Ben Saunders
Ben Saunders is the youngest person ever to ski solo to the North Pole, a challenge described by Reinhold Messner as “ten times as dangerous as Everest”, and holds the record for the longest solo Arctic journey by a Briton.
In October 2008 Ben sets out on his next expedition, SOUTH. This 1,800-mile trek will be the first return journey from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole on foot, and the longest unsupported polar journey in history.
The current record stands at 1,350 miles, and many experts believe going another 500 without the assistance of vehicles, dogs, kites, or airdrops of food is impossible. To succeed will not depend on grit or resilience, but on Ben’s ability to innovate. Over the past six years, he has pioneered expedition technology. In 2003 he sent the first ever real-time video footage from the North Pole and he has updated his award-winning website live via satellite phone from his last four expeditions (with an online audience of 7.5 million in 2004). SOUTH will be a showcase for renewable energy; his tent and clothing will feature photovoltaic fabric allowing him take advantage of Antarctica’s 24-hour daylight. The expedition’s carbon composite sleds have been two years in the making and use materials developed in Formula One. Fuelling the body over vast distances in polar conditions has always been problematic, and many have returned from shorter expeditions emaciated and exhausted. Rather than following the accepted wisdom of polar nutrition, Ben has developed a cutting-edge diet derived from sources as diverse as chemotherapy wards treating recovering cancer patients, ultra-marathon runners and Tour de France teams.
SOUTH will incorporate the largest education programme of its kind. Totally web-based and with world-wide applicability, it will allow schoolchildren to follow and interact with the SOUTH team on the ice, see real-time photographs and video from Antarctica, and engage with the last continent in a new and dramatic way. Media partners including Yahoo! and the Discovery Channel, and patrons including Al Gore, insure that SOUTH will have a truly global audience and impact.
His most recent expedition, in March 2008, was an attempt to set a new world speed record to the Geographic North Pole. The current record was set in 2005 by a guided team using dog sleds and five re-supplies in a time of 36 days 22 hours. Ben’s expedition was solo, unsupported and on foot. After nine days battling through the worst ice conditions ever recorded, the expedition was forced to a halt through equipment failure.
“To have an expedition that is the culmination of seven years training, preparation and experience forced to a halt due to an equipment failure is incredibly disappointing, particularly as I am still in excellent physical condition. I came here well prepared and the daily distances I have achieved to date (in my first four days I covered 29.4 nautical miles, something that took a Finnish Special Forces team two weeks to achieve in 2006) show that setting a speed record was within my reach. The ice conditions I have encountered have been the worst I have ever seen, and worse than I could have imagined. I am witnessing at first hand the disintegration of the last of the Arctic’s multi-year pack ice. If climate change in the high Arctic continues at its current rate, I may be one of the last to be able to attempt this journey on foot. I feel enormously privileged to have had that chance and the only true failure would have been not to have started this expedition in the first place.”
In February 2004, Ben set out from Northern Siberia in an attempt to be the first person to make a solo and unsupported crossing of the frozen Arctic Ocean in a 1,240-mile journey ending in Canada. The expedition was a traumatic one: out of the four solo attempts, Ben was the only one to reach the North Pole. A Finnish woman died within 24 hours of being on the Arctic Ocean, a French Marine fell through thin ice and was rescued with severe frostbite and an American was airlifted out with frostbite and a broken ankle.
Ben became the youngest person ever to reach the North Pole on foot on May 11th 2004. After experiencing first hand conditions described by NASA as “the worst since records began”, he has raised international awareness regarding the extent to which climate change is affecting the Arctic. He noticed conditions that were up to 15 degrees C. warmer than in 2000, and had to negotiate vast, unprecedented areas of thinning ice and open water.
In the spring of 2001, Ben became the youngest person ever (at 23) to attempt an unsupported “all the way” North Pole expedition, along with fellow Briton Pen Hadow. They were forced to stop short of the Pole, after surviving polar bear attack, frostbite and enduring 8 weeks of skiing nearly 400 miles through icy headwinds and temperatures below -40ºC.
Ben has a great love for the outdoors, he grew up in rural Devon, spent four months walking and climbing in the Nepalese Himalayas aged nineteen, and went on to work as an instructor at the John Ridgway Adventure School in Scotland (known as “the UK’s toughest management training school”).
He is an Ambassador for The Prince's Trust and Global Angels, an Honorary Vice-President of the Geographical Association, a Patron of the British Schools Exploring Society (BSES) and was the front man for the Edge Foundation’s 2007 UK-wide schools competition, Ice Edge.
Ben is one of the country's outstanding young motivational speakers .