Polar explorer hits back over claims he put lives at risk

The polar explorer Pen Hadow, who was stranded in temperatures as low as minus 37C for eight days, returned to Britain yesterday and took a sideswipe at his rescuers, who had criticised his trek.

Mr Hadow, 41, from Hexworthy in Devon, was met by family and friends at Heathrow airport after completing the first solo unsupported journey from Canada to the geographic North Pole.

Hearrived there on 19 May after covering 478 miles in 64 days. But on the way back he was stranded by bad weather on floating and unstable ice, and ran dangerously low on food supplies. After surviving on half-rations of dried fruit and nuts he was eventually flown to safety, but the rescue team criticised him for setting out so late in the year.

Steve Penikett, of Kenn Borek Air, which is based in Calgary, said the explorer had been "stupid" and had put lives at risk. "Landing on the North Pole at this time of year is not the brightest thing people can do because of the weather and ice conditions," he said. "The ice is breaking up, which makes it very difficult to find somewhere to land.

"The issue was not that Mr Hadow was going to run out of rations, but that people were at risk - the ice breaks and it shouldn't really happen."

But the explorer said yesterday: "If they had called me up and said, 'Pen, for whatever the reason, we need you off the ice', I would stop, I couldn't go on. They're the guys that take me off but that request never came. If the company was really concerned for their pilots they never said something - and they could have said something."

Earlier Mr Hadow, who works as a guide on Arctic expeditions, had said there was nothing unusual about the timing of his trip. "I've organised teams that have been out there later than that," he said on BBC radio. "The ice is breaking up from the moment any expedition ever sets off on the Arctic Ocean, by definition."

Mr Hadow said that thinking about his family was what had kept him going during his lonely and gruelling trek. With his wife, Mary, their four-year-old son, Wilf, and daughter, Freya, aged one, and other relatives, friends and supporters at the airport to meet him, he said: "When I was on thin ice - if I was pushing the limits a bit - I thought of Wilfy. I had this image of picking daffodils on Dartmoor.

"The image of never being able to pick daffodils with Wilf would pop in my head and I would think, 'Don't do it, it's not worth it'."

The explorer also said how he was sad to have missed the first steps taken by Freya. "I need to get to know my daughter because she is only one and I have been busy preparing for this expedition so I haven't got the same sort of relationship with her, which is a sadness, but I'm going to make it my business to catch up." Describing his journey, Mr Hadow said he focused on hauling his sledge, weighing about 115kg (250lb), as far as possible across the ice each day. He used a full-body immersion suit to enable him to swim for up to an hour at a time through the freezing waters, and encountered dangerous polar bears. He collapsed and cried at the foot of his sledge when he finally made it to the Pole and dedicated his trip to his father, who died 10 years ago. He also described how for days he lay "mummified" in his sleeping bag, the wind thrashing at the tent and "bored beyond belief" while waiting to be picked up. "I was at the Pole. I was on top of the axis of the entire planet as it was spinning," he said.