Twenty-two years passed before another Antarctic crossing was attempted.
In the same year, 1981, Robert Swan (b. 1956) from Britain, made the decision to march to the South Pole 'in the footsteps of Scott'. His plan obviously appealed to his countrymen. Within three years he had found himself two partners, Roger Mear (b. 1950) and Gareth Wood (b. 1952), and 500 sponsors who altogether contributed around DM 3,500,000. The age of historical adventure games had begun. It was the intention of the trio, seventy-five years after Scott's failure, to follow the old route to the Pole in the style of the turn of the century: on foot, without radio, without air support, totally self-reliant. In October 1984 they left for the Antarctic in a small trawler. Respectfully, in an allusion to Shackleton's last ship Quest, they named her Southern Quest. Swan and his people took their time, training for almost a year on the Ross Shelf Ice. They climbed Mount Erebus and tested mountain bikes in the darkness of the Antarctic winter. On 2 November 1985 they marched away at last with three sledges. Each sledge weighed 100 kilos, half as much as Scott's had done. This was not only attributable to the fact that modern equipment (sleeping-bags, tents, skis) weigh less than the corresponding items in Scott's time; it was because from the first they planned to end the expedition at the Pole. Swan wanted to fly back to McMurdo from there. Thus they would need less provisions because no dumps for the return match would have to be set up. At 5,200 per day, the calorie intake was much higher than on Scott's Pole expedition.
The party covered the 1,450 kilometres in seventy days. Like Scott, they started on 2 November 1985 and arrived at the South Pole on 11 January 1986. Overall they experienced everything that had tormented Scott's team; snowstorms, extremely low temperatures, mist, sastrugi, crevasses. The three young disciples had the highest admiration for Scott's performance and were very glad not to have to retrace the route. The only piece of bad luck was that Southern Quest had been crushed by pack ice meanwhile, ironically exactly on the day the Pole party came in sight of their goal. Swan, Mear and Wood were flown out on a US aircraft.
At about the same time, Norway's Monica Kristensen had hid the idea of repeating Amundsen's march to the Pole with the same means as he had used. Monica Kristensen (b. 1951), a Cambridge graduate in glaciology, christened her expedition '90 Degrees South'. Six years were devoted to preparation. She organized, raised over DM 5,000,000 and purchased an old whaler. With her ship Aurora, likewise a reminder of Shackleton, the expedition left Oslo harbour in October 1986.
In Monica Kristensen the expedition had a woman as leader. Her three companions for the polar march all had ice experience. Specially to look after and drive the twenty-two sledge dogs, she had engaged two Danes, Jesper Andersen and Jacob Larsen, who had carried out several expeditions in Greenland. The careful planning was commendable because the Norwegian undertaking was more ambitious than the British concept. For Kristensen had to return from the Pole, like Amundsen, to Bay of Whales, as the Americans at the polar station categorically refused from the outset to provide return air transportation. Whosoever wants to operate in Antarctica must be completely self-sufficient. As the Antarctic summer set in late in 1986 and Kristensen had rejected an overwintering, she lost time from the start.
The group was not able to start until 17 December 1986. The undertaking became a race against time which Kristensen lost. It was planned that if they were not to winter in Antarctica, the Aurora must be reached again by the beginning of March at the latest. Despite all efforts the average daily performance of this dog-sledge expedition was less that a 20 kilometres per day. Kristensen saw no chance of getting there and back. Still 440 kilometres from the Pole, she found herself compelled to give up and on 30 January 1987 the group turned back. They managed to reach the Aurora just in time before the pack ice closed in on her. Yet Kristensen and her mate companions had covered almost 2,000 kilometres with the dog sledges, in the course of which food depots had been supplied by a small aircraft.
The British explorers Ranulph Fiennes, Charles Burton and Oliver Shepard had taken it upon themselves to circle the earth on longitude 0° the Greenwich Meridian. Their so-called 'Trans-Globe' expedition took them also to the region of the South Pole. The zero meridian here runs not far from the South African base Sanae III, through Queen Maud Land to the South Pole. The trio used Ski-doos, motorized sledges with 640cc engines. Each machine could carry up to 500 kilos. The British were supplied by air drops. In sixty-seven days, they covered 3,600 kilometres, starting on 29 October 1980 and reaching New Zealand's Scott Base on McMurdo Sound in good shape on 11 January 1981. The greatest danger for them had been the drifted-over crevasses of the Antarctic glaciers.
