Читать книгу Polar Exploration. A practical handbook for North and South Pole expeditions онлайн

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To cater for this burgeoning market, experienced polar adventurers – including specialists in North and South Pole treks – are turning their hands to guiding. Although well established on the world's mountains, guiding the public on ski or dogsled expeditions to the poles is comparatively new. These trips serve as an introduction to the world of polar expeditioning, as training towards more serious undertakings, or simply as ‘peak-bagging’ exercises. Full-length guided expeditions, from a coastline to a pole, are less common but on the increase; and very recently élite guides have begun leading a ski trek from Canada to the North Pole, the ‘K2’ of polar expeditions. This most gruelling of treks was once the domain of professional adventurers, but now paying customers can simply hire a guide and have a go.

One upshot of this emerging industry is a desire among guides to standardise guiding practices, encourage professional conduct throughout the entire polar guiding process, and endorse those dedicated few who make it their profession. In April 2010 a meeting of the world's pre-eminent polar guides was held in Longyearbyen, Norway, to discuss the formation of an international polar guides association. This body hopes to set a paradigm that emerging guides can aspire to with the knowledge that they will be among the elite of polar travellers. But in order to become an endorsed guide, the polar adventurer will first have to rack up an impressive personal history of Arctic and Antarctic expeditions, by and large following the widely accepted model outlined in this book.