Men's Journal

In a class by himself: Explorer Mike Horn redefines expeditionary learning.

by Adam Spangler

In the summer of 2007, Mike Horn, arguably the world’s most versatile living explorer, took his family skiing. It would prove to be more than just another family trip for the Horns: His daughters Annika, 15, and Jessica, 14, became the youngest to ski to the North Pole, in temperatures around –35 degrees, and it gave Mike the idea for his next big adventure.

“It was the three worst days of weather I’ve experienced in the Arctic,” Horn says. “But we reached the Pole and set up camp. Stuck in a tent, we talked about the importance of life and getting to know nature. It inspired me to take young adults out and give them the chance to not only discover nature, but to discover who they are.”

To that end, Horn turned down an offer to captain the Calypso, Jacques Cousteau’s old ship, and instead designed a state-of-the-art classroom in the form of a 35-foot sailboat called Pangaea. Over the next four years, Horn and his team will take 144 teenagers, 12 at a time, on two-week tours of some of the most threatened areas of the globe on an expedition sponsored by Panerai, the Italian watchmaker — from Siberia to the Amazon Basin to Antarctica. Would-be young explorers fill out applications at Mikehorn.com and share their visions for confronting environmental problems.

Those selected by a jury of experts will help gather data such as snow measurements in Antarctica and water temperature and plankton levels throughout the world’s oceans. Bringing kids into the wilderness to connect with nature is hardly a novel concept, but Horn is taking an old idea to its ultimate extent, as he does on his own exploits — like when he and Borge Ousland trekked to the North Pole in the complete darkness of an Arctic winter.

In more than two decades of exploration, Horn has traveled, often alone, to every corner of the planet, nabbing firsts such as circumnavigation of the Earth’s equator without a motor (during which a snakebite blinded him for four days). He has also traversed South America and crossed Greenland. But he says this adventure is the most fulfilling. “To see the joy in the children’s faces when they first saw Antarctica and the tears when they left proves the emotional connection,” Horn explains. “We all have a role to play. As an explorer, I can’t discover new land because it is all found, but I can help protect it.