A Brief History
On May 1, 1978, Japanese adventurer Naomi Uemura made history as the first person to reach the North Pole all alone. Using a dog sled, Uemura barely made the 57 day trek alive, as he had been raided by a Polar Bear that ate much of his provisions! An intrepid adventurer, Uemura shot the bear dead when it returned the next day.
Digging Deeper
Uemura was also the first person to raft the Amazon River alone and the first to make a solo ascent of Denali in 1970. Always looking to best his own efforts, he disappeared during a solo attempt on Denali during the winter in 1984, at the age of 43.
Uemura had made other endurance runs by dog sled across Greenland and from Greenland to Alaska and had planned someday to do the same across Antarctica. Uemura joins fellow solo pioneers such as Charles Lindbergh, Wiley Post, and Joshua Slocum in the pantheon of great adventurers.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Roskolenko, Harry, ed. Solo: The Great Adventures Alone. Playboy Press, 1973.
Slocum, Joshua. Sailing Alone Around the World. Independently published, 2018.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by hashi photo of a dog sled that Naomi Uemura used in the Arctic Circle, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
