on Greegor sPeak.
The next Greegor sPeak entry will explain why and how this honor came about in 1971, and a couple of my more memorable stories, mostly humorous stories, from those 2 months on the ice.
USARP Official Seal and Antarctic Service Medal