“It was a beautifully clear evening, and we had a most enchanting view of the two magnificent ranges of mountains, whose lofty peaks, perfectly covered with eternal snow, rose to elevations varying from seven to ten thousand feet above the level of the sea.”

In January of 1841, British explorer James Clark Ross recorded his first view of the Transantarctic Mountains. A veteran of many Arctic voyages and reportedly “the most handsome officer in the Royal Navy,” Ross had been the first man to reach the magnetic North Pole, and arrived in Antarctic hoping to duplicate his earlier successes. Ross and his team spent days traversing pack ice and fighting gales in their attempts to reach the South Pole, yet on January 11^th, they spotted land ahead. Within a matter of days, the expedition found themselves at the edge of the breathtaking mountain range that furnishes the subject of geologist Edmund Stump’s book The Roof at the Bottom of the World: Discovering the Transantarctic Mountains.

The Roof at the Bottom of the World offers an illustrated history of the mountains from Ross’s discovery to the present day, complete with photographs culled from the thousands Stump has taken over the course of his career and maps that allow the reader to “actually follow the traverse routes of the old explorers.” With its extreme cold and remote location, the Antarctic is never short on adventure, and Stump describes windswept camps and snowy marches in vivid detail.

Stump blogs for the Huffington Post about some of his most exciting Antarctic adventures, and interspersed with his narrative of the history of the exploration of the region in The Roof at the Bottom of the World is an account of his own exploits in the region—rescuing his wife Harriet from a plunge into ice waters, and discovering notes left amongst the mountains’ stones by those who came decades before him. A geologist and professor of exploration at Arizona State University, Stump has been working in Antarctica for the past forty years, since his first trip as a graduate student. A consummate scientist, he is also an amateur in the true sense of the word, with a longstanding love for mountain range he describes.

This extra day in the year has been brought to you by the Earth’s revolution around the Sun taking about 365.25 days—something about the tilt—so we thought we’d bring you a special gift from the rarely seen and always felt South Pole: a book giveaway quiz for four lucky Leap Year winners.  Send us your responses by Friday, March 23 for your chance to win a copy of this beautiful book of photography and adventure!

The Transantarctic Mountains/Roof at the Bottom of the World Quiz:

1. What was the name of the speculative southern continent imagined by pre-modern Europeans as balance to the northern ocean?

2. What animal did the Victorian explorer Ernest Shackleton use for transportation during his Antarctic journey due to his distrust of dogs?
3. Which agency did the US government establish in order to further its interests in Antarctica?
4. What did the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen name the part of his namesake glacier that he encountered during his 1911 expedition to Antarctica?
5. Which type of educational institution did Amundsen drop out of before attempting to become a career explorer?

You can see some of the book’s stunning images at www.transantarcticmountains.com and hear Stump talk about the significance of the Antarctic in studying climate change with this video from ASU Research.