By Wren Mast-Ingle
Jason Grove will be battling temperatures down to -35°C on Mount Vinson near the South Pole as South Africans celebrate New Year.
His attempt to climb this 4 800m peak is just the start of an expedition that will see the adventurers hike 115km to the South Pole after the climb.
If Jason succeeds, he and two other South Africans, Shaun Disney and Donald O'Connor, will become the first from the African continent to complete the double task.
Grove will also be heading for the South Pole to plant a Peace for Africa flag as part of a campaign in South Africa to bring peace to the continent.
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He says the gruelling preparation for the month-long expedition, which started on Friday, included dragging a tyre around for kilometres at a time and spending up to four hours a day in the gym under the guidance of a personal trainer.
"But this is only half of it. Mental preparation is an absolute necessity and one has to reach deep down in moments of crisis or when you feel you can't go a step further."
And he should know, having already tackled and succeeded in climbing two peaks out of the seven he has tasked himself with in achieving the Seven Summit honour.
"Meditation has formed an integral part of my mental preparation and I have had the added incentive of doing this under the guidance of the Thai monks who run the Johannesburg Meditation Centre."
The party left Johannesburg on Friday to fly to Sao Paolo and then on to Ponte Arenas under the guidance of Adventure Dynamics (AD), a company that sets up expeditions for people around the world.
CEO of AD and leader of the expedition Shawn Disney has climbed Everest once and has done all of the seven summits.
They will then hitch a lift on a military cargo plane to Patriot Hills, an American base well into the Antarctica.
"We will wait for the weather to clear, which could be anything from an hour to two days, before being flown from there to the base of Mount Vinson," Grove says.
"We will set up three camps during the ascent. Less oxygen found in the far southern latitudes means you can add an extra 1 000m to the difficulties we face. While the 4 980m mountain is rated as a lesser climb than Everest, the combination of it and the hike to the South Pole certainly rates it just as arduous."
After being flown back from Vinson to Patriot Hills for restocking of supplies, the team of Disney, Grove, and O'Connor will be joined by Vaughn De La Harpe (another Seven Summits climber), and they will be flown to a drop-off point before hiking 155km to the South Pole.
The group will walk six to 10 nautical miles a day during their hike to the geographical South Pole in temperatures dropping as low as -35°C.
Follow the expedition on www.jasongrove.co.za. The expedition will be in telephonic contact whenever possible.
- This article was originally published on page 5 of Cape Argus on December 27, 2008
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