Young Britons to cross Antarctica

The four will try to complete the journey by January

Four adventurers will attempt to become the youngest and fastest British-based team to cross Antarctica.

The group hopes to complete the 1,000-mile journey in two months on skis and surf-kites going from east to west.

Sir Ernest Shackleton was the last person to try the route in 1914, but his ship was crushed by ice.

Expedition leader Patrick Woodhead, 26, said: "The old explorers would be pleased that finally this challenge is going to get done."

Mr Woodhead will be joined by David de Rothschild and Alastair Ver Nicoll, both 30, all three from Notting Hill in west London.

Canadian Paul Landry, in his forties, is the oldest member of the group.

Although the chances are good there is room for unpleasantness Sir Ranulph Fiennes

They will fly from the UK on 27 October before taking up the skis on 5 November on the Trans-Antarctic Mountains in the east of the continent.

They should complete the 345-mile trip to the South Pole on 10 December, where they will swap to kite surfs for the 745-mile second leg.

They hope to reach Patriot Hills on the west side by the first week in January.

"No-one has even tried to do it since then," said Mr Woodhead of Shackleton's 1914 expedition.

"People have traversed Antarctica but never in the same way he envisaged," he told BBC News.

Escape

Sir Ernest Shackleton first planned the route 100 years ago.

But in 1914 his Antarctic expedition was thwarted when his ship, the Endurance, became trapped in sea ice.

The group was stuck for 15 months before Shackleton and a small crew sailed 800 miles in an open boat to South Georgia island.

Mr Woodhead wants to complete Shackleton's challenge

They then trekked over the mountains and found a whaling station from where he launched a successful rescue operation to save the rest of his men.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Britain's leading explorer, believes the team faces some of the same difficulties as Shackleton.

He said: "These guys can fall into crevasses just as Shackleton could fall into crevasses.

"We don't have anything to detect where crevasses are, you just fall into them and then you know that they were there.

"Although the chances are good there is room for unpleasantness."