KEY POINTS:
After 52 days of fierce cold, pain, sleep deprivation, hallucinations and doubts, getting to see a barbershop pole in the snow made it all worthwhile for two weary New Zealanders.
"It's very corny, but very satisfying," Antarctic adventurer Kevin Biggar told the Herald from his tent at the South Pole.
Biggar, 37, of Auckland, and Jamie Fitzgerald, 26, of Tauranga, planted their flag next to the landmark yesterday after an 1100km trek from Hercules Inlet, across snow and ice, pulling 160kg of sleds in temperatures as low as -30C.
They can now lay claim to being the first Kiwis to trek to the pole unassisted. Sir Edmund Hillary and his companions completed the journey with tractors 49 years ago, reaching the South Pole on January 3, 1958.
The pair will be flown back by plane after having to abandon a planned return trek because of injury and bad weather.
The feeling of getting to the pole was "utter exhilaration, satisfaction and relief", Biggar said.
"It was worth it in the end, because your mind plays tricks on you. Of the 52 days, your mind blocks out 49 of them. It just shows you a couple of funny moments and some wide-open white fields.
"There are times when you wonder if the body is going to give out. You feel yourself withering away, your clothes start to get baggy.
"You are sleep-deprived because you are trying to maximise the hours on the trail, so the hours in the tent start to go down."
The pair survived on a diet of muesli, hot chocolate, chocolate bars, butter, nuts, salami, soup and cooking oil drunk straight from the bottle.
Biggar lost 23kg during the gruelling journey. "The energy output is unbelievable."
The men would sleep in their tent for about six hours, rise each day at 2.45am and be "on the road" by 5am.
"The mornings are the worst times," said Biggar. "You're sluggish and cold and you have to spend time rolling and folding and putting on cold clothes."
They would then trek for an hour and 25 minutes at a time, with 10 minute breaks. Some days they would trek until 5pm before setting up camp again.
Often they would cover only 1.6km an hour because of the difficult ground and air conditions. On one especially difficult day, they were down to 100m in an hour.
Simple day-to-day activities were "brutal", said Biggar.
"Your hands are always getting cold and warming out and refreezing. The normal things like going to the loo, getting water, sleeping - that kind of thing is slow, painful, cold and it hurts."
The bleak landscape played havoc with their minds. "The scenery changes, but it is only variations on a theme.
"You know you are going uphill and you look back and it's flat. You constantly feel like you are walking in a saucer."
The white-out conditions were the worst. "You take a step and the step might be into a hole. You put down your ski pole and it might be into a fissure."
Fitzgerald endured painful hamstring injuries for most of the trip, while Biggar lost toenails. Otherwise they came through largely unscathed.
Asked if he would do it again, Biggar was doubtful.
"Jamie and I swore to each other that if either one of us did that, we would give the other one a bit of a punch to remind ourselves what it was like."
