It was 110 years ago today, on December 14, 1911, that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen and his team of explorers became the first people to reach the South Pole, beating the British expedition led by Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who arrived just 33 days later.
Amundsen had feared Scott would beat him to the pole, so he attempted to set out on September 8, an early start in the Antarctic season when the worst of the polar winter was not over. It proved to be a near disastrous decision. After three days the team suffered an exceptionally intense freeze with temperatures dropping to minus 56C, forcing them to return to their base camp.
Five men, four sledges and 52 dogs set off again on October 20, and this time the weather had improved. They still had to cross a great ice barrier at the front of a huge ice field, then climb the Transantarctic Mountains, with difficult glaciers and treacherous crevasses.
Eventually they reached the plateau, a vast, featureless land at high altitude where the South Pole lies at 2,830m above sea level. In fact, the plateau is so featureless that when the Norwegians eventually reached the pole they spent days taking measurements to make sure they were in the correct location. Satisfied they were at the right place, the team returned to base camp and arrived on January 25, 1912, a round trip of more than 1,600 miles in 99 days.
In contrast, Scott’s expedition was horrendous. They relied on dogs, ponies and motorised sledges for transport but the ponies could not withstand the harsh conditions, the sledges broke down and the men had to haul their own gear. Blizzards forced them to shelter in their tents for days. As Scott wrote, “Our luck in weather is preposterous.”
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They reached the pole on January 17, 1912, only to find that Amundsen had beaten them. Dejected, they turned back but faced even worse weather, and with supplies running out they suffered exhaustion, hunger and extreme cold, and all died.
