Walk At the Mountains of Madness, Boston to inner Antarctica
A university expedition sails for Antarctica to drill for fossils and finds far more than it wanted to. Your everyday steps follow it south, and Lovecraft's words unlock at the places it went.
- 14,478 miles
- 12 stops
- H. P. Lovecraft, 1936
An expedition that should have turned back
A Miskatonic expedition leaves Boston for Ross Island, then pushes by plane and sled far into Antarctica. Fossils give way to abandoned camps, impossible mountains and a city millions of years old, in Lovecraft’s longest journey from scientific expedition to cosmic nightmare.
The Miskatonic University expedition sails from Boston in September 1930, through the Panama Canal, by Samoa and Hobart to Ross Island. It climbs Mount Erebus and sets up on the Ross Ice Shelf, all real places. Then it flies inland, and the novella leaves the known map behind for an abandoned camp, a range of impossible mountains and a city far older than humanity.
Lovecraft wrote it in 1931, when the interior of Antarctica was still being mapped from the air, and much of its horror comes from how carefully scientific it sounds. It was published in 1936. The first half of the route runs across the real world. The second half goes where Lovecraft took it, pinned onto the real continent.
- Distance
- 14,478 miles (23,300 km)
- Stops
- 12, each with its own passage and plate
- Map
- The real world, on Apple Maps
- Text
- H. P. Lovecraft; Project Gutenberg ebook #70652
Where it starts
As the newspapers told, we sailed from Boston Harbour on September 2, 1930; taking a leisurely course down the coast and through the Panama Canal.
At the Mountains of Madness · H. P. Lovecraft
This is the passage Bematist gives you the moment you set out. The other 11 wait at the places they happened, and the only way to read them is to walk there.
How long would Antarctica take you?
The expedition sailed for months to reach the ice. Choose a month or a season instead and Bematist sets the pace from how much you already walk.
A rough guide, at about 0.75 m a step. In the app the pace comes from your own 30-day average in Apple Health, and stays fixed for the whole journey.
On the way
The words, at the places
12 passages, each waiting where it happened. You can see how far away the next one is, but not what it says.
Walk it with friends
Send a link and walk the same road together, each of you on your own streets, wherever you live.
No streak to lose
Steps come straight from Apple Health. A quiet day is just a short one, and your place on the road only moves forward.
More roads like this one
See the whole library, with a new book every month, chosen by walkers' vote.
Set out for the ice.
14,478 miles of At the Mountains of Madness, on the walks you already take.
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