Antarctica’s concealed mountains tell of wonders revealed by pure science

In the desolation of East Antarctica lies a mountain range like no other: phantom peaks buried from view beneath thousands of meters of ice.

H.P. Lovecraft, the fantasy and horror writer, might well have been describing this range in his 1931 novella At the Mountains of Madness. In it, a geology professor leads an Antarctic expedition to mountains higher than the Himalayas, only to find insanity and death lurking beyond.