A pole of inaccessibility marks a location that is the most distant point from the coastline. The Southern Pole of Inaccessibility, located in Antarctica, is the point most distant from the Antarctic Ocean.
A vast amount of coordinates have been given for this location. The discrepancies are due to the difficulty in measuring to the edges of ice shelves, the movement of ice sheets, and accuracy of survey data. There are also many topographical errors among the ice that cause issues with geographical coordinate systems.
The Southern Pole of Inaccessibility most commonly refers to the site of the Soviet Union Research Station. However, the Scott Polar Research Institute is also another possibility of coordinates through the use of different measurement criteria.
This pole is much more difficult to reach than the South Pole. The average year-round temperature there is approximately -52 degrees Celsius. A Soviet expedition led by Yevgeny Tolstikov was the first to reach this remote area in 1958. They left a bust of Vladimir Lenin on the roof of their research station.
In 2007, a British/Canadian expedition arrived at the same area, the first ones to do so on foot, and found the research station completely covered in snow. They couldn't get inside the building, but Vladimir Lenin's statue was still poking out of the snow, and remains there to this day.
