Sheltering in a snow grave he’d dug himself, while temperatures plummeted to well below -40C and a biblical storm rolled across the sky, 49-year-old adventurer Scott Smith was part way through his toughest challenge yet.

The father-of-three from Chartham, who spent 24 years in the parachute regiment, was trekking solo across the Alaskan tundra in a bid to complete an epic 1,000-mile journey.

After close encounters with wild animals and enduring 20 days of back-to-back thunderstorms, the professional mountaineer - who trains on the Kent Downs - was forced to pull out of his mammoth task with the finishing line within reach.

“I did 800 miles but that’s nothing to be sniffed at,” he said.

“The outcome wasn’t looking good as it was getting continuously dangerous.

“If I carried on I may have needed to be rescued - and that would have put more lives at risk.

“It was pure isolation. There is no sound apart from your breathing and footsteps so it’s a great mental challenge, and when the storms came, all I could hear was the wind and just see white ahead of me.”

Scott, who has climbed the world’s tallest mountains and run marathons across the Sahara, trekked - at times thigh-deep in snow - for about 18 hours a day across frozen rivers and wind-battered woodland.

“Initially the weather was OK, but after day 10 there were continuous storms and blizzard after blizzard - the winds were over 100mph,” he added.

“If you lose a glove, within minutes you’re going to be in a seriously bad place.

“I ended up having some pretty bad damage on my face as my cheekbones were exposed at one point.”

With no human company until he reached small Inuit villages dotted sparsely across the landscape, the only other signs of life were the wild beasts roaming the tundra.

“I had encounters with moose,” he said. “As it was the winter over there, the grizzly bears were in hibernation but in fact more people die in the wild when they meet a moose as they can charge straight at you.

“There were occasions that I had to freeze and let them pass by.

“I was also faced with a dilemma when I met a lynx, because it was sadly caught in a trap.

“I wanted to free it but the Native Americans live off the land and are dependant on catching their food.

“So I had to walk on by but that played on my mind for the rest of the journey.”

After gaining 4kg before the challenge, Scott shed 10kg during the trek despite eating 5,000 calories per day.

He said: “You have to be creative with your thinking.

“About every five days or so I would be able to stock up on food and fuel when I reached villages.

“I needed to drink six litres of water a day but water is hard to come by, so I had to spend a long time each day melting a lot of snow to get enough fluid.

“Overall, it was an epic experience and I got to see Alaska in a way almost no one has ever seen but I think there is unfinished business there.”

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