http://geology.com/world/antarctica-satellite-image.shtml

• Coldest

• Windiest

• 5th Largest

• Desert!

• 99.6% Ice

• 70% of Earth’s

Pure Water

• No native

population

If you have men who will only come if they know there is a road, I don’t want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all.- David Livingstone (1813-74)

Onboard MV Stepan Krasheninikov, Goa to Antarctica, Dec 93

The land looks like a fairytale. – Roald Amundsen (1872-1928)

Approaching Maitri Station, Schirmacher Oasis, Antarctica

Helping the cook on Galley Duty

The men selected must be qualified for the work, and they must also have the special qualifications required to meet polar conditions. They must be able to live together in harmony for a long period without outside communication, and it must be remembered that the men whose desires lead them to the untrodden paths of the world have generally marked individuality. - Ernest Schakleton (1874 – 1922)

A Snow Blizzard picking up during winter

Anybody can deal with the ice. But to deal with the human spirit is very difficult.– Roland Hurtford, Polar Historian on Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1914-17

The Ice tends to magnify seemingly trivial events and symptoms, transforming what would be viewed as mundane or unimportant in any other environment into something that is problematic and significant under conditions of isolation and confinement."    — Dr. Lawrence Palinkas, On the ice: Individual and Group Adaptation in Antarctica

At a party at Russian Station, Novolazarevskaya, Schirmacher Oasis, Antarctica

It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves. – Edmund Hillary

At foot of Polar Ice Sheet, Schirmacher Oasis, Antarctica