The Eight Poles of Inaccessibility refer to the six Continental Poles (Europe and Asia being one combined land mass), the Northern Artic Pole and the Oceanic Pole, also known as Point Nemo:

• North America
• South America
• Africa
• Eurasia
• Australia
• Southern (Antarctic)
• Northern (Arctic)
• Point Nemo

My aim is to be the first person ever to visit all of the Poles of Inaccessibility and I’m calling this The Eight Poles Project. It is, if you like, the explorer’s version of the mountaineers’ Seven Summits.

The Eight Poles Coordinates

The coordinates of five of these poles were calculated by Garcia-Castellanos and Lombardo – see their table here.

The Antarctic Pole remains as a “generally accepted” historic location, commonly accepted in the Exploration world.  I’ve been unable to track down who first made the calculation but it was probably somebody on the 2nd Soviet Antarctic Expedition in 1958, led by Aleksei Treshnikov, who were first to achieve that location. There’s since been a better calculation made by the British Antarctic Survey.

The arctic pole has actually changed position!  Prior to a review of satellite mapping in 2013, the pole was thought to be 133 miles away from where it is now calculated to be – now known as the False Northern Pole of Inaccessibility.

Point Nemo coordinates were first calculated by a Croatian Ocean Survey Engineer called Hrvoje Lukatela using a geospatial programme that incorporated the Earth’s ellipsoid shape to calculate the coordinates.

You will find a discussion on the use of the term “pole” on this page, which is commonly used to reference these seven points – another reason for distinguishing these as the “The Seven Poles”.  For smaller land masses, on this site, we use the term Point of Inaccessibility.