Geography Monstrosity 2: Driving Directions to Iqaluit
Round 5
Packet by Jeff Hoppes
Moderator's note: this set features 20-point superpowers (bold text before (*)) and 15-point powers (text before ► ). Some more difficult tossups are 15 (in extreme cases, 20) points all the way through. There are no minus-fives.
1. The outer limit of this peninsula is composed of a turbidity conglomerate built on granite similar to that of the Tehachapi Range. A herd of Tule Elk may be found near McClure's Beach on this peninsula, whose backbone is topped by Mount Vision, the highest point of the Douglas fir-covered Inverness Ridge. A practical joke played by the E Clampus Vitus society on Herbert Bolton forged a brass plate found at this site with an inscription supposedly left by Francis (*) Drake, who may have made contact with the Coast Miwok at this site. Drake provides the name of the boulevard that leads to the end of this peninsula, as well as one of the several esteros that indent its southern shore. It is separated from the mainland by Tomales Bay, a water-filled portion of the San Andreas Fault. For 15 points, name this national seashore in Marin County, California.
ANSWER: Point Reyes (National Seashore)
2. Two species of bullhead fish introduced into this body of water in the 1960s died out within thirty years due to changing salinity, which also encourage the growth of saxaul plants on its shores. Vozrozhdeniya Island in this body of water was used as a research station for (*) biological weapons. The delta between Muynak and Nukus on the southern coast of this sea was a center for muskrat trapping, one source of employment for the Karakalpak people. The Qaraqum Canal ► diverted water to irrigate cotton fields that should have flowed into this sea, which could no longer be replenished by the Syr Darya. For 10 points, name this sea once found between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
ANSWER: Aral Sea
3. The preface to David Mallett's poem Amyntor and Theodora advised readers to visit this island. Eight out of ten babies born on this island died of infant tetanus, thought to be the result of island custom that anointed a newborn's umbilical cord with a mix of fulmar oil and sheep dung. A western outlier of this island is home to the endangered breed of Soay sheep. Rachel Erskine, Lady Grange, the sister-in-law of the Earl of Mar, was imprisoned on this island. Its first radio transmitter was completed in 1913 and destroyed five years later when the island was shelled by a German U-Boat. The last civilian inhabitants were evacuated on the sloop Harebell and put to work for the Forestry Commission at Ardtornish. In 1955 the British Army set up a base here to track missiles launched from Benbecula. For 20 points, name this island also known as Hirta, the outermost of the Outer Hebrides.
ANSWER: St. Kilda (accept Hirta before it is read)
4.A dynasty named for this state promised a policy of “savage pragmatism” under the leadership of former chickpea farmer Alvaro Obregon, for whom the city of Cajeme was later renamed. This state is home to a people who perform the deer dance, the (*) Yaqui, so an antler-headed dancing figure can be found on this state's license plate. Alamos is an old silver-mining center in the Sierra Madre Occidental near this state's border with Chihuahua, while Bahia Kino, Puerto Penasco, and Guaymas are beach resorts along its western coast on the ► Gulf of California. For 10 points, name this Mexican state, which gives its name to a desert that stretches into Arizona.
ANSWER: Sonora
5. One might make a sail in Omarakana in these islands, if one wished to travel by canoe to the Marshall Bennet Islands. People from this subgroup of the Massim Archipelago went to the village of Dikoyas on nearby Woodlark Island, but were less successful insailing to Kitavu. Expeditions from Kiriwina in these islands brought back (*) shells called mwali. The D'Entrecasteaux Islands are the southern neighbors of this group, part of Milne Bay province, where yam exchange was important for marriage relationships.►Coral Gardens and their Magic is part of a series of works about these islands that documented the kula ring. For 10 points, name this archipelago of Papua New Guinea, described in Argonauts of the Western Pacific by Bronislaw Malinowski.
ANSWER: TrobriandIslands
6. A suspected hemichordate is named after this province, the source of the Chengjiang fauna found at Maotianshan. Early writing in this province was monopolized by a priestly caste called the pimu. Those priests used a script found in rock art at Luquan, and across the border in nearby Guizhou on the bronze bell of Dafeng. That script was used to write the (*) Yi language, spoken by the rulers of this province's Nanzhao state, which was supplanted by a kingdom founded by Duan Siping. That kingdom, known as Dali, was overthrown when Kublai Khan's armies broke through around the lake of Er Hai, ending this region's independence. It is the only province of China to border ► Laos, and its Three Parallel Rivers are the Salween, the Mekong, and the Yangtze. For 10 points, Kunming is the capital of what Chinese province, the southern neighbor of Sichuan?
ANSWER: Yunnan
7. Sandra Lauderdale Graham's book House and Street examines 19th-century labor practices in this city. One neighborhood in this city lies on the banks of the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon. Another neighborhood here has a name that means “like a rattle” in Tupi; that neighborhood, (*) Maracana, is home to this city's major stadium. Cariocas are natives of this city, which is overlooked by mountains called the Sugarloaf and the Hunchback. The latter, or ► Corcovado, is home to a giant statue of Christ the Redeemer. For 10 points, name this city on Guanabara Bay which was replaced by Brasilia as its nation's capital, the host of the 2016 Summer Olympics.
ANSWER: Rio de Janeiro
8. The Mummelsee is a tarn in this region, whose peaks include the Spiesshorn and the Hochblauen. Early mining took place in the Kinzig Valley, which crosses this region. Its traditional hat topped with several red pom-poms is called the Bollenhut. Berthold Auerbach wrote a collection of stories about village life in this region, which includes the Schwenninger Moos, the source of the (*) Neckar River. Breisgau is a subcomponent of this region that includes its most populous city, Freiburg. International fame for this region of Baden-Wurttemberg rests largely on its ►Kirschtorte and its cuckoo-clocks. For 10 points, the Schwarzwald is the German name for what picturesque region just east of the Rhine?
ANSWER: Black Forest (accept Schwarzwald before it is mentioned; prompt on “Baden-Wurttemberg”)
9. Methane reserves recently extracted from this lake were used to power a brewery in the town of Gisenyi. Like Lake Monoun and Lake Nyos, this lake is susceptible to limnic eruptions. Such an eruption could be caused in the future by eruption of nearby Mount Nyiragongo. Cities on this lake include (*) Goma, which became a major refugee camp in the 1990s. Although this lake is part of the Albertine Rift, it lies south of Lake Edward and Lake Albert. For 15 points, name this lake shared between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda.
ANSWER: Lake Kivu
10. Uninhabited components of this group include Shackleford, which is used as a study site for the behavior of feral horses. The Ocracoke ferries are one way to reach this group, the site of Pea Island National Wildlife Refuge. Cape (*) Lookout is the southern point of this group, while one of the counties in the northern section is named after Virginia Dare. The Kill Devil Hills are a landform on this group whose major islands include ► Roanoke and Hatteras. The Pamlico and Albemarle Sounds are separated from the Atlantic by, for 10 points, what group of North Carolina barrier islands?
ANSWER: Outer Banks
11. The hypotenuse of Palliser's Triangle cuts across the center of this province, where the Stanley Mission was built on the shores of Lac la Ronge to preach to the Cree. Fort La Jonquiere was built at the forks of the river that (*) shares this province's name, whose two major branches flow from the Columbia Icefield and the Bow River. The birthplace of Poundmaker is at Battleford in this province, which was also the site of the Battle of Batoche, which forced the surrender of Louis Riel. Cities in this province include Swift Current, Prince Albert, and ► Moose Jaw. For 10 points, Regina is the capital of what prairie province located between Manitoba and Alberta?
ANSWER: Saskatchewan
12. According to recent papers by Edward Vajda, the language family named for this river is genetically related to the Na-Dene languages. Extinct languages spoken along this river, including Yugh, Pumpokol, and Arin, are documented by early records of the fur trade, while its northern reaches are presently inhabited by the Ket people. This river was used to transport nickel from the mines at (*) Norilsk, and two of its branches meet at the city of Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva. Tributaries of this river include the Podkamennaya Tunguska and the Angara, which drains Lake ► Baikal. For 10 points, name this river of central Siberia, whose basin lies between the Ob-Irtysh and the Lena.
ANSWER: Yenisei River
13.This man who studied mathematics under Gemma Frisius at Louvain expressed doubt that Aristotle could be harmonized with the Book of Genesis. A close friend of the English astrologer John Dee, he used triangulation to produce a 1540 work promoting Antwerp at the expense of Ghent. He honored the “king of Mauretania... learned philosopher, and (*) Titan” by being the first to use the word “atlas” for a book of maps. The area of ► Greenland is notably distorted in this man's namesake cylindrical projection. For 10 points, name this Flemish cartographer who represented all lines of longitude as straight in a 1569 planisphere.
ANSWER: Gerardus Mercator
14. Minor islands in this group include North Seymour, the site of an iguana translocation experiment, and Daphne Major, the setting of a 1994 book by Jonathan Weiner. Tomas de Berlanga, a bishop of Panama, was the first European to visit this group. Its Pinta island is the birthplace of Lonesome George, the last of his subspecies of Giant (*) Tortoise. Names dispensed by the British Admiralty, like Tower and Albemarle, have been replaced by ► Spanish ones, such as Genovesa and Isabela, respectively. For 10 points, name these islands belonging to Ecuador, which were notably visited by Charles Darwin.
ANSWER: Galapagos Islands
15. Robert and George Marshall climbed 46 peaks in this range that were thought to be over 4,000 feet high. Since that achievement, resurveying discovered that Mount MacNaughton was higher than 4,000, but four others including Couchsachraga, are in fact lower than 4,000 feet. A western outlier of this range is the cuesta called the Tug Hill Plateau, while across the Black River its western foothills contain the home of the (*) 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum in Jefferson County and the town of Old Forge in the northern panhandle of Herkimer County. Its eastern side stops near Crown Point, as the mountains give way to Lake George and Lake ► Champlain. For 10 points, Lake Placid is located in what mountain range of upstate New York?
ANSWER: Adirondack Mountains
16. The last residents of this desert to live a traditional nomadic lifestyle were the Pintupi Nine, who were first contacted in 1984 when they walked into the town of Waberton. The type specimen of Acacia balsamea was collected on Mount William Lambert, east of Wiluna along the Gunbarrel Highway. The highway provides access to the nature reserve named after this desert, a stronghold of the dalgyte, or greater bilby. It is named after a (*) man who disappeared into it on the Ernest Giles expedition of 1874. For 15 points, name this desert found between the Great Sandy and Great Victoria Deserts in east-central Western Australia.
ANSWER: Gibson Desert
17. This city, nicknamed “Linenopolis,” is overlooked by Cavehill, whose most prominent feature is a rock called “Napoleon's Nose.” This city's Harland and Wolff shipyard saw the building of the Titanic. Stormont, an outer section of this city, was the site of a Parliament suspended in (*) 1972. Streets in this city include the base of operations for a gang called the “butchers” led by Lenny Murphy, the ► Shankill Road, and the site of its Gaeltacht, the Falls Road. The Golden Mile connects city hall with Queen's University in, for 10 points, what city on the River Lagan, the site of Protestant-Catholic conflict because it's the capital of Northern Ireland?
ANSWER: Belfast (or Beal Feirste)
18. Minor routes over this range include Horse Creek Pass, Lemhi Pass, and the valley of the St. Joe River. The southernmost part of this range, called the Beaverhead Mountains, is west of the Big Hole basin. Trapper Peak is found in their central section, which is bordered on the south by the Salmon River. Fort Fizzle was built in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the (*) Nez Perce from crossing this range via the Lolo Trail, the same route that Lewis and Clark used to cross in the other direction. The Lewisia flower, consumed by Flathead Indians, gives its name to, for 15 points, what mountain range that forms the northeastern border of Idaho?
ANSWER: Bitterroot Range
19. In 2008 the nesting ground of the Large-billed Reed Warbler was discovered in this region. The Shola-Javaid were Maoist insurgents operating in this region, where Soviet forces built a road to Lake Zorkul. Soviet occupation of this region was intended to secure control of Vakhjir Davan Pass. An 1895 agreement with Abdur Rahman drew its boundaries in order to separate the disputed kingdoms of Roshan and Shignan from rebels against British rule in Chitral. In the 1980s Kirghiz refugees from this region were resettled in the Van area of eastern Turkey. It forms the easternmost part of (*) Badakhshan province, and marks the junction of the Pamir and Hindu Kush mountain ranges. The upper course of the Amu Darya is the northern border of, for 15 points, what corridor, the only part of Afghanistan that borders China?
ANSWER: Wakhan Corridor
20. The Treaties of Chinfuma and Simulambuco transformed the kingdom of N'Goyo into this territory, whose early nationalists were deported to a prison camp at Baia dos Tigres. One secessionist group in this territory was led by Luis Ranque Franque, while another drew its support from the Mayombe ethnic minority. Those two groups united to form a liberation front for this territory, the (*) FLEC, which claimed responsibility for a January 2010 attack on the Togolese national soccer team's bus in this territory. Its northern border is formed by Kouilou, a department of Congo-Brazzaville. For 15 points, name this oil-rich exclave of Angola.
ANSWER: Cabinda
TB. J. Lawton Collins successfully crossed this peninsula, whose COGEMA nuclear processing plant on this peninsula was the scene of protests by Greenpeace. Towns in this peninsula include St. Vaast la Hogue, noted for its oysters, and Sainte-Mere-Eglise, which was the site of a drop by the (*) 101st Airborne Division. Utah Beach was the only one of the five D-Day beaches on this peninsula, which is part of the Department of the Manche. For 15 points, name this peninsula in western Normandy whose chief port is Cherbourg.
ANSWER: Cotentin peninsula