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Paul Landry M.B. (born September 6, 1955) is a French-Canadian polar explorer, author, and adventurer who is the only paid man to ever reach three Geographical poles in a single year.
A Franco-Ontarian from Smooth Rock Falls in the Northeastern part of the province, Paul Landry spent his boyhood summers canoeing the area's rivers and his winters snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. He received a diploma in Power Engineering from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology and studied social sciences at the University of Western Ontario. Between the age of 20 and 22, Landry travelled and worked throughout Europe and the Middle East then functioned for a number of years as a Program Director for Canadian Outward Bound community projects during which time he co-authored their publications: Basic River Canoeing and the Wilderness Canoeing Handbook. He also was the editor of On Thin Ice, A Woman's Journey to the North Pole. He eventually married and had two children and settled in Baffin Island where he used to operate a polar guiding business and runs polar training courses for explorers. He used to be the owner of a professional dog sledging team.
As an explorer/adventurer, Paul Landry has paddled numerous rivers in North America and was a member of three separate mountaineering expeditions to Peru, Bolivia and Argentina. With seven, he holds the world record for North and South Pole expeditions.
In September 2003, Landry and friend Peter Gladden of Hudson, Ohio were decorated with the Medal of Bravery by the Governor General of Canada for risking their lives to rescue four hikers who were overcome by the current while crossing a fast-flowing river in Auyuittuq National Park on Baffin Island.
Landry was part of the ski team in the 2004/2005 Sir Ranulph Fiennes-backed "Invesco Perpetual Trans-Antarctica Challenge". He is participating in his fourth North Pole expedition with Adventure Ecology's "Top of the world" Mission 1 expedition. Part of a four-person team that included his 20-year-old daughter, Sarah McNair Landry, along with Britons David Mayer de Rothschild and Martin Hartley, he skied, walked, swam, dog sledded, and snow-kited 1800 km (1240 Miles) across the Arctic Ocean via the North from Cape Arctichesky in Russia to Ellesmere Island in Canada.
In January 2007, Landry as part of Team N2i was acknowledged in the Guinness World Records as being the first team to reach the Pole of Inaccessibility (Antarctic research station) by foot and kite skiing.
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Ann Bancroft is an American author, teacher, adventurer, and public speaker. She was the first woman to successfully finish a number of arduous expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1995.
A pole of inaccessibility with respect to a geographical criterion of inaccessibility marks a location that is the most challenging to reach according to that criterion. Often it refers to the most distant point from the coastline, implying a maximum degree of continentality or oceanity. In these cases, pole of inaccessibility can be defined as the center of the largest circle that can be drawn within an area of interest without encountering a coast. Where a coast is imprecisely defined, the pole will be similarly imprecise.
Snowkiting or kite skiing is an outdoor winter sport where people use kite power to glide on snow or ice. The skier uses a kite to give them power over large jumps. The sport is similar to water-based kiteboarding, but with the footwear used in snowboarding or skiing. The principles of using the kite are the same, but in different terrain. In the early days of snowkiting, foil kites were the most common type; nowadays many kiteboarders use inflatable kites. However, since 2013, newly developed racing foil kites seem to dominate speed races and expedition races, like Red Bull Ragnarok and the Vake mini-expedition race. Snowkiting differs from other alpine sports in that it is possible for the snowkiter to travel uphill and downhill with any wind direction. Like kiteboarding, snowkiting can be very hazardous and should be learned and practiced with care. Snowkiting is becoming increasingly popular in places often associated with skiing and snowboarding, such as Russia, Canada, Iceland, France, Switzerland, Austria, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Northern and Central United States. The sport is becoming more diverse as adventurers use kites to travel great distances and sports enthusiasts push the boundaries of freestyle, big air, speed and back country exploration.
Will Steger is a prominent spokesperson for the understanding and preservation of the Arctic and has led some of the most significant feats in the field of dogsled expeditions; such as the first confirmed dogsled journey to the North Pole in 1986, the 1,600-mile south–north traverse of Greenland - the longest unsupported dogsled expedition in history at that time in 1988, the historic 3,471-mile International Trans-Antarctic Expedition - the first dogsled traverse of Antarctica (1989–90), and the International Arctic Project - the first and only dogsled traverse of the Arctic Ocean from Russia to Ellesmere Island in Canada during 1995.
Børge Ousland is a Norwegian polar explorer, photographer and writer. He was the first person to cross Antarctica solo.
The Pole of Inaccessibility research station is a defunct Soviet research station in Kemp Land, Antarctica, at the southern pole of inaccessibility as defined in 1958 when the station was established. Later definitions give other locations, all relatively near this point. It performed meteorological observations from 14 to 26 December 1958. The Pole of Inaccessibility has the world's coldest year-round average temperature of −58.2 °C (−72.8 °F).
Benjamin John Saunders is an English polar explorer, endurance athlete, and motivational speaker. He led the first return journey to the South Pole on foot via Shackleton and Scott's route in 2013–14, and skied solo to the North Pole in 2004. Saunders has skied more than 3,700 miles (6,000 km) on polar expeditions since 2001. He holds the record for the longest human-powered polar journey in history (2,888 km) and for the longest solo Arctic journey by a Briton (1,032 km).
Matty L McNair is an American explorer. She now lives in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada on Baffin Island, where she runs her company NorthWinds. Among her many accomplishments are:
Eric Philips OAM is an Australian polar explorer, adventurer and polar guide.
The South Pole, also known as the Geographic South Pole, Terrestrial South Pole or 90th Parallel South, is one of the two points where Earth's axis of rotation intersects its surface. It is the southernmost point on Earth and lies on the opposite side of Earth from the North Pole.
Thomas Avery, FRGS is a British explorer, author and motivational speaker. He made record-breaking journeys to the South Pole in 2002 and to the North Pole in 2005. He is one of fewer than ten people throughout history to have completed the Polar Trilogy; full length expeditions to the South Pole and North Pole and a coast to coast crossing of Greenland. Avery and his teammates hold two Guinness World Records; the fastest surface journey to the North Pole and the fastest coast-to-coast crossing of Greenland. He is also the youngest Briton to have reached both the North and South Poles on foot.
Henry John R Cookson, FRGS is a British polar explorer and adventurer. On 19 January 2007 he, alongside fellow Britons Rory Sweet and Rupert Longsdon, and their Canadian polar guide Paul Landry, became the first team to reach the southern pole of Inaccessibility (POI) by foot, the last visitors being a research team using tracked vehicles & planes in 1965.
Sebastian Copeland is a British-American-French photographer, polar explorer, author, lecturer, and environmental advocate. He has led numerous expeditions in the polar regions to photograph and film endangered environments. In 2017, Copeland was named one of the world's top 25 adventurers of the last 25 years by Men's Journal. He is a fellow of The Explorers Club. His documentary Into the Cold was a featured selection at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival and was released on DVD timed to Earth Day 2011.
Felicity Ann Dawn Aston is a British explorer, author and former climate scientist.
Ryan Waters is an American mountaineer and guide, and a polar ski guide. To date he has guided clients more than 50 times to the summit of the various 7 summit peaks.
Ramón Hernando de Larramendi is a Spanish polar explorer and adventurous traveler who has promoted and developed a WindSled unique in the world, intended for the research in Antarctica and Greenland. He has travelled more than 40.000 km in polar territories.
Geoffrey Usher Somers is a British explorer, particularly of the polar regions. He was the first Briton to cross Antarctica on foot, and has an Antarctic peak named in his honour, Somers Nunatak. In 1992 he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire for services to outdoor education and polar exploration, and in 1996 the Polar Medal for his contributions to polar exploration.
