OU CAN tell a lot about a man from his
handshake. Mike Horn clamps you like a
garbage compactor and then begins a process
which feels as if he’s trying to dismember your
limb with the intention of beating you with the
soggy end. In his defence, I can understand why.
The world’s greatest living explorer runs his
expeditions with military precision and we’d missed
our flight to meet him in New Zealand. I didn’t have
the fortitude to tell the Swiss-based adventurer that
his plans had been derailed by the temptation of a
McFlurry and that was why he was waiting in the dark
in a parking lot at Queenstown airport. He grins and
informs us that he has some real fun in store. As we get
into the waiting Mercedes G-Class, it’s apparent that we
might have ventured a little out of our depth.IF YOU’RE not acquainted with Horn’s canon of work,
here’s a quick primer. He’s climbed 8000m peaks in the
Himalayas without oxygen, he’s traversed the length of
the Amazon on a boogie board, walked to the North Pole
in the permanent darkness of winter, circumnavigated
the globe at the equator under his own steam, and then
done the same with the Arctic circle. At the moment he’s
part way through Pole to Pole, an expedition that starts
and ends in Monaco and which, as its name suggests,
takes in solo crossings via the North and South Poles.
He’s been in the South African special forces, he was a
gold diver in the Amazon, has been commissioned by the
German soccer team and the South African and Indiancricket squads for motivational coaching, has
designed and built Pangaea, a 35-metre aluminium-
hulled ice-breaking yacht, and won the Laureus World
Alternative Sportsperson of the Year award.
With the first solo, unsupported crossing of Antarctica
just completed in a record time of 56 days and 22 hours
for the 5000km journey, he’s just been reunited with the
pair of G-Class expedition vehicles that Mercedes has
supplied him with and is looking to point them at the
South Island’s wildest spots. What’s more, because he
finished his Antarctic crossing so far ahead of schedule,
we’re invited to eat the spare polar rations.
Bags of vacuum-sealed scroggin aren’t at the forefront
of my mind right now. We’re at the top of a steep, lumpy
goat track that we’d driven up to our camp site the
previous night. I’m relieved that we bumped up it in
the dark, as the precipitous drops off the side disappear
into flinty oblivion way below. It’s the sort of track that
would beggar belief that a roadgoing vehicle could be
driven up it, all polished bulges, rain runnels and loose
rocks. Horn noses the G500 down, straightens the wheels
and then mats the throttle. It’s a badge of honour for
a motoring journalist to never be a nervous passenger,
but this is beyond any sort of off-road driving I’ve ever
experienced. The speedo heads north of 120km/h as the
heavily laden G-Class descends like a skipping stone,
revs flaring as wheels kiss and release from the ground.
Horn’s sawing at the wheel, grinning, as the other
vehicle becomes a black blur in the rear view. I’m just
waiting for one malign combination of dips and ramps to
send us into some sort of inverted death corkscrew.THE NEVIS
VALLEY IS CRISS-
CROSSED WITH
ABANDONED
MINESHAFTS
FROM THE OTAGO
GOLD RUSH