You call a trip up to the dog-sled races in Ashton an adventure? Try a race to the South Pole! Come Jan. 31, you'll get your chance (in an academic sort of way) when the Museum of Idaho presents Race to the End of the Earth, a recounting of one of the most stirring tales in the annals of Antarctic exploration.
This exhibition from the American Museum of Natural History chronicles the contest to reach the South Pole. Specifically, it focuses on the challenges of two expedition leaders—Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott—as they undertook their separate 1,800-mile journeys from the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf to the South Pole and back.
Both Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott were pursuing the same goal in their race to the South Pole: to be first. Each was faced with the daunting task of convincing investors, scientific organizations, and governments to fund their respective journeys.
For Amundsen, significance came from being the first to do something, but his drive for success was not entirely a matter of ego. For Scott, the significance of this journey was a more complex issue. Being first at the South Pole mattered, but so did science.
Born to a family of Norwegian ship-owners on July 16, 1872, Roald Amundsen was four years younger than Robert F. Scott. Despite his mother's hopes that he would become a doctor, Amundsen knew by the age of 15 that he would one day be an explorer.
Born in 1868, Robert Falcon Scott began his naval career as a 13-year-old cadet aboard the training ship HMS Britannia. At 15 he became a midshipman and began a steady progression up the career ladder of the Royal Navy, becoming a lieutenant specializing in the new technology of torpedoes in 1889.
Scott, Amundsen, and Ernest Shackleton were among the most successful of what we may call the celebrity explorers of the early 20th century. Like celebrities today, their fame was only partly due to accomplishment; the rest came from whatever aspects of society's desires and ambitions they reflected back.
Race to the End of the Earth vividly re-creates, through dioramas and period detail, how Amundsen and Scott prepared for their polar journeys. Nutrition, human endurance, equipment, logistics, and Antarctica's extreme weather were among the many factors that each team had to evaluate, often with far too little information to avoid tragedy and ensure triumph.
Race to the End of the Earth is organized by the American Museum of Natural History, New York, in collaboration with Musée des Confluences, Lyon, France, and Royal BC Museum, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.
Source: American Museum of Natural History; www.amnh.org. For more information on the exhibit in Idaho Falls, visit www.museumofidaho.org or call 522-1400.