Gruber Mountains

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View of the submarine on the bastion

The Otto von Gruber Mountains is a small mountain, consisting of a main massif and various nunataks in Antarctica. It forms the northeastern part of the blessing massif in central Queen Maud Land.

Discovery and designation

The Otto von Gruber Mountains was discovered by the German Antarctic Expedition 1938/39, under the direction of Alfred Ritscher and documented with the aid of aerial photographs. In 1942 appeared expedition report surfaced for the mountains, only the term " central Wohlthat solid " on. The mountain carries on the map annexed to the report at 1:50,000 no name, but all the main peaks are named on this card. The map created by the geodesics Otto von Gruber (1884-1942), who looked after the First World War as a pioneer of Photogrammetry at Carl Zeiss in Jena, made ​​from the aerial photographs of Ritscher 's expedition. On the map published in 1968 Norwegian Wohlthatmassivet the mountain is named in honor Gruber Gruberfjella. To avoid confusion with the also located in Queen Maud Land Gruber Mountains, which are named after the expedition members Erich Gruber (1912-1940), in 1986 the name was from the Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy Otto von Gruber Mountains introduced.

Geography and Geology

The mountain range extends out to a length of about 40 kilometers in northeast-southwest direction and up to 18 kilometers in north-south extent of the ice cap. In the south of the mountain, the ice is dammed up to 2000 meters altitude, in the north of the ice surface drops to about 800 meters. In the center of the main massif, the submarine, which is surrounded by five peaks over 2,000 meters semi-circular. From the east, these are starting clockwise:

• Mentzelberg ( 2530 m) ( after Rudolf Mentzel, the Acting President of the DFG)
• Bastion ( 2460 m)
• Sugarloaf Mountain ( 2525 m)
• Ritschergipfel ( 2791 m)
• Zimmermann mountain ( 2324 m)

Dropped slightly to the southwest lie the layer Mountains ( 2420 m) and the Ödegaardhögda ( 2330 m).

At the northeast end of the range is the upper lake, which is about 200 meters higher than the submarine. To the west and east of the mountain range is separated by two different widths glacier from the nearest mountains. The approximately five kilometers wide Deildebreen separates the mountains from the Petermann ranges in the west, 50 kilometers wide Muschketow Glacier in the east extends to the Nunatakgruppe to the outpost.

Geologically, the Otto -von- Gruber Mountains is constructed from a single anorthosite pluton, which has an area of ​​at least 900 km ²; only the outermost southwest and east of the mountain is built up of gneisses. The pluton intruded before about 600 mya in the surrounding gneisses, which have a mesoproterozoisches age. In some places, contains the anorthosite pluton sills of dark diorite, which are clearly visible on aerial photographs. Because of this shallow sills layer Mountains got their name.