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 Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen’s attempt to reach the North Pole in 1895, was part of Nansen’s famous Fram Expedition (1893–1896).

Nansen and Johansen left the ship Fram on March 14, 1895, with dogs, sledges, skis, and supplies, intending to travel over the frozen Arctic Ocean to the North Pole. They were already farther north than almost anyone had ever been. 

The remarkable problem was that the ice underneath them was moving. They could spend an exhausting day skiing and hauling sledges northward, only to discover from their astronomical position that the pack ice had been drifting southward beneath them, partly canceling their progress. Nansen specifically recognized that they were “fighting a southerly drift.” 

Eventually conditions became terrible—great pressure ridges, broken ice and open water—and their supplies were being consumed faster than they were gaining latitude. On April 7, 1895, at about 86°13.6′ N, Nansen decided they had to abandon the attempt. They were still roughly 225 miles from the North Pole, but they had reached farther north than any humans reliably known before them. 

It’s a powerful illustration: they were working tremendously hard in the right direction, but the ground beneath them was carrying them the wrong direction. It was a tragedy… they were going nowhere.