expedition
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Day 2 First full day on the ice
Distance travelled 12km/7.5miles 17th November. Today has been all uphill and slow, but steady! Could see the wall of the glacier I had to ski up ahead of me as I packed…
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Day 1 Arrival by plane and first night under canvas
Distance travelled 5km/3miles It was strange yesterday being dropped off – a spectacular 30min flight in over the mountains. Could see all the main initial nunataks that will be using to help…
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Thoughts, doubts and staying positive
The countdown has been on hold. I was meant to fly to Union Glacier on the 10th, then on the 12th… then possibly today but now hopefully tomorrow. As I mentioned in…
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Long Road South
57 N to 90 S The long journey south starts here at Inverness Airport. 57 degrees North to 90 degrees South. Ben will travel to London and then onto to Punta Arenas,…
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Hard Yards
The clock ticks towards my departure to Antarctica. There have been some fun hours spent in the local woods here in Carrbridge in the Cairngorms National Park. Dragging my four friends around…
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STV interview
Strange seeing myself on TV! Really amazing to receive encouragement from legendary explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes as well! It has been a long time since last met with him and he has…
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South Pole 2022 confirmed..!
Once I finished the Greenland crossing and managed to access my emails once again, I was greeted by the excellent news that Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions (ALE) had approved my plans for…
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Greenland – A final word…
Travelling over 560km across Greenland with the Hvitserk group of seven other adventurers from Norway, Denmark and Sweden, was a truly fantastic and memorable experience. The whole environment.. skiing on those days…
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Greenland Part 5: The final push
We were lucky with the weather and conditions over the full course of the journey. A couple of days’ worth of total whiteouts made navigation a little tricker, with some… interesting diversions…
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Greenland Part 4: Leaving DYE2 behind
After DYE2 we had a few more days of skiing slowly uphill before it was pretty much flat for a while, and we eventually started the slow and almost imperceptible descent towards…
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Greenland Part 3: Relics of the past…
As we sped across the ice, and left the western mountains and the icefall behind, we spotted the DYE2 abandoned radar station from around 28km away. A small black spot on the…
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Greenland Part 2: Speeding up…
We started the expedition off slowly: three 50 minute sessions on the first half day with 5km travelled, then doubling to six sessions on day 2. Following this we added an extra…
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Greenland Part 1: The icefall
The weather as we started was positively mild – around 5C at the bottom of the icefall at point 660, the starting place of pretty much all west-east Greenland expeditions around 90…
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Boots ‘n Bindings
Getting boots for polar expeditions is not entirely simple – you have to consider the warmth of the boots of course, but you also have to consider the bindings that will let…