Hellbent for the Pole

Late in 1957 two field parties set off from different sides of the Antarctic continent, both headed towards the South Pole. The intention was for one of those parties to successfully complete a trans-Antarctic crossing. This party was led by Britain's Dr Vivian Fuchs. The second party, led by Edmund Hillary, was to lay fuel and supply depots along the route, to resupply the Fuchs party on the second part of their expedition. The New Zealanders were to wait 500 miles short of the South Pole until they were joined by Fuchs and his men, and the two parties would then travel back to where Hillary had started. However, Hillary and his men reached the end of their planned journey several weeks before Fuchs could possibly meet up with them. So rather than wait in temperatures often below -30 degrees, consuming the supplies they had painstakingly carried with them, they decided to forge on to the South Pole - and a controversy was born. Geoffrey Lee Martin was in the Antarctic covering the story for the New Zealand Herald and the Daily Telegraph. This is his account of the great adventure.