For the mountain in the Eternity Range, Palmer Land, see Mount Hope (Eternity Range)

Mount Hope (Eternity Range)

Mount Hope is a massive mountain rising to 2,860 m, forming the central and highest peak of Eternity Range, northern Palmer Land. First seen from the air and named Mount Hope by Lincoln Ellsworth during his flights of November 21 and 23, 1935. The mountain was surveyed and given the name Mount...

Mount Hope is a dome-shaped hill

Hill

A hill is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain. Hills often have a distinct summit, although in areas with scarp/dip topography a hill may refer to a particular section of flat terrain without a massive summit A hill is a landform that extends above the surrounding terrain. Hills...

, rising to approximately 3500 feet (1,066.8 m), situated at the foot of the Beardmore Glacier

Beardmore Glacier

The Beardmore Glacier in Antarctica is one of the largest glaciers in the world, with a length exceeding 160 km . The glacier is one of the main passages from the Ross Ice Shelf through the Queen Alexandra and Commonwealth ranges of the Transantarctic Mountains to the Antarctic Plateau, and was one...

, Ross Ice Shelf

Ross Ice Shelf

The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica . It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than 600 km long, and between 15 and 50 metres high above the water surface...

, Antarctica at 83°45′S 171°00′E. It was discovered on 3 December 1908, by Ernest Shackleton

Ernest Shackleton

Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, CVO, OBE was a notable explorer from County Kildare, Ireland, who was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration...

 and his south polar party, on their journey towards the South Pole

South Pole

The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole or Terrestrial South Pole, is one of the two points where the Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on the surface of the Earth and lies on the opposite side of the Earth from the North Pole...

 during the Nimrod Expedition

Nimrod Expedition

The British Antarctic Expedition 1907–09, otherwise known as the Nimrod Expedition, was the first of three expeditions to the Antarctic led by Ernest Shackleton. Its main target, among a range of geographical and scientific objectives, was to be first to the South Pole...

. Through their ascent of this hill the party gained their first sight of the glacier which provided the route to the polar plateau and the pole itself. Shackleton recorded: "We reached the base of the mountain which we hoped to climb in order to gain a view of the surrounding country [...] With great difficulty we clambered up this rock face, and then ascended a gentle snow slope [...] From the top of this ridge there burst upon our view an open road to the south, for there stretched before us a great glacier [...] stretching away south inland until at last it seemed to merge in high inland ice". Shackleton named the hill that provided this vantage point "Mount Hope", for the promise that it provided. Shackleton's party ascended the glacier to the plateau, but turned back before reaching the Pole. Three years later, Captain Scott's party followed the same route and reached the Pole, but the entire party perished on the return. Mount Hope was the site of the final depot laid by the Ross Sea party

Ross Sea Party

The Ross Sea party was a component of Sir Ernest Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1914–17. Its task was to lay a series of supply depots across the Great Ice Barrier from the Ross Sea to the Beardmore Glacier, along the polar route established by earlier Antarctic expeditions...

 in 1916, in support of Shackleton's abortive transcontinental march that was to have marked the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition

Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition

The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition , also known as the Endurance Expedition, is considered the last major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Conceived by Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition was an attempt to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent...

.