Ralph plaisted biography

Ralph Summers Plaisted (September 30, 1927 – September 8, 2008) was an American explorer who, with his three companions, Walt Pederson, Gerry Pitzl and Jean-Luc Bombardier, are regarded by most polar authorities to be the first to succeed in a surface traverse across the ice to the North Pole on April 19, 1968, making the first confirmed surface conquest of the Pole.

Background

Plaisted was a high-school dropout from Bruno, Minnesota, who found success as an insurance salesman.

An avid outdoorsman, in the early 1960s he was one of the first Minnesotans to buy a Ski-Doo snowmobile, a then-novel invention of Canada's Bombardier Company, and became a convert and promoter of the machine. In 1965, Plaisted drove his snowmobile 250 miles (400 km) from Ely to White Bear Lake, Minnesota in one day, which is regarded as the first long-distance snowmobile trek.

Arctic expedition

Plaisted and his friend Art Aufderheide conceived the idea of reaching the Nor