Imagine standing on ice with no land beneath your feet, temperatures at negative 40 degrees. Blinding snow in every direction. That is what Robert Peary and Matthew Henson faced when they claimed to reach the North Pole on April 6, 1909. But getting there was nothing like walking to a finish line. The North Pole sits in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, covered by shifting sea ice. There is no land underneath. The ice cracks, drifts, and opens into channels of freezing water. Temperatures dropped below negative 40 degrees, and blizzards struck without warning. Peary and Henson set out from Ellesmere Island in Canada with 24 men, 19 sleds, and 133 dogs. They followed a route that crossed pressure ridges. Walls of broken ice pushed upward by colliding ice sheets, sometimes rising 20 feet high. The team chopped paths through these ridges with axes. Henson, an African American explorer, was essential to the expedition. He had spent years living with Inuit communities, learning to build igloos, drive dog sleds, and navigate across featureless ice. Four Inuit men traveled with them on the final push to the Pole. Their knowledge of Arctic survival made the journey possible. Whether Peary and Henson actually reached the exact North Pole has been debated ever since. Without modern GPS, pinpointing your location on drifting ice was very hard. But whether they reached the exact spot or came close, their journey remains one of the toughest in exploration history.