The Road to the South Pole
One goal. To become the first South African to reach the South Pole, solo and unsupported, in 2030.
The road is already underway. It started in 2024 with a polar primer, then twelve days on Svalbard in 2025. Greenland in 2026 was the first major step, 553km unsupported across the ice cap, and the one that proved it was possible. Five expeditions now stand between that crossing and the Pole. This page is my road to the Pole.
Why the South Pole
The South Pole, solo and unsupported, is the hardest version of that I can imagine. Over eleven hundred kilometres from the coast. Fifty to sixty days alone on the ice, hauling everything I need behind me and climbing to nearly three thousand metres. No resupply. No team. No one to share the weight. Just me and whether the things I teach still hold when there is nothing left to lean on.
I am doing this at fifty. Not at twenty five. That is not a complication. That is the point.
The easy story is that the body is a depreciating asset. A window in your twenties and thirties, then you manage the decline. Most people my age signed that contract without reading it.
I have not signed it.
I crossed Greenland at fifty. Five hundred and fifty three kilometres, twenty nine days, hauling everything I needed behind me. My body did the work. And it taught me something I did not expect, that most of the limits I blamed on age were just stories I had never tested. So I am going to test them. All the way to the South Pole in 2030, and past it. In the open, with the numbers visible. Not the highlight reel. All of it. The good days and the bad ones.
I am not chasing my twenty five year old self. He was fitter in a few ways and clueless in most of the ones that matter. He had no idea what the body could do, because he had never had to find out. I do now. Fifty is not him with less. It is me with everything I have learned about how to suffer well, recover properly, and keep going.
This is not a last hurrah. It is a starting line.
I am proud of where I am, and I am not slowing down. I am going to spend the next five years showing exactly what that looks like, in real numbers and real honesty, on real ice, at an age the world quietly writes off. And if you are somewhere near that age, being quietly written off, or writing yourself off, watch closely. I am not doing this to prove something about me. I am doing it to put a crack in a story that a lot of us swallowed without ever testing it.
Fifty is not the end of the story. It is the part where it gets interesting.
The Record
Across every expedition on the road to the South Pole, I am tracking the whole picture. Not just the numbers. Strength, body composition, recovery, sleep, hormones, yes, but also how the body actually feels, what the mind does under load, where the cracks show, what holds when it has no right to.
The data matters. It is not the whole truth. A graph does not tell you what it felt like to get up on day fourteen with your feet wrecked and keep pulling. The numbers and the feeling together, that is the real record.
This is not a flex and it is not a before and after. Some of it will look good. Some of it will not. I am showing all of it, because the honesty is the point, not the performance. Hidden data proves nothing, and a perfect graph is usually a lie.
Here is the part most men my age leave out, because most men my age do it in private and say nothing.
I do this with help. I am on a medically supervised protocol. Peptides, hormone support, a GLP-1, the tools that actually move human performance, managed by doctors and tracked with regular bloodwork. I am telling you that on purpose. There is a generation of men quietly doing the same thing and lying about it, which leaves everyone else comparing their real life to someone else's secret. I would rather show the whole picture.
So I am leaning into all of it. Not the shortcuts. The real levers. Training, recovery, sleep, nutrition, the medical side, tracked and out in the open. None of it is exotic. I am just taking it to the far end of what a fifty year old body can do, and writing down what happens.
And nothing takes away from the work. No protocol on earth hauls a sled across an ice sheet for you. The tools help you train, recover, and show up. The showing up is still yours.
Not to sell a supplement or a system. To put a real, honest, five year record behind a simple idea. That fifty can be a beginning, and that the decline we treat as inevitable is, for a lot of us, a choice we never questioned.
What it costs and what it gives. The good days and the bad ones. All the way to the Pole.
The thing I could not find.
When I started training for this properly, I went looking for the science. Not stories. Numbers. What actually builds a body that can haul a hundred kilos across an ice sheet for a month. Strength work with real load progression. Cardio built on more than dragging a tyre down a road. Heart rate, recovery, VO2, sleep, the markers that tell you if the training is working or quietly breaking you. The mental side measured, not just described.
Most of it is not there. Sports science aimed at athletes half my age. Expedition accounts with no data behind them. Nobody joining the two.
So I am building it. Five years of tracking everything. The training that moved the numbers and the training that did nothing. What fifty does to a body under this kind of load, measured, not guessed. The protocols. The failures. The recovery data. What actually happened to me, so the next person going where I am going has the thing I could not find.
The Greenland crossing is the first full set. Every number, the good days and the bad ones, is here.
Earning the Pole
Each expedition builds a specific capability for the Pole.
2024
Svalbard. Where it started.A Polar Primer with Icetrek. Where I cut my teeth. Navigation, camp craft, cold, the basics you cannot skip. Everyone starts here whether they admit it or not.
2025
Svalbard. Twelve days on the ice.My first real stretch out there. Unsupported, with a team. It was hard. My feet behaved, which they would not always do later. But this was where I learned what sustained time in that place actually feels like. Not a day trip. Days on end.
2026
Greenland. 553km.The Greenland ice sheet, coast to coast. 553km on foot, 29 days, unsupported. Ten of us, hauling everything we needed. The first big step on the road, and the one that proved it was possible.
2027
Finnmarksvidda. Northern Norway. Solo.The first time I go out alone. Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions (ALE) will not consider you for Antarctica without solo polar experience of at least two weeks. I am planning around 20 days on my own to clear that and then some. Alone is a different thing. No team to carry the bad days. This is where I find out how I do with only myself out there.
2028
Svalbard. South to north. Solo.The hard one, and the one most likely to move. South to north across Svalbard, solo, would be a first for South Africa. Very few people have done it. It is a longshot, permits, field safety, weapon handling in polar bear country, all of it real. If Svalbard does not come together I cross Iceland solo instead. Either way the goal holds. More solo distance on the board, more proof I can be trusted alone out there.
2029
Antarctica.The first time I get onto the ice that counts for the record, a year before the solo. It might be skiing the Last Degree, flying in to 89 and skiing to 90. It might be joining another expedition. The form matters less than the fact. I need to stand on that continent, in those conditions, before I go back alone.
2030
The South Pole. Solo, unsupported.The one everything else was for. I apply in March 2030, and everything above is what makes that application credible. If the road did its job, this is where it pays out.
2031
Greenland. Again. Together.The homecoming. The road started alone on that ice. I want to close it by going back with someone else. Between now and then I am looking for one person in South Africa who wants to cross Greenland with me. If that lands somewhere in you, reach out. There is no rush. We have years.
The North Pole
One day.The far horizon. Unlikely, given the state of it. My white whale anyway.
Eric Philips. My consultant on the road to the Pole.
Eric and I in 2024, during my Polar Primer in Svalbard.
My first polar primer was with Eric Philips of Icetrek. Since then he has been my consultant on all of it. He does not guide these expeditions anymore. He helps plan and manage them. He was pivotal in the Greenland logistics, and he stays involved as my safety and security backup through every big expedition ahead.
Eric has been to both Poles more than 30 times. He has pioneered four new routes to the South Pole. He founded the International Polar Guides Association and was its first president. He also built the Polar Expeditions Classification Scheme, the system that decides how polar journeys are compared and verified.
So when the plan says I can be trusted alone out there, he is one of the people who has to believe it first.
Where This Goes
This is not adventure for its own sake. The ice is where everything I teach gets tested. The lessons don't stay out there. How to make a clear call when you're cold and scared and wrecked. How to keep moving when the day falls apart. How to suffer well, recover properly, and show up the next morning. That's what I coach. That's what I speak about. The expeditions are where I go to find out if any of it is actually true.
If you want that in your corner, this is where it goes.
Follow the Journey
This is a five year story and it is being told as it happens. The writing, the data, the honest version. Subscribe and follow the whole road to the Pole.
Back the Road to the Pole
Five years. Six expeditions. A goal no South African has reached. This is a long story told in public as it happens, with an audience following every step to the Pole.
The brands on this road are part of that story. Their gear gets tested in the hardest places on earth. Their name travels with a journey people are watching, in the writing, the films, and the data. Some partners keep me moving on the ice. Some back the work behind it. There is room for both.
Sponsors rent a moment.
Partners own a story.
If you run a brand, a company, or a marketing budget, and you want your name on this road, I want to hear from you. From the biggest corporate to the right small partner. The earlier you come in, the more of the story you own.