KYODO NEWS - Sep 18, 2017 - 13:35 | Sports, Lifestyle, All

A 40-year-old Japanese adventurer will embark in mid-November on an unassisted solo trek of approximately 1,130 kilometers across Antarctica to the South Pole.

If successful, Yasunaga Ogita will become the first Japanese to accomplish an unassisted trek to the South Pole. He is planning to pull a 100-kilogram sleigh loaded with a tent, food and fuel and reach the goal in about two months.

(Ogita)

"I want to experience the excitement of seeing an unknown world," said Ogita, who has previously given up twice on unassisted treks to the North Pole since 2012 due to obstacles such as huge crevasses.

This time he will be trekking in summer from Hercules Inlet, a location in the Antarctic at latitude 80 degrees south, and when the temperature in the continent covered with a thick ice sheet will be around minus 35 C.

Ogita, who lives in the town of Takasu in Hokkaido, said unlike the Arctic, where trekkers face challenges such as crevasses and walls of sea ice, adventures in Antarctica would not involve technical difficulties.

(Ogita)

But he said the upcoming trek is expected to be physically demanding as he would constantly face strong highland winds in climbing to the South Pole, some 2,800 meters above sea level.

Out of around 20 million yen ($180,000) needed to fund the trek, including costs of chartered flights to Antarctica, Ogita collected 3.7 million yen through crowdfunding.

Ogita, a native of Kanagawa Prefecture near Tokyo, joined a trekking program for the first time in 2000 when he walked in the Arctic with Japanese adventurer Mitsuro Oba. At that time he said he had been "looking for a place to burn energy" after quitting his studies at the Kanagawa Institute of Technology.

After that experience, he saved money from various part-time jobs and visited the Arctic 15 times, successfully trekking over 9,000 km in total.

Reflecting upon his adventures in the Arctic, Ogita said he has shooed away polar bears that approached him while he was asleep, and also suffered burns when his tent was set ablaze by a stove.

"In such adventures, you can feel you are living and facing challenges with full force. I have accumulated experiences in the Arctic, so I think it is possible for me to reach the South Pole," he said.