Pen Makes Polar History

Rob / 20.05.2003

People come into AR from all sorts of backgrounds and for all sorts of reasons. Last year Team Snowbird took part in some ACE Races and later in the BARC Final (renamed ‘The Polar Travel Company’). They were lead by polar explorer Pen Hadow and the team started out as a means to keep fit for their guiding trips, but as they were bitten by the AR bug Pen admitted, “adventure racing has now become a significant mission in its own right!”

The fitness training must have helped though as on May 20th Pen became the first person to trek unsupported and solo to the Geographic North Pole, one of the last remaining great Polar challenges. The 41 year old, who lives on Dartmoor, started his journey on March 17th from Ward Hunt Island in Canada, covering 416 nautical miles and surviving temperatures of -45C, a fall in the sea, and the loss of his skis. His last day was just 4 miles, but in the previous 2 days he had covered an amazing 34 nautical miles and 64 days after setting out he reached the pole.

His trek had a slow and difficult start and at times he made only a mile a day as he dragged his sledge of supplies across huge pressure ridges and waited for breaks in the ice to close. Where he could he swam these while towing his specially built buoyant sledge and wearing an immersion suit for protection from the cold. The sledge weighed as much as 330lbs when packed with survival equipment and food to sustain his 5,000-calorie-a-day diet.

In April he fell through the ice without the immersion suit on, and lost a ski struggling to get out. He then covered the last 160 miles without skis and once thought he had come across another expedition\'s tracks – before realising he had gone round in a circle.

His success is the achievement of a very personal goal as he revealed talking to The Times. \"I\'ve done it,\" he said. \"The overwhelming feeling is of utter relief. But I am exhausted. Exhausted. I gave my father an undertaking shortly before he died in 1993 to make it to the North Pole solo and with no resupply. To have completed that - after my third attempt - is everything to me.”

\"This whole expedition has been dedicated to his memory, and so I am very, very pleased.\" He added: \"I\'ve pushed myself every day putting in the extra miles - otherwise I wouldn\'t be here.\" His wife Mary said, \"It was a dream he has harboured for 25 years, invincible is the word which springs to mind.\"

You can see more about Pen’s remarkable achievement and on his specialist guiding company The Polar Travel company here.