January 12, 2008	Saturday	Muharram 02,1429

PARIS: Best known for his ascent of Everest, New Zealand explorer Sir Edmund Hillary also led an extraordinary trek to the South Pole as part of an expedition that had lasting scientific and political benefits.

Hillary died on Friday at the age of 88, nearly exactly half a century to the day after he arrived at the South Pole with a caravan of converted tractors.

He became the first person to reach the Pole by vehicle and just the third to arrive there overland since Amundsen in 1911 and Scott in 1912.

After travelling 80 days across nearly 2,000 kilometres, Hillary had just one drum of petrol left – enough to take the unusual train only another 32 kilometres – when the polar base set up by the US Air Force air came into view.

Soft snow with the consistency of sugar, perilous crevasses, engine failures, strong winds, intense cold and day-long “white-out” conditions in the Antarctic summer provided rugged obstacles for the conqueror of Everest.

But – in a way that somehow typified Hillary’s life – the kiwi shouldn’t even have been at the South Pole. He just couldn’t resist a challenge.

He was taking part in the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, a 1955-58 venture sponsored by four Commonwealth countries to complete the first overland crossing of Antarctica.

The expedition was headed by Vivian “Bunny” Fuchs, a remote and rather starchy British explorer, while Hillary, fresh from his 1953 climb of Everest, was to have played a purely supporting role.

The idea was that Fuchs’ party of Britons would set off from on side of Antarctic, from the Weddell Sea, and head towards the Pole.

Hillary’s party of Antipodeans would start off from the other side of the continent from New Zealand’s newly-established Scott Base at the Ross Sea.

They would drop off fuel, food and other essential supplies that would be used by Fuchs for the final leg of his journey.

But Fuchs, using snomobiles over difficult terrain, made poor progress, whereas Hillary advanced swiftly with his three converted Massey Ferguson TE20s – a model nicknamed by farmers “Little Grey Fergie” – hauling a caboose and two sledges.

After he had finished dropping off his supply caches on the Polar Plateau, the lanky New Zealander saw a chance to get to the South Pole first and put one over on the Brits.

“We were only 800 kilometres from the Pole, and I decided that we would push on and try and reach the Pole itself,” Hillary told the daily New Zealand Herald in an interview in January 2007.

The press predictably lapped up the idea of a “race to the Pole”, although Fuchs and the expedition committees in London and Wellington were horrified.

“I was a somewhat bloody-minded youngish man,” Hillary admitted. “I decided to follow my own judgement.” His five-member team arrived the Pole on Jan 4, and celebrated with a steak dinner cooked by the US military, followed by a cowboy movie.

Fifteen days later, Fuchs showed up, and was not happy. He made the young upstart travel part of the return journey lying in the back of one of the British snomobiles, Hillary recalled.

The overland party finally arrived at Scott Base on March 2, after a 99-day crossing of 3,473 kilometres. It was not until 1981 that Antarctica was crossed overland again.

The Trans-Antarctic Expedition was a keystone achievement of the 1957-58 International Geophysical Year (IGY), an event mirrored 50 years on in the 2007-08 International Polar Year.

“Not only did the crossing rank as an impressive achievement in itself, it also achieved some scientific firsts,” the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said.

“The area between the Weddell Sea and the Pole was explored for the first time, and seismic sounding across the continent revealed the landscape under the ice in previously unknown detail.

“The Expedition also saw the first co-ordinated use of tracked vehicles, sledges, dogs and aircraft at a time when radio communication was improving.” Radio reports of the scientists’ work and press coverage of the “race” also helped to open up Antarctica to the public mind.

And international cooperation under IGY had profound political repercussions, for it led to the ratification of the Antarctic Treaty in 1961, BAS said. The pact enshrined the continent as a scientific preserve and banned military activity there.—AFP