A First-Hand Account of a Uniquely Antarctic New Year Ceremony

National Science Foundation
Office of Polar Programs
4201 Wilson Boulevard
Arlington, VA 22230

Posted February 2, 2018

Image: Johannes Werthebach / NSF

In an annual ritual unique to Antarctica, personnel at NSF's Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station on Jan. 1 unveiled the new marker that designates the geographic South Pole.

The station sits on a nearly two-mile-thick piece of ice that is continuously sliding towards the Weddell Sea at a rate of about ten meters (33 feet) a year, meaning the marker indicating the precise geographic South Pole needs to be relocated annually.

The South Pole tradition is that the crew spending the Southern Hemisphere winter at the station designs a marker. The design is then approved by NSF and machined on site for the Jan. 1 unveiling. (a striped pole topped with a silver ball marks the “ceremonial pole” and appears in the photos of countless visitors who have been to the Pole over the decades, including, among the notable and most recent, celebrity TV chef Anthony Bourdain.)

South Pole Laboratory Operations Supervisor Tim Ager, who attended, writes it “was a beautiful summer day for the ceremony, and much of the station participated. The U.S. flag was moved from the old pole marker – passed from one person to the next – until it was placed next to the new pole marker. The 2018 Winter Site Manager, Marco Tortonese, spoke briefly about all that the new marker would witness in its upcoming year, and the covering was removed so we all could see it for the first time.”