[KamperKen]

"...just to prove that Peary’s disputed claim about reaching the North Pole was actually possible."

It was possible since Frederick Cook probably did attain the north pole. Peary was a fraud and a despicable human being as well. Outside of the National Geographic, one of Peary's original backers, no polar expert backs his claim.

[Alberta's Child]

I don't think Cook reached the pole when he claimed he did. One of those guys from the Steger expedition pointed out that one of Cook's photos from his polar expedition showed a distinct land formation in the distant background ... in a place where Cook claimed he was miles from any land mass.

The guy speculated that Cook was actually somewhere not far off the coast of Ellesmere Island instead of standing within 50 miles of the North Pole.

[rlmorel]

A real feat was the Shackleton Expedition, after their ship was crushed, spent six months on steadily disintegrating ice floes, eating seals and penguins, until they had to climb into their boats and sail three days through open ocean to land on a small island. Realizing they would not survive there, they set up one of their boats and made an extraordinary 720 nautical mile voyage over open ocean only a month or so after the official end of the antarctic winter with only three chances at taking a celestial fix from a heaving small boat, and hit Georgia Island square on.

Impossible, but they did it.

I saw the actual boat they did it in at an exhibit at the Peabody-Essex Museum...just cannot believe it. That was a small boat.

Then they had to travel overland to the other side of the island, and traveled 32 miles over rugged, crevassed glacier with a carpenter’s adze, wool clothes, 50 feet of rope and wood screws put through the soles of their shoes.

An utterly remarkable endeavor.