Page 132 - Sharp Winter 2023

PEAK PERFORMANCE
EXPLORER AND LONGTIME PANERAI AMBASSADOR MIKE HORN REVEALS PLANS FOR HIS NEXT EXPEDITION, AND WHY A MECHANICAL WATCH IS ESSENTIAL IN THE FIELD
By Jeremy Freed
M IKE HORN HAS BEEN PLACES THAT MOST PEOPLE WILL NEVER SEE AND DONE things that few humans could ever conceive. In 1997, he swam the length of the Amazon River — some 7,000 kilometres — relying on just a backpack and a small floating raft. A few years later, he circumnavigated the globe via the Arctic Circle, a trek
that covered 20,000 kilometres over 808 days without the aid of motorized transport.
Throughout his adventures, Horn has worked with luxury watchmaker Panerai to create and test watches — such as 2020’s Submersible EcoPangaea Tourbillon GMT Mike Horn Edition — that are capable of standing up to the most extreme conditions on earth. SHARP spoke to him about this longstanding partnership and his next adventure.
What is the importance of being an explorer in the 21st century?
Exploring is not only going out into nature, but also exploring the human — our capability and limitations. We tend to put exploration into a box that says it means taking risks, going to unknown places, and doing what others haven’t done, but that’s just the face of exploration. Exploration is a decision to sacrifice everything and make your dreams come true. It’s broadening your vision of life by putting yourself into unknown situations. Modern-day exploration has taken so much from exploration in the days when Scott and Shackleton discovered the world, but today we’re able to make the dreams of the past come true.
Shackleton’s ill-fated South Pole expedition is one of the greatest stories of all time. It’s easy to see how you would be inspired by that. Even just the way that he advertised for crew mem- bers. He said, “I need men that can stay away from home for a very long time, who are willing to work for no money, who can endure extreme cold, and who know that return is not certain.” And everybody survived because he was such a fantastic leader. One of my next expeditions will be to go and retrace a little bit of what Shackleton did. Although we can read about it, that’s not enough for me. I would like to live through what he lived through, and that’s part of my next expedition called What’s Left.
I assume you’ll be using modern gear, and not the stuff they had in 1915.
Oh, no, we still use more or less the same equipment — the wool undergarments and wooden base skis. Wood is the best insulation so you don’t
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