Sir Wally Herbert, who has died aged 72, was one of the last explorers of the polar regions who was able to make major contributions to geographical discovery and research. From a family background of travel, and an early education in Africa, he spent time travelling throughout the Americas and Europe. His passion for polar regions began in the Antarctic and later extended to the Arctic, where he made the first crossing of the frozen ocean. As time went on, he made a gentle transition to become a writer and artist of the scenes he knew so well.
Wally was born in England into an army family, and went with his family to Egypt aged three, and then to South Africa for nine years. After finishing school, he joined the army, where he studied at the Royal School of Military Survey. Subsequently, he spent 18 months surveying in Egypt and Cyprus. From there he began a slow journey back to Britain through Turkey and Greece, drawing portraits for his board and lodging.
In 1955, he obtained a post in the Antarctic with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (which became the British Antarctic Survey in 1961). He was based at Hope Bay station, near the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula, where much of his work involved surveying which included glaciological studies. Field work was an essential component of this and most of his extensive traverses were made by dog sled; he became an expert in the care and running of husky dogs.
His longest journey was along the mountainous spine of the Antarctic Peninsula from Hope Bay (62º23´S) to Portal Point (64º33´S). This included transits of the notoriously narrow "Catwalk" and the "Waist", where the Herbert Plateau narrows abruptly. During these two years, he sledged some 5,000km. This was when, as with several of his contemporaries, he developed a persistent passion for the polar regions.
Wally's experience with dog sledding led him to a job with the New Zealand Antarctic programme, where his first commission was to go to the west coast of Greenland to purchase dogs for the Antarctic. During this time, he learned much of the Inuit methods of dog driving and developed an enduring interest in their way of life. He continued to the Antarctic to join the New Zealanders with his selected team of 13 dogs.
As leader of the 1961-62 southern exploration party, he surveyed a large area of the Queen Maud range, where he ascended the route up the Beardmore glacier, discovered by Ernest Shackleton in 1908 and followed by Captain Scott in 1911. A request to continue to the south pole was not sanctioned, so his programme was exploration of new territory southwards along the Transantarctic mountains. At the head of the Axel Heiberg Glacier, his party ascended Mount Nansen and descended by a similar route to that taken by Roald Amundsen in 1911, during which he found one of Amundsen's survey cairns. This was the first retracing of these historical traverses first accomplished during the heroic age of exploration. Wally returned to Britain in 1962 and wrote his first book about his experiences, A World of Men.
In 1963, he conceived an idea for a major Arctic expedition and began careful planning, including living with the Inuit in the far north-west. The following spring, he set out with three dog teams and four Inuit to trace the routes described by Otto Sverdrup (1898-1902) and Frederick Cook (1908-09). This led from Greenland to Ellesmere Island and proved a difficult test, largely across pack-ice, for men and equipment.
Wally's best known polar journey was as leader of the British Trans-Arctic Expedition (1968-69), with Allan Gill, Roy Koerner and Kenneth Hedges. Their equipment included four sleds and 40 dogs. The journey began from a base at Point Barrow, Alaska, where the first difficulty to be overcome was access from the shore to the constantly drifting Arctic ice fields. It was planned to make the traverse in three travelling periods, interrupted by the Arctic winter and the summer melt period, when travel over the pack becomes impossible.
After crossing some 1,900km of rough drifting ice, they established a summer camp, in July 1968, at 81°22´N 165°29´W, which became known as "Meltville". Unfortunately, they were not able to reach a position where the drift of the trans-Arctic ice-stream was in their favour (they were drifting around the north pole rather than towards it). This necessitated the expedition camping there for the winter, during which they continued to drift anti-clockwise but not much closer to the pole.
After midwinter, the floe on which they had camped broke in two and, in February, shattered. However, they had to remain until the sunlight returned before continuing the journey which passed the northern pole of inaccessibility. The geographic north pole was attained on April 6 1969. Wally and the other three were unquestionably the first men to have reached this point over the ice surface. From the pole, over difficult ice, they continued to Vesle Tavloya, the most northerly island of the Svalbard archipelago, which was reached on May 29 1969, 464 days from Point Barrow. Other than receiving air-drops, contact with the rest of the world was by radio only.
For this achievement, the first surface traverse of the Arctic, the longest traverse across the Arctic Ocean, reaching the northern pole of inaccessibility and north geographic pole, 6,700km over the pack-ice, Wally was awarded an Arctic bar to his Polar medal and received awards from the Royal Geographical Society and other institutions. His book of the expedition, Across the Top of the World, was published in 1969.
Shortly after his return, he married Marie McGaughey, and within two years they lived, with their baby daughter, Kari, on an island off north-west Greenland making a film about the Inuit hunters.
Greenland was again Wally's polar base when, between 1977 and 1979, he, with Allan Gill, attempted to circumnavigate the island by dog sled and umiak (traditional boat), beginning and ending at Thule. It was estimated that the journey would take 16 months and cover 13,000km. Difficult ice and weather conditions, however, made it impossible. On midsummer day in 1978, they were near Loch Fyne (East Greenland); Wally wrote: "We were forced to take to the land and haul the sledges across steaming tundra and rock bare of snow, swollen rivers, baked mud flats, sand-dunes, swamps and stagnant pools. We were blasted by duststorms and eaten alive by mosquitoes." Mesters Vig was ultimately reached, but the circumnavigation was abandoned, and has yet to be accomplished. Subsequently, he led filming expeditions to north-west Greenland, Ellesmere Island and the north pole for a second time (but by aircraft).
From this period, Wally's literary and artistic career began to dominate. He also lectured extensively. He made a specialised study of the north pole controversy (the problems of Frederick Cook in 1908 and Robert Peary in 1909), and although his analysis effectively resolved rival claims, The Noose of Laurels (1989) was not able to quench many of the passionate opinions. He also worked on his autobiography, The Third Pole, and on a book of his paintings, The Polar World (2007). He was knighted in 2000.
Wally is commemorated in the Antarctic by names of a mountain range and a plateau, and, in the Arctic, the most northern mountain of Svalbard also bears his name. He is survived by Marie, and their elder daughter, Kari, who has also developed a passion for the polar regions. Their younger daughter Pascale predeceased him.
· William Herbert, explorer, born October 24 1934; died June 12 2007
