Sir Edmund Hillary                                                                                                                             Dr. Vivian Fuchs

HELLBENT FOR THE POLE

In the week before Christmas, 1957, most of the world’s media seemed totally fascinated with what they gleefully dubbed ‘the race to the South Pole’ between the leaders of the two field parties making up the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition: the United Kingdom’s Dr Vivian Fuchs (later knighted, after the successful completion of the expedition) and New Zealand’s Sir Edmund Hillary, who had recently conquered Mount Everest.

Hillary was, in his own words, ‘Hellbent for the Pole’, although it had been planned for Fuchs to reach there first. With four companions aboard three quite basic but reliable Ferguson farm tractors, Hillary had completed his allotted task — laying fuel and food depots toward the Pole to re supply Fuchs’s party, which was making the crossing of the continent — but had resolved to press forward.

Click the above links and find out more about this great
historic expedition to the ends of the earth

 

Rear Admiral
George Dufek, US Navy…
the forgotten man of
Antarctic exploration

Three men of complex but very different characters met at the South Pole on January 20, 1958 -- Dr Vivian Fuchs and Rear Admiral George Dufek, USN, both veterans of many years Antarctic and Arctic exploration, and Sir Edmund Hillary whose snow and ice experiences had predominantly been in high mountains. In another, more romantic, era all might have been called men of destiny.
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