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View Full Version : Good Morning...If he'd gone any further south, he'd have been going north.



Okla-homey
12/14/2007, 06:54 AM
December 14, 1911, Amundsen is first to the South Pole

Norwegian Roald Amundsen the first explorer to reach the South Pole, beating his British rival, Robert Falcon Scott.

The thing that is really amazing to me is these guys did this without any high-tech cold weather gear. Just furs and woolens. No "polar tech", no "Goretex" just old-school heavy, bulky natural materials. You gotta figure their clothing got wet each day as they sweated and when they stopped to rest -- it must have been miserable. Fuel for fires was only what they brought with them so drying out damp underclothes would have been practically impossible

Also no fancy and easily packable nutritionally dense dehydrated chow. I imagine their caloric requirements were at least 5000 per day given the cold and how hard they were working and all they had to eat was canned stuff and dried meat and fish.

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Amundsen

Amundsen, born in Borge, near Oslo, in 1872, was one of the great figures in polar exploration. In 1897, he was first mate on a Belgian expedition that was the first ever to winter in the Antarctic. In 1903, he guided the 47-ton sloop Gjöa through the Northwest Passage and around the northern Canadian coast, the first navigator to accomplish the treacherous journey.

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/5847/amundnwproute16fk.th.jpg (http://img205.imageshack.us/my.php?image=amundnwproute16fk.jpg)
Path of Amundsen's 1903 "Northwest Passage" expedition.

Amundsen planned to be the first man to the North Pole, and he was about to embark in 1909 when he learned that the American Robert Peary had beat him to it...so the Norwegian Amundsen thought to himself, "WTF, I can still be da first to da South Pole. Ja, sure, youbetcha!"

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Amundsen chilling in his study at home...instead of getting all p*ssed and going out and getting hammered when he found out he had been beaten to the North Pole (note the chart on the wall in front of his desk) he quickly decided to shift gears and be the first guy to the South Pole!

Amundsen completed his preparations and in June 1910 sailed south to Antarctica, where the British explorer Robert F. Scott was also headed with the aim of reaching the South Pole. In early 1911, Amundsen sailed his ship into Antarctica's "Bay of Whales" and set up base camp 60 miles closer to the pole than Scott.

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In October (which is early spring in the southern hemisphere), both explorers set off--Amundsen using sled dogs, and Scott employing motor sledges, Siberian ponies, and dogs. On December 14, 1911, Amundsen's expedition won the race to the Pole and returned safely to base camp in late January.

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Amundsen and his party reach the South Pole and raise the Norwegian colors.

Scott's expedition was less fortunate. The motor sledges broke down, the ponies had to be shot, and the dog teams were sent back as Scott and four companions continued on foot. The reason the ponies had to be shot was the simple fact that horses sweat when they're worked. Scott's people couldn't avoid putting the horses up wet at the end of each day and the bitter cold caused the ponies tremendous suffering.

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Robert F. Scott, Captain, Royal Navy

On January 18, 1912, Scott's party reached the pole only to find that Amundsen had preceded them by over a month. Weather on the return journey was exceptionally bad--two members perished--and a storm later trapped Scott and the other two survivors in their tent only 11 miles from their base camp. Scott's frozen body was found later that year.

http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/9757/amundt628231a0gb.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Scott and his guys at the South Pole on Jan 18, 1912. Beaten to the pole by Amundsen, they would all die on the way home.

After his historic Antarctic journey, Amundsen established a successful shipping business. He later made attempts to become the first explorer to fly over the North Pole. In 1925, in an airplane, he flew within 150 miles of the goal. In 1926, he passed over the North Pole in a dirigible just three days after American explorer Richard E. Byrd had apparently done so in an aircraft.

In 1928, Amundsen lost his life while trying to rescue a fellow explorer whose dirigible had crashed at sea near Spitsbergen, Norway.

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Amundsen is understandably a big deal in Norway. Here's a statue of him in his hometown. I doubt the pigeon on his head has any idea who Amundsen was.

http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/839/insane7zo0xx.jpg

TUSooner
12/14/2007, 10:38 AM
Neat-o.
That Scott was one tragic doofus (which I mean in the nicest possible way).

Miko
12/14/2007, 02:38 PM
Great as always. Thanks!