The Brown Range or Sørtindane Peaks (-68.13333°N, 62.4°W) is a group of seven peaks in the Framnes Mountains about 4 km south of Mount Twintop in Mac. Robertson Land, Antarctica.

Exploration

Norwegian cartographers mapped two of the peaks from aerial photographs taken by the Lars Christensen Expedition in 1936, and named them the Sørtindane (South Mountain) Peaks. They are named for D. A. Brown, who was a radio operator at Mawson Station in 1958.

Description

The Framnes Mountains have elevations up to 1500 m above sea level, and rise up to 400 m above the ice surface. They have dark, weathered charnockite bedrock that is littered with light-colored quartz-rich, granitic gneiss glacial erratics. The Brown Range is about 50 km inland. During the late Quaternary the ice sheet thickened by about 160 m at the Brown Range.

Features

Simpson Ridge

-68.1°N, 62.38333°W. An isolated, sharp, serrated ridge situated 1 mi south of Mount Twintop in the Framnes Mountains, Mac. Robertson Land. Mapped from ANARE surveys, 1954-62. Named by ANCA for C.R. Simpson, electronics engineer at Mawson Station in 1967.

Gordon Peak

Gordon Peak (-68.14694°N, 62.41383°W) is in the center of the Brown Range and is its the highest peak at about 1484 m above sea level. The two main peaks in this range were plotted by Norwegian cartographers from air photographs taken by the Lars Christensen Expedition (1936). Gordon Peak was used as an unoccupied Trigonometrical station by Max J. Corry, surveyor at Mawson in 1965. It is named for P.J. Gordon, radio technician at Mawson Station in 1965.

Sources