The South Pole
The Geographic South Pole is marked by this board with quotes from Amundsen and Scott, a small metal plaque and the U.S. flag
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Arriving at the Pole has a slight ‘Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome’ feel about it.
Having been out in the wonderfully wild and empty polar plateau for a week you are gradually confronted with the polar-industrial landscape of the U.S. National Science Foundation ‘Scott Amundsen’ base. As well as the geographic and cultural shift there is a strange temporal shock too. Having come from Patagonia via Patriot Hills we are on Chilean time. The base runs on New Zealand time and thus you suddenly ski into a 16 hour time zone difference which meant we were doing our souvenir shopping and in the Post Office at 3.30am sunday morning our time!
Being an NSF base, science is the driving force (although you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise at the Geographic Pole, which is owned by no one but marked by the U.S. flag?). Tourists and skiers are welcomed to the Pole and given a single short tour of the base with tea and cakes by the hospitable and friendly staff. After that, visitors are asked to stay put on the designated campsite and wait for the arrival of their aircraft to whisk them away.
The Poles summer season was coming to an end. About 210 of the 250 staff would be departing over the next couple of weeks leaving 40 or so folk to enjoy the single sunset in April followed by 6 months of darkness and single sunrise in September. Judging by a variety of stunning pictures adorning the base corridors, the Southern Lights or ‘Aurora Australis’ can be incredibly spectacular.
We marked our arrival with a team dinner party in the tent and guest of honour was the young Canadian woman Meagan McGrath. She had also just arrived but with a rather different journey to get here. I had watched Meagan depart Patriot Hills (about 600 nautical miles away) 38 days ago during which time she had travelled solo, covering around 15 nautical miles a day. Shortly before that Meagan had survived an unroped crevasse fall near the start of her journey at Hercules Inlet. It took quite some courage for her to set off sledging again, never mind complete her long solo journey, but she did it. You can read more about Meagan’s journey here.
We had just enough time for soaking up the South Pole ambience, taking our photos, meeting the locals and relaxing at the end of our sledging journey before the DC-3 Basla arrived to whisk us back to Patriot Hills. Three and a half hours of looking out the window thinking, Meagan has skied across all of this. She was fast asleep!
The Last Degree and to a much greater extent the ‘Ski all the way’ challenges will appeal to those who like the sense of a slow incremental journey. Where progress is marked in the passage of days and weeks, of the nautical miles slowly falling away instead of the modern forms of swift, convenient travel we are so used too. The challenge is considerable both physically and mentally. The reward is the pleasure and privilege of being in such a wild, raw environment and completing a tough, self powered journey. I, for one, am not proud of the carbon footprint I make to get here but am weak under the powerful spell cast by this magical continent, and I am compelled to keep returning.
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