The Oddest Place on Earth: Rediscovering the North Pole

by Christopher Pala

When Christopher Pala first landed at the North Pole, he fell so much in love with it that he took his girlfriend to ride the polar treadmill on what he mischievously called the First Expedition to Nowhere. For a week, the couple skied every day to the pole, pitched their tent and drifted away from it as they slept. Between his five trips to the pole, Pala used his journalistic skills to peel away the layers of myth surrounding its discovery and capture the untold story of the first men who indisputably stood there. Pala is the first to chronicle the transformation of one of the most remote places on earth into a new Mecca for adventure travelers. Flying in every April on Russian jets, he joined risk-lovers to parachute over it, balloon across it, attain it on skis and scuba-dive under it. But as he discovers, mans presence at the pole is still ephemeral and there is plenty of opportunity to enjoy the escape from ordinary constraints of time and space provided by this breathtakingly gorgeous place that is not a place. Excerpts of the book have appeared in Condé Nast Traveler, Blue Adventure, Polar Record and other publications.

324 pages, Paperback

First published March 24, 2002