Centimeters from Death with Mike Horn

By The Outdoor Journal LLC

Fighting through total arctic darkness and running dangerously low on food, Mike Horn and Borge Ousland journey unsupported across the polar ocean.In September, South African Mike Horn and Norwegian Borge Ousland set off on a human-powered journey across the North pole. They walked and skied through 24 hours of darkness, lugging all of their supplies behind them in sleds. Due to climate change, the deteriorated ice conditions took their journey to dangerous lengths, even drifting them backward, and when it had taken a month longer than they planned and depleted their emergency food reserves, their mission was in serious jeopardy.Mike Horn has been a loyal ambassador for The Outdoor Journal for years. He has sailed 15 times around the world, completed a solo journey around the equator without any motorized transport and he’s stacked up a series of polar firsts to boot. If you look closely at the thumbnail for The Outdoor Journal podcast, you’ll notice it’s a shot from the crow’s nest of Horn’s ship Pangea as he makes ground on Antarctica. We chose that shot because it represents the spirit and ethos of pushing through fear in the outdoors.The Co-Founder of The Outdoor Journal, Lorenzo Fornari, is no stranger to Horn, having adventured across Australia’s Simpson desert together back in 2017 in one of Horn’s heavily modified Mercedes G-500’s. The two reunited in Paris for this discussion. In this episode of The Outdoor Journal Podcast, Horn details the unique challenges on this expedition due to climate change, how he came centimeters from death on the final day of the journey after grinding for 87 days in the darkness, and he finally sets the record straight about the recent controversy on crossing Antarctica.