RIP Ralph Plaisted

[nitrah55]

He was the first person who indisputably made it to the North Pole.

He did it in 1968, on a snowmobile.

Here's the NY Times obit:

In September 1909, Dr. Frederick A. Cook reappeared in Europe after a two-year absence from society and claimed to have crossed the polar ice cap by dogsled and stood at the North Pole on April 21, 1908.

Just a few days after Cook’s announcement, Rear Adm. Robert E. Peary sent a wire to The New York Times from the far north of Canada proclaiming that he had planted an American flag at the North Pole on April 6, 1909. When he learned that Cook had beaten him there, Peary declared Cook’s claim fraudulent, and for many years the two men and their defenders argued over who was the real pioneer.

Actually, it was probably neither. Scientists and historians who have examined the diaries and navigation records of the two men have concluded that though both made formidable journeys, they more than likely never got close to the pole.

That leaves the title of the first man to cross the ice and indisputably reach the top of the world to Ralph Plaisted, who did it in a snowmobile in 1968, and who died of a heart attack on Monday at home in Wyoming, Minn., just north of the Twin Cities, his stepdaughter Lesle Tobkin said. He was 80.

Mr. Plaisted, an insurance man by profession, was an adventurer by nature who once uprooted his family to live for 15 months in the Saskatchewan wilderness. The Plaisteds slept in tents until they finished building cabins, and they dined on what they caught, picked and grew.

Snowmobiles were still in their infancy as a consumer product when Mr. Plaisted got on one for the first time in 1963 or 1964 and was immediately smitten. In January 1965, to prove they were durable for travel, he drove nonstop for 14 hours, in temperatures as low as 41 degrees below zero, from Ely, in northern Minnesota, to St. Paul, a distance of 250 miles.

Shortly thereafter, a friend who was tired of hearing from him about the virtues of snowmobiles suggested jokingly that if Mr. Plaisted thought they were so great, he should take one to the North Pole.

With a small crew that included the television journalist Charles Kuralt, Mr. Plaisted made his first attempt to reach the pole in 1967, but the trip had to be aborted far short of the goal, when unexpected warm weather in April caused the ice to begin breaking up. The next year, determined to avoid the same fate, he and a three-man crew — Gerald Pitzl, Jean-Luc Bombardier and Walter Pederson — started farther north, beginning their trek on March 7, at a speck on the Canadian map called Ward Hunt Island, 474 miles from the pole. The temperature was 60 below zero.

Winding among ridges of ice up to 40 feet high and leaping miles-deep fissures, the men and their machines actually covered 825 miles. At one point, they had to wait out a six-day Arctic storm. Finally, on the 44th day, April 19, they planted American and Canadian flags at the North Pole. Their position was verified by a United States Air Force plane.

Ralph Summers Plaisted was born in Bruno, Minn., southwest of Duluth, where his father, Orey, was a farmer and, later, a salesman. His mother, Phyllis Summers, was English; she taught piano and was an excellent baker, a skill she passed on to young Ralph. He never finished high school, dropping out in the 10th grade and lying about his age to join the Navy, where he made his mother proud, serving as a baker in the Aleutians near the end of World War II. When he returned, he did odd jobs in the Twin Cities. Eventually he started his own insurance agency in St. Paul.

Mr. Plaisted was married three times. His first wife died during surgery. His second marriage ended in divorce. His third wife, Riki Magnolo, to whom he was married for 31 years, died in 1998; she helped her husband run a fishing camp on Lake Russell, Saskatchewan, where the family built their cabins during their wilderness sojourn in 1970 and 1971.

“I was 10 when he took me out of school,” Ms. Tobkin said. “We ate blackberries and cranberries and made soap out of lye and bear fat.”

In addition to Ms. Tobkin, he is survived by a brother, Tom, of Buffalo, Minn.; a son, David Plaisted, of Wayzata, Minn.; two daughters, Jacquie Hafner of Woodbury, Minn., and Taffy Plaisted of Florissant, Colo.; six grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter.

He often reminisced about his journey to the pole, Ms. Tobkin said, though it was an adventure he was not about to repeat.

“Boy, it’s cold up there,” he said upon his return, as reported by The St. Paul Pioneer Press. “I don’t know why anyone would want to do it again.”

[Bob Juch]

You can probably swim there now.

[themanintheseersuckersuit]

I don't understand this:

With a small crew that included the television journalist Charles Kuralt, Mr. Plaisted made his first attempt to reach the pole in 1967, but the trip had to be aborted far short of the goal, when unexpected warm weather in April caused the ice to begin breaking up. The next year, determined to avoid the same fate, he and a three-man crew — Gerald Pitzl, Jean-Luc Bombardier and Walter Pederson — started farther north, beginning their trek on March 7, at a speck on the Canadian map called Ward Hunt Island, 474 miles from the pole.

How could it be that it was "too warm" in April 1967 to go overland (ice) to the North Pole?

[themanintheseersuckersuit]

You can probably swim there now.

The Polar Defense Project though it would be ok to kayak to the North Pole.

Spoiler

The were only 1000 km short