November 3, 2003	Monday	Ramazan 7, 1424

AUCKLAND: As the summer sun rises over bleak and lonely Antarctica in the next couple of weeks a bewildering array of people, inspired by causes as diverse as depression and peace in the Middle East, will walk the increasingly crowded path to the South Pole.

Rosie Stancer and Fiona Thornewill will compete for the national honour of being the first British woman to walk solo and unaided to the Pole. Simon Murray aims to be the oldest Brit to make the trip unaided while British 22-year-old Caroline Wilton intends to become the youngest woman.

Wilton will get supplies airdropped — those going for the unsupported tag have to carry everything they need on the sled.

Meanwhile “Breaking the Ice”, a team of four Israelis and four Palestinians, will spend this southern summer trekking Antarctica Peninsula and climbing an unnamed mountain so they can label it in the name of Middle Eastern peace.

Among the adventures will be an expedition crossing Eastern Antarctic, through the “zone of inaccessibility”, on a houseboat-style sled pulled by an enormous kite.

There is even a high school on the ice, with Britain’s West Nottinghamshire College making a class trip to the Pole.

The lonely image of Antarctica will take another knock when the United States begins work on an ice highway from McMurdo Sound on the Ross Sea coast of the continent to the South Pole, offering driving comfort for 1,600 kilometres.

And a French company are planning to drive in an “environmentally sensitive snow buggy” to the South Pole to tow back a Russian plane abandoned last year.

Doing it the old-fashioned way, from Berkner Island in the Weddell Sea to the South Pole, will be Australian Rob Porcaro who aims to become the first Australian to walk unassisted. He is doing it to raise awareness of depression.

Briton Robert Falcon Scott knew a thing or two about that. On January 16, 1902, he led his battered party to the South Pole only to discover Norwegian Ronald Amundsen had beaten him, arriving December 14, 1911.

“Great god,” proclaimed Scott in his log, “this is an awful place....”

In November Britons Pete Goss and Alan Chambers are planning to use the same route Scott pioneered — although they may have to look both ways when crossing the road.

The new 153 million US dollar facilities at the Amundsen-Scott Base at the pole offer all the comforts of home, including email and ice cream, but the trekkers will probably not get a bed there. American policy forbids it — although passing explorers get a meal and an increasingly jaundiced welcome.

All these Britons aiming to be the “first” at something are walking in the footprints of Norwegians.

Liv Arneson of Norway made the first solo walk to the South Pole in 1994 while countryman Borge Ousland was the first to walk solo and unaided across Antarctica.

At the end of his 2,840-kilometre trek in 1997 he had the disorientating experience of walking into New Zealands Scott Base to be welcomed by prime minister Jim Bolger and the first climber of Mount Everest, Edmund Hillary.

“We agreed that the things we dislike most when travelling in the Antarctic are the crevasses,” Hillary said.

“He quite frankly admits that there were moments of danger, and moments of fear, we all experience of course.”

An exploration website (www.thepoles.com) has listed all this summer’s known polar adventures, along with an appeal for others not listed to check in.

It paints a surprising picture of the ultimate getaway, which is going to be kind of crowded this year.—AFP