More life at Patriot Hills

21 December 2007 Friday.

Our mission done, we now await the weather conditions for our transport back to Punta Arenas. As soon as it's suitable, the Iluyshin will be here, bringing in a load of fuel for the camp and taking a load of passengers back.

Everyone here is anxious to get home for Christmas, speculating on tomorrow's weather, wondering about the logistics to clear the runway, get the plane here, and get us back out. Antarctica, however, isn't like anywhere else on earth. There are no scheduled flights. We're at the mercy of the weather and the logistics people to get us out of here.

The Four Poles

If you've seen the South Pole on TV, you've probably seen the "Ceremonial South Pole." It's that striped pole with the silver ball on top of it, surrounded by the flags of several nations.

A few meters away is the actual Geographic South Pole, where all of the lines of latitude converge. The marker is a metal post with a medallion on top of it. Because it's located on nearly two miles of ice, the post drifts northward a few feet every year. Every January first, a new post with a new medallion is positioned over the exact pole. From there you can see the row of posts from previous years, going off into the distance.

The South Magnetic Pole, exactly opposite of the one in the north, is actually located off the coast of Antarctica in the ocean. It tends to move a little every year, roughly in a circle. In the center of the circle is the Russian base, Vladavostock. (CHECK THESE FACTS)

The other one, the "Pole of Relative Inaccessibility," is a human-contrived point that is the farthest average distance from all the coastlines of Antarctica. It's the closest thing man has come up with to being "in the middle of nowhere."


We spent the day recovering from our marathon efforts, relaxing a bit, enjoying the great food. We had a short meeting after lunch to award everyone with a finisher medal, and after dinner we drank up the wine and beer they had for us, then I broke out the bottle of Chivas Regal that I brought from Punta Arenas to celebrate our marathon. A few of the guys played cards late into the night, some of them loosing thousands in the process. Thousands of Chilean Pesos, that is. Ten thousand is roughly twenty dollars in the U.S.

After midnight, the train left for the South Pole, then to the Pole of Relative Inaccessibility. What a neat adventure for them! Fred and Sue are on that train.