A Durban-born man who has sailed solo across the five seas, cycled through Africa and recently trekked unassisted from Canada to the North Pole has begun his latest adventure – walking from the Antarctic coast to the South Pole, alone.
Howard Fairbank, a former Durban High School pupil, began his journey on Saturday, after leaving Punta Arenas in Chile for Antarctica.
If he completes the journey, battling some of Earth’s toughest terrain in sub-zero temperatures, Fairbank is hoping to become the oldest person, and first South African, to do the trip solo, unassisted and unsupported.
Fairbank, who has been training for his latest adventure for months, left South Africa on November 6.
He hopes to reach the South Pole by Christmas Eve.
According to his blog, Fairbank left a successful business career in 2004 to pursue his “Simply Adventure” dream, which he describes as “a simple wandering way of life, centred around sailing, cycling, and sea kayaking adventures, and one far removed from the capitalist and material world”.
In 2009, after years of solo sailing across oceans and cycling the continents, he moved his focus to polar adventure.
Last year, with three others, he completed an unassisted trek from Canada to the geographic North Pole, joining an exclusive club of fewer than 60 people who have completed what is dubbed the “hardest trek on Earth”.
Writing on his blog shortly before he left Cape Town, Fairbank said: “This is a very emotional time, as I seem finally to be on track to meet my destiny with Antarctica.
“In 2006, 2008, and 2009, I came close to meetings with this special wilderness but the experiences weren’t to be, no doubt waiting for this very special meeting and experience that lies ahead.
“I never wanted the meeting to be on passive, commercial-operator terms, I wanted as naked an experience as I could personally manage, and now this is exactly what awaits me.
“As I think through what lies ahead, I have this huge emotional cocktail within, feelings of apprehension, fear, excitement, and a sense of handing myself over to fate.”
Fairbank said a rational person would question why someone would want to leave home to take on the hostility of the Antarctic environment solo.
“There is something bizarre about all this, but having done many of these ‘irrational’ expeditions, I know that there is an amazing way of life awaiting on the ice… It is a life free of mindless clutter, yet full of challenge, and in an environment that is the purest of the pure – the world’s largest desert, and an ice one at that…”
At the weekend while waiting to fly to Antarctica, Fairbank was co-ordinating his trip using two compasses he plans to use while he is out on the ice.
He said he had met three seasoned polar adventurers who completed the Messner route, and who went through their experiences of the dangerous crevasse areas with him.
“The main fear I have is being alone in a whiteout with crevasse around, but now having rehearsed the situation many times in my head, I have to just get out there and deal with it… Gee, this is going to be exciting,” he said. - Daily News. Source: The Post
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