The Southern Pole of Inaccessibility

The cold hard stare of Lenin penetrating the icy air is the only thing you’ll come across the vast frozen landscape in this part of Antarctica for hundreds of miles. His plastic bust was left here, erected on the roof of a research station, by the members of the Third Soviet Antarctic Expedition. Today, it is the only visible part of the now defunct station. The rest is buried in snow. The Third Soviet Antarctic Expedition arrived at this remote location on 14 December 1958. This place is called the pole of inaccessibility because it is the farthest point on the Antarctic continent, in any direction, from the surrounding seas, and hence is far more remote and difficult to reach than the geographic South Pole. Reaching the pole of inaccessibility was an express objective of the Third Soviet Antarctic Expedition. The world’s loneliest statue: Lenin’s bust at the Pole of Inaccessibility Station in 2008. Photo credit: Stein Tronstad / Norwegian Polar Institute The expedition was organized as part of the International Geophysical Year—a period lasting from mid-1957 to the end of 1958—during which scientific interchange between East and West was encouraged. In reality, it was another opportunity for America and Russia to outdo each other in the Cold War. Just months before, the Americans had established the Amundsen–Scott Station at the South Pole, and the Russians decided that they would respond by being the first to reach the southern pole of inaccessibility—the Antarctic’s most remote point—and build a research station there. In December 1958, just before close of the International Geophysical Year, a team of 18 men set out for the pole of inaccessibility, dragging tractor-trailers loaded with equipment and prefabricated buildings behind them.