The 40 HOTTEST bachelors of 2015

Last February, the bluff, barrel-chested polar explorer completed the 1,795-mile route through Antarctica that killed Captain Scott and his team in 1912. Throughout Saunders’s thoroughly 21st-century expedition—sponsored by Intel and Land Rover—he blogged all the way and uploaded “holiday snaps” as well as the occasional video update. You could hardly imagine a more thoroughly British figure. It’s not just the red beard and blue eyes and crisp Sandhurst accent (the Royal Military Academy also trained princes William and Harry); there’s the throwback job title (polar explorer) and the self-deprecating humor. “I essentially drag sledges for a living,” the 37-year-old likes to say. It seems a shame to waste such charm on the polar ice caps, but embracing solitude is one of his gifts. Before his trek to the South Pole (which he undertook with ultra-marathoner Tarka L’Herpiniere), he soloed the North Pole, at the age of 26, and took several stabs at beating the polar speed record—without sled dogs and entirely alone. Although he maintains a certain lifestyle while on treks (during his North Pole expedition he admitted that it was possible to change his underwear only once a month), he cleans up nicely and seems to be adjusting well to continents with permanent populations greater than zero. His motivational speeches (“‘Impossible’ is just someone’s opinion”) go for $35,000 a pop, and his TED talk has attracted well over a million views. “There is nothing extraordinary about me,” he says, somewhat unconvincingly. Certainly, by now he has enough of a record to disprove the grade school teacher who wrote, “Ben lacks sufficient impetus to achieve anything worthwhile.” KevinConley