Free Conquering the Impossible by Mike Horn Page A

experience and a single clear lesson. By learning to say stop, I had taken a giant step toward greater wisdom.
    Everything started to move more quickly. The things that Børge had taught me were now enriched with my own hard-earned experience, which allowed me to customize my gear to better suit it to my own personal preferences. I took advantage of the four months that remained before the big departure to have new prototypes of my kites produced, both larger and smaller in size, to haul me across the ice like a sailboat in different wind conditions. When I went shopping at Salomon, I selected a pair of “improved” telemark skis, that is, skis whose width was between that of cross-country skis and downhill skis. It would take more effort to move forward, but I would also have a larger load-bearing surface, which would help me to stay on top of the snow instead of sinking into it. The company specialists worked with me to determine the ideal balance between the wood of the laths, the steel of the edges, and the Pytex of the bottom runners, so that the optimum curvature of the ski structure would be maintained, even at forty degrees below zero.
    I modified certain buttons, levers, and springs so that I could work them even with frozen fingers. I selected double-sealed bottles so that I wouldn’t lose the contents and the container if a stopper were to break. I carefully avoided the new high-pressure thermos bottles with springs and other gadgets that seemed certain to break in conditions of intense cold. If their contents were to leak or freeze, I would be in serious trouble.
    It wasn’t that I was being picky. It was that I wanted to survive. I could only recite with greater conviction what I had said before setting out for the North Pole: my life was going to depend on each piece of equipment, as it never had before.
    Panerai specially manufactured for me an antimagnetic watch whose mechanism avoided all contact with the case in order to withstand the cold and was therefore suspended by means of a contrivance so secret that its inventors refused to reveal it even to me. I would wear it on my sleeve, by means of a long Velcro bracelet, and not against my skin, because the metal would stick to it in the extreme cold and—incredible but true!—it would draw the body heat out of my fingers. As for the idea of a plastic watch, it wouldn’t last twenty-four hours. I would be the first person to test this Panerai watch, the Arktos model, virtually indestructible and created especially for my expedition. If it made it through this challenge, it would be marketed in a limited edition.
    Yvan Ravussin specially manufactured a snow shovel for me that was a little jewel. It was made of carbon Kevlar, just like chainsaw-proof trousers and bulletproof vests; it was both unbreakable and light as a feather.
    But first of all and most important, I had my tents completely redesigned by my Italian manufacturer, Ferrino, to whom I took a number of sketches and a daunting list of specifications—daunting even for them. While the company had done a lot of work with polar expeditions, it had never yet designed or produced a tent intended for long-term use in such extreme conditions.
    I reexamined everything, beginning with the materials themselves. My tent would be made out of nylon composed of small squares that would prevent any tear from spreading. This nylon would theoretically remain unbreakable even when exposed to temperatures at which metal becomes fragile as glass, or elastic loses its stretchiness, or a folded tent stiffens like a sheet of steel.
    At the factory, we thought a lot about the ideal shape: dome, half-tube, A-frame, or tepee? A half-tube tent—that is, tunnel-shaped—is ideal when it stands facing the wind (you get the same wing-effect as with an airplane). But in the Arctic the wind constantly shifts direction, and a side-gust will collapse the tunnel shape in the middle because there