The Outer Edge Polar Challenge: Chasing the Last Great Wind 

There are moments in a life when the biggest adventure isn’t finding somewhere new. It’s finding  out whether you’re still capable of doing something that frightens you. 

That’s where this expedition begins. Not on a glacier in Iceland, but with a question that wouldn’t  leave me alone: could wind alone power a new generation of polar exploration? A simple thought,  really. But it’s grown into one of the most ambitious expeditions ever attempted on ice. 

In July 2026, a small team of us will deploy onto Iceland’s vast Vatnajökull glacier, one of the  largest ice caps in Europe, a place that swallows sound and scale in equal measure, to attempt  multiple Guinness World Records aboard a purpose-built, zero-emission, wind-powered snowsailer.  Every metre we travel will be driven by nothing but the wind. Every watt of power we use will come  from the sun. No engine. No fuel. No emissions. Just wind, technology, and human judgment,  pitted against one of the most unforgiving landscapes on Earth. 

It started long before Iceland 

Although the expedition officially begins on the glacier, the real journey started years earlier, in the  quieter moments after other expeditions had ended, when I found myself asking a different kind of  question. Not where should I go next, but what kind of expedition actually matters today? 

Because the truth is, the world doesn’t need another person planting a flag somewhere, or racing to  be first across a line on a map. That version of exploration had its time. What matters now is  different: sustainability, technology, honest communication, and finding ways to make the next  generation look at the world and think differently about what’s possible. The Outer Edge Polar  Challenge grew out of that shift, an attempt to ask what a modern expedition could actually look  like, if we let go of the old reasons for doing it. 

Why wind 

For centuries, wind carried explorers further than anything else could. Long before combustion  engines, before aviation, before satellites told us exactly where we stood, the greatest journeys in  human history depended on reading the weather, understanding nature, and working with it rather  than against it. 

Somewhere along the way, we stopped trusting the wind as a serious source of power. This project  asks what happens if we go back to it, deliberately, and with everything modern engineering can  bring to bear. What happens if we build an entire expedition around the oldest renewable energy  source humanity has ever used? 

The answer became the snowsailer. 

Building something that didn’t exist 

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about an expedition like this: the hardest part isn’t the planning.  It’s that the vehicle you need doesn’t exist yet. There was nothing commercially available that could  do what we needed on ice this vast and this hostile, so we built one from nothing. 

Working alongside Advanced Fibreform in Cape Town, we designed an entirely new wind-powered  snowsailer, engineered specifically to survive Iceland’s glaciers. Every gram of it has been fought  over: lightweight composite construction, interchangeable sails that can be reconfigured as  conditions shift beneath us, purpose-built steering, solar-powered electrical systems, satellite communications, and live broadcasting equipment bolted onto a machine that also has to somehow  stay light enough to move on wind alone. Every component has to earn its place, and every  component has to survive. 

More than records 

Yes, we’re chasing Guinness World Records. But if that’s all this was, it wouldn’t be worth the risk.  This expedition is also a live operational experiment, playing out in real time, with real  consequences if it fails. 

Can renewable energy genuinely support remote, extreme exploration, not just power a  demonstration for the cameras? Can modern communications let an audience live an expedition as  it actually happens, rather than hearing about it months later, safely edited into a tidy story? Can a  classroom on the other side of the world follow live environmental data streaming off the glacier,  and learn something real about engineering, physics and sustainability while they do? Those  questions matter long after any record is either broken or missed. 

Broadcasting exploration differently 

Historically, expeditions vanished into the wilderness and reappeared months later with stories  already softened by time and memory. Technology changes that entirely. The Outer Edge Polar  Challenge will run as a continuous livestream, filmed simultaneously as a feature documentary, so  people don’t just hear about what happened afterwards. They experience it as it unfolds. Every  weather call. Every small victory. Every setback we didn’t see coming. Every kilometre fought for.  The audience isn’t watching from a distance. They become part of the expedition itself. 

Partnerships, not sponsorships 

One of the more unusual aspects of how this has come together is how it’s been funded. Rather  than selling logo space on a jacket, we’ve invited a small number of carefully chosen technology  companies to become genuine operational partners in the mission. If a company joins us, its  product has to do real work out on the ice. AI meeting assistants manage the complexity of  expedition planning. Power systems run entirely on renewable energy. Communications platforms  are the only thread connecting the glacier to the rest of the world. Remote tracking follows every  metre we travel. Every partner earns its place by becoming part of the mission, not by decorating it.  That authenticity creates a far more meaningful story than sponsorship ever could, and it means  the partners’ innovations become part of the expedition’s history, not just its funding. 

A personal journey 

For me, this has never really been about glaciers. 

A few years ago, I had a heart attack. Anyone who has lived through something like that knows  what it does to you afterwards, the quiet, uninvited reassessment of everything you thought  mattered. Adventure had always sat at the centre of my life, but suddenly it meant something  different. This was no longer about proving anything to anyone else. It became about finding out  whether challenge, uncertainty and curiosity still had the power to change who I was, at an age  when most people are being told to slow down. 

I’m 67 years old. I have no illusions that this will be easy. The glacier doesn’t care about age. The  wind doesn’t care about experience. Nature remains, as it always has been, wonderfully indifferent  to who you are or what you’ve survived. That indifference is exactly why exploration still matters,  because it asks something of you that nothing else can fake.

The team 

Exploration likes to celebrate individuals, but no expedition has ever been the work of one person.  This one certainly isn’t. Filmmakers. Engineers. Meteorologists. Logistics specialists. Technology  partners. Safety experts. Each one carries something the mission cannot survive without. The  same is true of the extraordinary companies who’ve chosen to support us through operational  technology, renewable power systems, communications, navigation and field equipment. Their  innovations will be woven into this story every bit as much as our own footsteps on the ice. 

Education beyond the glacier 

Perhaps the most important legacy of this expedition won’t be a record at all. It will be what  happens after we come home. 

The expedition forms the foundation of the Outer Edge Polar Challenge education programme,  giving schools a way into renewable energy, engineering, climate science and problem-solving  through a real, unfolding adventure rather than a textbook. Students won’t just read about  exploration after the fact. They’ll analyse live data coming off the glacier, understand the  engineering behind the snowsailer, and see first-hand how technology can be made to work in one  of the harshest environments on the planet. If even one young person decides to become an  engineer, a scientist, an explorer or an entrepreneur because they followed this journey, then the  project will already have done its most important work. 

Why we still explore 

People sometimes ask why exploration still matters, in an age when satellites have already  mapped almost every corner of the Earth. The answer is simple, and it has never really been about  geography. 

It’s about possibility. About asking questions nobody has bothered to answer yet. About building  things that don’t exist because nothing else will do. About discovering what happens when years of  preparation finally meet real uncertainty, out somewhere that owes you nothing. 

The Outer Edge Polar Challenge isn’t an attempt to conquer nature. It’s an attempt to collaborate  with it, to move across one of Europe’s last great wildernesses using nothing more than the same  force that has carried explorers for thousands of years before us. The wind. 

Whether the Guinness World Records fall or not, this expedition has already achieved something  worth having. It shows that exploration can evolve. That it can become cleaner, more connected,  more educational, more collaborative. And perhaps, most importantly, it reminds us that the  greatest adventures still begin the same way they always have: with a single, stubborn question. 

What if? 

To follow the journey live visit our website The Challenge – OEPC – Outer Edge Polar  Challenge 

Watch live here from the 22 July – https://outeredgepolarchallenge.com/track-live-stream/

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You Tube: Charles Werb – YouTube