Andy Murray’s brother-in-law is gearing up for an Antarctic adventure as he attempts to become the youngest person to reach the South Pole solo.
Lieutenant Scott Sears, of the First Battalion Royal Gurkha Rifles, hopes to complete the 702-mile trek to the bottom of the world in around 40 to 50 days.
He is attempting to become the youngest person to walk to the South Pole completely unassisted and unsupported and if successful will beat the record by two years.
Set to fly to Chile on Wednesday, before heading to Hercules Inlet on Antarctica’s Weddell Sea a few days later, he said it had been a “mad dash” to get final bits of kit ready.
“I am very excited – it has been two years in the planning so it is nice to finally be under way,” said the 27-year-old, who lives in Shoreditch, London.
“I’m looking forward to the moment where I finally get chucked out the side of the plane, and I am actually there looking out at the expanse of Antarctica after years of visualising it and dreaming of it.”
Lt Sears, whose older sister Kim married Murray, the Wimbledon champion, in 2015, said he hopes to arrive at the South Pole in time for Christmas Day.
He is looking to raise more than £25,000 for the Gurkha Welfare Trust to help rebuild schools in Gorkha, Nepal, destroyed in the earthquake of April 2015.
“We are hopefully going to rename one of the schools after Rifleman Suraj – he was the last member of 9 Platoon which is the platoon I took over – to be killed in Afghanistan,” he said.
Braving temperatures ranging between zero and minus 60C as well as 100mph winds, he will walk and ski over crevasse fields, glaciers and the Antarctic plateau.
Admitting his choice of expedition is “a very, very strange life choice”, and something which did not initially excite his mother, he said his whole family is now “very supportive” of his trek.
“I used to do quite a lot of mountaineering, but polar travel and polar adventure exploration always appealed to me – a solo expedition is about as challenging as you can get both mentally and physically,” he said.
The 6ft 5in former tennis player will burn more than 10,000 calories a day as he pulls a 100kg sledge, also known as a pulk, containing all his food, fuel and equipment.
He said his training has involved dragging tyres down beaches, gym sessions, and trips to Norway and the Arctic to train in cold conditions.
“I am lucky that the Gurkhas are probably the fittest out there, and I have to keep up with them all the time, so I have to stay quite fit,” said Lt Sears, who has been in the Army for almost three years.
“We are light infantry so we carry our houses on our back most of the time anyway – so for me it was getting used to dragging rather than carrying.”
He will be taking 50 days worth of “quite tasty” dehydrated meals with him, including chicken tikka masala and beef stroganoff, as well as stores of salami and chocolate.
Quizzed on how he will cope with being alone, Lt Sears said once he gets off the plane he will mentally break everything down into “tiny little tasks” to focus on.
Asked how he will stay motivated, he said: “I’ve got music, podcasts, audiobooks – I have enough memory on my phone to get a couple of series of Narcos on, which I haven’t watched yet because I am well behind the trend. So I am going to give myself an episode a night, on my phone, in my tent, as I melt my water.”
:: To make a donation visit www.justgiving.com/fundraising/scottsears
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here