The World's Ends

There is method and purpose to explorer Mike Horn’s madness, including stabbing his toe to make it bleed

- Darren Ho

When Mike horn was demonstrating what he had to do to prevent frostbite in his toes, everyone in the room winced. “What you do is you take a sharp awl and you push it through the toenail and prick your toe, so that the blood flows under the nail. This ensures there’s circulation in your toes,” he said matter-of-factly. Among all the things we’ve heard, it wasn’t the worst, but he had to do this day after day when he was making his way across the Antarctic on skis, during the few hours he had to eat, sleep and recharge before bracing himself for -50°C weather, blistering winds of between 10 and 100 knots and negotiating deadly crevices. He managed the 6,800km trek in 57 days, while having to deal with a broken ankle and shoulder from para-surfing across the continent in manic winds.

Horn, 51, is used to doing crazy things to survive. But the Pole2Pole expedition that he completed nearly a year ago was probably his craziest to date. After circling the globe along the Equator and swimming the full length of the Amazon, Horn decided to embark on a new challenge. He thought of circumnavigating the globe across the Poles.

“I called my sponsors, Panerai and Mercedes-Benz and asked if they would be interested in supporting me on this expedition and they immediately said yes,” he shrugged. Panerai helped him to develop a watch that allowed him to navigate since magnetic compasses don’t work at the poles, while keeping precise time using a mechanical movement so he would not have to worry about electronics failure.