The polar particle hunter

No commercial airline flies to the South Pole. Instead, I started my trip there on a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport, which traveled from Christchurch, New Zealand, to McMurdo Station, a U.S. Antarctic research center located on the southern tip of Ross Island. I stayed at McMurdo overnight before boarding a smaller plane, an LC-130 turboprop, for the rest of the journey. After a 3-hour flight over the Transantarctic Mountains, my plane landed on skis at the bottom of the world.