It sounds like a yarn from a book of boys’ adventure stories. This week, when his friends are enjoying the school holidays, Jordan Maguire will be dodging polar bears and clambering over ice ridges in temperatures of -80C.

The 15-year-old hopes to return to school in a fortnight as the youngest person to walk to the North Pole.

Maguire will leave his family home in Uplawmoor, Renfrewshire, tomorrow to set out on a challenge that has proved too great for many adult adventurers. He will be expected to ski for 10 hours a day, dragging an 80kg sled laden with camping equipment and food supplies 111 miles across potentially hazardous ice.

“We have to take off our skis and hold them above our heads in a V-shape if we see a polar bear. That prevents them getting up on their hindlegs while our expedition leader gets his gun,” says Maguire matter-of-factly, after waiting until his mother, Karen, leaves the room. “She worries about me, probably too much.”

Karen, 40, and her husband, Bernard, an inventor, have signed the disclaimer that the Norwegian expedition leader, Borge Ousland, 43, requests from all participants. Presumably the couple are reassured by the fact the explorer has done this trip successfully several times before, as well as similar ventures to the South Pole.

Maguire, a fourth-year pupil at Hutchesons’ Grammar School in Glasgow, is unfazed by the dangers. “I’m not too worried about polar bears. I’m more worried that something small will happen, like one of us getting an injury, which will prevent us from reaching the pole.”

Maguire and the eight other adventurers taking part in Ousland’s expedition are due to arrive at the pole on April 20 or 21, depending on their progress. If they succeed, Maguire, whose 16th birthday is on August 23, will shave three months off the record set by the explorer David Hempleman-Adams’s daughter Alicia, who was also 15 when she walked to the North Pole last April.

In addition to basic rations of freeze-dried pasta, stews, soup and meat, Maguire is taking his own supply of chocolate and a celebratory cake baked by his mother. He plans to share this around once they reach the pole, where, conditions permitting, they will spend their last night before flying back to base in a helicopter.

“I can’t believe I am finally getting to go,” says Maguire, who has dedicated the last 18 months to preparing for the trip. “Now that our departure is so close I’m just desperate to get started.” He hopes to speak to his mother every couple of days by satellite phone and plans to send a blog home, updating family and friends on his progress.

The youngster has been interested in the North Pole for as long as he can remember. “He was never into Spiderman and Batman like other boys his age,” says his mother. Instead he spent his childhood watching documentaries and reading up on early polar explorers such as Captain Scott and Roald Amundsen.

In 2004 Maguire heard about Ben Saunders and his attempt to make the first solo and unsupported ski crossing of the Arctic Ocean, from Russia to Canada via the North Pole. The schoolboy was hooked. He followed the then 26-year-old explorer’s daily weblog and, when Saunders returned, the two spoke on the telephone. “That was really inspirational. I knew then that I definitely wanted to go to the North Pole.”

Ousland’s team will set out from “Borneo”, a drifting Russian ice station about 89 degrees north. From there they will pull their sleds through the hostile environment, over pack ice mountains and potentially fatal areas of thin ice, and swim, fully clothed, through leads — lakes formed by large cracks in the surface.

To prepare for the physical challenge Maguire has been running, hill climbing, boxing, playing rugby and going to the gym. The best training of all, though, has been pulling a stack of tyres tied to his waist up and down a field for hours at a time. “I think knowing what to expect is the best preparation. It will be very boring,” he says.

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