An explorer has revealed the shocking artefact buried in one of the most remote places on earth.
Chris Brown, 62, recently hit the headlines after sharing his terrifying ordeal when travelling to Antarctica with his son, Mika, 28, as the pair got “trapped” in -28°C conditions after their plane broke down.
The dad-of-two from Harrogate, North Yorkshire, frequently shares discoveries from his wild adventures and has gone viral this week with a video that has over 20,000 views so far.
The clip shared online (@chrisbrownexplores) has blown social media users’ minds as Chris shares the fact that there is a whole building buried in Antarctica.
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The only clue to this unique find? A giant bust of the former Russian leader, Vladimir Lenin, poking out of the snow and ice in the remotest part of Antarctica, known as the Pole of Inaccessibility.
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And there’s some funny history to the statue’s positioning, too.
“The Lenin bust is on top of a wooden plinth, none of the rest of the building is visible because it’s under ice,” said Chris, who documents his adventures on Chris Brown Explores and Inaccessibility.net – Remotest places on Planet Earth
“When the Russians put it there, they positioned his face so he was looking towards Moscow.
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“But apparently, a couple of American explorers who visited the site several years after it had been abandoned by the Russians, turned it around so it faced Washington.
“Not long after that, the Russians sent an expedition back out there and turned it round so it was facing Moscow again.”
In the TikTok, Chris shared a slideshow of images from the discovery.
He notes the bust was found on the pair’s trip to the historic Antarctic Pole of Inaccessibility in January 2023.
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He also shows a photo of the “unburied” version of the artefact, leaving viewers shocked.
“I was not expecting it to be THAT buried,” one person said.
Someone else added: “There’s an entire building under the bust????”
The statue sits atop an old Soviet Union meteorological research station which was built in 1958.
The bottom three quarters have now been entirely buried beneath the ice and snow.
Some of the bust’s attributes remain a mystery.
He added: “When we got there we had quite good weather. It was only -30°C, whereas the average temperature at that location is -58°C so we spent quite a lot of time looking at it.
“And on top of the wooden plinth there is a cable attached with a screw on the very top, and similarly, there is a screw on the front face and on the side face and they are all joined together with cables.
“I was wondering what this is, bearing in mind it originated from the height of the Cold War and the Russians were probably fed up with the Americans turning it back to face Washington all the time.
“I wondered what those cables were, and what would have happened if we tried to open up that wooden box.”
Chris, who has embarked on a quest to be the first person to visit all seven of the world’s land-based Poles of Inaccessibility, has almost succeeded in reaching five of the Poles so far, including being the first person ever to the African Pole – with only sites in the Arctic and Eurasia (North West China) remaining.
He set himself the mammoth task after getting to know other explorers, including second man on the moon, Buzz Aldrin, and Hamish Harding, the billionaire who perished on the Titan submersible’s voyage to the wreck of the Titanic, at the regular South Pole in 2016.
