AN EXPLORER IN POLE POSITION

An interview with Polar explorer Mark Wood

Coventry fire-fighter Mark Wood is currently in the midst of a huge personal challenge - to be the first person to reach the Geographic North and South Poles completely unaided, and to raise awareness of climate change in the process. As well as educating businesses, Mark has partnered with the University of Warwick to offer unique learning opportunities to young people on the IGGY programme, and in return, the University has been helping him to prepare for his journey.

Most of us try to do our bit to reduce climate change, whether it’s walking instead of using the car; recycling; turning the central heating down; or buying locally-grown vegetables to reduce our food miles. Mark Wood, however, is going 1,400 miles further than that to raise climate change awareness, by setting out for the geographic North and South Poles. Alone and on skis he is dragging 24.8 kilograms of chocolate to keep him sustained.

The Arctic and Antarctic are, as they say, poles apart from daily life in Coventry where the 43-year-old ex-soldier and fire-fighter calls home. When the North South solo project is completed he will enter the record books as the first solo unsupported and unaided person to reach both of the geographic poles. Climate change is a cause close to his heart. “I have a long-standing education project back home in Coventry,” he says. “This expedition is a great way of engaging those kids with the world around us.”

To this end, Wood has partnered with the University of Warwick’s International Gateway for Gifted Youth (IGGY) programme - a network of bright young people, aged between 11 and 19, who are given access to diverse challenges and learning opportunities. In the past he has delivered successful workshops to IGGY members both face-to-face and via Skype (while he was in the Himalayas on an expedition) and plans to continue these links in the future, helping IGGY members to see the value in challenging themselves.

Wood is educating businesses too. “I'm also reaching out to the corporate world, encouraging them to look at the environmental credentials of their businesses, with a climate change workshop in Norway once I reach the North Pole,” he explains. For him the trip is a personal challenge. “It is my 26th expedition, and almost certainly the most daunting!"

Dr Harbinder Sandhu has used her health psychology expertise to help Wood with his training.

To prepare himself for the rigorous physical exertion ahead, Wood enlisted the help of University of Warwick personal trainer Russell Boorer who devised a gruelling personal fitness programme to enhance his fitness and strength. This included one- and two-hour sessions in the gym, using treadmills and rowers, and a run up and down the length of Gibbet Hill Road. Says Wood: “I'm lucky to have been offered Russell’s help, who is only happy when I am screaming out in pain. The University has also offered me a dietician, psychologist to help me cope with the mental strain of being alone in the wilderness, and a physiotherapist to undo all the pain that Russell's causing me!” Mental preparation is as important as its physical counterpart. In addition, Dr Harbinder Sandhu, from WMS, has used her health psychology expertise to help Wood with his training.

On 10 January 2012 Wood achieved the first half of his expedition when he reached the geographic South Pole, having set off from Hercules Inlet on the west coast of Antarctica. His trip took him across floating sea ice in the most densely-populated polar-bear region of the planet. Wood took 50 days to ski 612 nautical miles to the South Pole, experiencing temperatures of -25°C and wind speeds of 27 mph. On reaching his first goal he remarked “I’d like to say I feel like I’m on top of the world, but I’m actually at the bottom of the world! To be here is just incredible, absolutely amazing even though I know I’m only half way through the expedition.”

The geographic South Pole ceremonial marker is moved every year to compensate for movement of the ice sheets. There’s a permanently-staffed United States Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station there, near which are crosses commemorating those who didn’t make it back home. “There’s a 25 per cent chance I might not make it back alive,” said Wood. “But frankly, if we don’t start taking climate change seriously there’s an even higher probability that our planet won’t survive much longer.”

Great British explorers such as Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who is patron of the expedition, have inspired Wood’s urge to travel to places very few have been before. "All my life I've wanted to walk in the footsteps of the great explorers. But thanks to man's destruction of the planet, the paths they mapped no longer exist. The effects of climate change have left a very different landscape."

The second stage of his polar challenge, the journey to the geographical North Pole, begins in March 2012. Starting at Ward Hunt Island on the coast of the Arctic Ocean, Wood estimates it will take him between 60 and 80 days to cross 700 miles across floating sea ice.

It may be an arduous journey for Wood, but if the North South solo project increases climate change awareness, he knows it will be worth it. “I want people to see that my struggle is a drop in the ocean compared to the struggle the human race is going through now.” Wood has asked people to sponsor him, not by giving their spare change, but by pledging to take small actions to create change. Each pledge is undertaken for two months, and already more than 100 people have taken steps to cut their carbon emissions such as eating less meat and making draft excluders. So far they’ve saved over 21 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent amount of driving from London to Edinburgh 100 times. "So please, get doing," adds Wood, "it'll really spur me on through those long tough days on ice."

You can follow Mark Wood’s expedition on his website.

Former soldier Mark Wood is an explorer, speaker and educator. His first expedition was to the Canadian High Arctic back in 2003. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, an Ambassador to Coventry, an Ambassador to the Prince's Trust and Patron of the Liverpool Wilderness Medicine Society.

By Penelope Jenkins