JOIN USUK teen is youngest to ski to South Pole
She joined her adventurer dad David Hempleman-Adams on the two-week, 156-kilometre trek to the South Pole from explorer Ernest Shackleton’s Farthest South Point, where he had to turn back in 1907. Shackleton’s granddaughter Alexandra Shackleton had met with Hempleman-Adams before the trip and had given the young expeditionist a photograph of her grandfather to take to the Pole.
The nine-strong party completed the journey at 0130 GMT on Friday after a final 14-mile push. “I’m really proud to have actually made it and just really happy,” the younger Hempleman-Adams said by satellite phone from the Pole.
“It’s really exciting to be able to achieve something like this. It hasn’t quite sunk in yet that we’ve actually made it because it’s been such a tough journey but I’m sure it will in the next few days.
“We arrived here and we all just hugged each other and congratulated each other and it was really nice to finally get here.”
The teenage explorer took her homework with her but her father removed some of it from the sledge, saying it would be too heavy.
Hempleman-Adams spent time training for the expedition in a frozen food storage facility in southwest England.
Guinness World Records said the record for the youngest person to trek overland to the South Pole without the use of dogs or motorised vehicles was set by Canadian Sarah Ann McNair-Landry, who was 18 when she reached the Pole in 2005. She made the 1,100-km kite-assisted trip as part of an unsupported expedition led by her mother.