The Wright Valley, named for Sir Charles Wright, is the central one of the three large

Dry Valleys The McMurdo Dry Valleys are a row of largely snow-free valleys in Antarctica, located within Victoria Land west of McMurdo Sound. The Dry Valleys experience extremely low humidity and surrounding mountains prevent the flow of ice from nearby ...

in the

Transantarctic Mountains The Transantarctic Mountains (abbreviated TAM) comprise a mountain range of uplifted (primarily sedimentary rock, sedimentary) rock in Antarctica which extend, with some interruptions, across the continent from Cape Adare in northern Victoria La ...

, located west of

McMurdo Sound McMurdo Sound is a sound in Antarctica. It is the southernmost navigable body of water in the world, and is about from the South Pole. Captain James Clark Ross discovered the sound in February 1841, and named it after Lt. Archibald McMurdo o ...

at approximately . Wright Valley contains the

Onyx River The Onyx River is an Antarctic meltwater stream which flows westward through the Wright Valley from Wright Lower Glacier and Lake Brownworth at the foot of the glacier to Lake Vanda, during the few months of the Antarctic summer. At in length ...

, the longest river in

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

Lake Brownworth Lake Brownworth is a meltwater lake immediately west of Wright Lower Glacier at the east end of Wright Valley, Victoria Land. The lake was mapped by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) from surveys and air photos obtained in 1956–1960. It ...

, the origin of the Onyx River, and

Lake Vanda Lake Vanda is a lake in Wright Valley, Victoria Land, Ross Dependency, Antarctica. The lake is long and has a maximum depth of . On its shore, New Zealand maintained Vanda Station from 1968 to 1995. Lake Vanda is a hypersaline lake with a salin ...

, which is fed by the Onyx River. Its southwestern branch, ''South Fork'', is the location of

Don Juan Pond Don Juan Pond is a small and very shallow hypersaline lake in the western end of Wright Valley (South Fork), Victoria Land, Antarctica, west from Lake Vanda. It is wedged between the Asgard Range to the south and the Dais Range to the north. On t ...

. The upland area known as the

Labyrinth In Greek mythology, the Labyrinth (, ) was an elaborate, confusing structure designed and built by the legendary artificer Daedalus for King Minos of Crete at Knossos. Its function was to hold the Minotaur, the monster eventually killed by the ...

is at the valley's west end. Although portions of the interconnected valley system were discovered in 1903 by the ''Discovery'' expedition led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott, the Wright Valley located near the centre of the system was not seen until aerial photographs of the region were made in 1947. By the mid 1960s scientists were becoming increasingly intrigued by the paradoxical fact that the valley lay immediately adjacent to the permanent

East Antarctic Ice Sheet The East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) is one of two large ice sheets in Antarctica, and the largest on the entire planet. The EAIS lies between 45° west and 168° east longitudinally. The EAIS holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by and ...

, yet had remained ice-free for at least thousands of years. Although Lake Vanda is covered by roughly of ice year-round, lake temperatures of had been reliably measured at a depth of .Ragotzkie, R. A., and G. Likens, 1964: "The heat balance of two Antarctic lakes." ''Limnology and Oceanography'' 9, 412-425 (abstract available onlin
here
Increasing summer field activity and a clear need to establish a winter record led New Zealand's Antarctic Division and the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

of the United States to plan a more permanent base in the valley. In 1968 New Zealand established

Vanda Station Vanda Station was an Antarctic research base in the western highlands (Victoria Land) of the Ross Dependency, specifically on the shore of Lake Vanda, at the mouth of Onyx River, in the Wright Valley. History The four original station buildings ...

near the eastern end of Lake Vanda.

Martin Cirque Martin Cirque () is a prominent cirque, northwest of Mount Newall, in the Asgard Range, Antarctica. It occupies the south wall of Wright Valley between Denton Glacier and Nichols Ridge. The cirque is wide and its floor, at an elevation of , is nea ...

occupies the south wall of Wright Valley between

Denton Glacier Denton Glacier () is a small hanging glacier which drains the northwest slopes of Mount Newall and terminates on the south wall of Wright Valley, Victoria Land. It was named by U.S. geologist Robert Nichols for George H. Denton, geological assist ...

and

Nichols Ridge Nichols Ridge () is a rock ridge between Denton Glacier and Decker Glacier in east Asgard Range, Victoria Land. The feature descends from heights north of Mount Newall to the snout of Wright Lower Glacier at the east end of Wright Valley. Named by ...

References

External links

Wright Valley panoramic picture, view from Dais intrusion
Valleys of Victoria Land McMurdo Dry Valleys Transantarctic Mountains {{McMurdoDryValleys-geo-stub

See also

References

External links