 During 1928 to 1930 he accompanied Admiral Richard E. Byrd on Byrd's first expedition to Antarctica, serving as the expedition's chief scientist and second-in-command.On November 4, 1929 Gould and five companions began a grueling 2½ month, 1500-mile dog-sledge journey into the Queen Maud Mountains, with the primary purpose of providing ground support and possible emergency assistance for Byrd's historic first airplane flight over the South Pole and a secondary purpose of conducting the first geological and glaciological survey of an area that Gould called "a veritable paradise for a geologist.