the meal is followed by a precarious trip across the frozen lake to the beach. because what s antarctica about if it ain t about a beach party? when you say you need
scientists, it s fantastic. anthony: in just a few hours, we cross the ross ice shelf, fly up the beardmore glacier into the heart of antarctica the polar plateau. how many miles from mcmurdo to the pole? around female pilot: 735 miles. anthony: scott walked that? what was going through his mind? male pilot: they loved to suffer. anthony: the first explorers who got here or came close, raced across the continent, striving to be the first. amundson made it before anyone in 1911, beating scott by only 34 days. amundson wisely used huskies to pull his sleds across the ice. scott didn t and his team never made it back alive. the south pole. what you might not know or be prepared for is the south pole is high, like 9,000 feet above sea level and it s cold, real cold, but you knew that. you feel the altitude.
extricating somebody. anthony: there s a steep learning curve to flying down here, skillfully handle gale force winds, reduced control at high altitudes and the unpredictability of extreme turbulence around mountains and active volcanoes. ryan: slowly but surely climbing and it s minus 20 outside. anthony: erebus and that s ryan: mount terror. anthony: vo this is mount erebus, the southernmost active volcano on earth. antarctica was a great mystery for most of human history. only a theory, a great white space at the bottom of the world. ryan: we re just passing 8,500 so we ll go another 4,000. you re going to see the main crater in just a second. anthony: the conditions endured by the first british antarctic explorers like scott, and shackleton and norwegian amundson and the lengths of time they endured them, are well, horrifying to imagine.
and it s important to scientists, it s fantastic. anthony: in just a few hours, we cross the ross ice shelf, fly the heart of antarctica the polar plateau. how many miles from mcmurdo to the pole? around female pilot: 735 miles. anthony: scott walked that? what was going through his mind? male pilot: they loved to suffer. anthony: the first explorers who got here or came close, raced across the continent, striving to be the first. amundson made it before anyone in 1911, beating scott by only 34 days. amundson wisely used huskies to pull his sleds across the ice. scott didn t and his team never made it back alive. the south pole. what you might not know or be prepared for is the south pole is high, like 9,000 feet above sea level and it s cold, real cold, but you knew that.
anthony: antarctica, for all too obvious reasons, remained free of any sustained human contact until the mid-20th century when the u.s. navy launched operation deep freeze an enormous logistical enterprise that established the first permanent base here at mcmurdo in 1955. caves were cut, and here the supplies werpacked away in a natural fridge. frozen meat, perfectly preserved, but where s that axe? let s have a bit of 15-year-old ham. anthony: since the national science foundation took over from the navy, things have gotten a lot less wild west around here. it feels like dorm life at college. bathrooms are communal, everybody rotates housekeeping duties, everybody shuffles off at designated hours to the galley, where the cooks do the very best they can given the infrequent delivery of what are