02-Dec-2004 -- This visit was as part of a journey from Hercules Inlet to the South Pole. We left Hercules Inlet on 3 November and the team reached the Pole on 28 December.

I visited 84S 84W with the rest of the team on 2 December. We actually had been first hoping to visit 83S 83W several days earlier as well, but navigated slightly too far west when crossing latitude 83S. We made no such error with 84S and were careful to head directly towards the confluence. We nearly reached it to camp there on the night of 1 December, but to do so would have required us to take a very long day travelling 1.5 hours longer than normal and we were all too tired to attempt this. We therefore reached it at the end of our first leg of travel the next day - we spent about 30 minutes circling the area to make sure that we stopped as accurately as possible at the exact point.

Four days after this I unfortunately had to pull out of the expedition because of injury to my tendons. The rest of the team carried on to the Pole which they reached on 28 December. There is a full description of the journey together with dispatches sent directly from the ice here.