Day 50
S79 45' 39.60", W82 51' 24.84"
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At last, the Pole.
“M: Hi everyone, it’s Martin and Lou on today’s blog, on day 50 of the expedition.
Today was a pretty special day, as we got to the geographic South Pole.
L: Absolutely amazing, after having skied over 60 nautical miles in six days together, we arrived on the centenary of Shackleton’s death. Which was a pretty momentous day, so it was great to come in on that historic occasion.
M: The South Pole is really difficult to explain without seeing it for yourself. But if you see any pictures online, or in magazines, there’s a huge, very significant research centre there, run by the Americans. I was a bit taken aback by the size of the place, it’s a lot bigger than it looks in pictures. That was pretty impressive, a number of different telescopes there, a lot of research going on. We didn’t actually see anybody moving around. They’re all obviously either busy….
L: They’re all on New Zealand time, so they’re all in bed.
M: Oh there you go, that’s why we didn’t see anyone moving around. And there’s two Poles there; you’ve got a ceremonial Pole, which is surrounded by the flags of the 12 nations that signed up the Antarctic Treaty. And then there’s the actual geographic South Pole. The geographic South Pole itself is slowly moving, because the ice and snow on the continent is constantly moving. The geographic South Pole is about 120 metres away from the ceremonial South Pole. So we went to both, to make sure that we’re ticking the boxes properly, and then we got all the flags out and took some photos, which was fantastic. A range of different emotions to be honest with you. From gratitude for the opportunity to do this, to everyone supporting us - and our supporters in particular – through to a bittersweet moment if I’m completely honest because we didn’t do the 720 miles unsupported that I was hoping to do. But mostly gratitude that we actually made the right decisions, that enabled us to actually get there, and then being in a decent position to attempt Mount Vinson.
L: Really excited for the next stage of our expedition in Antarctica, to head off on Mount Vinson. We’ve just met our guide, Wes, the ALE mountain guide who’ll be taking us up. And it’s just me and Martin with Wes, so just the three of us, tackling the summit. Potentially, depending on weather, we could be heading off as early as tomorrow. We’re just starting now to prepare our equipment and switch to mountaineering mode. Really looking forward to heading over to Mount Vinson.
M: I forgot to say, we’re now back at Union Glacier. We didn’t have much time at the Pole. We got there, and the weather at Union Glacier was descending into high wind and poor visibility, which is not great for flying conditions obviously. There was a plane, luckily, at the Pole, to pick up Preet, who we’ve mentioned in previous blogs. She’s done an amazing journey herself, to the South Pole, and done it in a cracking time as well. So we all got to fly back in on that together, and we managed to get back in before the weather changed. We nailed a quick turnaround. We’ll let you know what’s going on tomorrow, but for now, we just want to say thank you very much for following.
L: Yep, that’s all for this evening. Thanks for all your support everyone. We look forward to continuing the blog updates as we tackle Mount Vinson.
Onwards.”
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