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

This exceptional book is a first-hand record of an astonishing journey – one that will probably never be repeated

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 in Spitsbergen, having attained the North Pole and crossed the frozen Arctic Ocean for the first time. Travelling and living on ice that was in continual motion, sometimes buckling and breaking beneath them, they had endured extreme cold and months of winter darkness, and faced frequent encounters with polar bears. It stands today as one of the greatest expeditions of all time.

The book is illustrated with unpublished photographs and other personal materials from the Wally Herbert archive, as well as rare items from public and private collections. An impressive team of experts – polar travellers, explorers and scientists – contribute their reflections on the Arctic wilderness and their appreciation of this remarkable feat of heroism, epic endeavour and scientific enterprise.

Wally Herbert wrote that trying to fix the position of The Geographic North Pole was as difficult as stepping on the shadow of a bird flying overhead. Now the Arctic Ocean as a whole is the subject of headlines worldwide because of global warming, the shrinking ice cap, the opening up of new northerly trade routes and competition for potentially vast untapped mineral resources. Across the Arctic Ocean is thus a timely account of the last great frontier in a rapidly changing world, and will appeal to all those interested in exploration, polar science, the great outdoors, and the spirit of adventure.

'What compels a man to risk everything on a dream? Why would anyone put themselves through hell and back all for the sake of walking across a frozen ocean? In these pages you’ll discover why and how something as formidable as this challenge was achieved for the very first time. Sir Wally Herbert was the man who did it and rightly earned his place in history. It’s an elemental story of men chasing their ambitions over the polar horizon and travelling into the unknown. These were true explorers.' – Sir Ranulph Fiennes

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.