The South Pole marker must be moved every New Year
Where Earth's spin axis meets the ice, every direction is north and longitude loses meaning. A sheet of ice about 3.2 kilometres thick slides roughly ten metres a year, burying buildings and carrying the marker away, so crews replant the stake in a ceremony every New Year's Day.
The Geographic South Pole is the southernmost point on Earth, antipodal to the North Pole, defining 90°S. It differs from the south magnetic pole. Because all meridians meet there, longitude is geometrically undefined; when needed it may be called 0°, and directions use a grid-north convention instead. No time zone has been assigned to the spot.
An ice sheet about 3.2 km thick creeps roughly 10 m per year toward the Weddell Sea between 37° and 40° west of grid north, so the geographic marker shifts relative to stations and must be relocated metres each year. Snow that never melts slowly buries buildings. The plateau sits about 2,835 m above sea level on Antarctica—though continental drift means the pole has not always been ice-covered land.
A stake and small sign mark the spot; New Year's Day ceremonies move them and recall Roald Amundsen and Robert F. Scott's arrival dates. Tiny polar motion means even the axis definition wobbles slightly.
Roald Amundsen's Norwegian party arrived first, on 14 December 1911, and named the surrounding plateau after King Haakon VII; their tent lies buried somewhere nearby and is protected as Historic Site 80. Richard Byrd flew over the Pole on 29 November 1929, but nobody set foot there again until 31 October 1956, when Admiral George Dufek's party landed in a Skytrain aircraft. The Amundsen–Scott station, established by air in 1956–1957 for the International Geophysical Year, has been staffed ever since. Edmund Hillary reached it overland on 4 January 1958, and on 30 December 1989 Arved Fuchs and Reinhold Messner finished the first crossing of Antarctica via the Pole without animals or motors, using skis and wind alone.
Source: South Pole
