Hulbe's Vanity Page

It is against my better judgement, but here are a couple of picures of me. Well, they are mostly of the flat white that is the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. I'm the indistinct grey feature with legs. These scanned pictures are in black and white, as are the originals. Art. It's art.


This picture was taken at the geographic south pole, January 1993.
The sign records the arrivals of the men who " raced for the pole " in the austral summer of 1911. Roald Amundsen and his team of Norwegian alpinists arrived first, on 14 December. They skied and used sled dogs to transport their gear. They arrived with a surfeit of food and equipment (and even left some for Scott). Amundsen's quote on the sign is

So we arrived and were able to plant our flag at the geographical South Pole.
Robert F Scott and his team of British seamen arrived a distant second, on 17 January 1912. They were malnourished, exhausted, and in ill spirits. They had manhauled all their gear, one of them even going without skis. Scott's quote on the sign is
The Pole. Yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected.
That is a flattering portrayal of Scott. His diary goes on to detail what a miserable place he thought Antarctica to be.
I got there in an LC-130, the Flying Hercules.


This picture was taken at the ceremonial Pole. This is where politicians come to have glory shots (much like this one) taken on their 2-hour turn-around trips to the pole. Behind the pole and flags, you can see some of the buildings of Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, a U.S. scientific base.
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