New Zealander Peter Hillary, togther with Australians Eric Phillips and Jon Muir set out in early November from New Zealand's Scott Base.

They pulled their 100kg (225lb) sleds with food up the Shackelton Glacier and then across the polar plateau in the path of British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his ill-fated 1910-13 mission. Scott and his entire party perished on their attempted return to the Antarctic coast, having been beaten to the pole by Norwegian Roald Amundsen.

A trek spokesman told the New Zealand Press Association news agency the trio were being fed and entertained at the large US station at the pole.

"Now that I've got here, everything seems worth it," Mr Hillary said after reaching the US polar base. "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."

Return walk abandoned

Hillary, son of Mount Everest conqueror Sir Edmund Hillary, and his party have already abandoned plans to walk back to Scott Base and were due to be flown there on Wednesday.

The trio originally intended to ski trek from the Antarctic coast to the South Pole and return without airdrops or any other outside support. But that goal failed two weeks ago when howling winds, blinding blizzards, unbelievable cold, illness and frostbite delayed their journey so much that the group needed food sent in by helicopter from the Amundsen-Scott South Pole US base.

On their return to Scott Base the team are likely to meet up with a group of about 80 participants in the first international high-level government meeting on the icy continent. The ministers and senior officials from 24 nations gathered at Scott Base and the nearby McMurdo Base on Monday for four days of activities and meetings centred on the political management of the continent's fragile ecology.

During Tuesday some members of the party visited Scott's Hut - the original base for Scott's trek.

By reaching the South Pole, Peter and his father, Sir Edmund, became the first father and son to both do that. It follows their earlier accomplishment, when Peter duplicated his father's ascent of Mount Everest, the world's highest mountain.

"Congratulations Peter, on this marvelous achievement of reaching the Pole," Sir Edmund told his son in a message.