This year sees the centennial year of Polar Exploration – Scott, Parry, Shackelton, are all the names that we associate with the ground breaking epic stories that formed the reputations of these last unpopulated wildernesses on our planet.

Historic journeys that were forged in hardship and grim determination to conquer the unknown, with all but the most basic knowledge and equipment. No planes, no research stations to reach at the Poles, no communication and no rescue if it all went wrong, as was so dramatically illustrated in Captain Scott’s fated Antarctic expedition of 1912 which resulted in the loss of the whole team.

One hundred years on and equipment may have improved; it is lighter and more high tech. There are many successful and unsuccessful expeditions to learn from, satellites allow you to communicate direct from the ice and rescue planes can be called upon if things get dire, but it is still one of the toughest undertakings that you can embark on, on Earth, so the journeys continue and the challenges get greater. The fastest, the most difficult route, the youngest, the oldest and now the longest ever continuous land journey by a British Military unit, to mark the centenary year and to honour Scott’s ultimate sacrifice to Polar history.

The Royal Marine Commando team led by Captain Sean Chapple will be following in Scott’s footsteps later this year as they set forth for the South Pole at the beginning of November.

This will in fact be the first Royal Navy Polar expedition since the Scott epic, marking Polar Quest team’s journey as something special that will hopefully result in them standing on the original position of the South Pole as Scott did back in 1912. The magnetic Pole shifts gradually each year and is current position some miles from Scott’s original Pole.
Polar Quest has been a two-part journey through 2006 to mark the one hundred years of Polar exploration. The first expedition took place earlier this year when the team successfully completed their unassisted walk into the North Pole where they linked up with thirty young people who had flown to the Pole as part of the Polar Watch team having won through a selection process from schools throughout southern England.

With mission one completed all attention and was turned towards the longer and more extreme expedition to the south. Captain Chapple however has a further unique twist to his Polar journey, where as Scott took dog sledges, Chapple is taking kites, yes kites! The target for the team is to walk unassisted from the Patriot Hills to the South Pole in 45 days, then to return to their evacuation point at Resolute Bay in 20 days under kite power.

Kites have in recent years become a major item in the Polar Explorers kit list. Fiennes, Dickinson and Laundry have all made use of kites in their journeys and the Polar Quest team are hoping that their kite power will serve two purposes on their trip. Firstly to take them from the current South Pole position to Scott’s original point, then to take them on their return journey in less than half the time it will have taken them to arrive at the Pole. The winds from the South Pole spiral out, so hence the reason for only going one way, it will be much easier to journey downwind rather than upwind, which an inward journey would require, not forgetting of course that each member of the team will be hauling a 140kg sledge known as a ‘Pulk’ with them.

So the kites will be a critical factor in the team’s planning and being the Marines nothing has been left to chance. So over the past year the Polar Quest team has been working closely with the Paracademy’s snowkite instructors Neil Godbold and Adam Horner to gain the skills that will be needed to make their Polar kite journey. After their initial kite flying, safety training and kit development in the UK with Adam, the team needed to have a full rehearsal and complete their kiting skills in snow conditions with Neil. This took place during in August this year and to find snow at this time of year in Europe meant only one thing - a glacier in Norway.

So while the UK was basking in its summer the Polar Quest team were living on the ice and being put through their paces on the Folgefon glacier in southern Norway. Neil was also joined during the week by Norwegian snowkite expert Niklas Norman, who has recently returned from an all Norwegian record breaking crossing of Greenland by kite. During this expedition the team set up a new distance record of over 270miles travelled in one day by kite power. Between them Neil and Nicholas brought the teams skills on from flying and walking with kites, to moving on their skis under kite power and then finally by the end of the week moving as a team in formation across the glacier with laden sledges. Sounds straight forward but it required long days of hard work by the Polar Quest team to bring the basic power kiting skills they had learned back in the UK onto those required for a Polar journey.

The training days that stretched well into the long 24hr daylight nights not only covered the basics of moving on the snow, but also self rescue and safety techniques should the worst happen taken from IKO training package delivered by Neil through to specific twist and tweaks on kite snow travel learned the hard way by Nicholas on his own snow journey. Of course Paracademy’s kite training has formed only part of what the Polar Quest team have needed to undertake in the lead up to the longest unsupported Polar land journey by the British forces, so its been a long year of planning, logistics, personal fitness training, fund raising and of course kiting.

On the 12th November the Polar Quest team finally set foot on ice at Patriot Hills and have begun their long haul across Antarctica towards the South Pole.