Ralph Plaisted

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Ralph Plaisted (30 September 1927 - 8 September 2008) and 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 19 April 1968, making the first confirmed surface conquest of the Pole. Plaisted was a high-school dropout from Bruno, Minnesota, who found success as an insurance salesman. An avid outdoorsman, in the early 1960's 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 booster of the machine. In 1965, Plaisted drove his snowmobile 250 miles from Ely to St. Paul, Minnesota in one day, which is regarded as the first long-distance snowmobile trek.