First-ever woman to go to the North Pole reflects on life-changing journey 40 years on

This weekend marks 40 years since Ann Bancroft (USA) made her mark on history.

After 55 long days of crossing the unforgiving Arctic landscape, Ann arrived at the North Pole on 2 May 1986 – somewhere no other woman had ever been.

Then a 29-year-old elementary school teacher with a life-long love of the outdoors, she became the first woman to reach the North Pole.

It was an unprecedented achievement that quite frankly, she struggled to comprehend.

“I just couldn't grasp it, you know,” she told us. “It was a huge thing to get my head around.”

Sitting down with GWR to reflect on her record-breaking achievements, Ann, now 70, looked back on that incredible experience that changed her life forever.

It was on 8 March 1986 that she embarked on the Steger International Polar Expedition, led by Will Steger.

The team of eight – with two injured along the way and not making it to the end – carried all of their own supplies and equipment – weighing some 3 tons (2.72 tonnes) altogether (that’s heavier than a rhino) – on five dogsleds, pulled by 49 dogs, meaning it was also the first unsupported expedition to the North Pole.

“You’re kind of on your own,” she said. “I crossed Antarctica in 2000 to 2001 with one other person and we had a satellite phone and all the gizmos, which we didn’t have back in ’86, but even then you’re still kind of on your own.

“If you call for an emergency flight, it could take days, or even a week, for someone to get to you. So if you’re hanging upside down in a crevasse…

“But that’s one of the reasons I love doing what I do. You have to go in thinking that you're on your own, that you've got to solve the problems.”

Looking back on one terrifying moment from her North Pole trek, Ann recalled how she fell through the ice.

“I didn’t go all the way under because you have so many clothes on you’re almost like a blimp,” she said.

“But I was wet from the chest down. I climbed out and when the guys came up on their sleds I was stripping and trying to get my clothes off before they froze.

“That night, I was shivering uncontrollably – I was hypothermic, I couldn’t generate my own heat. They threw me in the tent and I had to sleep next to two of the guys or I would have died – I needed the body heat.

“I shivered for three days, and I really realized at that moment, we’re remote and there was no help around.

“Fortunately I had the guys there to help me, if I had have been on my own, maybe I wouldn’t have lived.”

Despite that life-threatening experience, Ann insisted she feels way safer out in the Arctic than she does on a US freeway.

And although she initially struggled to get her head around her amazing achievement, Ann knows now just what a special thing it was.

She said: “Looking back 40 years on, I feel really privileged because when you're the first, nobody else can do that, nobody can take that away from you.”

Read about more epic adventures like this one in our Sports and Fitness section.

In 1992, Ann led the four-person American Women’s Expedition to the South Pole, with Sue Giller, Anne Dal Vera, and Sunniva Sorby, making her the first woman to reach the North and South poles by surface travel.

Years later, Ann set back out on her adventures with Liv Arnesen (Norway), and together, they broke the record for first crossing of the Antarctic landmass (female), completing their journey between 13 November 2000 and 11 February 2001.

Over their 94-day trek, they walked 2,747 km (1,707 mi). They went unsupported and each pulled a sled weighing 113 kg (250 lb) – more than a kangaroo - with supplies for the entirety of the journey.

Ann said: “I was 47 crossing Antarctica and being on Antarctica for a second time. So you're a very different person. At this point, I'm very used to being a public explorer, and I know what my purpose is, and my passion.

“Since ‘92, I’ve never done anything without a curriculum. Whatever I do, I take kids with me virtually. I can't take them with me literally, but they're a part of my team.”

In an extension of her work with young people, Ann has also launched a foundation.

The Ann Bancroft Foundation offers grants to young women and girls to help them chase their own dreams, just like Ann got to fulfil hers by going to the North Pole.

She said: “There are women all over the world doing all sorts of things. Science, education, the arts, exploring - and I love it. When I first came home from the North Pole, starting a foundation was like starting an expedition.

“I started it after my ‘92 expedition, in part because, in those days, no sponsor would touch us. We had no patches on our sleeves.

“I was down in South America getting ready to go on that trip and Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the famous British explorer, was there and he was getting ready to hit the ice too. We were all stuck together and we were having dinner and a beer. We're all in our jackets and he goes, ‘Ann, where are your sponsors?’

“We tried for years but nobody would touch us. They said it would be irresponsible to support women going to the bottom of the world, that we should have a man with us, and we heard all these outrageous things.

“It was just ignorance, these men in suits didn’t know anything about what a journey like this actually entails and what women are capable of.”

Ann added: “But that trip was really significant for me, well both polar trips, because they really showed me how much work was left to do with women. It's one of the reasons I went with all women, because I wanted to prove that point .

“So, I started the foundation and decided to give monetary grants to girls from ages really young, five through to high school, whatever age that was. So if they were a teen mom and they were taking longer to get through high school, they were still eligible.

“We've been doing that for 29 years, and they put the money towards a programme or something that they want to do.

“And in the process of articulating that, they have to have a mentor, because that was important for me as a young girl - somebody other than my parents seeing something in me.

“We also have a girlhood summit and girls come from all over and spend a day with us.”

Honouring that 10-year-old girl she once was, who dreamed of going to the top of the world on the back of a dogsled, Ann has now helped thousands of young women and girls live out their own dreams.

Read more about Ann in her books Four to the Pole! The American Women's Expedition to Antarctica and No Horizon Is So Far: Two Women and Their Extraordinary Journey Across Antarctica.