Who was first to the North and South Poles? The first person to reach both the North and South Poles was Roald Amundsen. Although, he didn’t reach the North Pole by foot. The first person to reach the North Pole by foot was Wally Herbert.
Let’s look at the North Pole first. There are two North Poles. There is the polar North Pole and the magnetic North Pole. The polar North Pole doesn’t move, but the magnetic one slides all over the place. Right now, magnetic north is currently in Northern Canada. As the 20th century started, most of the world had been explored and people were starting to turn their attention to all of the places that were too hard to get to. There were attempts on Everest and people looked towards the poles. The north pole was the first target because most of the nations that were doing the exploring were in the northern hemisphere. However, the North Pole is much more difficult to reach than the South Pole. The reason for this is that the North Pole is situated on sea ice. The South Pole is on land. When people were trying to get to the North Pole, they discovered that the ice moves with the currents of the sea underneath it. It seems solid, but it is floating. You can spend days walking north, but the currents could carry you south, so you still have farther to go. You also have to be careful of thin ice.
There were several attempts to reach the North Pole, starting in the 1880s, but none of them were successful. It was just too hard. The first two people to claim that they had walked to the North Pole were Robert Peary and Frederick Cook, both of them in 1909. However, it turned out that Frederick Cook had probably made up large parts of his journey. Robert Peary may have thought he reached the pole, but analysis of the speed he walked at and the measurements he took, showed that he didn’t reach the pole. He may have fabricated some of his observations as well. His claim was taken seriously, until it was disproven several decades later.
Roald Amundsen was the first person to actually set foot on the North Pole, but he flew there. He had tried to walk, but his expedition had failed. He ended up flying in an airship and he got out at the North Pole. The first person to walk to the North Pole was Wally Herbert and he did it in 1969. He set out on his expedition from Alaska and he and his team walked 6,115 km in all. They reached the North Pole and they had the luxury of modern equipment to verify it.
The first person to reach the South Pole was Roald Amundsen, and he had Robert Peary to thank for it. Amundson had been planning to take an expedition to the North Pole, but he heard that Robert Peary had already made it. These expeditions were expensive and they were usually sponsored by a publication, such as the National Geographic. It was hard to raise money if there was no chance of being the first person. Amundson’s source of funding for the North Pole dried up, so he changed it to an expedition of the South Pole. He made it on 14 December 1911. He had followed the arguments around Cook and Peary’s finding of the North Pole, so he and his team spent three days taking measurements and making sure they were actually at the pole. They were. Amundsen arrived five weeks earlier than Robert Scott, a British explorer who was also aiming for the South Pole. Scott and his team ended up dying on the way back due to several factors out of their control. The temperature dropped below -40 degrees and they had days of storms. They wouldn’t be the last people to die on the way to the poles. It is estimated that several hundred people have died on expeditions to either of the two poles. A journey to the poles is probably safer today because of modern technology, but it is still incredibly difficult and hazardous. These days, if you want to visit either of the poles, you can take a tour there. It isn’t quite as rewarding as dragging a sled thousands of kilometers across the snow and ice, but it would be pretty amazing. You can get there for about $30,000 on a ship, or you could fly. Something for the bucket list. And this is what I learned today.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Falcon_Scott
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amundsen%27s_South_Pole_expedition
https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/race-south-pole-scott-amundsen
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/december-14/amundsen-reaches-south-pole
https://www.wildfoottravel.com/blog/who-was-the-first-man-to-reach-the-north-pole
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Herbert
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Arctic_expeditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Cook
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Peary
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180913-a-frozen-graveyard-the-sad-tales-of-antarcticas-deaths
Photo by Francesco Ungaro: https://www.pexels.com/photo/majestic-ice-shelf-overlooking-frozen-sea-in-arctic-30429904/