OFF PEAK

PHOTOGRAPHER MARTIN HARTLEY HAS SPENT HIS LIFE CAPTURING THE ARCTIC OCEAN ON CAMERA, AND IN TURN HAS SEEN THE DEVASTATING EFFECTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE FIRST-HAND. THIS FEBRUARY, HARTLEY WILL EMBARK ON HIS MOST IMPORTANT EXPEDITION TO DATE: TO PHOTOGRAPH THE RAPIDLY MELTING SEA ICE. AHEAD OF HIS TRIP, THE LANCASTRIAN DISCUSSES SURVIVAL INSTINCTS, ENVIRONMENTALISM AND WALKING – QUITE LITERALLY – ON THIN ICE

You know NASA? That giant, American space programme responsible for rocketing the first man to the moon and countless space expeditions since? That hub of genius, technology and expertise, where the greatest minds, innovators and machinery collide? Well, imagine if I told you that this mecca of intelligence had been trumped by something as simple as stationary.

In 2017, NASA deployed a satellite above the Arctic Ocean to measure the volume of sea ice, an expanse of frozen water that, thanks to increasing global temperatures, has rapidly reduced in recent years. The satellite was supposed to provide the most upto-date data, but it struggled to decipher where the snow stopped and the ice began.

Enter Martin Hartley and his tool of choice: a ruler. The photographer, who has spent his career capturing the planet’s coldest climates on camera, was dispatched to the Arctic – skis, camera and ruler in tow – to measure the snow depth while a NASA plane flew overhead, recalibrating the satellite’s data accordingly.

The findings were bleak, but Hartley could predict this from sight alone. “Normally on an Arctic Ocean expedition, you’re surrounded by ice that’s four to eight centimetres thick,” he explains. “On that journey, I didn’t see any big lumps of ice. It was like skiing across a lake.”

A quick Google back on home soil revealed unwelcome statistics: historically, Arctic sea ice spans five to six million square miles, but as of September 2016 it has been as low as 1.6 million. It’s the earth’s “protective layer”, Hartley says, which projects 90 per cent of the planet’s radiation back into space – “and that’s nearly all gone now. Ten years ago, the predictions were that it was going to be around for the next 100 years, and in the last 10 they’ve realised that’s not accurate. That’s my primary reason for going back to the arctic again and again: to document the sea ice.”

One of the world’s foremost adventure photographers, Hartley has travelled the planet capturing nature from its best angles. Born and raised near the Lancashire Moors, he always had a love of the outdoors and photography, but never thought to bring the two together until he came runner-up in the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition aged 16. Today, his images of powdered peaks and jagged glaciers have been published by the likes of National Geographic, The New York Times and the BBC, and taken him to the most extreme corners of the globe.

“I’m fascinated by the human experience of being in an extreme environment,” says Hartley. “When the plane is gone, you’re more or less on your own. If you’re aware that the long arm of rescue can’t come and pull you back out, then you have to think quite differently about survival and all the decisions you make.”

Life or death moments come thick and fast in such conditions. On one trip to the Arctic Ocean, Hartley and two others found themselves on thin ice – literally. “All around us, it was breaking up,” he recalls. “The only way to escape from that situation was to ski. If one person had fallen through, we would have had to have left them. There was no way a helicopter or plane could come and get us because the weather was so bad.”

His latest collaboration with Leica and outwear brand Shackleton will provide him with some protection against the elements: the Photographer’s Jacket has been designed in partnership with Hartley and features 800 fill-power goose down, a graphene lining to function down to -25˚C and ample pockets for essential kit. It’s named after Frank Hurley, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s official photographer and cinematographer on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914, and a personal hero of Hartley’s. “I know Frank Hurley’s work very well because I’ve done the journey that he did with Shackleton, and I know every single picture he’s taken,” the photographer says. “Anything I can get involved with that’s got his name attached to, I will.”

Hartley’s next trip is scheduled for February 2020 and will take him to Greenland, where he intends to document the sea ice before it melts even further. “I’m not religious, but you know when you walk into a cathedral and you feel that kind of atmosphere? Big ice has that effect on you as well,” he says. “When you walk through it, you can feel the cold radiating from it, in the same way a really hot fire pushes heat onto you. It is incredible – and it’s going to go in my lifetime.

“Climate change is happening in different places all over the planet, but the Arctic Ocean is warming faster than anywhere else,” Hartley says. “My goal is to keep going back before it’s all gone.”