Is your journey really necessary?

Pen Hadow goes to the North Pole quite often. For a price he’ll take you there too. When not under- taking one of his private expeditions he acts as a guide for his own travel company. For those with the time and cash and courage he can organise an arduous months-long trek. If you have to cram your polar adventure into your annual three-week holiday, then you can join one of his ‘Last Degree’ trips: you’ll be dropped by plane some 50 miles short of the Pole and make the last part of the journey over the ice on skis or, if you prefer, by snow-mobile. Hadow has escorted a client suffering from muscular dystrophy, he has posed at the Pole with a wheelchair-bound 11-year-old. The Arctic is still dangerous — the things that are likely to kill you there (thin ice, a polar bear) will do so far faster than a plane can arrive for a rescue — but the last places on earth are now tourist destinations and their comparative accessibility makes it harder than ever to imagine a rational response to the question of why anyone would risk their life to go to either Pole.