Amundsen's Team Reaches the South Pole

A Norwegian Party Reaches the Pole

On December 14, 1911, Roald Amundsen and four companions reached the geographic South Pole. Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel and Oscar Wisting were the other members of the polar party. Their achievement depended on getting across the Ross Ice Shelf, over the mountains and onto the high plateau with enough food and equipment to return. Arrival was not the end of the expedition. The men still had to establish their position as carefully as their instruments allowed and make the entire journey back. A flag and a tent marked success at the pole but could not replace the supplies needed beyond it.

The Bay of Whales and the Route South

Amundsen established his base, Framheim, at the Bay of Whales. His party laid depots before the final journey, spreading food and supplies along portions of the route. The stores made it unnecessary to carry everything from the coast at once. Markers helped the returning party locate them in a landscape where visibility and tracks could change. The team used skis and dog sledges, and it developed practices around their advantages and limits. Those choices belonged together: dogs, drivers, depots and travel pace formed a system rather than a collection of independent innovations that could be adopted one at a time without consequences.

Finding a Pole That Had No Signpost

There is nothing on an ice plateau that identifies the geographic pole to a traveler approaching it. The party used astronomical observations to estimate position and took further measures to make sure it had covered the location. Its members named their tent site Polheim and left records there. The procedure gives the moment more substance than a scene of men walking up to a fixed marker. They had to decide from the Sun and their instruments that they had reached the intended place, and preserve enough evidence for people who could not travel there to inspect their conclusion.

The Expedition Came Home

Robert Falcon Scott's party reached the pole in January 1912 and found evidence that Amundsen had arrived first. Scott and his companions died on the return. The comparison has often turned the two expeditions into a simple contest of character, but planning, routes, weather and transport choices need to be considered separately. Amundsen's team returned to its base safely. The December 14 milestone therefore belongs to a completed expedition with an outward and a homeward leg. What made the achievement repeatable as knowledge was not merely standing at the pole, but carrying home observations about a route and a method that had worked.