Amundsen reaches South Pole
In December 1911, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and four companions became the first people to reach the Geographic South Pole. Their arrival ended a long contest to reach one of the last great unvisited places on Earth, and it set the stage for one of the most famous tragedies in the history of exploration, since a British party under Robert Falcon Scott arrived at the Pole about a month later and did not survive the return journey.
Amundsen was already an experienced polar traveler. He had served on a Belgian Antarctic expedition in the late 1890s and led the first voyage through the Northwest Passage in the early 1900s. He had originally planned to reach the North Pole, but in 1909 news arrived that Americans had claimed it, and he quietly changed his goal to the south. He kept this shift largely secret, and Scott learned of it only after the expedition was under way. Amundsen used the ship Fram, previously employed by Fridtjof Nansen, and set up his base on the Ross Ice Shelf, at a spot he called Framheim, in the Bay of Whales.
His success is usually credited to careful preparation and a willingness to learn from Arctic peoples. The party relied on skis and sled dogs, wore fur clothing influenced by Inuit designs, and laid supply depots along the route in advance. Dogs were also used as a food source, with some animals killed along the way to feed the remaining dogs and the men. The team crossed the Transantarctic Mountains by way of the Axel Heiberg Glacier and then pushed across the high polar plateau. They reached the Pole in mid-December 1911, and they left a tent and a letter for Scott before heading back. All five men returned safely to base in early 1912.
Scott's team, relying more on man-hauling sledges alongside ponies and motor sledges, reached the Pole in January 1912 to find Amundsen's tent. Scott and his four companions died on the return march, victims of cold, hunger, exhaustion and bad luck. Their deaths made Scott a national hero in Britain, and for decades the British story overshadowed Amundsen's achievement. Some writers criticized Amundsen for being unsporting, while later historians have more often praised his planning and judgment.
The achievement marked the end of the first phase of Antarctic exploration, often called the Heroic Age. Amundsen later took part in airship and aircraft expeditions in the Arctic, and he died in 1928 during a rescue flight. His South Pole journey remains a standard example of how thorough preparation, suitable equipment and respect for local knowledge can determine the outcome of an expedition.