Exploring the Ends of the Earth

With low-tech equipment, variable levels of planning, and plenty of courage, late nineteenth and early twentieth century explorers mesmerized the world with daring attempts to reach Earth’s geographic poles. The one hundredth anniversary of Robert Peary’s controversial North Pole claim was in April 2009, and the centennial of Roald Amundsen’s undisputed dash to the South Pole is coming up in December 2011. Much less known are the “poles of inaccessibility” (PIA), which are distinguished by their great distances from any coast (Stefansson, 1920). As 50% of humanity lives within 200 km of the coast, such remote points are particularly difficult to reach. In addition to numerous local maxima, there are two global maxima of particular interest: the Eurasian PIA, representing the land-locked point farthest from the ocean, and the South Pacific PIA, being the most remote oceanic point. The Eurasian PIA has been called the “Center of the Earth” (CE), and it was “conquered” in 1985 by Richard and Nicholas Crane during a bike journey across the Himalayas (Crane and Crane, 1987). However, recent calculations have placed the CE considerably further south (Garcia-Castellanos and Lombardo, 2007). The oceanic PIA is more elusive and was only recently named “Point Nemo” (Lukatela, 2005) after the globetrotting captain in Jules Verne’s classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea