On Easter Day, April 6, 1969, four men — Wally Herbert, Roy ‘Fritz’ Koerner, Allan Gill and Major Ken Hedges — with four teams of Greenland Inuit sled dogs reached the North Pole during an expedition that would go down in history as the first crossing of the surface of the Arctic Ocean, the longest sustained dogsled journey on sea ice in the history of polar exploration, and the first undisputed expedition to reach and return from the North Pole on sea ice. 

Hedges, the last surviving member of the expedition, passed away Oct. 11 at the age of 88. 

A former Royal Army Medical Corps physician and member of the British Special Air Service (SAS), Hedges served as medic on the 476-day, 5,987-kilometre trek across the top of the world from Point Barrow, Alaska, to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. Together with his team, Hedges survived encounters with polar bears, endured months of darkness and disorienting weather and battled ice floes. The British Trans-Arctic Expedition has been described as one of the last great polar journeys and would not be possible today due to climate change. 

Hedges spent his early childhood years in Fiji. With the outbreak of the Second World War, the family returned to England, just in time to experience the Blitz. Hedges graduated from University of Liverpool Medical School in 1962 and in 1964 joined the SAS as Regimental Medical Officer, where he was invited to join the British Trans-Arctic Expedition. The four members of the crossing party were elected Fellows of the Royal Geographical Society, and in 1970 were awarded the Polar Medal at an investiture held by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother at Buckingham Palace.