A 16-year-old British schoolboy on Saturday became the youngest person ever to trek to the South Pole, his team said.
Lewis Clarke celebrated with a bowl of pasta with fresh parmesan cheese, his first real meal since setting off on the gruelling 1,129km journey from the coast on Dec. 2 last year.
The teenager and his guide, Carl Alvey, traveled across Antarctica on skis, unsupported except for a few food drops and braving temperatures as low as minus-50?C, according to Clarke’s Web site.
“I’m really happy, but mostly relieved that for the first time in 48 days I don’t have to get up tomorrow and drag my sled for nine hours in the snow and icy wind,” Clarke said in a statement carried by British media.
“Today was really hard, the closer I got to the Pole the slower I went, my legs had had enough. But now I’m here and I’ve had some spaghetti bolognese and I am sitting in a heated tent,” he added.
RELIEVED
The pair arrived at the South Pole at 6pm GMT and after tucking into his meal, Clarke called his relieved parents at home in Bristol.
“Coming home will be a bit weird for him, I’m sure, after seven weeks of almost complete solitude,” his father, Steven Clarke, told the BBC.
“But it’ll be a few days off, a party and then onto GCSE revision,” he added, referring to the national school exams that the young adventurer will have to take in May and June.
NEW RECORD?
Clarke, who raised money for Prince Charles’ charity for young people, the Prince’s Trust, is expected back in Britain on Friday when he hopes his record will be verified.
Guinness World Records said the record for the youngest person to trek overland to the South Pole without the use of dogs or motorized vehicles was set by 18-year-old Canadian Sarah Ann McNair-Landry in January 2005.
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