Described by the Antarctic Sun as the world’s toughest road trip, the 14-week trek from McMurdo Sound wrapped up last week.
The Sun, produced by the US Antarctic Program, says the driving saved them an estimated 65 C-130 Hercules flights.
The ‘road’ the trip takes is through two shear zones, or heavily crevassed areas. They use ground-penetrating radar to avoid trouble. They move at around 6.5 kilometres per hour.
In 1957 New Zealand’s Sir Edmund Hillary drove three farm tractors from Scott Base to the South Pole, taking three months to do it.
A hundred years ago it took Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen and his team of men and sled dogs, eight weeks from the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf to the South Pole.
