March 5, 2021 • 38 mins
In 1968, decades after Peary’s and Cook’s competing stories emerged, a Minnesota insurance salesman named Ralph Plaisted was sitting in a bar, talking to a friend about snowmobiles. His friend said that if snowmobiles were so great, he should be able to ride one to the North Pole. Plaisted accepted the challenge. Thus began one of the most improbable expeditions, led by one of the unlikeliest adventurers, ever made to the Pole—a journey by Ski-Doo that ended up being the first to indisputably reach 90° North latitude. We’ll look at how Ralph Plaisted did it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. It's April and an
insurance salesman from Minnesota named Ralph Plistead is looking down
at his feet. He's standing on an ice flow in
the Arctic with ten thousand feet of frigid water below,
(00:25):
and the ice is getting softer. Plystead looks around. Miles
of ice covered oceans surround him in all directions. He's
only days into his attempt to reach the North Pole,
and things look as grim as they've ever been. Plistead
and his team of amateur explorers have endured fuel shortages,
howling storms, and forgotten supplies, but now just a few
(00:48):
inches of precarious ice separates them from a watery grave.
For days, they probe the ice with chisels. They hope
for sure footing and an extrusion that will connect them
to another flow. Finally one appears placed It and his
men scramble onto their snowmobiles, preparing to ride over to
the fragile surface. Like Daredevil's Plastad doesn't want to do it.
(01:13):
It's a preposterous plan, but there's no other choice. The
flows finally touch the men rev their engines and surge
forward incredibly impossibly, it works. Three of the four, including
ply Stead, make it across. Then they hear a crack.
Pl Stad looks back. There's his friend, Walter Peterson, caught
(01:37):
in the lead between the ice flows and he's sinking.
Pliestad bolts across the surface, feet meeting ice the consistency
of a slurpie. He reaches out for Peterson, grabs his
snowmobile and pulls as hard as he can. Today, four
will survive or two will die. How had they even
(01:59):
gotten to this point? Ralph Plystead was no one's idea
of an action hero. In his late thirties with a
Wilford Brimley esque mustache, ply Stead was just an insurance
salesman from Minnesota. And insurance salesman, while members of a
noble profession, aren't necessarily equipped for Arctic expeditions. Would he
(02:19):
be able to save his friend? And what was really
behind this unlikely mission to reach the North Pole? In
this episode, we'll find out from Mental Floss and I
Heart Radio. This is the Quest for the North Pole.
(02:41):
I'm your host, Cat Long, science editor at Mental Floss,
and this is episode eight Triumph by Snowmobile By the
time Ralph Plistead was sinking into the ice, it had
(03:04):
been fifty nine years since Robert Pierry and Matthew Henson
claimed to conquer the pole in nineteen o nine. After
that momentous adventure and ensuing controversy with Frederick Cooke, which
we laid out in our previous episode, a parade of airships,
airplanes and submarines had traveled to the Pole. The airship Norga,
(03:24):
led by Roald Amondson with American aviator Lincoln Ellsworth as navigator,
an Italian engineer Ambaritoe noble Ay as pilot, flew over
the North Pole. In a few days earlier, American aviator
Richard E. Byrd claimed to have flown his plane over
the North Pole, but skeptics later questioned his veracity. In
(03:46):
ninety eight, the US nuclear submarine Nautilus made the first
underwater cruise to the geographic North Pole, gliding under the ice,
and the following year the American nuclear sub Skate pushed
through the field to become the first to surface at
the pole. But those were explorers and vessels. Trekking to
(04:07):
the North Pole over miles of ice was still a
romantic mission one that attracted adventurers with iron constitutions, men
who had made a life and career of pushing the envelope,
Men who were completely and utterly unlike Ralph Plystead, who
had never even been to the Arctic, and after he
had gotten there, remarked, boy, it's cold up there. Plystead
(04:30):
was determined to succeed where many had not. He had
read National geographic issues cover to cover and knew the
accounts of Peary and Henson by heart. What Plistead lacked
in personal polar experience, he made up for an enthusiasm.
And while men like Robert Peery were driven by a
need to make history, Plistead was driven by a dare
(04:52):
maid in a bar. Granted, Plistead wasn't a guy you
typically find lounging around the house on weekend. As a
naval officer, he had served in the Pacific Theater during
World War Two before returning to Minnesota to begin a
series of odd jobs. Ply Stead was a born salesman.
He went door to door with a variety of goods
(05:14):
like fly spray and cattle vitamins. Then he began selling insurance,
which was his true calling. Pretty soon he owned his
own company. He was also an avid outdoorsman who had
a special affinity for skidoos. This brand of snowmobile was
starting to gain popularity after being introduced in nineteen fifty nine.
(05:35):
They were particularly suited for snowy Minnesota. Minnesota has a
thriving snowmobile culture. That's Bill Conberry, the director of research
for the Minnesota Historical Society and an expert in the
state's history. Although in the nineteen sixties, when had got
his first snowmill built, the consumer culture of snowmobil ing
had just started. But today a lot of Minnesota's own snowmobiles.
(05:59):
It becomes the merry away they get around in the wintertime.
It's a major source of recreation, and Minnesotan's pride themselves
on their ability to endure extreme cold temperatures, and certainly
ply Stead fits in that category. Ply Stead was such
a fan of snowmobiles that in he drove one all
the way from Ealie, Minnesota to White Bear Lake, just
(06:21):
north of St. Paul, a distance of two fifty miles.
Oh and it was about thirty degrees below zero during
the trip. The coldest I've experienced in Minnesota is thirty
five below, and I tell you it's impossible to breathe.
It hurts to breathe. When you go outside, your your
limbs get frostbite almost immediately. And the idea of bundling
(06:42):
up and hopping on a snowmobile, which was not you
couldn't say the snowmobiles of the nineteen sixties were overpowered
by any stretch of the imagination. Had a little fifteen
or sixteen horsepower engine, that top speed it could go
was maybe twenty or if you really pushed at thirty
miles an hour, so fourteen of enduring colder temperatures, then
(07:02):
really most of us can even imagine. And Plista did
it NonStop. An achievement like that can really bolster a
person's confidence. So when Plistood was seated in the Pickwick
Bar in Duluth, Minnesota, on May five six, he thought
he knew what he was talking about when he assisted
(07:23):
snowmobiles would be a feasible way of traveling in the Arctic.
Plistead had a verbal sparring partner that evening. His name
was Art alfter Hyda, a local doctor. The men had
originally been discussing a seal hunting trip using dog sleds,
which Alfterhida had used in previous trips. But the more
(07:43):
Pliestad bragged about the virtues of snowmobiles, the more confrontational
alfter Hyda gut. If what Plistad was saying was true,
he argued, then a snowmobile should be something that Plista
could drive straight to the North Pole. Remember that no
one in history had ever driven a motorized vehicle to
the North Pole. In fact, no person had even been
(08:06):
able to prove they had trekked to the North Pole,
but Plastad might not have been aware of that at
the time, and after crowing about his skidoo, Plistead really
had no choice but to defiantly insist that, yes, it
would absolutely be possible to drive one all the way
to an incredibly remote part of the world, which I
think of this kind of the equivalent of, well, if
(08:28):
you love her so much, why don't you marry her.
It's like going to the North Pole on sort of
a middle school there, be careful what you promise. After
a couple of drinks. Right then in there, Pliste had
made a decision. He would embark on an expedition that
traditionally had a formidable casualty rate Afterhido would be coming
(08:49):
along with him his role medical officer. As newspaper stories
began to surface in November ninety six, plist had described
his trip and scientific terms. He'd collect data on everything
from human tolerance to extreme weather conditions to polar navigation.
They were lofty goals, and in reality, Plistid and his
(09:11):
men would be so preoccupied with merely surviving that none
of this research would be completed. And maybe deep down
Pliston knew there would be limited value to his observations.
The prize was being first. The thing about PLI said,
is that he was a huge fan of National Geographic
and he had soaked up the stories of Robert Peary
(09:34):
and Admiral Bird and Matthew Hanson. He knew those stories
backwards and forwards, and I think he romanticized those stories
in an important way. And he certainly understood cold although
he really didn't understand the conditions of the North Pole.
But I think he knew just enough to be dangerous
to think, well, if these guys could do it overland,
and I can certainly do it on a machine. Plistid's
(09:56):
adventure had attracted the attention of CBS. The network entered
into a deal with him to chronicle his trip for
future airing on the channel, with regular updates on their
radio news broadcast. CBS even dispatched correspondent Charles Corralt to
shadow Plistad's crew and write about their progress, like a
(10:17):
kind of Arctic Dirty Dozen. Plistad recruited friends who could
each bring a special skill to the table. In addition
to after Heida, Placetad enlisted Donald powellc an engineer who
could operate the radio, Gerald Pitzel, a high school geography teacher,
and Blair Woolsey, a dentist by trade, would assist with navigation.
(10:39):
Walt Peterson was a mechanical engineer who would tend to
the skidoos. John Al's dad was a survival expert from
the Royal Canadian Air Force. Photographer Robert Clemens came on
assignment for CBS, and Well And Phipps, a Canadian pilot,
would provide air support and deliver supplies. Plistad designated himself
(10:59):
the expedition's cook. Today, so many polar explorers are trying
to do it like unsupported solo. They're kind of putting
these artificial limits on themselves to show that they can endure,
you know, this amount of pressure to reach their goal.
But Pli said, is like, I don't want to make
this more difficult than I have to exactly. I mean,
(11:23):
there's this aesthetic of deprivation that a lot of explorers
live up to that it's kind of a test of
their discipline to be able to go without the creature
comforts of life. And that didn't fly with Ralph, Plie
said at all, not even a little. He wasn't going
to do this if if he couldn't be comfortable, and
so all along the way he received packages that dropped
from the air of cigarettes and beer and scotch. Some
(11:47):
of these men didn't even have much experience outdoors, much
less in the Arctic. Pitzel said as much in an
interview with the Montreal Gazette, labeling them all a bunch
of amateurs. Well, you know, these guys, they're mostly middle
aged men in their late thirties and early forties. Their
mechanics and engineers and teachers, kind of people with everyday
(12:08):
backgrounds who got into this expedition simply because they were
friends with Ralph Weistead. The men would have to train
for a journey demanding physical and mental fortitude. Since none
of them had passed the psychological evaluation, they just have
to make do with the physical part. They hoped their
weekends spent ice fishing on frozen lakes would prepare them
(12:29):
so to train and prepare for this trip, they slept
outdoors in sleeping bags. They camped out on frozen over lakes,
particularly relaxed lake. They went through exercises like building up
fake ice riches to navigate and to to figure out
how they were going to move their snowmobiles over them.
They did this all, you know, basically thinking, and they're
(12:50):
not entirely wrong. There a Minnesota winter was you know,
at least good conditioning for the kinds of experiences they
were going to experience in the Arctic. Do you think
what they did to prepare was enough? I would say
that they came back thinking. The answer to that was no.
(13:11):
The ice conditions in the Arctic circle where nothing like
any of them had experienced, and so they couldn't read
the ice, which is very dangerous. Of course, if you
if you drive a snowmobile over it thin patch of
ice in the Arctic, that's almost certainly a fatal experience.
The more they practiced that spring of ninety seven, the
more crowds began to form around the lake. There was
(13:33):
a real curiosity over what would become of this motley
crew once they started towards their destination. Newspapers in Minneapolis
and St. Cloud followed the expedition's progress and setbacks, and
Playstead became a local celebrity. Even if Minnesotans had their
doubts about whether the team would make it to the poll,
they went along with the narrative swept up in the
(13:55):
age old battle between man and nature. I think couple
of wire services at the time did an article or
two about him, and and it was carried in all papers,
like all across the country. I mean, it kind of
to me felt like these audiences, like kind of the
late sixties, are perhaps looking for something to believe in collectively.
(14:17):
I mean, it was a pretty rough time in our
country at that point, and maybe they needed this kind
of thing to latch onto. That's a great point, and
I think, you know, part of the context that people
need to understand is what was going on in the
United States and in the world in the late nineteen sixties.
America was mired in Vietnam, the civil rights movement was
was kind of falling apart. On April fourth of nineteen
(14:40):
sixty eight, a Place is still up in the Arctic,
Martin Luther King Jr. Was assassinated. This is a very
turbulent time, but there's also a backdrop of these new
adventures in outer space. The Apollo program was going in
nineteen sixty eight and nineteen sixty nine, and so Americans
(15:01):
were kind of mired in problems on the ground, but
looking up the skies with some hope. And that was
kind of the context that that drew a lot of
attention to route Place Stead. It's kind of funny that
even as late as nine, it's still a race, right,
This is still an extreme endeavor a Place Stead when
he returned, noted that even in the late nineteen sixties,
(15:22):
hundreds of mountain climbers were scaling Mount Everest every year,
but almost nobody went to the North Pole. So this
was terra incognita. This was essentially an unconquered horizon for
human beings. And you brought up the space race, to
which of course was happening at the same time, And
there's so many parallels between the two One thing that
(15:44):
kind of struck me is that not only are there
parallels between the Space Race and play Stead's expedition, but
he actually used foods, apparently that the Pillsbury Company in
Minneapolis had developed for the space program. Do you know
anything about that? I am so curious about this. Think
about what it takes to eed food in outer space
(16:04):
for a minute. You know, you can't eat things with crumbs,
You can't eat things that are liquid e or gooey,
because that stuff floats around and it gets in your controls.
And so NASA was looking for some sort of compact
way to keep their astronauts fed in a way that
wouldn't muck up their systems. And Pillsbury, a Minnesota company,
a company that was headquartered in Minneapolis, was working on
(16:27):
the creation of what they called space food sticks. They
didn't really have a good name for this in the nineties,
but we would call this an energy board today, basically
a compact, edible stick of food that could be tightly
packed and contained and carried into outer space. And Plist's
expedition provided a great opportunity to test out these new
(16:48):
food sticks, so plies that took along a supply sponsors
wound up donating over one hundred thousand dollars to his
nonprofit company, pla Stead Polar Expedition, Inc. But not everyone
was enamored with Plista's plans. Campbell's Soup declined to send
him free cans. Pepsi also rejected his request for ten
(17:10):
cases of soda. He did manage to convince Bombardier, the
manufacturer of skadoos, to donate ten vehicles, but Bombardier had
one condition. Plistead would have to let Jean Luc Bombardier,
the nephew of the founder, accompany him, along with technician
Pierre Toroin. Plistet added some rather clever touches. For one,
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he made sure the park is worn by the men
were different colors so they could be easily identified on
the ice. The custom outfits cost eleven thousand dollars and
were made by sid Lanhum of the Chippewa Trading Post
and Grand Rapids, who worked from sketches created by after Heida.
The park has had both an inner and outer shell,
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so the men could remove the outer layer for physical
jobs like clearing a trail, and keep it on while writing.
He also made sure the scadoos were a ligned with
styrofoam to keep them afloat in case they broke through
the ice. Plistad had other help too. He consulted polar
research scientists in both Washington and Ottawa to formulate the
(18:16):
best way to make the eight hundred mile journey, although
he stated he got far more help from Canadian officials
than the Pentagon. I went to the Pentagon last year,
and the only thing they know about is Vietnam, Pliston
told the Montreal Gazette. If you're not going to Vietnam,
you are not going anywhere. He also sought advice from
at least one hundred and fifty experts in Arctic adventuring,
(18:39):
from those of the Arctic Research Laboratory at Point Barrow, Alaska,
to the Sea Ice Branch of the U. S. Navy
Ocean A Graphic Office. The most useful advice may have
come from Donald Alford, a glaciologist at Montana State. I
think your total food and fuel estimates are a bit low,
he began. The most priceless possession up there is a
(19:01):
warm sleeping bag. Until you've been in a sleeping bag
for five days at minus thirty fahrenheit, listening to the
wind blow. You can't imagine how it takes the edge
off one's enthusiasm. Even though he'd be using sixteen horsepower snowmobiles,
Plistead still planned on bringing along dogs to warn his
team of approaching polar bears. The skadoos could go thirty
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miles an hour while pulling sleds containing all of the
donated equipment and supplies they'd need. Each skadoo could tow
five hundred pounds, and the sleds had watertight plastic bags
in case they had to be moved over water. Blistead
pitched the tents in his living room so they could
dry out after their weekend practice runs, but his family
was used to the inconvenience. His wife Gail had to
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walk around them, and their children, eighteen year old Jackie
and eleven year old Stephen, sometimes slept over at a
neighbor's house. When Plistead had his teammates over for meetings.
It was time to begin. On March, ply Stead and
his team flew from Montreal to Eureka, a small weather
(20:09):
station on Ellesmere Island in Canada. From Eureka, Plistad intended
to travel along Nonsense Sound to the Arctic Ocean, then
head west to cross the ice towards the North Pole.
His route was similar to Frederick Cook's on his eight
polar journey. Upon arrival at the Pole, Plistead's party would
(20:30):
be transported back to civilization by airplane. On March, the
journey began, and on March things began going wrong. Let's
take a break here. Straddling their skidoos, with hundreds of
(20:58):
miles of icy terray between them and the North Pole,
the men sped towards immortality and ran into problems. Ignoring
Pitzel's navigation, Plies Diad gauge their direction by using an
iceberg as a point of reference, but too late they
realized they had circled the iceberg and were now heading south,
a major obstacle, and arriving at the North Pole, they
(21:22):
had lost twelve miles. By the second day, Clemens, the
CBS photographer, had already had enough. He seemed to see
the gravity of the situation when his camera lens froze
over and began screaming that he would be returning to
base camp by himself. The others talked him out of
what would have been a dangerous solo trip. That night,
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the men set up camp and radioed back to base,
where operators could pass along word of their progress to
their wives and families, and Pliestad could request supplies. Moving,
even if the men were going in circles, was tolerable,
but i at night the environment's reluctance to accommodate human
occupants became stark. Plisted stuff the men into a single
(22:07):
dinner tent and cooked up a nice beef stew, but
there was so little space inside that one team members
what clothing might be draped over another person's leg or arm.
The zippers lining the entrance froze with the flap open,
blasting them with frigid air. By April first, they had
traveled one hundred miles north. The odometers on their skidoos
(22:30):
read one seventy five miles owing to the detours after
exiting nonsense sound. What lay ahead was treacherous sea ice
broken into hummocks and ridges, none of it ever meant
to be traversed by man or machine because of the currents,
which carried ice flows two or three miles an hour.
The men would move even while camped out, but it
(22:53):
might not necessarily be in the right direction. Plastad soon
came to a realization, with uneven ice ahead of him
and a load of equipment totaling hundreds of pounds, his
expedition had become too cumbersome. He sent Woolsey and Bombardier,
who were both sick, back to base camp. Clemmens also
(23:14):
went back since his cameras needed thawing, but he still
needed to send one more man away as a leader.
It couldn't be him, and it couldn't be Austad, who
had experience with sea ice. Powellick operated the radio, Pitzel
was in charge of navigation, alfter Haida was a doctor,
and Peterson was the mechanic. All were indispensable, but ply
(23:38):
Stead finally decided that alter Hida was the only one
who wasn't absolutely necessary to their progress, Though any one
of them could have needed medical attention for something like
a broken leg, the doctor was sent away. Plistead may
have had second thoughts. Once they started moving forward again,
leads opened between ice flows and revealed water below. The
(24:00):
men hurried to cross before they widened. They used rods
to test the ice for stability. Sometimes the rods would
hit solid ice, other times they would pass clean through.
When they came to a newly formed ice bridge fifty
yards wide. The men scrambled across it, knowing it could
collapse at any time. Because Plistead, the National geographic fan,
(24:23):
had read Robert Pierry's accounts of crossing these fragile, flexible
ice bridges, he surely would have doubted the wisdom of
this enterprise. Pierry and his men had barely crossed such
ice with lightweight sledges, nimble footed dogs, and snowshoes. Plistead
had snowmobiles and too much gear. Once Plistead and his
(24:44):
crew woke up to find that the ice flow they
had camped on had drifted into open water, they were
marooned and could do nothing but wait for the ice
to close up so they could proceed. It took two
days when they finally were able to move forward, did
their best to assess the strength of the ice before crossing.
(25:04):
Often it came down to not what they knew, but
what they hoped to be true that it would be
able to support their snowmobiles. Here's Bill Conberry, they have
about the same power of powered lawnmower. Today. You look
at the ski dooce from five and they look like
a little plastic toys. They're not very maneuverable, they don't
(25:26):
handle very well. And you know, the idea that they
went on what essentially looks like a tonk at toy
is one of the things that's really remarkable about this
entire story. Despite the conditions, only minor injuries befell them.
Powellic twisted his ankle in a crack well, Peterson's nose froze,
(25:47):
thawed and refroze. Jerry Pitzel swung an axe to chop
at an ice boulder, and when it bounced off, it
sliced clean through his boot and socks, barely missing his foot.
Throughout the expedition, Plystead had rotated members of his party
to give everyone a chance to navigate the ice. The
(26:07):
men Plistead had sent away alfter, Heida, Wolsey, and Bombardier
now rejoined the team, replacing Powellek, Pitzel, Alstad, and Peterson.
Not long after, the men were confronted with an ice
ridge over forty ft tall. They carved a makeshift ramp
into it, pulling the snowmobiles up and over with ropes.
(26:29):
It was grueling work. The temperature plunged to sixty degrees
below zero. Their practice at the frozen lake had failed
to prepare them for the elements. Then on April a
storm hit a bad one. It trapped ply Stead and
his men in their tents for a weak straight with
(26:49):
howling winds blowing at least fifty miles per hour, beating
relentlessly against the fabric of their shelters, and a week
inside of a tent gives you time to think, the
goal of the North Pole began to seem quaint. Instead,
survival became paramount. Plistead began to fear that lives might
(27:09):
be lost if and when the blizzard finally broke. The
salesman decided he would lead his men home driving a snowmobile.
In Minnesota had simply not trained him for the steep
learning curve of the Arctic. The ice was softening, and
finishing seemed more like a death wish than a study
in persistence. They had logged a total of two hundred
(27:33):
and sixteen nautical miles, with three hundred and eighty four
ahead of them. On May four, they stopped on an
ice flow big enough for the de havel In twin
Honor propeller plane to land on, and waited to go home,
but placed it. Didn't think of the retreat as a failure.
He and his team had spent an arduous month acclimating
(27:55):
themselves to the real Arctic. It was practice. Like Peri
and other explorers before him, He would learn from the experience,
and not long after he returned home, Plistead decided they'd
try again. We'll be right back. Plaistead was convinced the
(28:31):
second time would be the charm. He now had a
month's worth of experience in extreme conditions. He made adjustments
to his camp supplies to reduce the number of sleds.
He also decided that leaving from Eureka had been too challenging.
He moved his base camp to ward Hunt Island, a
tiny speck of rock off the northernmost coast of Ellesmere Island.
(28:56):
This new route meant crossing a distance of just four
and twenty five miles, but ahead of them was a
vast landscape of sea, ice and open water, constantly moving
and shifting with currents and wind. The ground could literally
break open beneath their feet. That fact could never have
been far from Plistead's mind. The men set out on
(29:19):
March seven, roughly a year after their first attempt, and
again they headed in the wrong direction on their very
first day, but this time their air support pilot Well
and Phipps dropped a cigarette pack with a note that
told them to change direction. Other times, Phipps later recalled
Plystead would unknowingly set up his tent directly on a runway,
(29:41):
preventing him from landing. As they settled down to camp
each night, they realized several crucial supplies had been left behind,
including the mechanics tools, a medical kit, and a generator
for the radios. Walt Peterson was sent to retrieve them,
while Plistead shouted his frustrations at the rest of the team.
How was he supposed to make history if they couldn't
(30:04):
even remember to bring a screwdriver. Things got worse. It
turned out that air dropping containers of gasoline isn't nearly
as safe as it sounds. When the crew did run
out of fuel before the next air drop, their heater
stopped working and they shivered in their tents. It seemed
as though the second attempt at the North Pole was
(30:24):
going to be even harder than the first. The one
saving grace was that no polar bears bothered them, though
two team members were attacked by foxes. As their progress continued,
it became clear that having a large expedition party was
again slowing their pace. At the same time, the coming
spring thaw meant that the ice would begin thinning and
(30:46):
make their path forward even more precarious. Two men to
a snowmobile was no longer practical. Plastead, who had become
surly and demanding with every irritating setback, told a cameraman
and powelek to join Alftahidah in returning back to base camp.
That left just four men Plistead, Peterson, navigator Gerald Pitzel,
(31:09):
and Jean Luke Bombardier. As it turned out, Placed had
been right that reducing team size would quicken their pace.
Where the party had been traveling just twenty two miles
a day, they were now up to fifty four miles
at a time. Roughly a month into their journey, the
men found themselves on a mobile ice floe and desperate
(31:30):
to make it onto an ice field that was heading north.
With a little time to spare, they decided to make
a daring jump on their skidoos. They made it, all
of them except for Peterson, who became trapped in the
watery sludge. That's when Plistead acted, quickly grabbing the skidoo
and pulling it to safety at the risk of his
(31:50):
own life. The expedition carried on for weeks. Their route
was anything but direct. Hummocks blocked their way, and open
leads were more numerous. Now the four mile trip to
the poll had doubled to eight forty miles because of
the detours. That would be like a road trip from
(32:11):
New York City to Cleveland with a detour through Richmond, Virginia.
Then on April fift, navigator Pitzel declared that they were
close to the northernmost point on the globe. An insurance
salesman from Minnesota was about to take the first confirmed
steps on the north pole after treading carefully over ice,
(32:35):
knowing they could break through if they made one careless step.
They arrived at ninety degrees north on April and no
one had to take placed as word for it. The
next day, the Air Force planes sent to pick them
up at the poll confirmed the coordinates. The achievement of
(32:55):
the poll by snowmobile cast more doubt on Robert Perry's
claim of reach the poll using a similarly sized team
and dog sleds in just thirty seven days. Plistead had
departed just twenty miles from Peerie's starting point at Cape
Columbia and had taken forty four days. Plistead left a
lot of their equipment behind on that ice flow circling
(33:17):
the pole. It was just too heavy to bring on
the plane. In some ways, he also left his old
life behind when he departed the second time. His wife,
Gail was pregnant with their third child. When he returned,
he had a new baby, a boy named David Scott Plystead.
A cheering crowd met him at the airport, eager to
(33:37):
celebrate his victory. Ralph Plystead had defied the odds and
come back with his pride and his extremities intact, which
is more than can be said for many explorers before him.
In keeping with tradition, he and his crew members gave
lectures on their accomplishment and published accounts of the trip.
(33:58):
St Cloud even declared a wall to Peterson day, Plistead
returned to selling insurance. He had certainly earned the right
to resume the predictability of a salesman's life, but Plistead
didn't want that so he quit. He pulled his kids
out of school and took his family to a place
near Russell Lake in Saskatchewan. For fifteen months, they ate
(34:20):
fish and moose meat and slept intense before building a
log cabin. He wrote a book about living in the wilderness.
There was something in Plistead that needed to be back outdoors,
challenged by the elements. He died in two thousand eight,
still proud of what he had accomplished. As Bill Conberry explains,
(34:41):
his obituary was in the New York Times. But he
never received the kind of international fame that somebody like
Admiral Bird or Robert Perry received for their expeditions. But
everybody remembered him. Everybody knew who he was. And if
you go to Bruno, Minnesota, which is his hometown where
he was born, there's a little sign that says that
(35:03):
this was the birthplace of the first person to officially
reach the North Pole by snowmobile in April nine. So
there's a lot of local pride in this guy, and
people remembered him right up to his death. That knew
that he was this man who had done the impossible.
So what can we make of Ralph Plistead and his
(35:24):
unlikely journey to the top of the Earth. He had
no government support and no real scientific purpose. He had
set up an endurance challenge for himself and aced it
in two tries. He proved a person didn't have to
be a professional explorer to succeed opening the North Pole
to other amateurs, provided you were willing to make the
(35:46):
necessary sacrifices, you could even follow in his footsteps, Poy said,
is a great everyman's story. This is an ordinary person
who does an extraordinary thing by basically taking a bunch
of his middle aged friends and determining to travel overland
all the way to the North Pole. One thing that
(36:07):
has been kind of consistent throughout history in terms of
polar explorers is that they're these very confident, swashbuckley type
figure and placed it is not really that guy. He's
an insurance salesman. So so I think that's one thing
that makes him really unique in this pantheon. If you
(36:29):
just think of the magnitude of that endeavor, of how
much fortitude and maybe even how much ignorance is required
for somebody to kind of casually say, yeah, I'm going
to drive a snowmobile to the North Pole. I think
if he really knew what he was getting into, he
would have never started, And he certainly was on record
after he was finished saying he would never do anything
(36:50):
like that again. In one strange bit of irony placed
it once said that he wouldn't have been able to
acquire life insurance for himself or any of his team
members for the journey. It was too dangerous, the odds
were too long, But somehow Ralph Plystead and his friends
found their true North. The Quest for the North Pole
(37:32):
is hosted by Me cat Long. This episode was researched
by me and Jake Rawson and written by Jake Rawson,
with fact checking by Austin Thompson. The executive producers are
Aaron McCarthy and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
The show is edited by Dylan Fagan. Thanks to our
expert Bill Conferry for transcripts, a glossary, and to learn
(37:56):
more about this episode, visit Mental flaw dot com slash potcast.
The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, check out the I Heart Radio app
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more
(38:37):
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. It's April and an
insurance salesman from Minnesota named Ralph Plistead is looking down
at his feet. He's standing on an ice flow in
the Arctic with ten thousand feet of frigid water below,
(00:25):
and the ice is getting softer. Plystead looks around. Miles
of ice covered oceans surround him in all directions. He's
only days into his attempt to reach the North Pole,
and things look as grim as they've ever been. Plistead
and his team of amateur explorers have endured fuel shortages,
howling storms, and forgotten supplies, but now just a few
(00:48):
inches of precarious ice separates them from a watery grave.
For days, they probe the ice with chisels. They hope
for sure footing and an extrusion that will connect them
to another flow. Finally one appears placed It and his
men scramble onto their snowmobiles, preparing to ride over to
the fragile surface. Like Daredevil's Plastad doesn't want to do it.
(01:13):
It's a preposterous plan, but there's no other choice. The
flows finally touch the men rev their engines and surge
forward incredibly impossibly, it works. Three of the four, including
ply Stead, make it across. Then they hear a crack.
Pl Stad looks back. There's his friend, Walter Peterson, caught
(01:37):
in the lead between the ice flows and he's sinking.
Pliestad bolts across the surface, feet meeting ice the consistency
of a slurpie. He reaches out for Peterson, grabs his
snowmobile and pulls as hard as he can. Today, four
will survive or two will die. How had they even
(01:59):
gotten to this point? Ralph Plystead was no one's idea
of an action hero. In his late thirties with a
Wilford Brimley esque mustache, ply Stead was just an insurance
salesman from Minnesota. And insurance salesman, while members of a
noble profession, aren't necessarily equipped for Arctic expeditions. Would he
(02:19):
be able to save his friend? And what was really
behind this unlikely mission to reach the North Pole? In
this episode, we'll find out from Mental Floss and I
Heart Radio. This is the Quest for the North Pole.
(02:41):
I'm your host, Cat Long, science editor at Mental Floss,
and this is episode eight Triumph by Snowmobile By the
time Ralph Plistead was sinking into the ice, it had
(03:04):
been fifty nine years since Robert Pierry and Matthew Henson
claimed to conquer the pole in nineteen o nine. After
that momentous adventure and ensuing controversy with Frederick Cooke, which
we laid out in our previous episode, a parade of airships,
airplanes and submarines had traveled to the Pole. The airship Norga,
(03:24):
led by Roald Amondson with American aviator Lincoln Ellsworth as navigator,
an Italian engineer Ambaritoe noble Ay as pilot, flew over
the North Pole. In a few days earlier, American aviator
Richard E. Byrd claimed to have flown his plane over
the North Pole, but skeptics later questioned his veracity. In
(03:46):
ninety eight, the US nuclear submarine Nautilus made the first
underwater cruise to the geographic North Pole, gliding under the ice,
and the following year the American nuclear sub Skate pushed
through the field to become the first to surface at
the pole. But those were explorers and vessels. Trekking to
(04:07):
the North Pole over miles of ice was still a
romantic mission one that attracted adventurers with iron constitutions, men
who had made a life and career of pushing the envelope,
Men who were completely and utterly unlike Ralph Plystead, who
had never even been to the Arctic, and after he
had gotten there, remarked, boy, it's cold up there. Plystead
(04:30):
was determined to succeed where many had not. He had
read National geographic issues cover to cover and knew the
accounts of Peary and Henson by heart. What Plistead lacked
in personal polar experience, he made up for an enthusiasm.
And while men like Robert Peery were driven by a
need to make history, Plistead was driven by a dare
(04:52):
maid in a bar. Granted, Plistead wasn't a guy you
typically find lounging around the house on weekend. As a
naval officer, he had served in the Pacific Theater during
World War Two before returning to Minnesota to begin a
series of odd jobs. Ply Stead was a born salesman.
He went door to door with a variety of goods
(05:14):
like fly spray and cattle vitamins. Then he began selling insurance,
which was his true calling. Pretty soon he owned his
own company. He was also an avid outdoorsman who had
a special affinity for skidoos. This brand of snowmobile was
starting to gain popularity after being introduced in nineteen fifty nine.
(05:35):
They were particularly suited for snowy Minnesota. Minnesota has a
thriving snowmobile culture. That's Bill Conberry, the director of research
for the Minnesota Historical Society and an expert in the
state's history. Although in the nineteen sixties, when had got
his first snowmill built, the consumer culture of snowmobil ing
had just started. But today a lot of Minnesota's own snowmobiles.
(05:59):
It becomes the merry away they get around in the wintertime.
It's a major source of recreation, and Minnesotan's pride themselves
on their ability to endure extreme cold temperatures, and certainly
ply Stead fits in that category. Ply Stead was such
a fan of snowmobiles that in he drove one all
the way from Ealie, Minnesota to White Bear Lake, just
(06:21):
north of St. Paul, a distance of two fifty miles.
Oh and it was about thirty degrees below zero during
the trip. The coldest I've experienced in Minnesota is thirty
five below, and I tell you it's impossible to breathe.
It hurts to breathe. When you go outside, your your
limbs get frostbite almost immediately. And the idea of bundling
(06:42):
up and hopping on a snowmobile, which was not you
couldn't say the snowmobiles of the nineteen sixties were overpowered
by any stretch of the imagination. Had a little fifteen
or sixteen horsepower engine, that top speed it could go
was maybe twenty or if you really pushed at thirty
miles an hour, so fourteen of enduring colder temperatures, then
(07:02):
really most of us can even imagine. And Plista did
it NonStop. An achievement like that can really bolster a
person's confidence. So when Plistood was seated in the Pickwick
Bar in Duluth, Minnesota, on May five six, he thought
he knew what he was talking about when he assisted
(07:23):
snowmobiles would be a feasible way of traveling in the Arctic.
Plistead had a verbal sparring partner that evening. His name
was Art alfter Hyda, a local doctor. The men had
originally been discussing a seal hunting trip using dog sleds,
which Alfterhida had used in previous trips. But the more
(07:43):
Pliestad bragged about the virtues of snowmobiles, the more confrontational
alfter Hyda gut. If what Plistad was saying was true,
he argued, then a snowmobile should be something that Plista
could drive straight to the North Pole. Remember that no
one in history had ever driven a motorized vehicle to
the North Pole. In fact, no person had even been
(08:06):
able to prove they had trekked to the North Pole,
but Plastad might not have been aware of that at
the time, and after crowing about his skidoo, Plistead really
had no choice but to defiantly insist that, yes, it
would absolutely be possible to drive one all the way
to an incredibly remote part of the world, which I
think of this kind of the equivalent of, well, if
(08:28):
you love her so much, why don't you marry her.
It's like going to the North Pole on sort of
a middle school there, be careful what you promise. After
a couple of drinks. Right then in there, Pliste had
made a decision. He would embark on an expedition that
traditionally had a formidable casualty rate Afterhido would be coming
(08:49):
along with him his role medical officer. As newspaper stories
began to surface in November ninety six, plist had described
his trip and scientific terms. He'd collect data on everything
from human tolerance to extreme weather conditions to polar navigation.
They were lofty goals, and in reality, Plistid and his
(09:11):
men would be so preoccupied with merely surviving that none
of this research would be completed. And maybe deep down
Pliston knew there would be limited value to his observations.
The prize was being first. The thing about PLI said,
is that he was a huge fan of National Geographic
and he had soaked up the stories of Robert Peary
(09:34):
and Admiral Bird and Matthew Hanson. He knew those stories
backwards and forwards, and I think he romanticized those stories
in an important way. And he certainly understood cold although
he really didn't understand the conditions of the North Pole.
But I think he knew just enough to be dangerous
to think, well, if these guys could do it overland,
and I can certainly do it on a machine. Plistid's
(09:56):
adventure had attracted the attention of CBS. The network entered
into a deal with him to chronicle his trip for
future airing on the channel, with regular updates on their
radio news broadcast. CBS even dispatched correspondent Charles Corralt to
shadow Plistad's crew and write about their progress, like a
(10:17):
kind of Arctic Dirty Dozen. Plistad recruited friends who could
each bring a special skill to the table. In addition
to after Heida, Placetad enlisted Donald powellc an engineer who
could operate the radio, Gerald Pitzel, a high school geography teacher,
and Blair Woolsey, a dentist by trade, would assist with navigation.
(10:39):
Walt Peterson was a mechanical engineer who would tend to
the skidoos. John Al's dad was a survival expert from
the Royal Canadian Air Force. Photographer Robert Clemens came on
assignment for CBS, and Well And Phipps, a Canadian pilot,
would provide air support and deliver supplies. Plistad designated himself
(10:59):
the expedition's cook. Today, so many polar explorers are trying
to do it like unsupported solo. They're kind of putting
these artificial limits on themselves to show that they can endure,
you know, this amount of pressure to reach their goal.
But Pli said, is like, I don't want to make
this more difficult than I have to exactly. I mean,
(11:23):
there's this aesthetic of deprivation that a lot of explorers
live up to that it's kind of a test of
their discipline to be able to go without the creature
comforts of life. And that didn't fly with Ralph, Plie
said at all, not even a little. He wasn't going
to do this if if he couldn't be comfortable, and
so all along the way he received packages that dropped
from the air of cigarettes and beer and scotch. Some
(11:47):
of these men didn't even have much experience outdoors, much
less in the Arctic. Pitzel said as much in an
interview with the Montreal Gazette, labeling them all a bunch
of amateurs. Well, you know, these guys, they're mostly middle
aged men in their late thirties and early forties. Their
mechanics and engineers and teachers, kind of people with everyday
(12:08):
backgrounds who got into this expedition simply because they were
friends with Ralph Weistead. The men would have to train
for a journey demanding physical and mental fortitude. Since none
of them had passed the psychological evaluation, they just have
to make do with the physical part. They hoped their
weekends spent ice fishing on frozen lakes would prepare them
(12:29):
so to train and prepare for this trip, they slept
outdoors in sleeping bags. They camped out on frozen over lakes,
particularly relaxed lake. They went through exercises like building up
fake ice riches to navigate and to to figure out
how they were going to move their snowmobiles over them.
They did this all, you know, basically thinking, and they're
(12:50):
not entirely wrong. There a Minnesota winter was you know,
at least good conditioning for the kinds of experiences they
were going to experience in the Arctic. Do you think
what they did to prepare was enough? I would say
that they came back thinking. The answer to that was no.
(13:11):
The ice conditions in the Arctic circle where nothing like
any of them had experienced, and so they couldn't read
the ice, which is very dangerous. Of course, if you
if you drive a snowmobile over it thin patch of
ice in the Arctic, that's almost certainly a fatal experience.
The more they practiced that spring of ninety seven, the
more crowds began to form around the lake. There was
(13:33):
a real curiosity over what would become of this motley
crew once they started towards their destination. Newspapers in Minneapolis
and St. Cloud followed the expedition's progress and setbacks, and
Playstead became a local celebrity. Even if Minnesotans had their
doubts about whether the team would make it to the poll,
they went along with the narrative swept up in the
(13:55):
age old battle between man and nature. I think couple
of wire services at the time did an article or
two about him, and and it was carried in all papers,
like all across the country. I mean, it kind of
to me felt like these audiences, like kind of the
late sixties, are perhaps looking for something to believe in collectively.
(14:17):
I mean, it was a pretty rough time in our
country at that point, and maybe they needed this kind
of thing to latch onto. That's a great point, and
I think, you know, part of the context that people
need to understand is what was going on in the
United States and in the world in the late nineteen sixties.
America was mired in Vietnam, the civil rights movement was
was kind of falling apart. On April fourth of nineteen
(14:40):
sixty eight, a Place is still up in the Arctic,
Martin Luther King Jr. Was assassinated. This is a very
turbulent time, but there's also a backdrop of these new
adventures in outer space. The Apollo program was going in
nineteen sixty eight and nineteen sixty nine, and so Americans
(15:01):
were kind of mired in problems on the ground, but
looking up the skies with some hope. And that was
kind of the context that that drew a lot of
attention to route Place Stead. It's kind of funny that
even as late as nine, it's still a race, right,
This is still an extreme endeavor a Place Stead when
he returned, noted that even in the late nineteen sixties,
(15:22):
hundreds of mountain climbers were scaling Mount Everest every year,
but almost nobody went to the North Pole. So this
was terra incognita. This was essentially an unconquered horizon for
human beings. And you brought up the space race, to
which of course was happening at the same time, And
there's so many parallels between the two One thing that
(15:44):
kind of struck me is that not only are there
parallels between the Space Race and play Stead's expedition, but
he actually used foods, apparently that the Pillsbury Company in
Minneapolis had developed for the space program. Do you know
anything about that? I am so curious about this. Think
about what it takes to eed food in outer space
(16:04):
for a minute. You know, you can't eat things with crumbs,
You can't eat things that are liquid e or gooey,
because that stuff floats around and it gets in your controls.
And so NASA was looking for some sort of compact
way to keep their astronauts fed in a way that
wouldn't muck up their systems. And Pillsbury, a Minnesota company,
a company that was headquartered in Minneapolis, was working on
(16:27):
the creation of what they called space food sticks. They
didn't really have a good name for this in the nineties,
but we would call this an energy board today, basically
a compact, edible stick of food that could be tightly
packed and contained and carried into outer space. And Plist's
expedition provided a great opportunity to test out these new
(16:48):
food sticks, so plies that took along a supply sponsors
wound up donating over one hundred thousand dollars to his
nonprofit company, pla Stead Polar Expedition, Inc. But not everyone
was enamored with Plista's plans. Campbell's Soup declined to send
him free cans. Pepsi also rejected his request for ten
(17:10):
cases of soda. He did manage to convince Bombardier, the
manufacturer of skadoos, to donate ten vehicles, but Bombardier had
one condition. Plistead would have to let Jean Luc Bombardier,
the nephew of the founder, accompany him, along with technician
Pierre Toroin. Plistet added some rather clever touches. For one,
(17:34):
he made sure the park is worn by the men
were different colors so they could be easily identified on
the ice. The custom outfits cost eleven thousand dollars and
were made by sid Lanhum of the Chippewa Trading Post
and Grand Rapids, who worked from sketches created by after Heida.
The park has had both an inner and outer shell,
(17:55):
so the men could remove the outer layer for physical
jobs like clearing a trail, and keep it on while writing.
He also made sure the scadoos were a ligned with
styrofoam to keep them afloat in case they broke through
the ice. Plistad had other help too. He consulted polar
research scientists in both Washington and Ottawa to formulate the
(18:16):
best way to make the eight hundred mile journey, although
he stated he got far more help from Canadian officials
than the Pentagon. I went to the Pentagon last year,
and the only thing they know about is Vietnam, Pliston
told the Montreal Gazette. If you're not going to Vietnam,
you are not going anywhere. He also sought advice from
at least one hundred and fifty experts in Arctic adventuring,
(18:39):
from those of the Arctic Research Laboratory at Point Barrow, Alaska,
to the Sea Ice Branch of the U. S. Navy
Ocean A Graphic Office. The most useful advice may have
come from Donald Alford, a glaciologist at Montana State. I
think your total food and fuel estimates are a bit low,
he began. The most priceless possession up there is a
(19:01):
warm sleeping bag. Until you've been in a sleeping bag
for five days at minus thirty fahrenheit, listening to the
wind blow. You can't imagine how it takes the edge
off one's enthusiasm. Even though he'd be using sixteen horsepower snowmobiles,
Plistead still planned on bringing along dogs to warn his
team of approaching polar bears. The skadoos could go thirty
(19:24):
miles an hour while pulling sleds containing all of the
donated equipment and supplies they'd need. Each skadoo could tow
five hundred pounds, and the sleds had watertight plastic bags
in case they had to be moved over water. Blistead
pitched the tents in his living room so they could
dry out after their weekend practice runs, but his family
was used to the inconvenience. His wife Gail had to
(19:47):
walk around them, and their children, eighteen year old Jackie
and eleven year old Stephen, sometimes slept over at a
neighbor's house. When Plistead had his teammates over for meetings.
It was time to begin. On March, ply Stead and
his team flew from Montreal to Eureka, a small weather
(20:09):
station on Ellesmere Island in Canada. From Eureka, Plistad intended
to travel along Nonsense Sound to the Arctic Ocean, then
head west to cross the ice towards the North Pole.
His route was similar to Frederick Cook's on his eight
polar journey. Upon arrival at the Pole, Plistead's party would
(20:30):
be transported back to civilization by airplane. On March, the
journey began, and on March things began going wrong. Let's
take a break here. Straddling their skidoos, with hundreds of
(20:58):
miles of icy terray between them and the North Pole,
the men sped towards immortality and ran into problems. Ignoring
Pitzel's navigation, Plies Diad gauge their direction by using an
iceberg as a point of reference, but too late they
realized they had circled the iceberg and were now heading south,
a major obstacle, and arriving at the North Pole, they
(21:22):
had lost twelve miles. By the second day, Clemens, the
CBS photographer, had already had enough. He seemed to see
the gravity of the situation when his camera lens froze
over and began screaming that he would be returning to
base camp by himself. The others talked him out of
what would have been a dangerous solo trip. That night,
(21:44):
the men set up camp and radioed back to base,
where operators could pass along word of their progress to
their wives and families, and Pliestad could request supplies. Moving,
even if the men were going in circles, was tolerable,
but i at night the environment's reluctance to accommodate human
occupants became stark. Plisted stuff the men into a single
(22:07):
dinner tent and cooked up a nice beef stew, but
there was so little space inside that one team members
what clothing might be draped over another person's leg or arm.
The zippers lining the entrance froze with the flap open,
blasting them with frigid air. By April first, they had
traveled one hundred miles north. The odometers on their skidoos
(22:30):
read one seventy five miles owing to the detours after
exiting nonsense sound. What lay ahead was treacherous sea ice
broken into hummocks and ridges, none of it ever meant
to be traversed by man or machine because of the currents,
which carried ice flows two or three miles an hour.
The men would move even while camped out, but it
(22:53):
might not necessarily be in the right direction. Plastad soon
came to a realization, with uneven ice ahead of him
and a load of equipment totaling hundreds of pounds, his
expedition had become too cumbersome. He sent Woolsey and Bombardier,
who were both sick, back to base camp. Clemmens also
(23:14):
went back since his cameras needed thawing, but he still
needed to send one more man away as a leader.
It couldn't be him, and it couldn't be Austad, who
had experience with sea ice. Powellick operated the radio, Pitzel
was in charge of navigation, alfter Haida was a doctor,
and Peterson was the mechanic. All were indispensable, but ply
(23:38):
Stead finally decided that alter Hida was the only one
who wasn't absolutely necessary to their progress, Though any one
of them could have needed medical attention for something like
a broken leg, the doctor was sent away. Plistead may
have had second thoughts. Once they started moving forward again,
leads opened between ice flows and revealed water below. The
(24:00):
men hurried to cross before they widened. They used rods
to test the ice for stability. Sometimes the rods would
hit solid ice, other times they would pass clean through.
When they came to a newly formed ice bridge fifty
yards wide. The men scrambled across it, knowing it could
collapse at any time. Because Plistead, the National geographic fan,
(24:23):
had read Robert Pierry's accounts of crossing these fragile, flexible
ice bridges, he surely would have doubted the wisdom of
this enterprise. Pierry and his men had barely crossed such
ice with lightweight sledges, nimble footed dogs, and snowshoes. Plistead
had snowmobiles and too much gear. Once Plistead and his
(24:44):
crew woke up to find that the ice flow they
had camped on had drifted into open water, they were
marooned and could do nothing but wait for the ice
to close up so they could proceed. It took two
days when they finally were able to move forward, did
their best to assess the strength of the ice before crossing.
(25:04):
Often it came down to not what they knew, but
what they hoped to be true that it would be
able to support their snowmobiles. Here's Bill Conberry, they have
about the same power of powered lawnmower. Today. You look
at the ski dooce from five and they look like
a little plastic toys. They're not very maneuverable, they don't
(25:26):
handle very well. And you know, the idea that they
went on what essentially looks like a tonk at toy
is one of the things that's really remarkable about this
entire story. Despite the conditions, only minor injuries befell them.
Powellic twisted his ankle in a crack well, Peterson's nose froze,
(25:47):
thawed and refroze. Jerry Pitzel swung an axe to chop
at an ice boulder, and when it bounced off, it
sliced clean through his boot and socks, barely missing his foot.
Throughout the expedition, Plystead had rotated members of his party
to give everyone a chance to navigate the ice. The
(26:07):
men Plistead had sent away alfter, Heida, Wolsey, and Bombardier
now rejoined the team, replacing Powellek, Pitzel, Alstad, and Peterson.
Not long after, the men were confronted with an ice
ridge over forty ft tall. They carved a makeshift ramp
into it, pulling the snowmobiles up and over with ropes.
(26:29):
It was grueling work. The temperature plunged to sixty degrees
below zero. Their practice at the frozen lake had failed
to prepare them for the elements. Then on April a
storm hit a bad one. It trapped ply Stead and
his men in their tents for a weak straight with
(26:49):
howling winds blowing at least fifty miles per hour, beating
relentlessly against the fabric of their shelters, and a week
inside of a tent gives you time to think, the
goal of the North Pole began to seem quaint. Instead,
survival became paramount. Plistead began to fear that lives might
(27:09):
be lost if and when the blizzard finally broke. The
salesman decided he would lead his men home driving a snowmobile.
In Minnesota had simply not trained him for the steep
learning curve of the Arctic. The ice was softening, and
finishing seemed more like a death wish than a study
in persistence. They had logged a total of two hundred
(27:33):
and sixteen nautical miles, with three hundred and eighty four
ahead of them. On May four, they stopped on an
ice flow big enough for the de havel In twin
Honor propeller plane to land on, and waited to go home,
but placed it. Didn't think of the retreat as a failure.
He and his team had spent an arduous month acclimating
(27:55):
themselves to the real Arctic. It was practice. Like Peri
and other explorers before him, He would learn from the experience,
and not long after he returned home, Plistead decided they'd
try again. We'll be right back. Plaistead was convinced the
(28:31):
second time would be the charm. He now had a
month's worth of experience in extreme conditions. He made adjustments
to his camp supplies to reduce the number of sleds.
He also decided that leaving from Eureka had been too challenging.
He moved his base camp to ward Hunt Island, a
tiny speck of rock off the northernmost coast of Ellesmere Island.
(28:56):
This new route meant crossing a distance of just four
and twenty five miles, but ahead of them was a
vast landscape of sea, ice and open water, constantly moving
and shifting with currents and wind. The ground could literally
break open beneath their feet. That fact could never have
been far from Plistead's mind. The men set out on
(29:19):
March seven, roughly a year after their first attempt, and
again they headed in the wrong direction on their very
first day, but this time their air support pilot Well
and Phipps dropped a cigarette pack with a note that
told them to change direction. Other times, Phipps later recalled
Plystead would unknowingly set up his tent directly on a runway,
(29:41):
preventing him from landing. As they settled down to camp
each night, they realized several crucial supplies had been left behind,
including the mechanics tools, a medical kit, and a generator
for the radios. Walt Peterson was sent to retrieve them,
while Plistead shouted his frustrations at the rest of the team.
How was he supposed to make history if they couldn't
(30:04):
even remember to bring a screwdriver. Things got worse. It
turned out that air dropping containers of gasoline isn't nearly
as safe as it sounds. When the crew did run
out of fuel before the next air drop, their heater
stopped working and they shivered in their tents. It seemed
as though the second attempt at the North Pole was
(30:24):
going to be even harder than the first. The one
saving grace was that no polar bears bothered them, though
two team members were attacked by foxes. As their progress continued,
it became clear that having a large expedition party was
again slowing their pace. At the same time, the coming
spring thaw meant that the ice would begin thinning and
(30:46):
make their path forward even more precarious. Two men to
a snowmobile was no longer practical. Plastead, who had become
surly and demanding with every irritating setback, told a cameraman
and powelek to join Alftahidah in returning back to base camp.
That left just four men Plistead, Peterson, navigator Gerald Pitzel,
(31:09):
and Jean Luke Bombardier. As it turned out, Placed had
been right that reducing team size would quicken their pace.
Where the party had been traveling just twenty two miles
a day, they were now up to fifty four miles
at a time. Roughly a month into their journey, the
men found themselves on a mobile ice floe and desperate
(31:30):
to make it onto an ice field that was heading north.
With a little time to spare, they decided to make
a daring jump on their skidoos. They made it, all
of them except for Peterson, who became trapped in the
watery sludge. That's when Plistead acted, quickly grabbing the skidoo
and pulling it to safety at the risk of his
(31:50):
own life. The expedition carried on for weeks. Their route
was anything but direct. Hummocks blocked their way, and open
leads were more numerous. Now the four mile trip to
the poll had doubled to eight forty miles because of
the detours. That would be like a road trip from
(32:11):
New York City to Cleveland with a detour through Richmond, Virginia.
Then on April fift, navigator Pitzel declared that they were
close to the northernmost point on the globe. An insurance
salesman from Minnesota was about to take the first confirmed
steps on the north pole after treading carefully over ice,
(32:35):
knowing they could break through if they made one careless step.
They arrived at ninety degrees north on April and no
one had to take placed as word for it. The
next day, the Air Force planes sent to pick them
up at the poll confirmed the coordinates. The achievement of
(32:55):
the poll by snowmobile cast more doubt on Robert Perry's
claim of reach the poll using a similarly sized team
and dog sleds in just thirty seven days. Plistead had
departed just twenty miles from Peerie's starting point at Cape
Columbia and had taken forty four days. Plistead left a
lot of their equipment behind on that ice flow circling
(33:17):
the pole. It was just too heavy to bring on
the plane. In some ways, he also left his old
life behind when he departed the second time. His wife,
Gail was pregnant with their third child. When he returned,
he had a new baby, a boy named David Scott Plystead.
A cheering crowd met him at the airport, eager to
(33:37):
celebrate his victory. Ralph Plystead had defied the odds and
come back with his pride and his extremities intact, which
is more than can be said for many explorers before him.
In keeping with tradition, he and his crew members gave
lectures on their accomplishment and published accounts of the trip.
(33:58):
St Cloud even declared a wall to Peterson day, Plistead
returned to selling insurance. He had certainly earned the right
to resume the predictability of a salesman's life, but Plistead
didn't want that so he quit. He pulled his kids
out of school and took his family to a place
near Russell Lake in Saskatchewan. For fifteen months, they ate
(34:20):
fish and moose meat and slept intense before building a
log cabin. He wrote a book about living in the wilderness.
There was something in Plistead that needed to be back outdoors,
challenged by the elements. He died in two thousand eight,
still proud of what he had accomplished. As Bill Conberry explains,
(34:41):
his obituary was in the New York Times. But he
never received the kind of international fame that somebody like
Admiral Bird or Robert Perry received for their expeditions. But
everybody remembered him. Everybody knew who he was. And if
you go to Bruno, Minnesota, which is his hometown where
he was born, there's a little sign that says that
(35:03):
this was the birthplace of the first person to officially
reach the North Pole by snowmobile in April nine. So
there's a lot of local pride in this guy, and
people remembered him right up to his death. That knew
that he was this man who had done the impossible.
So what can we make of Ralph Plistead and his
(35:24):
unlikely journey to the top of the Earth. He had
no government support and no real scientific purpose. He had
set up an endurance challenge for himself and aced it
in two tries. He proved a person didn't have to
be a professional explorer to succeed opening the North Pole
to other amateurs, provided you were willing to make the
(35:46):
necessary sacrifices, you could even follow in his footsteps, Poy said,
is a great everyman's story. This is an ordinary person
who does an extraordinary thing by basically taking a bunch
of his middle aged friends and determining to travel overland
all the way to the North Pole. One thing that
(36:07):
has been kind of consistent throughout history in terms of
polar explorers is that they're these very confident, swashbuckley type
figure and placed it is not really that guy. He's
an insurance salesman. So so I think that's one thing
that makes him really unique in this pantheon. If you
(36:29):
just think of the magnitude of that endeavor, of how
much fortitude and maybe even how much ignorance is required
for somebody to kind of casually say, yeah, I'm going
to drive a snowmobile to the North Pole. I think
if he really knew what he was getting into, he
would have never started, And he certainly was on record
after he was finished saying he would never do anything
(36:50):
like that again. In one strange bit of irony placed
it once said that he wouldn't have been able to
acquire life insurance for himself or any of his team
members for the journey. It was too dangerous, the odds
were too long, But somehow Ralph Plystead and his friends
found their true North. The Quest for the North Pole
(37:32):
is hosted by Me cat Long. This episode was researched
by me and Jake Rawson and written by Jake Rawson,
with fact checking by Austin Thompson. The executive producers are
Aaron McCarthy and Tyler Klang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
The show is edited by Dylan Fagan. Thanks to our
expert Bill Conferry for transcripts, a glossary, and to learn
(37:56):
more about this episode, visit Mental flaw dot com slash potcast.
The Quest for the North Pole is a production of
I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, check out the I Heart Radio app
Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more
(38:37):
podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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