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It’s late morning on the polar ice when Eric Larsen unzips his tent to find white-out conditions obscuring everything from view. He’s had just a few hours of sleep, and he still overslept. Today he and his expedition partner, Ryan Waters, are making their final push to the North Pole, less than four miles away. But the whipping wind is pushing the big ice floe where they set up camp southward, and every moment counts.
At this point, the two veteran adventurers have spent 53 days inching across the Arctic sea ice, and today will be another slog through slushy leads and over hummocks. When they began planning this expedition, they expected it to be treacherous. That was the point. They wanted to show the world how climate change was already wreaking havoc on the North Pole in fact, they’re calling this the Last North Expedition. They predict that their method of reaching the Pole on foot will soon be impossible.
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It’s April 1968, and an insurance salesman from Minnesota named Ralph Plaisted is looking down at his feet. He’s standing on an ice floe in the Arctic, with 10,000 feet of frigid water below.
And the ice is getting softer.
Plaisted looks around. Miles of ice-covered ocean 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. Plaisted and his team of amateur explorers have endured fuel shortages, howling storms, and forgotten supplies. But now, just a few inches of precarious ice separates them from a watery grave.