• North Pole 2001

    My first real expedition. In March 2001 Pen Hadow and I set out to reach the North Geographic Pole from the coast of Russia, unsupported and on foot. I was 23 at the time, and about to embark on the steepest learning curve of my entire life.

  • L'Enfer du Nord

    The Arctic Ocean is like nowhere else on earth. I had expected the profound cold, but hadn't appreciated the severity of the 'terrain' we would be moving through.

  • Victor Oscar Oscar

    Iridium -the only satellite phone network to reach the Poles- went bust in 2000, and we were reduced to using HF radio to communicate with the outside world. Our antenna was jury-rigged from two ski poles; our call sign Victor Oscar Oscar.

  • Learning to Suffer

    We misjudged our nutrition and spent 59 days hungry. At times I was haunted by daydreams of food so vivid that I would salivate, at others I was dizzy and faint with hypoglycaemia. I had never given so much of my physical self.

  • Game Over

    After 59 days on the ice we ran out of time, some 180 miles from the Pole. We were over two thirds of the way there, but logistical and financial constraints forced us to abort.

  • North Pole 2003

    My first solo expedition (and my best frozen-faced self-portrait to date). At 120km and less than a fortnight, it was a small trip, but my first time alone on the Arctic Ocean. In contrast to the suffering of 2001, I loved travelling solo and was sad to fly home.

  • Flat Pans

    For the most part, the ice conditions and the weather were spectacularly good. I was seeing the Arctic Ocean that the last degree tourists see, in mid-April: sunny, benign. The gritty stuff happens in March.

  • Breakfast in Bed

    To my amazement, with blazing sun and no wind, I overheated in my sleeping bag. N.B. the crazy German rifle by my bed: a Nazi-issue WW2 Mauser Karabiner 98k rented with questionable legality from a guy called Terje.

  • Arctic Geek

    A clunky Compaq iPAQ snapped up on ebay and an Iridium satellite phone meant I could update my website daily from my tent. I also sent video from the Pole, the first time an individual had done this via a satellite phone.

  • Exeunt

    The first leg of the flight home was via a Gazpromavia Antonov AN-74. This runway was bulldozed in the sea ice; the pilot reckoned "60cm" was a decent thickness to land on.

  • North Pole 2004

    My plan was to walk across the Arctic Ocean, from Russia to Canada via the North Pole; 1,240 miles alone and unsupported. I sometimes wonder where the 26-year-old me found the balls to attempt something so audacious. I briefed the press in a borrowed jacket; my sponsor's logo held on with safety pins.

  • Refuelling, mid-Siberia

    Somewhere between Krasnoyarsk and Khatanga. Most maps show blank tundra between the two, though it's roughly the same as flying from London to Rome.

  • Downtown Khatanga

    One of the coldest and strangest places I've visited. One day, some one will make a momentous horror film here.

  • Sredny Ostrov

    Our last port of call (after flying nearly 900km by helicopter from Khatanga) was the military airstrip at Sredny, a seemingly endless Cold War runway built in the late fifties as a stepping stone for Russian TU-95 Bear bombers to reach North America.

  • Touchdown

    The view as we came in to land at my starting point, the safe edge of the pack ice north of Severnaya Zemlya. On that morning, the Arctic Ocean looked and felt like a different planet.

  • Realisation

    Pulling my two fully-laden sleds in tandem, (180kg or 396lbs), the gravity of my situation hit me hard. I lapped the helicopter for photographs, and hugged and back-slapped an awkward goodbye to my team, my girlfriend, and the Russian crew.

  • Self-portrait, March 2004

    The first photograph I took during the expedition, about two hours after the helicopters left. I'm not sure what to read into my expression; my emotions oscillated wildly for the first day or two. You can see my bear deterrent -a Saiga 12K shotgun- strapped to the front sled.

  • Self-portrait #2, March 2004

    My first evening in the tent. I remember my relief, a week or two later, that it was finally warm enough to use my satellite phone without wearing gloves. The black mesh bag contained all my personal stuff – diary, toothbrush and The Life of Pi.

  • View from the sleeping bag

    Hoar frost glistening in the light of my head torch. The tent was perpetually lined with the stuff. I left the small vent open to avoid carbon monoxide poisoning when the stove was on.

  • Pressure Ridges

    Sisyphus was punished for his hubris, a story I pondered on several occasions. The ice was rarely flat, and the effort required to negotiate this sort of terrain is hard to articulate.

  • Self -portrait #3

    It was windy when I took this. I can't remember much else.

  • Perspective

    A typical view for much of the 72 days I was on the Arctic Ocean. I've climbed a pressure ridge to look for a better route, but the conditions make it impossible to judge distance or scale.

  • Sun Dog

    Seen most commonly at high latitudes, a sun dog -or parhelion- is caused by refraction of the sun's rays through fine airborne ice crystals known as diamond dust.

  • Frozen Lead

    Leads -cracks in the thicker pack ice- are a perennial feature of sea ice, and frequently proved a daunting obstacle. Thankfully it was cold enough for this one to freeze before I crossed it.

  • Will the line stretch out to th' crack of doom?

    Another lead, this time narrow and in thick, multi-year ice.

  • Whiteout

    Loading the sledge on a particularly unpleasant morning: near-zero visibility and my tent and gear coated with rime and windblown snow.

  • Pressure Ridge

    I planted my ski (190cm or 6'3") to give some scale. This one ran east to west; a decent hurdle as I headed north.

  • Stepping Stones

    There are some days when it feels as if the Arctic Ocean is trying to kill you, and there are others when it seems benevolent, when the frozen gods smile and give you a shove in the right direction.

  • Dark Nilas

    Pushing my luck, tracking the edge of a barely-frozen lead, trying to find a way across the brash ice. The surface was thin enough that my strides created ripples and waves.

  • Drysuit

    Inspired by Børge Ousland's pioneering use of an immersion suit on (and in) the Arctic Ocean, I used mine to swim across leads I either couldn't find a way across, or decided not to detour around.

  • Wet Feet

    Heavy snowfall made it hard to judge the thickness of the ice. This was the site of a lucky escape – both feet went through the ice but I managed to scramble forwards and out using my ski poles.

  • Self-Portrait #4

    Everything changed colour during my 72 days on the ice. My eyes became bluer, my beard went a crazy ginger, my face tanned like leather, my lips went Crayola pink and my eyebrows were bleached white. I fear ultraviolet light had a hand in this.

  • Scenery

    One of the peculiar things about travelling solo on the Arctic Ocean is the knowledge that what you're seeing is unique to you. I am the only person in the world to have seen this lump of ice, the size of a Portakabin and extruded like Anish Kapoor's Svayambh.

  • Deterioration

    At around the fifty-day mark, the ice and weather conditions became markedly worse. I had days of endless whiteout, and a frighteningly fractured surface to traverse. These photos scare me more now than the conditions did at the time.

  • Deterioration #2

    Occasionally things got really difficult, and I'd find myself strapping my skis and poles to the top of the pulk and scrambling over ridges on all fours.

  • 90° North

    From my diary: "Ninety degrees north. The axis of the earth's rotation. The North Geographic Pole. I've had 68 days to rehearse a speech, yet when I turned on the video camera and counted down the last few feet on my GPS, I didn't know what to say. I still don't."