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Michael Studinger

In what expedition member Michael Studiger called a "million-dollar view," Antarctica's active Mount Erebus volcano peeks out from behind a hill near the Ross Ice Shelf (interactive Antarctica map) in 2008—far from the Gamburtsev Mountains. Team members headed for the remote field camp had to participate in a mandatory two-day survival course near the volcano loosely referred to as Snow School or Happy Camper School. Expedition leader Robin Bell thinks the Gamburtsevs are far older than Mount Erebus. They may have been formed about 250 million years ago, when Antarctica had already eased into its current position above the South Pole. It was a warmer time, Bell said, when erosion could have produced the valleys seen in the new ice-penetrating radar images. Then the ice came and buried the valleys, not to mention the peaks—leaving them, until recently, Earth's last unexplored mountain range.

Strong winds on a day in 2009 confined expedition members to camp—and delayed the radar flights that eventually brought to light the hidden peaks, valleys, and streams of the Gamburtsev Mountains. In some places under the Antarctic ice, expedition leader Bell said, it appears that liquid water flows down some of Gamburtsev's ancient valleys. "But there are other places where the [moving] ice sheet is simply going to pull the water and drag it right over the ridges and down the other side," she said, "right over the highest peaks."

At the surface, Antarctica can be a fairyland of complex features, such as this ice cave photographed during a Gamburtsev Mountains expedition in 2008. But the landscape beneath the ice has long been a mystery, requiring painstaking work to unmask. "We flew a lot," expedition leader Robin Bell told National Geographic News by email. "Twelve months ago, the map was fuzzy," she said. But with multiple flights across a grid 430 miles (700 kilometers) long and 155 miles (250 kilometers) wide, the details began appearing. "Slowly the map filled in," she said, "and we saw the mountain range unfold."

A researcher prepares a plane for radar duty during a 2008 expedition over Antarctica's ice-buried Gamburtsev Mountains. On the surface the ice is often runway flat, revealing nothing of the underlying terrain, which can be as deep as 15,700 feet (4,800 meters). Peering beneath the ice requires modifying the plane with radar antennas mounted to the wings, a bone-chilling job in even the best Antarctic conditions.