The first Irish woman to reach the South Pole returns home to a rousing reception at Cork Airport.
The Beyond Endurance four person expedition team were welcomed home by family members and supporters gathered in Cork Airport.
During their fifty eight day adventure Pat Falvey, Clare O’Leary, Shaun Menzies and Jonathan Bradshaw spent up to ten hours a day trekking across Antarctica to reach the South Pole. On 8 December 2008, the team became the first Irish expedition to do so.
Doctor Clare O’Leary from Bandon who was the first Irish woman to climb Mount Everest in 2007 is now the first Irish woman to trek to the South Pole. She describes the physical and mental effort required to complete the expedition to RTÉ News.
No matter how wrecked you are, you just have to keep pushing on.
The team trekked eleven hundred and forty kilometres across Antarctica’s snowy landscape, hauling their supplies on sleds behind them through subzero temperatures and snowstorms.
The journey retraced the steps of Ernest Shackleton and Tom Crean’s voyage to the South Pole in the early years of the twentieth century. This is the sixty second expedition for Cork native Pat Falvey, who described it as,
A historic event.
The mascot and fifth member of the team Frederick T. Bear was busy being greeted by pupils from Cloghroe National School, having accompanied the Beyond Endurance team every step of the way.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 17 January 2008. The reporter is Jennie O’Sullivan.
