There were frightening moments during Roald Amundsen’s expedition to conquer the South Pole that tested the character of each and every man with him. During one leg of the journey, Amundsen recalled, "We had to work our way across a hard, smooth slope, which formed an angle of 45 degrees, and ended in a huge bottomless chasm . . . The prospect of seeing sledge, driver, and dogs slide down sideways and disappear into the abyss was a great one." But Roald Amundsen had prepared well, so he began his expedition hoping the obstacles nature put before him would not defeat him.
Born in Borge, Norway, on July 16, 1872, Roald Amundsen decided to be a polar explorer at age 15 after reading about Sir John Franklin, the famous British Arctic explorer who died in 1847 when his final expedition met with disaster. Amundsen was attracted by Franklin’s adventurous life, but also felt that the doomed expedition was mostly the explorer’s own fault. Amundsen believed he could do better at conquering the unknown, so at age 21, he went to sea to gain command experience.
In 1897, he obtained a position as first mate on the Belgica, a ship commissioned to conduct research in Antarctica. When the Belgica became frozen in the ice during the trip, Amundsen experienced the brutal hardships a ship’s crew can suffer because of an unprepared captain. In addition to choosing a crew of mostly incompetent and lazy men, the captain hadn’t even brought enough food or warm clothing for an extended voyage. Then, while facing starvation, the crew was brought to near insanity by a lack of activity through the endless Antarctic night of the winter months. It was only when the captain fell ill and the ship’s doctor took command that the expedition was saved.
In 1903, Amundsen planned and led the first expedition to obtain scientific data on the magnetic north pole. He also wanted to find, and became the first to navigate, the elusive Northwest Passage—a possible shipping route many believed to exist north of Canada that would allow vessels to reach the Pacific Ocean from the Northern Atlantic Ocean. This unknown water route had been sought by navigators for centuries, but had never been discovered. On this expedition, Amundsen traveled throughout the area meeting the native people, and he learned from the Inuit how to survive in the bitter cold. This knowledge became invaluable when Amundsen’s ship became locked in ice for three years. The Inuit taught him how to handle a dogsled, and Amundsen learned that animal skins kept him warmer than wool coats.
In September of 1909, Amundsen was in the process of planning another expedition to the North Pole when he heard that the American explorer Robert Peary had already accomplished that feat. Immediately, Amundsen decided to challenge the British explorer Robert Scott, who was about to try for the South Pole. But Amundsen kept his decision secret. He was afraid his financial backers would want to see if Scott was successful before committing money to a similar expedition. So Amundsen didn’t even tell his crew about his change of plans until his expedition was well under way.
To increase his odds of success, Amundsen tried to anticipate every difficulty that might arise, and made plans to avoid or overcome them. He packed provisions for a much longer expedition than he expected, and assembled a crackerjack crew of eight mentally and physically strong men. For his ship, Amundsen chose the Fram, a unique vessel able to withstand the pressures of the ice that would inevitably surround it. Lastly, he chose 110 Greenland sled dogs, a breed accustomed to surviving in the frozen wilderness.
On June 7, 1910, the Fram set off from Oslo, Norway, and reached the Ross Ice Shelf on January 14, 1911—significantly ahead of Robert Scott. The crew built Framheim, a base camp of tents and snow buildings three kilometers from shore, and during the next three months, they transported supplies to three depots about one hundred kilometers apart along the route to the South Pole. On April 22, when the sun was visible for the last time until spring, the men at Framheim settled into the long Antarctic winter.
To help them cope with total darkness and temperatures that would reach as low as -55 °C, Amundsen planned definite routines for his crew. For the next four months, each crew member had chores: hunting seals, cleaning, cooking, charting scientific observations, fueling lamps and heaters, and caring for the dogs. At night they played cards and darts and even did needlework. The sun finally rose again on August 24, and preparations resumed so that on October 19, 1911, Amundsen and four of his men finally set off for the South Pole. The other four remained behind to make scientific observations on King Edward VII Land, a peninsula on the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf.
Amundsen’s group proceeded toward the pole with four sleds and fifty-two dogs; as temperatures ranged from -21 °C to -30 °C, the dogs pulled the sleds while the men skied alongside. The men and the sleds traveled approximately 17 kilometers a day on flat land and gentle rises. They stopped and built snow beacons from blocks of ice to guide them on the way back. The men’s food consisted of biscuits, chocolate and dried milk for hot chocolate, and pemmican—a substance made of dried meat, fat, and fruits used by the Inuit. Soon, however, they entered a landscape of rugged mountains, ice blocks, shallow cracks, and deep chasms. The dogs trudged up peaks and glaciers ranging from 610 to 3,375 meters high, pulling the sleds plus the men on skis. At times, the steepness of the slope was so great that the heavy sleds had to ascend one at a time with twice as many dogs pulling each sled to make it up the mountain. On the descent, ropes were wrapped around the sleds’ runners to slow them down. Blizzards delayed the group, making the journey more difficult. But on December 14, 1911, after almost two months, all five explorers finally planted the Norwegian flag at the South Pole on a plateau more than 3,000 meters high.
Leaving behind a small tent, a letter to the king of Norway, and a note to Robert Scott, the men set off three days later on the return trip with only two sleds, eating the food they had stored along the way. On January 25, 1912, the five men and their eleven surviving dogs reached Framheim, 99 days after they had started out. Robert Scott reached the pole about a month later; tragically, he had chosen a starting point farther from the pole than Amundsen and used ponies to carry supplies instead of hardy sled dogs. When his expedition experienced terrible weather on their return, Scott and his men froze to death.
Roald Amundsen never stopped exploring, and in 1925, he took two planes as far north as anyone had ever flown. The next year, he flew over the North Pole in an airship and verified that the North Pole was made of nothing but ice. Unfortunately, however, on June 18, 1928, while attempting to rescue a group of lost explorers in the Arctic, Amundsen’s plane disappeared and he was never seen again. But his memory is kept alive by all the places that have been named for him: among those, the Amundsen Sea, the Amundsen Glacier, and at the moon’s south pole, the Amundsen Crater.