So...this happened. The US Coast Guard Icebreaker Healy did a major Arctic science cruise which included a visit to the North Pole at the beginning of October 2022. Healy was participating in the multi-year multinational Synoptic Arctic Survey.

And of course this cruise created an opportunity for what AFAIK was the third phone call between the North and South Poles, which happened on 6 October SP time. Oh...the first such call happened on 28 April 1999 as part of a NASA connectivity project, while the second such call happened on 15 August 2021 between Polie 2007 and 2012 winterover (and frequent summerer and friend) Sven Lidström...Sven was aboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden.

More info...here is a 17 October UNOLS article about Healy's cruise, as well as a 4 October article with video from KTUU (Anchorage CBS television). And...I must say there is some misinformation out there about the North Pole vessel statistics...so I had to dig in and correct things. Healy has visited the North Pole four times...in September 2001, September 2005, September 2015, and the most recent visit in October 2022. The 2001 voyage was part of her three-phase maiden voyage accompanied by the German research vessel Polarstern, Her 2005 Pole visit saw her accompanied by the Swedish icebreaker Oden, and in 2015 she became the first unaccompanied US surface vessel to reach Pole, although during that voyage she also worked with Polarstern while at the North Pole. Oh...Healy was NOT the first US vessel to reach Pole...that was another US Coast Guard icebreaker, the Polar Sea, which reached the North Pole on 22 August 1994 per this Polar Sea information page. More on that 1994 Polar Sea voyage...she was accompanied by the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Louis S. St.Laurent as described in this article by Gordon Stoodley VE1VCS who was radio officer on the Louis S. St.Laurent. Oh, I found some of the details on the web about Healy's North Pole visits to be incorrect, so I had to edit the Healy Wikipedia page to fix things. Well worth a look.

The Healy crew and science teams at the North Pole, photo by AUXPA1 Deborah Heldt Cordone.

Credits and thanks...the photo of Captain Boda on the phone is from Sarah Kaye who was aboard the Healy, while the group South Pole photo is from 2022 w/o satcom engineer Hector Plaza. Both of the photos at the top of this page appeared on the South Pole weekly sitrep for the week ending 8 October 2022. And as a follower of the Pole sitreps, I must note that almost all photos that appear there are by current Polies...friend Sarah Kaye obviously wasn't there, but she wintered in 2004. She is second from right in the above photo in the blue parka, in front of the person with the high viz hat.