Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
like a pneumatically driven carving knife. The mean annual temperature at the South Pole is minus
49, and the record high, recorded in December 1978, a sultry minus 13.6. The lowest temperature
yet experienced here is the minus 82.8 recorded in June 1982.
The configuration of small buildings which made up the station were dominated by the sapphire
blue harlequinned dome, an aluminium structure shaped like the lid of a work. It was 165 feet in
diameter and 55 feet high, and on the top a Stars and Stripes flag was flapping among a small forest
of antennae. Underneath this protective lid, half a dozen simple heated buildings housed essential
facilities such as winter accommodation and the communications room. Before I went inside. I
wanted to see the Pole itself. For a year I had looked at it every day, in a photograph next to the
toothmug in my bathroom in the attic; and every day, as I cleaned my teeth, I had made myself
believe I could get there. It was the famous photograph of Scott and the four others at the Pole.
Ponting had taught Scott and Bowers to use a remote device so they could shoot photographs of
themselves, and after the film had reached home he told a journalist, 'They all look so well and
strong in that last picture.' But they don't. They look as though their hearts have just broken.
The marker at the Geographic Pole is shifted about thirty feet each year to compensate for ice
drift. The layer of ice, basically, is moving steadily over the surface of the earth far below it, with
the result that once a year a member of staff from the U.S. Geological Survey is obliged to make
jobs of all time. Later in the season I met the person who did it, and I asked her what she said to
people at parties when they came out with the usual 'And what do you do?' I was longing to hear
her say, 'I'm a Pole-shifter', or something similar, but alas, she launched into a lengthy description
involving geological software. At least it's guaranteed to clear the deck at the party.
A few hundred yards away from the perambulating marker, the permanent Ceremonial Pole
consists of an arc of flags facing a chromium soccer ball on a short barber-striped column. Here
someone had drilled a compass into the snow on a piece of canvas, every direction pointing north.
I wondered how Muslims knew which way to face.
The Geographic Pole was marked by a small brass plaque and a large board quoting Scott and
Amundsen (presumably they had to move this too). Whoever selected these quotes must have had
a stunted imagination. Amundsen was commemorated with the immortal words, 'So we arrived
and were able to plant our flag at the geographical South Pole.' Scott's quotation read 'The Pole.
Yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected.'
The bathetic words conceal a welter of cultural baggage. Two nations could hardly have been
further apart in their journeys when Amundsen and Scott raced one another to the Pole. When
Amundsen was born, Norway didn't exist. The Norwegians separated from the Swedes on 7 June
1905, and when Amundsen planted the flag at ninety south Norway was taking its first tentative
steps on the fragile slope of nationhood.
The citizens of Britain, on the other hand, had learnt that it was their right to rule. It was incon-
ceivable to them that Britain could be wrong, or lose. Scott wrote, 'I don't hold that anyone but
an Englishman should get to the Pole first,' and on the subject of Norwegian competition in the
south the crusty president of the Royal Geographical Society said, 'Foreigners rarely get below
the Antarctic Circle.' When Amundsen finally announced that he too was going south,
The Times
