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"Polar"
On 6 March, Rosie Stancer stepped off Ward Hunt Island and on to the frozen surface of the Arctic Ocean. With temperatures sinking past -50C, her eyelashes elongated with ice and every millimetre of exposed skin burning with the cold she pulled her sledge over serried ranks of 30 feet high barriers of ice stretching [...]
There’s a certain blog paralysis that creeps in after a certain amount of time has passed that makes going back to the blog yet more difficult. The urge to precis events is suffocated beneath yet more events, none of which necessarily make for a particularly coherent story. On reflection, I have decided to provide some [...]
Last Wednesday I sat down for lunch with Rosie Stancer, a veteran of several South Pole expeditions and the ’97 North Pole relay. We had been on an expedition to Svalbard in 2002 and spent one particularly glorious night in a storm that snapped our tent poles as the temperature [...]
With the possible exception of a blog post during our 2005 expedition to Greenland where Ben managed to make me look like Sid James, this youtube screencap from a video made for Ice Edge ranks as the worst picture of me on the net.
I realise that now [...]
A nice lady was wandering through a shop in the south coast, found these biscuits for sale, and gave them to me. They are apparently exact replicas of the biscuits that Scott took with him on his 1911-12 South Pole expedition. The packaging claims that the biscuits are perfect for [...]
Frances at 76 Degrees South has been taking a break from her work at Halley station in Antarctica to visit the local penguins. She has some beautiful photographs on her site and you can find more at her flickr page where [...]
Today I sat on an orange sofa and explained an idea I’d had after my front tyre exploded on the marylebone flyover and I’d had to walk the six miles to Ben’s dragging my bike and cursing my absent-minded shortage of inner tubes. I sat there in the offices of the mighty
Winston Churchill once said that success is merely the ability to hold on one minute longer than anyone else. I feel that recently Ben and I have been testing that out.
We’ve met some incredible people over the last six months from some of the most powerful media players in the [...]
The science and support types living through six months of darkness at the South Pole need to provide their own entertainment. Thus the Winterover Halfway Film Festival (WHIFF) was created. The production values and performance quality easily matches that of the best Cannes entrant and the special effects are truly groundbreaking. Many of the film [...]
This morning, lying in our tent at the top of the Hann Glacier we heard the familiar whup-whup of a helicopter heading our way. Our taxi had arrived. We jumped into action, threw sleeping bags in sledges and dismantled our tent in short order. Helicopter pilots do not like to [...]
Helicopter is due in 30 mins. Hopefully next time you hear from us we’ll be on the ice!
We touched down this morning in Kulusuk East Greenland and immediately made our way over to the helicopter taking us to Tasiilaq. We went, but our kit didn’t as the helicopter was overloaded. We are now waiting for the rest of the kit to turn up tomorrow. Good news is that we have seen our [...]
When I was managing Ben’s solo expedition in 2004, we were stuck in Khatanga, a town that is best described as the armpit of Northern Siberia. Each day we would head for the airport in the hope that the vodka-fuelled disagreements between the owners of the helicopters and the pilots [...]
We got the all clear this morning for a flight into Greenland at midday. It’s hard to say how I am feeling at this point so I will let John Masefield have a go for me.
“I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call [...]
With their natural habitat disappearing fast, polar bears seem to have been trying different ways to speed up their evolutionary response. Hunters near Iqaluit have managed to shoot a hybrid polar-grizzly bear, the first recorded in the wild. Well, at least it was until they killed the poor thing.
Ben and I touched down from New York early on Wednesday morning knowing that between us we had two days to attend six different meetings, give two speeches, MC an awards ceremony, hire an assistant and pack everything we would need for a month-long unsupported training expedition to Greenland.
To say that we [...]
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