1986-05-01

On this date Lesbian ANN BANCROFT becomes the first woman to reach the North Pole by dogsled. The trip, which started from Ellesmere Island, took two months.

Bancroft, 62, was the first woman to reach both the North Pole and the South Pole. In 1986, she and Will Steger and six other explorers drove dogsleds to the North Pole; seven years later, she successfully led the American Women’s Expedition to the South Pole.

Bancroft made history again in 2001 when she and her polar-trekking partner Liv Arnesen, 63, of Norway, became the first women to cross Antarctica.

Now the women, who co-own an exploration company called Bancroft Arnesen Explore, will follow the Ganges from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal with six other women from six continents. She lives in St. Paul Minnesota.