Pen Hadow Biography - General

Pen Hadow shot to international fame in 2003 when he made history by completing the first solo journey, without re-supply, from Canada to the North Geographic Pole – a feat thought comparable to climbing Everest solo without oxygen.  He remains the only person to have achieved this feat.  Yet he continues to think: ‘I’m the most normal person I’ve ever met!'

In summer 2009 Pen returned from leading the high-profile and gruelling Catlin Arctic Survey.  Five years in the making, this was a three-month pioneering scientific expedition to help determine the future of the Arctic Ocean's sea ice. The £3million expedition, whose patron is The Prince of Wales, has supplied the raw survey data to world-class scientific organisations for analysis including the University of Cambridge, UCL, and the Canadian Ice Service.

Pen’s findings will be taken to the national negotiating teams working to replace the Kyoto Protocol agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference of Parties in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Just nine months after returning from his solo North Pole epic Pen went on to become the only Briton to have trekked, without re-supply, to both Poles when he led an ex-French Foreign Legionnaire, Simon Murray, on a new 1,200 km route to the South Geographic Pole.  The 58-day journey from the continental coast of Antarctica enabled his 63 year-old sledging partner to become the oldest to have achieved this journey, while raising £280,000 to restore the most important artefacts held within the Royal Geographical Society’s polar collection.

Recognised within the polar community as one of its most pioneering spirits, Pen has dedicated his life to pushing back the boundaries of what is known to be possible both personally, commercially and geographically – an approach first observed when his mother found him, aged 7, hanging upside-down by his legs, high in an apple tree, to see how long he could do it … about 4 hours when she discovered him, head noticeably swollen.

He began exploring in his twenties and soon turned his passion into a business when he launched the world's first polar guide service.  The company took people from all walks of life to the most inaccessible and extreme environments on Earth - the Arctic Ocean and Antarctica.  Personally selecting and preparing the expedition teams, most of which he led himself, his company was famously responsible in 1997 for the first all-women expedition to reach the North Geographic Pole, and thus for their entry into the Guinness Book of Records.

Pen’s autobiography 'Solo' published in 2004 became one of Penguin's leading Christmas titles and was voted 'Book of the Week' by The Sunday Times.  He made a TV documentary for the National Geographic Channel, and his debut as a presenter with a five-part series for Radio 4 about Jules Verne.

Pen Hadow Biography - Environmental

When Pen was a schoolboy in the 1960s, a globe was produced in a geography lesson showing our world. It comprised four fundamental geophysical features: continents as mottled green splodges, oceans as swathes of sapphire blue, and two ‘white bits’ on the bottom and the top – the polar ice caps. This was our planet.

Within the next five to 50 years, the North Pole region’s sea ice - having thinned by up to 40% and shrunk by more than 10% per decade over the last 40 years - is likely to cease to be one of our planet’s defining permanent surface features. But it is the cause and the speed of its disappearance that provide the most alarming aspect.

The sea ice floating on the Arctic Ocean is both a vulnerable and surprisingly significant geophysical feature.  It contributes to holding in balance the entire global ocean circulation system.  This system is in turn inextricably linked with global atmospheric circulations and thus local weather patterns worldwide. The present balance will be distorted if the sea ice’s reflective heat-shield effect is lost, with major impacts on global climate and sea levels, regional methane emission levels, and habitat.

Pen’s initial personal experience of the disappearing ice cap came in Spring 2003, when he made history and shot to international attention when he completed the first solo journey, without re-supply by aircraft, from Canada to the North Geographic Pole - a feat thought comparable to climbing Everest solo without oxygen.  He remains the only person to have achieved this.  But to succeed he had to swim for over 50 cumulative hours across stretches of open water, towing his sledge which had been modified to double-up as a boat.

Pen has just returned from leading the high-profile and gruelling Catlin Arctic Survey.  Five years in the making this was a three-month pioneering scientific expedition to help scientists determine the future of the Arctic Ocean's sea ice. The £3million expedition, whose patron is The Prince of Wales, will supply the raw survey data to scientific organisations to analyse including the University of Cambridge, UCL and the Canadian Ice Service.

Pen's findings will then be taken to the national negotiating teams working to replace the Kyoto Protocol agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference of Parties in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Pen Hadow Biography - Short

Pen Hadow is an internationally acclaimed polar explorer. Pen shot to fame in May 2003 when he became the first person to trek successfully alone, and without re-supply by aircraft, from Canada to the North Geographic Pole. It had taken Pen 15 years and three attempts to fulfil his dream.

This feat required an exceptional degree of skill, endurance and commitment. It was thought by some to be harder than making the first solo ascent of Everest without oxygen, and by others to have been impossible. 

In 2009 Pen returned from leading the high-profile and gruelling Catlin Arctic Survey.  Five years in the making, this was a three-month pioneering scientific expedition to help scientists determine the future of the Arctic Ocean's sea ice. The £3million expedition, whose patron is The Prince of Wales, will supply the raw survey data to scientific organisations to analyse including the University of Cambridge, UCL and the Canadian Ice Service.

Pen's findings will then be taken to the national negotiating teams working to replace the Kyoto Protocol agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference of Parties in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Pen lives on Dartmoor with his wife, Mary, and two children, Wilf and Freya.