British trio completes gruelling Arctic challenge

A team of British amateur adventurers today told how they braved polar bears and frostbite to complete one of the last great arctic challenges.

The group, including a nuclear physicist and a tree surgeon, is believed to be the first to trek the 400 miles north across the island of Spitsbergen.

Glenn Morris, 43, from near Tunbridge Wells, Kent, Paul Walker, 36, from Egremont, Cumbria and John Starbuck, 45, from New Hutton, Cumbria, were recuperating today after their ordeal.

They finished the gruelling month-long journey in temperatures as low as minus 38C despite having organiser Major David Johnson airlifted out after just a few days.

Mr Morris said the bid to complete the ‘‘longitudinal traverse’’ of the Norwegian island officially started from its southern tip on April 1.

But they had to make a further 17-day hike to reach that point, as mechanical transport is not allowed in the area.

During that time Royal Army Medical Corps officer Major Johnson, 50, from Ramsbottom, Greater Manchester, nearly lost his frostbitten toes after they turned ‘‘red, black and were covered in pus at the end.’’

After he had been flown out, the remaining three men had to haul even more than their expected 250lb loads across ice sheets and snowy wastelands on their sleds and skis.

On the move for between eight and nine hours a day, they all lost a stone in weight despite eating chocolate and lumps of butter.

The first stages of the journey were the coldest, Mr Morris said, and even in their tents and sleeping bags with the stoves on it rarely got above minus 28C.

Mr Walker, a logistics expert for polar expeditions, also began to suffer the early stages of frostbite but ‘‘roughed it out‘‘ despite ‘‘excruciating’’ pain.

The team had five encounters with polar bears, with nuclear waste disposal scientist Mr Starbuck coming face to face with one as he left a trapper’s hut on the island.

‘‘They are very scary animals and have paws as big as tennis rackets. We had a gun with us but luckily we didn’t have to use it,’’ added Mr Morris, a tree surgeon.

The exhausted trio finally arrived at Verlegahuken, on the north tip of the island, the day before yesterday.

‘‘You cannot imagine how good it is to have a shower after what we have been through,’’ Mr Morris said. ‘‘None of us has washed since we started out.’’

Mr Morris dedicated his achievement to his mother-in-law, who recently died of motor neurone disease, and said the expedition had raised ‘‘a few thousand pounds’’ for sufferers of the condition.

Speaking from a hotel in Longyearbyen, a town in the Svalbard archipelago which includes Spitsbergen, he added: ‘‘The Norwegians have managed to go south to north, which is no mean feat, but as far as we can establish we are the first to make it this way.

‘‘It is definitely one of the last great polar challenges.’’