THE LONGEST JOURNEY

What made them take on the challenge? “Youthful exuberance and a slight lack of understanding of what it was really going to be like. If you haven’t been on an expedition before, you don’t quite know what you don’t know.”

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