Introducing the ‘ice road truckers’ of the South Pole

South African Times-Live correspondent Tiara Walters is the first female writer-in-residence with that country’s team of research scientists probing the barren landscape of the South Pole, and her Pole Dancing blog recently chronicled the team’s trek across what many Americans will be familiar with from the History Channel’s Ice Road Truckers series. “[Caterpillar] Challenger drivers from the defence force [hauling] heavy-duty cargo across 26 km of ice just 1.8 meters thick in parts.”

The provenance of the modified Caterpillar Challenger and other machines (pictured) the drivers use to haul cargo as part of the South African Antarctic expeditions is in turn chronicled on the Cat distributor Barloworld Equipment’s website here, It’s not exactly your father’s freight hauling, resembling such even less than that on the North Country’s ice roads, but stay tuned to Walters’ blog: her trek back to the South African mainland in time should surely contain more ice-trucking adventure.