Spirit of Hong Kong Awards: explorer inspires youth through glacial field trips

When Wilson Cheung took Hong Kong secondary school students into the Swiss Alps this summer, terrain he had once been able to reach had become inaccessible.

Glacier melt and thawing ground had destabilised parts of the mountain, while rockfall made fieldwork more hazardous.

Only weeks earlier, Cheung had completed a roughly 1,700km (1,056-mile) scientific snowkite traverse across Greenland in 2026. The journey took him across the ice sheet while he continued collecting data in one of the world’s most extreme environments.

“We can see it in the measurements, but when we are actually there, we see the physical changes in front of you,” he said.

Cheung is a finalist for the Spirit of Perseverance Award in this year’s Spirit of Hong Kong Awards, co-organised by Sino Group and the South China Morning Post.

His route into glaciology was far from conventional.

Cheung grew up in a low-income family and struggled with English at school. With little money at home, his mother often sent him to the library, where the air-conditioning was free and there were plenty of books to read.

After graduating from Baptist University and struggling to find suitable work, polar explorer Rebecca Lee Lok-sze became an important influence. She introduced him to Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, the story of a bird unwilling to accept the limits imposed by its flock.

Cheung said a person’s starting point should not determine how far they could go. In his view, school results capture only one point in someone’s life; what follows depends on the choices and actions that come afterwards.

His studies eventually took him to Canada, where he completed a PhD in glaciology at Queen’s University. His doctoral research examined decades of glacier change in Auyuittuq and Sirmilik national parks in the Canadian Arctic.

Cheung said he did not gauge success by how much he earned. He cared more about the knowledge and experience gained, and whether his work could contribute something useful.

He now gives young people opportunities to experience field science themselves. On the Swiss trip, students were asked to observe each glacier closely and explain how it differed from the previous one.

By the end of the programme, the students had a grasp of what the ice and surrounding terrain could tell them, he said.

Some participants in his youth programmes have since pursued their own paths. One later studied in Tasmania and went on to work in Antarctica. Another headed to France to train as a mountain guide.

Cheung also recalled a girl who had repeated a year at school and was considering giving up on an examination she feared. He promised that if she passed, he would send her a postcard from the Arctic. She did, and he kept his promise.

Donors including Christine Yu and Cyrus Cuthbertson have helped fund his youth programme, while PlayHard Hong Kong has supplied some of the field equipment. Cheung hopes that support could reach pupils who might otherwise be unable to take part.

Years of polar fieldwork have also taught him that even careful plans can unravel.

On his first assignment in the Canadian Arctic in 2022, a helicopter due to collect him was involved in an accident before reaching him. Cheung waited for 10 days before he could leave. The pilot was seriously injured and had to be taken to hospital.

“Being able to come home, see my mother and talk to her, that’s success,” he said.

The lesson from the polar regions, he said, is to prepare carefully while accepting that conditions can change without warning.

“We make a plan so that we have a plan to change,” he said. “Every day you wake up to a different problem, and you have to find a way to solve it.”