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Topics:
- Adventure
- Leadership
- Motivation & Teamwork
Pen Hadow
Pen Hadow is an explorer who proves the saying 'if you don't at first suceed, try and try again'. A wonderfully erduite and humourous speaker, Pen is fantastic for both motivational speaking engagements and after dinner speaking.
A First By Pen
In May 2003, Pen was catapulted to international fame when he became the first person to complete one of the last great polar challenges - solo, without re-supply, from Canada to the North Geographic Pole. This feat is thought by some to be harder than climbing Everest solo, without oxygen, and demands such a level of skill and endurance that all before had tried and failed. Even polar experts were beginning to think the challenge was perhaps impossible.
It had taken Pen 15 years, three attempts and an exceptional degree of commitment to achieve his dream. Indeed the undertaking had almost cost him his life on more than one occasion, when he broke through the ice and found himself swimming in the sub-zero waters of the Arctic Ocean, many hundreds of miles from the nearest help.
Growing Up
From an early age Pen’s nanny filled his head with tales of Scott and the other great explorers - 'the Antarctic Boys' as Pen came to know them. His father also told many stories of the sporting prowess and great deeds of Pen's illustrious ancestors, as far back as Tudor times. Among them was Douglas Hadow, a member of the seven-strong party led by Edward Whymper that made the first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865 - and one of the four who fell to their deaths on the descent. Pen discovered early the benefits that come with a high degree of compliance to sports training programmes, and applied these to his own extra-curricula endeavours.
Aged 15 he devised a punishing training schedule to enable him to attempt a traditional school marathon, which in 1977 was long before marathons had become a public participation sport. He completed the route in three hours and later learned it had not been done since 1927, fifty years earlier.
In the 1980's Pen became the youngest-ever executive at IMG sports organisation, where he concentrated on promoting the talents of international sports stars and sports events.
A decade later, in 1995, he set up the world's first specialist polar guide service, almost single-handedly opening up the Arctic and Antarctic to 'allegedly ordinary' people with his pioneering travel business, The Polar Travel Company. His vision was of empowering people from all walks of life to fulfil their polar ambitions.
In 1997 he organised, inspired and secured most of the funding for the first all-women's relay to the North Geographic Pole, thereby enabling 20 women, with no previous polar experience, from all backgrounds and age groups, to find fame and walk into The Book of Guinness Records. In so doing, he changed the perception of what many thought was possible in the polar regions.
Try and Try Again
Twice he had faced failure in his all-consuming mission to be the first man in history to reach the Pole, having walked - and swum - alone and without resupply the 480 miles across the Arctic Ocean from Canada to the North Geographic Pole. On his third attempt, when the Pole finally seemed to be within his grasp, Pen fell through the thin ice and very nearly drowned. When he then found he had lost a ski in the water, he realised he would have to complete the last 150 miles of this journey on foot.
During three months he saw nothing and nobody, save a small snow bunting. He ended up talking to his snowbrush, 'Mavis', his ski poles, and his sledge 'Baskers'. They became his friends and kept him company, as he averaged 7.5 miles a day battling his way up and down ice rubble, while pulling a 19-stone sledge, and swimming across stretches of open water, on his 480-mile odyssey, where the temperature was -28C to -46C 24-hours a day for the first 35 days.
Remarkably, just eight months later, in February 2004, Pen became the first Briton to trek, without resupply, to both Poles. He achieved this as he led ex-French Foreign Legionnaire Simon Murray (63) on a new 1,200km route to the South Geographic Pole, enabling Murray to become the oldest person by a decade to achieve the feat.
Working with the Environment
Pen currently works with the Met Office, the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research, and other research and campaigning organisations dedicated to global climate change issues and the concept of carbon neutrality, to see how he can use his unique first-hand experiences on the Arctic Ocean to promote understanding amongst policy-makers and the public of these life-threatening issues.
