Inflight Magazine of Brussels Airlines

In person

Alain Hubert

Belgian environmentalist and co-founder of the International Polar Foundation, Alain Hubert, was born in Brussels in 1953. He has had a passion for extreme sports since he was young and now acts as a goodwill ambassador for Unicef Belgium

Text James Kevin Mac Goris
Images Alain Hubert/Arctic Arc 2007

I don’t really have a mentor, but since childhood I have been inspired by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who was the first to reach the South Pole in 1911.

His fellow Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen was another inspiration.

The most intensely glorious moment of my life would have to have been during the “South through the Pole” expedition in 1997-98.

When we reached the foot of the Heiberg glacier in Antarctica after trekking 3,000km across the plateau, the sea was still 800km ahead of us but I could see in the distance that the sky was a different colour blue – which for me meant we were going to make it. I realised nature was going to spare us and that we would survive. I was so overcome, I burst into tears.

One of the most petrifying times was a polar bear moment.

We were crossing a breach in the ice and the wind was so strong I was on all fours.

I literally came face to face – or face to knees – with the polar bear, who was towering above me. I was petrified, sure that my hour had come, but I was dazzled by the magnificence of the animal as well. Very gently, Dixie [Dansercoer] handed me a revolver. Because the bear was more curious than anything else, he hadn’t swatted me yet. I fired a shot into the snow and the loud bang startled him and he ran away.

The arts were a passion of mine and still are.

But it was never a profession. I had to study something serious as a career!

As a kid, I always wanted to go further, to push myself to do more.

At 15 I discovered the mountains, and once there I always wanted to go higher. The extreme aspect of my nature is just an extension of that. Even to this day, I always want to go higher, faster, harder.

The Princess Elisabeth Research Station is the first zero emission station in the world.

It’s an example of what the Belgians can do when they put their minds to it. I guess I just wanted to make sure people took the future of the planet seriously. It was after seeing the capacity of space exploration to capture the public imagination that I decided to try to get the same type of public support for terrestrial exploration and research, which I believe are much more urgent areas of scientific research for the immediate future of the planet.

If Antarctica were a person she’d be a woman, because she’s impenetrable.

We think she’s peaceful, but in fact she is totally indifferent to us. In that sense she is pitiless, just like nature – and especially so if you’re not paying attention at every moment.

To be an explorer takes perseverance, stubbornness and a conviction that you can do something that is supposed to be impossible.

You have to learn from your mistakes. [Captain Robert Falcon] Scott was a great explorer and a very brave man, but he died in the Antarctic wilderness because he made the same mistake twice. It’s not enough to have great physical capacities; you have to have humility, too. But there are some things even I don’t understand about some of our exploits. For example, how can Dixie and I do a 104-day trek across the Arctic without stopping once? I don’t know the answer – it’s a mystery.

FACTS

Age 55

Lives Brussels

1977 Graduates from the University of Louvain-la-Neuve with a degree in civil engineering

1994 Walks to the North Pole

2003 Is awarded the Belgian title of Grand Officer de l’Ordre de la Couronne and the Georges Lemaître Prize for services to international science

2007 Helps to set up the Belgian Princess Elisabeth Scientific Polar Station in the Antarctic, the world’s first zero emission station

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