THE teenage daughter of a British explorer is to follow in her father’s frostbitten footsteps in an attempt to become the youngest person to reach the North Pole on foot.

Alicia Hempleman-Adams, 15, daughter of David Hempleman-Adams, is to trek across the Arctic wilderness of Baffin Island in northern Canada, on her first adventure among jagged mountain peaks and glacial ice.

If she is successful, Alicia will break her second world record — at the age of 8, she was flown in to meet her father at the end of his 600-mile journey to the North Pole to become the youngest person ever to reach the spot.

This time, accompanied by Jo Simmons, her PE teacher from Stonar School, near Atworth, in Wiltshire, she will walk 200 miles for the ultimate school trip. The team of four’s journey will take three weeks. Yesterday Alicia was finalising her training at an ice-rink in Bayswater, Central London, before flying to Canada next week.

She said that she had been preparing over the past two months by pulling sledges along a beach and getting used to walking with a rucksack.

The teenager, who keeps fit by swimming and playing hockey and netball, was chosen to attempt the journey when a team member dropped out.

She said yesterday: “I think we are pretty prepared. We have got all the kit so we should not have any frostbite.

“It’s going to be pretty cold, but amazing scenery. It’s minus 20 degrees at the moment and it might get down to minus 30.”

In 1996 David Hempleman-Adams became the first Briton to walk solo and unsupported to the South Pole. The 48-year-old adventurer from Wiltshire, who has also trekked to the North Pole twice, said yesterday that he was all too well aware of the difficulties and admitted that he was nervous about letting Alicia go.

“It took me a long time before I said yes because I know it is cold and horrible, but I think she had made up her mind,” he said. “I am a little apprehensive. It’s going to be very hard. It’s 200 miles in low temperatures in hard terrain — glaciers, frozen rivers and lakes.

“She is half my size and a teenager so I think the cold will be a big problem. Because of Alicia’s relative inexperience, it is a huge undertaking.”

Alicia said that adventuring was not her main aim in life — she would prefer to do something “more arty” in the long term.

She holds a Duke of Edinburgh Award bronze medal and has almost completed the tasks for her silver.

Her father, who broke three world records in November and December with his ballooning exploits, said: “I have tried to stress to her that if she does not finish it’s not a problem; she’s got the rest of her life to do it. You have got to enjoy it. There’s no other reason for doing adventure.”

His advice to Alicia, the eldest of his three daughters, was to “take it easy” and get used to the conditions.

Mr Hempleman-Adams’s wife Claire, meanwhile, is also trying to remain calm about the trip. Mr HemplemanAdams said: “She has always thought I’m silly — she hasn’t said that about Alicia, but she is also apprehensive.

“She feels definitely that Alicia’s too young to be doing this, and in an ideal world it would have been better a couple of years on, but this is what she wants to do.”

When his 90-year-old grandmother heard of the latest plan, she exclaimed: “Oh God, not again.”

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