Southbound: The Singapore Antarctica Expedition

OUT OF PRINT 

When the world partied at the dawning of this new millennium, four young men from Singapore were celebrating a different milestone. After 67 freezing days hauling 100kg sleds over 1,100km on skis against bone-chilling winds, they had reached the South Pole, the first for a group from Southeast Asia. But for adventurer Khoo Swee Chiow, scientist Robert Goh, Outward Bound School instructor David Lim and commando officer Ang Yau Choon, it was only mission half accomplished.Another four members of the team were to have summitted Antartica’s highest peak, Mount Vinson, at the same time.

A week later, medical doctor Mok Ying Jang, Outward Bound School deputy chief instructor Edwin Siew and instructor Kuak Nam Jin and schoolteacher Lee Ling Yen stood atop Mount Vinson. Finally, mission accomplished. To their relatives and supporters, it meant they would soon be home. Little had they known of the many dangers, near-death experiences and harrowing accidents the eight had kept from them.

Now for the first time, you can read how agonisingly close the climbers came to failure. Or how the skiers faced starvation with just one day’s food left and unrelenting bad weather preventing the re-supply flight from reaching them.

Southbound is the first book in English on polar travel by a team from Asia. It is the story of eight remarkable young people from a tiny equatorial island with no previous experience of polar travel or skiing for that matter attempting what has never been done before—a double mission to reach the South Pole and climb its highest peak on the coldest place on earth.