The South Pole!

Hooray! Today the South Pole Flight team arrived at the South Pole. The weather was beautiful with a blue sky, full sun and little wind. The 20k ski team, who arrived yesterday, spent the night at their drop off point 20 kilometers from the South Pole and managed to ski the entire distance back in only seven hours! The temperature today was around -28 degrees C. After everyone had arrived the team was given a tour of the Amundsen South Pole Station which is home to over 200 hundred scientists and support staff every summer. Roughly 40 hearty people remain for the winter "night".



The South Pole station in the background.



The team spent time at both the ceremonial South Pole and the Geographical South Pole (they are very close together). The Ceremonial South Pole is a red and white barber-style pole with a reflective globe on top. It is what most people take a picture with when they are at the South Pole. However it is not located at 90 degrees south. Depending on the occasion it is 30-100 feet away from the Geographical South Pole. You can read more about the Geographical South Pole towards the end of the blog.

When we spoke with them the team was getting ready to watch a South Pole cricket match (UK vs. the rest of the world). At 6 PM local time (that's 2 AM for our team who are on Punta Arenas time) the official ceremony commemorating Scott's arrival at the South Pole will take place.

Scott's Expedition upon reaching the South Pole

More about the Geographical South Pole...

Every New Year's day a team of surveyors from the United States Geological Survey locate ninety degrees South with precision. They fix the spot with a metal pole topped with a special sculpted marker, roughly 8 inches in diameter. Each marker is... "designed, selected and machined by the handful of hardy souls who keep the scientific enterprise operating during the six months of cold, darkness and total isolation that are the hallmarks of a polar winter."

This year's markers (there are two!) commemorate both Amundsen's and Scott's historic expeditions during the "Heroic Age" of Antarctic exploration. 



 

The Amundsen expedition marker is on top.
The Scott expedition marker is on bottom.



About this time next year these markers will be roughly 10 meters from the "new" South Pole marker freshly placed at 90 degrees South. That's how fast the ice is moving north towards the ocean.