Across the Arctic Ocean Original Photographs from the Last Great Polar Journey

About this book

On 21 February 1968, Wally Herbert and his team of three companions and forty huskies set out from Point Barrow, Alaska, embarking on a journey that no one had ever attempted. Sixteen hard months later they finally set foot once more on solid land, having attained the North Pole and crossed the frozen Arctic Ocean for the first time via its longest axis. It stands today as one of the greatest expeditions of all time.

Illustrated with unpublished photographs and other personal materials from the Herbert archive, this exceptional photography book Across the Arctic Ocean is a first-hand record of an astonishing journey one that with rising temperatures and Arctic ice melt will probably never be repeated. An impressive team of explorers and polar experts, including Wally Herberts daughter Kari, also provide their reflections and tributes to the expedition and to Wally Herbert, contributing to a remarkable visual and personal testimony of this historic event.

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Biography

Sir Wally Herbert was a pioneering polar explorer as well as an award-winning writer and artist. In the course of his polar career he travelled and mapped thousands of miles in both the Antarctic and the Arctic, often in previously unexplored areas. He later lived among the Greenland Inuit with his wife and young daughter Kari. He is most famously remembered as the leader of the first expedition to cross the Arctic Ocean, sledging with dogs from Alaska to Spitsbergen via the North Pole. His numerous books include his memoirs, The Polar World, and he was working on this new book when he passed away in 2007.

Huw Lewis-Jones is a historian of exploration and photo editor with a PhD from the University of Cambridge. He travels in the Arctic and Antarctica each year working as a polar guide. Formerly Curator at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, and the National Maritime Museum, London, he is now an award-winning author, who writes and lectures widely about adventure and the visual arts. Among his many books are the companions to this volume, The Conquest of Everest, which won the History Award at the 2013 Banff Mountain Festival, and The Crossing of Antarctica, both created with veteran explorer George Lowe.