FURTHER, HIGHER, FASTER
Mike Horn’s expeditions began back in 1997 with his six-month slide down the Amazon. Refusing to quit until he tasted salt water, he ended up 160km out in the South Atlantic. Now he’s hoping to mirror his record solo crossing of the Antarctic with a fast
“I’m a terrible road driver,” he laughs. “Too fast, too heavy on the brakes. The authorities in Switzerland keep making me do assessments of my mental attitude to driving,” he says. I can see why. What he lacks in mechanical sympathy, he makes up for in demented throttle commitment but he’s 50 now, so I guess he knows what his limits are. We come to a shuddering halt at a sheep gate and wait for the other vehicle to appear on the horizon.
“Having these vehicles as a tool makes my life as an explorer more complete. I can load my stuff into my space. I don’t want to fly over in a plane or a helicopter like I used to access these remote places,” explains Horn. “I want to travel, to see new things, to learn from the people, taste their food, smell their smells and understand better who they are and why they’re like that because that landscape determines who the people that live in that country. The landscape develops who you are. The cars have become my travelling companion. Where the car stops, I start on foot,” he tells me.
“I’ve never been able to afford a new car in my life. I’m a bit of a petrolhead and love old-timers but I’ve never had that sort of money,” he admits ruefully. “All of my money is sunk into expeditions and you can’t really make a living in this job. It’s not a commercially valued activity. The money I was paid by sponsors for the Pole to Pole expedition just about covered the insurance on my boat. It didn’t even cover the fuel,” he says. It doesn’t take long for the smile to come back as we drift into an errant patch of FM radio coverage. “I love James Blunt.”
In his downtime since Pangaea berthed in Dunedin, Horn and his daughter Annika have been criss-crossing the South Island looking for remote spots in which to bog a G-class. It’s clearly been a diligent bit of preparation, as our route crosses remote sheep stations, punctuated by wild camping under kaleidoscopes of stars. We wade through river deltas in the shadow of Tolkienesque glaciers and inch along narrow canyon roads with centimetres of space between the dizzying precipices and soaring rock walls. One day we’re edging through mossy forests, the next forming an express dust cloud soundtracked by yammering V8s across deserted mile-wide glacial valleys.
The G-classes are largely stock apart from extended fuel tanks, roof bars and upgraded Öhlins shock absorbers. Horn took delivery of them a year and a half ago, and they’ve already been up the Skeleton Coast of Namibia and across most of Africa, through Russia and Kazakhstan along the Karakoram Highway, escorted into the tribal areas in north Pakistan en route to K2 with the top cover of a duo of US drones. You might expect them to feel a little loose and smell a bit funky, but they feel as tight as a drum. Not one annoying squeak, James Blunt notwithstanding.
If there’s one theme that runs through Horn’s expeditions, it’s a certain quest for authenticity; to do things the right way. Often that comes at the cost of commercial success. “You try and set rules and regulations that you live by. You’re the person that puts your life in danger,” he muses. “It’s not a commercial event. It’s not another tennis or golf tournament or F1 race. It’s about a human being who’s willing to go out there and to pioneer new frontiers. But at the same time you’re so fragile. You can lose everything. I’m always in the shit. It’s just the depth that varies.”
”YOU CAN’T REALLY MAKE A LIVING IN THIS JOB. IT’S NOT A COMMERCIALLY VALUED ACTIVITY”
He’s now at an age where his sponsors no longer push him to do wilder and more extreme things. “If anything they try to rein me back,” he admits. His daughter Annika informs us that Horn lost 16kg on the Antarctic crossing, despite consuming over 16,000 calories a day on the ice cap. “Because he’s 50 now, he loses weight faster. He can’t retain that muscle mass for so long,” she says. He’s carrying a shoulder injury, sustained on the crossing, that causes him to wince when winging stones into the glacial meltwater below Mount Earnslaw.
“I broke the socket in my shoulder; the bit that supports the ligaments. The sled jammed nose into the snow while kite skiing so the kite just picked me up, turned me round and slammed me into the ice a couple of times. I couldn’t get to the quick release, so I had to pull out a small knife and cut the lines to the front of the canopy,” he says. It’s far from his only close call on the ice. “I set fire to my tent once. I was changing a gas bottle in the tent. The temperature outside had risen suddenly by 20 degrees and I’d left the pilot light on without noticing. Just a tiny half-flame. As soon as I opened the new bottle, the vapour spread and ignited and I lost everything. From that point I was in igloos.”
Then there are run-ins with wildlife. On the winter trek to the North Pole he had an uncomfortably intimate spooning experience with a polar bear. “I was asleep in my tent and the bear climbed onto my sled and started trying to tear it apart to get to the food,” he says. “It rolled onto the tent at one point and I was pinned under its belly. I said to Borge [Ousland, his trekking partner], ‘Get the flare gun. There’s a bear in my sled!’ He just rolled over and said, ‘It’s not in my sled.’ And that was it. We didn’t really get on; barely spoke two words a day on that expedition. He was ice cold. Now we’re the best of friends.”
Later that evening, we sit by the fire sampling some of Horn’s polar trekking food. There’s the usual freezedried boil-in-the-bag stodge as well as some fantastic home-made creations, most of which are steeped in olive oil. Honey and butter bites, packet soup loaded with Pringles to form a salty slurry, porridge laden with olive oil, white chocolate and almonds, it’s all calculated with a fanatical attention to weight and nutritional value. “Olive oil has twice the calories per kilo than chocolate,” he says, “but there’s only so much you can eat. On the ice I craved the feel of a juicy peach, and fresh baked produce like a chocolate croissant. You can’t bring any food that has the potential to damage your teeth. Cleaning your teeth is tough because you have to thaw the toothpaste. I pee in my tent. I shit in my tent. When it’s minus 60°C outside I’m not motivated to get out of the tent but you have to balance motivation and discipline. That’s when discipline takes over.”
Like most professional sportspeople, Horn has a good line in well-rehearsed motivational soundbites. “The will to win must become bigger than the fear to lose” is one. “The impossible only exists until we find a way to make it possible” is another. Then there’s “We have 30,000 days in a lifetime. Live each one to the fullest.” I’m keen to understand what motivates him; what’s beneath the bonhomie and the platitudes. Persistent needling eventually pierces the defences. Jabbing at the bonfire
I’M KEEN TO UNDERSTAND WHAT MOTIVATES HIM; WHAT’S BENEATH THE BONHOMIE AND THE PLATITUDES