Amundsen Glacier
glacier in Antarctica
The Amundsen Glacier (85°35′S 159°00′W) is a major Antarctic glacier, about 7 to 11 km (4 to 6 nmi) wide and 150 km (80 nmi) long. It originates on the Antarctic Plateau where it drains the area to the south and west of Nilsen Plateau, then descends through the Queen Maud Mountains to enter the Ross Ice Shelf just west of the MacDonald Nunataks.
Name
The Amundsen Glacier was discovered by Richard E. Byrd on the South Pole flight in November 1929.
The name was proposed for Roald Amundsen by Laurence Gould, leader of the Byrd Antarctic Expedition (Byrd AE) geological party which sledged past the mouth of the glacier in December 1929.
Location
According to Sailing Directions for Antarctica (1960), "Lying eastward of the Bowman Glacier is the Amundsen Glacier, the northern portal of which is in 85°30' S., 159°00' W. It is about 6 miles wide and trends southward about 60 miles to the polar plateau. Mount Helmer Hanssen, about 10,742 feet high, is a rounded dome, completely snow-covered, standing conspicuously above the westem wall. A tributary glacier, about 5 miles wide, enters the Amundsen Glacier on the northern side of the Mount Helmer Hanssen massif. The Amundsen Glacier has not been traversed. "
The Amundsen Glacier rises on the polar plateau to the west of the Rawson Mountains.
It flows northwest to the Nødtvedt Nunataks, which it passes on both sides, and is fed by the Norway Glacier from the left (west) south of Mount Hassel, where it wheels to the north and then northeast, fed by Devils Glacier from the left, by the Epler Glacier from the right and then by the Christy Glacier from the left.
“Amundsen Glacier” enters the record as glacier in Antarctica. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Amundsen, Glacier and glacier can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q196495. VIAF identifies the subject as 245851301. Authority coordinates are -85.583, -159.000. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1929 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “Amundsen Glacier” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.