| Nationalities: | Britain (UK). |
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One of only 41 people in history to have reached both the North and South Poles on foot, Tom Avery is one of the UK’s leading polar explorers. He achieved this remarkable feat at the tender age of 29, making him the youngest Briton to do so. Tom’s mountaineering career began at the age of sixteen, rock and ice climbing in Wales and Scotland, before going on to lead expeditions to the Alps, Tanzania, the Andes, the Atlas Mountains, New Zealand and Tibet. Tom electrified the exploration world by recreating Robert Peary’s disputed 1909 expedition to the North Pole, the fastest team to reach the Pole, a feat which is still listed in the Guinness Book of Records ten years on. Tom divides his time between home in the Cotswolds and Switzerland, where he is co-founder of Verbier Exclusive, which specialises in luxury ski holidays in the Alpine resort of Verbier. Tom is married to Mary and has three children, Maud, Olive and Nell.
The current record for a coast-to-coast crossing of Greenland was set in 2008 and is 17 days, 21 hours and 30 minutes achieved by Patrick Peters and Matt Spenceley, a Luxembourg/British pair. A handful of teams (from Canada, Norway and Sweden) have crossed Greenland’s ice cap in faster times, but the 67°N team’s goal is the full coast-to-coast record. They aim to complete the Greenland crossing, made famous by Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen in 1888, in just 10 to 12 days