The Seven Poles of Inaccessibility refer to the five largest land masses on Planet Earth (continental poles), plus the two frozen poles, Northern and Southern:

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

I’m calling them The Seven Poles purely in reference to the enormity of the land masses and the fact that these have traditionally been thought of as “all” of the Poles of Inaccessibility. It is, if you like, the explorers version of the mountineers’ Seven Summits.

My chosen project is to become the first person to visit all Seven Poles of Inaccessibility.

The Seven 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” 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.

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.

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.