Edinburgh Adventurer to embark on world first expedition to Arctic Northwest Passage
32-year-old Mark Agnew is hoping to fundraise more than £25,000 for the Wilderness Foundation
An Edinburgh adventurer is preparing to begin the world’s first attempt to kayak the Arctic’s 2000-mile Northwest Passage in 90 days to raise money for charity.
Mark Agnew, 32, along with his three American team members will start from Bylot Island, Nunavut, Canada next month and aim to reach Tuktoyaktuk, an Inuit hamlet following the historic route linking the Atlantic with the Pacific.
The professional adventurer, who is leaving his wife, Sophie, and one-year old daughter behind in London, is trying to fundraise more than £25,000 for the Wilderness Foundation UK, a charity which offers education and therapy programmes for young people and adults to help them reconnect to society.
Agnew has previously attempted to row the Atlantic twice, but was not able to complete it on each occasion. It led Agnew to suffer a mental health spiral, which made him feel worthless and unmotivated. It was after a year that his mental health improved, and he began to set himself challenges.
“After failing to row the Atlantic twice, I felt utterly worthless. I was overcome with feelings of humiliation and failure. It began to seep into every aspect of my life, and I became lethargic,” Agnew said. “I wasn’t clinically depressed, but the feeling of being pathetic became overwhelming. Eventually, I decided I needed to drag myself out of my hole by going on adventures again.”
He trained for his expedition by kayaking on the Thames and training with a polar region expedition paddler, Jeff Allen, who has aided Agnew improving his fitness and kayaking technique. He also kayaked around Bass Rock.
On the journey, the team will munch through between 4,000 – 6,000 calories each day and will camp on land every night. They will place a tripwire, which will let out a bang, if a polar bear gets near the camp.
The voyage is only feasible because the Arctic’s ice is melting due to climate change.
“This is really the ‘voyage that shouldn’t happen’. One hundred years ago, the Northwest Passage would have been frozen almost all year-round, but now we are going to be able to kayak the 2000-miles in a single season. A rather devastating example of how much climate change has affected the planet,” Agnew added.
Mark will follow the same route used by the British Arctic exploration voyage, led by Sir John Franklin in 1845. The 1845 expedition finished in chaos with the ships getting stuck in the ice and 129 crew members dead.
The expedition can be followed online and with updates on social media https://www.thearcticcowboys.com and @adventureagnew on Twitter and Instagram.