The Longest Journey

Exploring Greenland's Ice Cap

- Ash Routen

In 2008 two young British adventurers completed the longest unsupported Arctic expedition in history. A decade later adventure writer Ash Routen caught up with one of them to find out more about their remarkable story.

Even a decade ago the polar expedition market was saturated. Our most extreme latitudes were well explored, and the likelihood of finding funding for a major expedition was almost non-existent.

But this hadn’t deterred Alex Hibbert, an ambitious British University student, who had his sights set on a big polar undertaking. “I wanted to ski further than anyone before without support,” he says. “That was my big aim. Initially, the plan was to do so in the Antarctic on a new route.”

Over several years Alex managed to juggle his studies with the search for teammates and sponsorship. At one point, in 2007, he had formed a team and was close to securing funding. However, as is often the case in the expedition world, he was let down at the very last minute, just weeks from jetting south.

Alex’s Antarctic dreams were in tatters. But not being one to sulk, he set his sights on another frozen wasteland – Greenland. Alex didn’t water down his ambition and stuck to the aim of skiing further than anyone in polar history without outside help. “I decided, ‘Why not? Let’s go for the big prize again, the unsupported polar distance record, but let’s do it over a return route on the Greenland ice sheet’.”

With an out-and-back route planned across the vast Greenland Ice Cap, Alex would be able to make enough mileage to bring back the record, which previously stood at 1070 miles.