In 2008, he started his first journey across Antarctica, leading an expedition to pioneer a route through the Transantarctic Mountains, reaching a point from the South Pole. The expedition commemorated the centenary of Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition. Worsley returned to the Antarctic in 2011, leading a team of six in retracing Roald Amundsen's successful journey in 1912 to the South Pole, marking its centenary. In completing the route, he became the first person to have successfully undertaken the routes taken by Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott and Amundsen.