Ann Daniels, 40, a mother of four from Whimple, Devon, was ordered yesterday morning to board a helicopter and return to Siberia. The Russians were worried about weather conditions and had ordered the evacuation of all polar expeditions for their own safety.

A disappointed Ms Daniels had expected the helicopter to drop additional supplies.

The blow came after she endured the worst day of her expedition, hindered by strong winds and broken ice. Ms Daniels had already been beset with problems after bureaucratic delays held up the start of her trek by 16 days.

The former bank manager had taken 20 days to cross a quarter of the 575 miles she expected to cover and had expected to trek for another 40 days. She was equipped to swim through freezing water in a bright orange immersion suit and had already fired a handgun at a marauding polar bear.

Ms Daniels, a professional polar explorer, had been warned by Russian authorities to complete her expedition within 60 days. She would have become the third person to survive such a solo trip. The last woman trying to reach the Pole alone, the French-Finnish adventurer Dominick Arduin, died last year when the ice broke up in a storm around her kayak.

Ms Daniels will be reunited at the end of next week with her partner, Tom O’Connor, her ten-year-old triplets, Joseph, Lucy and Rachel, and 22-month-old daughter, Sarah.

Ms Daniels knew she would encounter open water, thin ice, a constantly moving terrain, enormous ice ridges up to 30 feet high and plunging temperatures reaching -50C. At the beginning of the expedition the sun did not rise but remained 6° below the horizon. The Arctic is one of the Earth’s harshest environments. The ice is constantly moving and splitting with leads (open water) ranging from inches to kilometres in width. In places the ice is only a few inches thick.

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