Hulbe's Vanity Page

Two photographs taken near the south pole. These scanned pictures are in black and white, as are the originals.


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.
His diary filled in some details on what a miserable place he thought Antarctica to be.

I got there in an LC-130, the ski-equipped flying Hercules.


This picture was taken at the ceremonial Pole. Behind the pole and flags, you can see some of the buildings of the old Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, a U.S. scientific base. It's all been rebuilt now.

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