Amundsen reaches the South Pole

Roald Amundsen's Norwegian team reached the South Pole using dogs and skis, about five weeks before Robert Scott's British party. Scott and his men died on the return trip.

Context

Amundsen had planned to go to the North Pole, but after news of Robert Peary's claim in 1909 he quietly changed his plan and headed south, aboard the ship Fram. He set up a base called Framheim on the Ross Ice Shelf at the Bay of Whales, closer to the Pole than Scott's base.

The Norwegians laid supply depots, used sled dogs and skis, and left for the Pole in October 1911 as a party of five. They climbed the Axel Heiberg Glacier onto the polar plateau and reached the Pole on 14 December 1911. They left a tent and letter and returned safely, killing many dogs along the way for food as planned.

Scott's British Terra Nova party, relying more on man-hauling and ponies, reached the Pole on 17 January 1912, about five weeks later, and found the Norwegian tent. All five men died on the return journey from exhaustion, cold and shortage of supplies, with the last diary entries from late March 1912. Historians still discuss how much planning, weather and bad luck each contributed.

Amundsen's success is often credited to his careful focus on a single goal and on experience with polar travel gained from Arctic expeditions and from Indigenous peoples such as the Netsilik Inuit.