Harry will join injured troops in Polar challenge

Prince Harry is to battle extreme temperatures in a test of punishing physical endurance by joining a team of wounded military servicemen who are trekking to the North Pole.
By The Newsroom
Published 26th Mar 2011, 06:00 BST

He will join the expedition for a five-day stint as the team walk across the frozen Arctic in temperatures as low as minus 60C.

Harry will be tracked for a documentary to be screened later this year on BBC1, tentatively called North Pole Warriors.

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The full expedition is expected to take around four weeks and will cover up to 200 miles.

Members of the team will be pulling their equipment on sledges, each weighing more than 100kg.

Harry – patron of the Walking With The Wounded charity – will join the group at their base camp in Longyearbyen, northern Norway, on March 29, to begin training.

His fellow travellers will include four wounded soldiers seriously hurt during active service, two of them amputees.

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Harry will leave the group on April 5, to return to the UK for further military training as he qualifies as an Apache Helicopter pilot with the Army Air Corps.

His team consists of Afghanistan veterans Captain Martin Hewitt, 30, Captain Guy Disney, 28, Sergeant Steve Young, 28, and Private Jaco Van Gass, 24.

Accompanying them will be expedition leader Inge Solheim, guide Henry Cookson and charity founders Edward Parker and Simon Daglish.

Harry said: “What the Walking With The Wounded North Pole Team is undertaking is an enormous adventure of the most challenging order.

“I’m delighted that their training has been going well so far, and that they feel prepared for the task ahead.”