Life on Edge the
Modern-day explorer Mike Horn dices with danger more often than he has hot dinners at home. He tells lauren tan what makes him a survivalist
“as soon as you expose yourself to risk, that’s when you start feeling alive...but if you are doing it to die then that defies the purpose of doing anything in life,” says Mike Horn.
That’s why he navigated the mighty 7,000-km Amazon River on nothing more than a tiny fibreglass float, hunting for food on its banks for sustenance. Why he circumnavigated the globe at its equator, crossing the drug zones of the Congo through to Gabon alone
and on foot. Why he and fellow explorer Borge Ousland became the first men to trek from Russia to the North Pole in the permanent darkness of the Arctic winter. And why, with less than 1,500m to the top of K2, he halted his climb due to dangerous conditions.
At 51, Mike Horn is a living, breathing superhuman; well-built with a handsome, if weatherbeaten, face that has graced the cover of GQ France. Perhaps the South African-born Swiss explorer is Superman himself. Or that’s the image I’m getting as we scroll through photos of his past adventures on-board his exploration vessel Pangaea. There’s one picture of him paragliding in Pakistan and trying to land on an off-roader driven by his daughters Annika and Jessica along a narrow mountain road.
These are the same ladies who in their pre-teens became the youngest to ski to the North Pole (in temperatures of around minus 35 degrees C). Now in their twenties, they help take care of administrative and logistical matters for Horn’s adventures, a role they stepped into after their mother Cathy passed away from cancer two years ago.
“If your family supports you and gives you the freedom to go out there and explore, it makes you want to come back to them — you want to stay alive,” says Horn, who sailed into Singapore in his buoyant home-away-from-home on the behest of his long-time watchmaker sponsor Officine Panerai.
But Horn isn’t on vacation. Far from it. This is merely one of countless port of calls Horn is making on his current quest: Pole2pole, an insanely long, two-year, 270,000-km journey that will see him circle the globe longitudinally from pole to pole with “some added stuff that I’ve always wanted to do”. An epic voyage Cathy had helped plan, he embarked on it in her honour.
Setting off from Monaco in May 2016, he’s since traversed the length of Africa, completed the first-ever solo, unsupported north-to-south crossing of the Antarctica, and seen more of New Zealand and Australia than its own residents ever will. Before he continues northwards to the Himalayas to ascend yet unnamed and unclimbed peaks, negotiate the volcanoes of Kamchatka, and cross Greenland, the Arctic Ocean and North Pole, we got this engaging raconteur to share his stories. You are roughly three-quarters through Pole2pole. What are the top memories that stick out in Your mind so far?
Leaving Cape Town for Antarctica, definitely. It’s that moment you think to yourself: “Now is the chance to do what you set out to do.” Crossing Antarctica at its widest spot is something that has never been done. When you reach that point of no return, you can’t make mistakes. You walk for your life. If you stop, nobody can rescue you — you will die. It’s the only thing that’s sure. Preparation is as important as the expedition. If you are not well-prepared, if you are not physically and psychologically capable of doing what you set out to do, you might as well not start doing it.
Another memory is of being attacked by a hippo in Namibia! I was travelling though the Okavango River by pirogue (a traditional dugout canoe), and the water is so murky you can’t see the hippos as they walk on the bottom of the river. When they see someone close, they are going to defend themselves by attacking. One came up suddenly
and went for me. But because it was just half a metre too far off, I basically avoided the attack. What comes to mind When you survive a close shave like that? The moment you are being attacked or fall into a crevasse, or the wind becomes too strong and you lose control of the skis, stuff like that, is the moment everything just slows down and you see everything in slow motion. You become very focused on what you do. Many people can’t control their fears, they don’t know what is happening and make the wrong decision. But for me, I’ve been doing this for 25 years. I’ve been fortunate enough to survive a couple of things, so that experience helps in decisionmaking in stressful situations. In that moment, if you think you are not going to make it, you are not going to make it. so it’s about mental strength? Eighty percent of what we do is about mental attitude. It’s not really physical. People always think you need to be young to have strength, but I’m already old! As you become older, your psychological strength improves and that’s a good life insurance actually. That makes exploration safer. Some have died very young, and that’s very unfortunate. I don’t know how I’ve managed to stay alive but now I can benefit from the experience a little bit. the antarctica Was a solo 57- day journey. many of your other expeditions are solo too. things can get really tough, how do you not go crazy When you are alone?
I can feel lonely in a bar with hundreds of people around me and where I know nobody, but alone, I’ve never felt lonely. You know Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? At the bottom is the needs of daily life — house, car, friends, family, career etc. As you go up to the top of the pyramid, the only thing you must do in life is survive. I live quite often on the summit of this pyramid, where you don’t need things, where the most important thing is to survive. And you operate completely differently. For somebody who lives in civilisation, it’s very difficult to get away from all the things that surround him. But if you are at the top of the pyramid, you can do what I do. When you are out there braving the elements for Weeks on end, do you stay in touch With friends and family? your sites get updated for sure.
I do stay in touch. I am a professional athlete and I have partners and sponsors who pay for me to be able to do these expeditions. And in return for that, I need to share my experiences. If you do things alone, it can never be appreciated. But if you can share the moments that you live through with the people who would never be able to do so, that’s the moment it becomes worth doing.
I take photos and I connect a modem by satellite and send these photos to our base camp in Switzerland, where my daughters are. Sometimes I would call and dictate text. [ The website is] a massive event in communication — 29 million people followed me across Antarctica that way. They want to support you and of course some people follow to see if you will make it or die. There is a little bit of voyeurism in what we do that people bet on it. Being able to use social media today has made it so much easier. Well, i’m here because of panerai, so i have to ask — how does your Watch enable your exploration?
It gives me the confidence to navigate in all temperature conditions — because time is the precision of the sun and moon. If you think the time is later or earlier, the angle you have to travel to changes. So if my watch says it’s 2 o’clock but it’s actually 3 o’clock, I’m 7 degrees off course. A lot of research went into making a watch that could not freeze. Because when you are at minus 50 degrees, metal starts to contract. And when it starts contracting, it loses precision and I need my watch to be precise. I also have a watch that is amagnetic because any other watch would be influenced by the magnetic fields. did they pack in anything extra like Q Would for james bond? Well no. But I’ll tell you a story. I was climbing in Switzerland near my house and I’d left the pitons in the car. I was on a cliff and couldn’t get down as there was nothing to attach my rope to. So I pushed my watch into a crack, turned it, and put the rope around the watch. I lost the watch and kept my life. It’s close to James Bond. But [I’m] the real James Bond (laughs).