KEY POINTS:
This is the moment Edmund Hillary has been living for.
Shortly after 2pm yesterday, the old thrillseeker stepped on to the ice for what may be the last time, alighting at the Pegasus runway, Antarctica, from the giant American military Globemaster transport plane that brought him from Christchurch.
It is dangerous to predict last-anything for the 87-year-old, however - two years ago he had what was then supposed to be his farewell visit to the frozen continent.
That 2004 visit was the result of an approach by Sir Ed's wife, Lady June Hillary, to Antarctica New Zealand chief executive Lou Sanson.
"Can you take him down one last time?" she asked. Mr Sanson was only too happy to oblige. They felt he might not live to see this year's 50th anniversary celebrations. But while looking around Scott Base, the New Zealand research station he established in 1957, Sir Ed came to a decision: "I'll be back."
"He's been living for this," Mr Sanson said yesterday aboard the flight, as Sir Ed sat in his seat, breathing oxygen through a ventilator. There is a certain unpredictability about Sir Ed's health but he seems determined to have the time of his life. During the flight, he climbed the steep stairs into the cockpit to don a pair of sunglasses and talk to the pilots as the Southern Ocean rolled below. Mission accomplished, he returned to the main cabin to lie on a stretcher, breathing through his oxygen mask for the last 90 minutes of the flight.
Once on the ice, Sir Ed felt "great".
He said: "The approach was great. I could hardly believe it. I'm thrilled to come back, to see all the old mountains and to see everything that's been done." Asked if he imagined in 1957 he might be back in 50 years, he said: "No, I didn't even think I was going to be here, but it's great to be back."
The 1957 creation of Scott Base was Sir Ed's official contribution to a Commonwealth Transantarctic expedition led by British geologist Sir Vivian Fuchs. The New Zealanders were supposed to establish a base, set up food and fuel depots and then wait for Sir Vivian, who set out for the South Pole from Shackleton base, on the other side of the continent, planning to come across to Scott Base.
Ignoring instructions from London to "be a good boy" and simply support Sir Vivian, Sir Ed fired up his Massey Ferguson tractors and set out for the pole, beating the British team by 17 days.
To get to the Polar Plateau, the only way to access the pole, the New Zealanders had to get their tractors up the steep Skelton Glacier through blizzards and over crevasses - a journey Sir Ed frequently thought might end in disaster.
"We were using an unknown route into the polar plateau. It was quite windy and a lot of drift snow. But we had flown into a place on the Polar Plateau and left a tent there the previous spring. I was the navigator and I wondered whether I was heading in the right direction. Suddenly, there was a bit of a clearance in the drift snow and I saw straight ahead of us the little tent. That was one of the great moments in my life. I thought, 'Well, Ed, me boy, we've done it'."
Sir Ed and the official party, including Prime Minister Helen Clark and Defence chief Jerry Mateparae, boarded Haggland all-terrain vehicles and made the hour's journey to Scott Base, passing Mt Erebus and Mt Terror, both topped with wisps of smoke.
Today, Helen Clark will fly to the South Pole, while Sir Ed is hoping to visit the Dry Valley conservation area and the historic hut of explorer Ernest Shackleton.
In 1953, Sir Ed's conquest of Everest was hailed as a British victory in the United Kingdom, so there was a special piquancy to his cheekiness in 1957, refusing to adopt a subservient position to the British explorers.
"What Sir Ed did was essentially one-upmanship over the Brits and they weren't terribly pleased," Mr Sanson said. "But it was a hugely significant event in the developing national consciousness of New Zealand. It changed the way people thought."
