This part of Lesser Antarctica has nine zones: (1) Near the pole is part of the Transantarctic Mountains: Hercules Dome and the Thiel Mountains; (2) the bulk of the land consists of a high, ice-covered, plateau, rising above 3,000 meters in the Whitmore Mountains; (3) near the north coast the plateau's edge is intermittently mountainous, the Kohlet Range and the Jones Mountains, for example; (4) at the north coast are ice shelves(1), with embedded islands like Thurston, Charcot, Latady and the westernmost end of Alexander; (5) north of the ice shelves is sea ice, varying in density and extent with the season; just beyond the permanent sea ice is the small Peter I island; (6) in the northeast is the base of the Antarctic (or Palmer) Peninsula; (7) south of it the area fronts an eastern sea, all sea ice, although as late as the end of the 20th century it was the westernmost end of the Ronne Ice Shelf, which recently disintegrated; (8) the coast by the former shelf is an alternation of ice streams (inlets) and peninsulas; Fowler, Fletcher and Skytrain; (9) just inland from them are the tall Ellsworth mountains, topped by Vinson Massif at 5,140 meters.
There are no year round residents.
No-one even visited the land before the 20th century, except for Peter I Island, which was first spotted in the early 19th.
north
east, from non-coastal areas, and northeast
east, from the eastern inlets
west
Chilean Antarctica claim
British Antarctic Territory
Antarctica
Norway and its possessions
(1) Ice shelves in Lesser Antarctica are rapidly melting and may disintegrate.