Helen Thayer is a New Zealand-born explorer. At 50, she became the first woman to travel solo to the magnetic North Pole, pulling her own sled without resupply. She travelled on foot, with no outside help. She now lives in the United States. She continues to develop educational programs with her husband Bill, a retired helicopter pilot. Thayer is the author of Polar Dream: The First Solo Expedition by a Woman and Her Dog to the Magnetic North Pole, Three Among the Wolves: A year of Friendship with Wolves in the Wild, and Trekking the Gobi: Desert of Dreams and Despair. She has received the Northwest Explorer's Club's Vancouver Award, and the Robert Henning Award from the Alaskan Geographic Alliance for exploration and education. 

November 12th, 1927 in Whang?rei (Age 97)