I’ve covered many miles today, but in entirely the opposite direction I’d hoped. We’re now in Ottawa.

We spent more than two weeks in Resolute Bay waiting for a weather window to start my North Pole speed record attempt, and it simply didn’t happen. What’s more, there hasn’t been a window to land at Cape Discovery -my intended start point- so far this year, and there’s no sign of there being one any time soon. Yesterday (Thurs 24th March) was the cut-off date we’d agreed, and to start any later in the spring would not only be pointless and potentially dangerous, as there’s simply not enough time to reach the Pole before the summer melt of the pack ice, but also reckless and irresponsible. Some of the polar cognoscenti may be wondering if I based my decision on the time window afforded by the Russian base near the Pole, Borneo, but they’re closing early this year (25th April) and, after an accident late in the season last year, the latest the charter firm Kenn Borek will now land a Twin Otter at the Pole is 29th April, meaning I’d need to be there by the 28th to find an airstrip. Our difficulties this year stemmed purely from bad weather, and not from budget.

As far as we can tell, a low pressure system this intense, and such a prolonged period of high winds and blizzard conditions over the Arctic Ocean has never happened before. The meteorologist stationed in Resolute with Environment Canada has been there for 30 years and has never seen conditions like this. This is something nobody had predicted, something no one has ever witnessed, and something we could not have mitigated against. Three expedition teams arrived in Resolute in mid-February and all were forced to abort their attempts shortly after we arrived, so there are no full-distance North Pole expeditions this year.

After a year of training, fund-raising and preparing for this project, I’m struggling to find the words to convey my frustration and disappointment. The only consolation is that this is not a result of poor planning, or poor equipment choice – we did everything right, but found ourselves up against the forces of nature in one of the most remote and hostile places on earth.

This expedition hasn’t been entirely without success, though, and I’m proud of the short films we sent back (all filmed, edited and uploaded 800km north of the Arctic Circle). They’ve been loaded more than a million times in no less than 150 countries, all before I’d even set foot on the ice.

My focus is now on Antarctica, and my Scott 2012 expedition that starts in October, on the centenary of Captain Scott’s final expedition. I have a lot left to do in the next 12 months, and I hope that, like any decent Hollywood film, the pitfalls we’ve faced here in the high Arctic are merely setting my audience up for the triumphant finale in Antarctica.

“If you succeed in everything you’re doing, you’re attempting things that are too easy“
-Warren Buffett

I thought today would be the day. The forecast last night suggested a brief weather window for a drop-off flight this morning and the pilot sounded optimistic when we spoke yesterday evening. Once again, I packed the belongings I wouldn’t be needing -my laptop, passport, jeans, t-shirts- into a holdall for Andy to bring back to the UK, once again I laid out my expedition clothing on the floor by my bed, and once again I had a stilted ‘goodbye’ conversation with my mum. I set my alarm early but hardly slept. The phone rang at 6am.

Troy sounded hesitant. “Eureka are showing three miles”, he started. (I’m getting quite good at pilot-speak by now; this meant good visibility at a weather station half-way between here and my Cape Discovery start point.) “And it’s fifteen knots at Alert.” (Windspeed this time. So far, so good.) “Right now it looks like there’s a window to twenty-one or twenty-two zed, when a new low comes in, but I’m not sure about vis at the north coast. I’d like to check with Polar Shelf and get back to you.” (It looks good for flying until 9 or 10pm UTC, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to see a landing spot. Let me call you back once I’ve spoken to people with better satellite images.)

Troy’s hesitancy didn’t fill me with confidence. He’s renowned as one of the finest polar pilots in the business, and a man who’s often eager (and skilled enough) to fly when others won’t. Peering into the abyss of self-pity, I dug my jogging bottoms and a t-shirt out of the holdall and shuffled down to breakfast. Troy called back at 7.30am. “I’ve had a look at some better images and there’s a definite obscuration.” An unfamiliar bit of pilot-speak. I wasn’t sure if this was good or bad. “Which means blowing snow and poor visibility at the landing spot, and,” he paused, “I’m afraid no flight today.”

I wanted to roar like a mountain gorilla, to smash a fist through the puny desk, to burst out of my t-shirt like the Incredible Hulk and to hurl the telephone across the room. Instead, from somewhere distant, I heard myself say “Thanks Troy. Keep me posted, and I guess we’ll speak this afternoon”.

Working to the schedule we’ve drawn up, Wednesday is the latest it makes sense for me to start, and it’s now Monday evening. If I’m not on the ice by the day after tomorrow then I’ll almost certainly miss the chance for a flight home via the temporary Russian base near the North Pole, Borneo. There’s still scope to charter a fixed-wing plane to pick me up from Canada, but this comes with a six-figure price tag (as opposed to five with a shared flight from Borneo – this is not a cheap way to go camping). Interestingly, Borneo has yet to be established due to bad weather (quelle surprise) and this would appear to be an exceptionally harsh spring on the Arctic Ocean.

It’s hard to put this intractable frustration into words. This should be my year. I’ve been doing this for a decade now, and I came here fitter than ever, earlier then ever, and with what I’m convinced is better clothing, better gear and better nutrition than any North Pole expedition in history. At a speaking engagement a few months ago I quipped that getting ready for a long-distance, unsupported polar expedition was like training for the Olympics while simultaneously fundraising for and project-managing the building of your own stadium. I’ve done all that, and now I find myself locked in the changing rooms.

We didn’t quite get this film up in time for Red Nose Day yesterday, but I hope you’ll enjoy this insight into the day-to-day routine that I and my hardened, professional team go through up here.

I’d like to assure my sponsors and members of the press that cabin fever hasn’t entirely addled our brains. Friends and family will, I fear, spot nothing out of the ordinary in this film. Normal transmission will resume shortly…

I was woken at 6am this morning by the sound of a phone ringing in the room next to mine. And seeing as I had taken it upon myself to ‘upgrade’ my room yesterday without informing the hotel owner, this was probably a call for me.

I scrabbled in the darkness for some clothes and staggered out into the corridor, just as the phone stopped ringing. It started again a few seconds later, in Andy’s room this time, and I heard him answer it groggily. My first instinct was to shoulder the door open and run in, but my English sense of reserve and decorum kicked in at about the same time that I realised Andy would probably be at least half-naked, so I stopped and cupped my ear to the door with a hand.

It was Troy, the pilot (I called him back a few minutes later) and the upshot was that the visibility had temporarily improved at the north coast. “They’re saying it’s patchy cloud”, he said, “and I can probably get you in. The downside is that it’ll be very windy, and the weather’s due to get worse again tomorrow before it finally clears early next week.” Then came the kicker; the toughest decision I’ve been asked to make all year. “It’s your call.”

Time stood still, and two thoughts entered my mind: first, John Ridgway’s old maxim “The opportunity of a lifetime must be grasped within the lifetime of the opportunity”, and secondly, in complete opposition, the promise I’d made to my girlfriend that I wouldn’t do anything reckless. This was a slim chance of getting to the start point, but it also meant poor -and possibly dangerous- conditions when I got there: strong south-westerly winds (gusting to 50 knots recently, and potentially pushing the ice out to sea), more snow tomorrow and a full moon. I wouldn’t be going anywhere fast, which isn’t what I had in mind for this expedition.

I told Troy that I’d prefer to wait for the weather to clear on Monday or Tuesday, and it was an easier decision to make than I thought, particularly as we only have one chance to get this right this year: if we weren’t able to land, I’d have blown CAD$30,000 on a noisy, uncomfortable sightseeing flight, and if we were, there’s every likelihood I’d have spent the first three days of my expedition sitting in a tent, waiting out the storm. The flip side of this, of course, is that if the weather doesn’t clear by Wednesday (23rd) at the latest, then that’s it for this year. Go Directly Home. Do Not Pass Go.

To pass the time yesterday, we (and when I say we, I really mean Tem) put together a short film about the hold-up we’re dealing with, what’s causing it, and what it means for the expedition. In the light of this morning’s events, it’s more pertinent than ever.

I spoke to Troy the pilot again last night: “I’ve been on the phone to the Arctic Weather Centre at Edmonton”, he started, “and I asked them when the weather would clear at Cape Discovery.” There was a pause. A faint crackle in the background like an old vinyl record left playing after the song has stopped. “And I thought they were joking when they said Monday or Tuesday.”

He talked of a “Very deep and intense low” over the north of Ellesmere Island, and another scudding up the west coast of Greenland to take its place soon afterwards. Of blizzard conditions, quarter-mile visibility at Eureka (a weather station halfway between here and my start point) and of fresh, twelve-foot snowdrifts on the runway at Alert, a Canadian military base on the north coast (that, incidentally, is closer to Stockholm than it is to Ottawa).

If I’m dropped on Tuesday 22nd, I’ll have a maximum window of 36 days to reach the Pole before the Russian ice base Borneo -and the opportunity for a flight home via Norway- closes for the year. We could not be cutting it much finer. This was always going to be an expedition that was at the outer margins of what’s possible, and in stalling me for six days, the weather has narrowed those margins yet further.

The lack of control is the most frustrating part. On the Arctic Ocean my progress north is up to me, and even on the worst days I can battle with blizzards and headwinds and negative drift to win a few miles. Here in Resolute, where the wind is still and the sun is shining, the weather somehow has me pinned down, with no chance to fight back.

Yesterday I was worried about losing fitness while I waited; of my year of training going slowly and inexorably to waste as I languished and floundered in a hotel that serves three greasy cooked meals per day. But a phone call this morning with one of the wisest people I know reminded me that, in the 1890s, Fridtjof Nansen spent eighteen months cooped up in his ice-locked ship, Fram, before strapping his skis on and completing one of the most epic Arctic journeys in history. And Nansen couldn’t lounge around in a t-shirt, watch Inception on his laptop and call his buddies from the boat via Skype. I silently reminded myself to man up.

I bought the Winter 2010-11 edition of Alpinist magazine to read on the flight up here from Ottawa, and there’s wonderful piece by Katie Ives on the Grand Teton, that applies equally well to the Arctic Ocean, and to the hopes that I have as the days tick by: “I realise, now, [it] had always been a symbol in my mind: a reminder of what could be and what is. For there, always, at the edges of our thoughts, beyond every city and road, lies some portion of that radiant, envisioned realm of possibility-what Wallace Stegner once called the wilderness: ‘the geography of hope.’ Why not strive for it?”

A quick update – I should have been heading north by now, but it seems we’re stuck in Resolute for the immediate future…

I spoke to Troy, the pilot that will be dropping me off at my Cape Discovery start point, at 7am this morning, and again at 5.30pm and he in turn has been speaking to the Arctic weather team at Edmonton. The latest is that there is a big area of low pressure over north-east Greenland, and overrunning cloud, high winds and blizzard conditions at the northern end of Ellesmere Island (where I’ll be setting off from) so a flight is out of the question today (Tues 15th) and in all likelihood for tomorrow as well.

The good news is that the forecasters thought the bad weather should lift by the end of Wednesday, and there’s also space in the flying schedule for me, so right now it looks like I’ll be dropped at around midday local time on Thurs 17th (about 5pm in the UK).

I still have enough time that my intended schedule isn’t affected, though I am keen to get a wiggle on before the full moon on the 19th, when there’s scope for high and low tides to make the sea ice at the coast more difficult to negotiate. More soon…

If the current weather window holds, in 24 hours’ time, I’ll be tucked up in my tent, fast asleep. The nearest human being will be roughly 130 miles away, at a small Canadian military base called Alert, and the temperature is likely to be below -40 degrees centigrade.

I’d be lying if I said the prospect of all this -and the 487-mile walk in front of me- didn’t leave me feeling slightly apprehensive, but I’m genuinely keen to get going, and I’m feeling more confident and better prepared than ever. I also know that once I’m through the shock of the first few days, and I start settling into a routine, there will be times when I wouldn’t trade places with anyone else in the world.

Right now, though, there is one place I’d rather be, and that’s in bed (it’s nearing midnight here in Resolute), so I’ll sign off by leaving you with Tem’s latest video. It’s so good that I’m wondering if I can sneak him into my sledge to document the entire trip…

Life in Resolute seems to revolve around two things: the weather, and meal times. Yesterday evening we had steak for dinner and today it’s been still and sunny, so life is revolving rather well at the moment. I popped out this afternoon for five or ten minutes to test my satellite phones, and it felt deceptively warm as I worked with bare hands, occasionally dunking one back into a pocket of my down jacket to warm it up. I spoke to my mum on Skype afterwards and told her it was warm. “How warm is warm?”, she asked, as I looked up Resolute’s weather forecast on the (frustratingly slow, satellite-dish-powered) internet. “Minus thirty-three.”

We borrowed a snowmobile and a komatik yesterday afternoon and headed out to some lumpy sea ice that shimmered on the horizon as we bumped and jolted along in a buzzing cloud of two-stroke fumes. Martin Hartley had tipped us off that there were a couple of hefty (and eminently photogenic) icebergs stuck in the bay this year, and sure enough, they proved to be the perfect backdrop for a slightly surreal photoshoot. I should point out that I’ve never actually seen whopping great icebergs like these out on the Arctic Ocean -and it’s highly unlikely that I ever will- but it was a beautiful sight.

I’ve uploaded the latest of Tem’s films, and it’s been a real joy working with such a talented and perceptive film-maker (and of course, Andy’s photographs are pretty bloody amazing too; he snapped the image above this post yesterday afternoon). I find it near-impossible to frame and take a decent photograph at room temperature, so I’m in awe of the skill and perseverance of these two, who valiantly shot away without a peep of complaint in a minus forty-something windchill.

So. Two more sleeps (and probably one more update typed from the warmth of a hotel) till I’m dropped off. Ooer.

We landed yesterday evening in Resolute Bay (the Inuktitut name for it is Qausuittuq, or the place with no dawn) the last bit of civilisation I’ll see until the end of April. It’s a frontier town, 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle, with something of a sub-zero Wild West feel to it, with spindrift instead of tumbleweed and revving skidoos instead of whinnying horses. Resolute’s inhabitants can usually be split into two camps: those who know how to skin a fish and mush a dog team at -45°C., and those who know how to service a Twin Otter’s turboprop engine and drive a forklift at -45°C.

If all goes to plan, we’re staying here until the 15th, when I’ll be dropped at my start point, Cape Discovery (at the northernmost tip of Canada’s Ellesmere Island) after a seven-hour flight in a ski plane, with a quick stop for fuel at a remote weather station called Eureka.

This is always a hectic period of packing, checking and testing, and it marks a strange transition for me, a kind of halfway house between civilisation and absolute wilderness. News of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami reached this remote corner of the Arctic at breakfast this morning, a faster and wider shockwave than the surging swells crossing the Pacific. Nearly all at the table had visited Japan and a few had friends there, and we ate in a stunned silence. In a few days’ time I’ll be cut off from the news entirely, and it’s odd to hear about such a profound human disaster when I’m almost on the eve of unplugging myself from society for several weeks.

We’ve just been to the airstrip (hurtling up the gravel road in a borrowed A-Team van, with the Arctic sunset glowing a deep orange in our mirrors) to speak to Rick, the chap that will be coordinating my drop-off flight on the 15th. A solid man in his sixties, with warm brown eyes and lines on his face that told of a life well-lived. “Oh, I was a soldier and then a bush pilot before I did this”, he said, as coffee dripped through the percolator. “I like it up here. Life’s pretty simple.”

My girlfriend and I drove up to see my mum at the weekend, to say goodbye to her and to drop our dog off for a bit of a holiday. We left after breakfast on Sunday and my mum cried as we hugged, reminding me that saying goodbye to your mum is arguably the hardest part of a solo expedition to the North Pole. There’s satisfaction to be had during even the worst day on the ice, but it’s no fun making your mum cry because you once again have something to prove by going for a long camping trip alone in a place that’s a long, long way from civilisation and not without the potential for a bit of drama.

Pen Hadow had a theory that, perhaps unlike wives and girlfriends, mums don’t think of the man-who-does-this-for-a-living out there alone with his sledge and his tent, but rather of the ten or eleven-year-old schoolboy, with his schoolboy shorts, a conker on a string and a little packed lunch. I hadn’t meant this to be a soppy post about mums, and I fear I’ve misportrayed mine as something of a worrier, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m convinced the word indomitable was invented just for her, and I know there’s no little pride mixed in with her motherly concern. “It never gets any easier”, she said to me on the phone yesterday.

Something else that never gets any easier is hustling this much excess baggage (180-odd kilos, or 400lbs between three of us) across the Atlantic, especially when you’re flying Economy. Tem stayed up late last night to edit this brilliant short film that captures a lot of yesterday’s nail-biting, trolley-overloading, baggage-handler-infuriating three-and-a-half-thousand-mile journey.

We’re due to fly a lot further north tomorrow, from Ottawa to Iqaluit, then on to Resolute via Arctic Bay. The bad news is that 15-20cm of snow has been forecast for Ottawa, starting tonight, so we’ll see how that affects things. The good news is that the wonderful First Air are flying us to Resolute and have been enormously supportive, so we’re hoping for a rather less stressful journey…

I had an email last year from a Random Person from the Internet, who took the time to inform me in no uncertain terms that in his opinion I had “failed” to reach the North Pole solo and unsupported from Canada because I was “attempting the impossible”, and that I should instead “get a job”. Now, while I’m normally all for changing my entire life on the half-baked advice of a ranting blog commenter, there haven’t been an awful lot of jobs going spare since then; especially not for I, whose resume would now read “self-employed for a decade. Formal qualifications: few and negligible. Experience includes: navigating over drifting pack ice, melting snow for drinking water, sledge-hauling and the use of satellite phones, pump-action shotguns and pee bottles.”

Instead, dear reader, I’ve stuck to my guns, returned my nose to the spinning grindstone of the useless but meaningful, and pumped every penny, every fizzing joule of energy and every ticking second I have into the expedition I’m about to start. I’ve piled up all my chips, I’m betting the lot on white and I’m heading north again in a few days’ time.

Cormack McCarthy said in an interview a year or two ago that “Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing”, and while I wouldn’t say the pursuit of my expeditionary goals has pushed me quite that far, there have been many moments in the last eighteen months where I’ve been sorely tempted to walk an easier path. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m about to do without the unerring support of a few that are close to me. My girflfriend has had more patience than any saint I’ve heard of. Andy Ward, my expedition manager, carried on working for me long after I could afford to pay him (and is back on the payroll, I’m happy to report), I’ve been consistently steered back on track by the extraordinarily sage advice and guidance of my very own Obi-Wan, Jerry Colonna, and I’ve been lucky enough to be supported by Land Rover, who were top of the list of dream sponsors I drew up on the back of an envelope 11 years ago.

Andy and I fly to Ottawa tomorrow (Tuesday) and then north from Ottawa to Resolute Bay – high in the Canadian Arctic and on the shore of the Northwest Passage – on Thursday. We’re travelling with an exceptionally talented film-maker, Temujin Doran, so I hope we’ll be able to give you a unique insight into what should prove an interesting journey.

It’s been an interesting season so far for North Pole expeditions. Rosie Stancer was forced to postpone her attempt to be the first woman to reach the Pole solo, and the Italian soloist Michele Pontrandolfo and teams from Ireland and the Royal Air Force have all aborted their attempts this spring in favour of returning for a better weather window next year. I’m planning to travel faster, so am starting a little later in the spring (around 15th March) but it’s a sobering reminder that this is a high-stakes game that needs absolute commitment, and more than a fair amount of luck.

I’ll sign off by doffing my cap to Will Nicholson and Zara Hannaford, who are both giving up their precious time to make sure my pulk (sledge!) makes it from rural Norway back to Heathrow airport today. I’ve never met Will, and he was decent enough to respond to Andy’s plea for help on Twitter yesterday.

Attempting the (potentially) impossible in the public eye will always mean a bit of flak from armchair critics, but if my experience is anything to go by, you’ll also be stunned by the willingness of complete strangers to roll up their sleeves and help you along the way. More soon. I’ve got some packing to do.