Roald Amundsen led the first expedition to reach the South Pole in December 1911, beating British explorer Robin Falcon Scott by a month. Amundsen had previously explored Antarctica and attempted to reach the North Pole. His team established supply depots on the way to the Pole and slaughtered dogs for food. They reached the Pole on December 14, 1911, and returned to Framheim on January 25, 1912.
“Amundsen’s South Pole Expedition” is the unassuming name of the first expedition to arrive at the South Pole, led by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. Running between September 1910 and March 1912, Amundsen reached the South Pole at a time when competition was intense: he defeated Briton Robin Falcon Scott by a month, reaching the Pole on December 14, 1911. The results of the Pole Expedition South of Amundsen were overshadowed for many years by the death of Scott’s expedition while returning to the Antarctic coast from the South Pole.
Amundsen was already an accomplished explorer when he launched his South Pole expedition, having been part of the first crew to winter in Antarctica (1899), and being the leader of the first expedition to pass the Northwest Passage (1903), a destination for explorers from over four centuries earlier, from the time of Columbus. Originally, Amundsen wanted to be first to the North Pole, using the vessel Fram, sometimes thought to be the strongest wooden vessel ever built, but when he learned in 1909 that Robert Peary had reached the North Pole first, he changed his plans and decided to go to Antarctica. The crew consisted of 16 men, including Amundsen.
Landing on the eastern edge of the massive Ross Ice Shelf, the closest landing point to the South Pole, the South Pole Expedition made its first camp in the Bay of Whales on January 14, 1911. He and his crew built a camp , Framheim, complete with sauna and pre-assembled log cabin in Norway. They began undertaking missions by establishing supply depots on a direct line to the pole, depositing more than 6700 pounds (2750 kg) of canned food and fuel. Shortly after landing, the Framheim field was visited by Robin Falcon Scott’s team on Terra Nova, who would later perish on their return from the Pole.
The South Pole Expedition got off to a false start on September 8, 1911, when the initial spring warming proved a fluke and was not sustained. After a week on the road, the eight-man team decided to back off and return to Framheim to await warmer conditions. On 19 October 1911, a new Polish team, with just five members, set out from Framheim with four sleds and 52 dogs.
Starting at 78° South, Amundsen’s South Pole Expedition headed south, reaching 85° South after a month of continuous sledding, after which they rested for a day. With no supply depots, the expedition would have had to survive on what it had by then. Each degree is about 69 miles (111 km), so by this point the journey had come to about 483 miles (777 km) and was just over half the way to the Pole. They were at the base of the Transantarctic Mountains.
The next day, Amundsen’s team climbed the Transantarctic Mountains via the previously unknown Axel Heiberg Glacier, which Amundsen named after a wealthy man who helped finance his trip. After a four-day ascent, the team arrived on November 21 at the Antarctic Plateau, which had only been reached on two occasions before. Delayed four days by bad weather, the crew slaughtered 24 dogs in a field they dubbed “the butcher shop”. The dog meat was fed to the other dogs and men, with the rest cached for the return journey.
Leaving the edge of the polar plateau on November 25, the men had to deal with blizzard conditions and navigate through heavily crevassed ice fields, slowing progress. On December 14, 1911, three weeks later, the team finally arrived at the Pole, naming their camp “Poleheim” and leaving behind a tent and a letter as proof of their success. They returned to Framheim on 25 January 1912, then to Hobart, Australia on 7 March 1912.
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