The bartender at the end of the world

Phil Broughton served drinks at the planet’s most remote bar, said Chris Broughton in The Guardian (U.K.). In 2002, the cryogenics technician arrived at Antarctica’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station for a yearlong deployment, and found that the base’s pub lacked a bartender. He took over the job, and spent his evenings pouring whiskeys and listening to the woes of his fellow researchers. “There was no chaplain at the base,” he says. “I was the nearest thing to one.” During Antarctica’s six-month-long night, temperatures dropped to minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and scientists often took refuge in alcohol. “It was a given that anyone who [took] a job on the base was trying to escape something. I saw a lot of people at the end of the world with nowhere left to run.” Broughton often binged with his patrons. “After a particularly heavy session, I would nip outside to be sick. Any liquid that came into contact with the ice froze immediately. It was a point of honor to clean up after yourself, which meant chipping away with a pickaxe.” Broughton now works at the University of California, but says he’d gladly return to Antarctica. “Watching the aurora with a cocktail in your hand isn’t an experience you let go of easily.”

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