The Age, Monday, December 11, 1961
Cable cars / gondolas have been spotting mountain-side ski resorts for decades. City systems are a newer phenomenon, but have also been around for many years. Between these two environments alone, cable has reached 6 of the 7 world continents in large numbers.
But what about the 7th continent? For a technology that works notoriously well in harsh, cold, and isolated places, would it not be interesting to build a system in THE harshest, coldest, most isolated (assumption, not fact) place on Earth … Antarctica?
Well, funny you should ask.
As usual, this idea is not a new idea. A quick google search turned up a 1961 news article published in the Australian newspaper The Age about an aerial cable car that was to be constructed the following summer at the French base of Durmont D’Urville, in Antarctica. The cable system was to be used to move cargo 1300 feet (up a 130 foot rise) from the wharf to the station’s base. Predicted time savings — from 2 weeks to 2 days.
No word on whether the system was ever built.
The most modern reference to an Antarctic cable system is as a means to access UANT University observatory, where UANT is supposed to stand for the University of Antarctica although I’m fairly sure this isn’t a real place. They have a website that says it was founded in 1961. But the school also has an uncyclopedia article. The whole thing just seems like a bad April Fools joke.
In conclusion there may or may not be, or have ever been a cable car system in a Antarctica, a continent which may or may not be, but probably not, home to its very own institution of higher learning.