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