Last modified on Fri 30 Apr 2021 14.41 EDT “Polar exploration,” said Apsley Cherry-Garrard, the companion of Capt Robert Falcon Scott, who later found the Antarctic explorer’s body, “is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has yet been devised.” But while previous generations of polar travellers devised their own rules for their gruelling journeys, a new certification scheme has been launched after growing controversy over allegedly inflated claims of exploits at the Earth’s two poles. The polar expedition classification scheme [PECS], set up in March, aims to ensure those who claim to have made so-called unsupported crossings have not benefited from any human help and to verify that claims of new firsts are historically valid.