Category: Polar

  • Never Give Up

    I should say this is a story about an expedition,  a grand adventure, a test of human endurance. I should say that. This is a story about failure. Right now, one of the people who knows me better than anyone else in the world is sitting in a hut in Punta Arenas, Chile and staring out […]

  • Furthest North

    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 […]

  • Paralysis

    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 […]

  • Inching SOUTH

    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 world to ultra-connected corporate […]

  • Saying goodbye to Greenland

    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 hang around in the cold […]

  • In Greenland

    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 sledges […]

  • Foiled again!

    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 had resolved themselves. On the […]

  • Closer to Greenland

    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 and […]

  • New York

    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 were not approaching these […]

  • Greenland

    Life has taken a turn for the hectic here as I once again get into expedition mode. Ben and I are off to Greenland for a month for our final test and training phase before we go SOUTH and I am juggling phonecalls, kit orders and eccentric email servers. In mid May we are taking a […]

  • The little blue passport

    Let me start with a disclaimer: Bribery is bad, really bad. In fact, it should only ever be used with small children. The trouble is, when you sometimes operate in areas that have a morally ambiguous  business environment combined with a weaponised bureaucracy, the requests can get pretty persistent and persuasive. Having had to get […]