Kevin Biggar’s Profile
Kevin Biggar got his first taste of adventure
early. He was just 18 when he had the
opportunity to work for two months at 12,500
feet, building a school at the
Tengboche monastery, in Nepal, with Sir Edmund
Hillary.
"The scenery was amazingly dramatic,
all around us were snow capped peaks that soared
20,000 feet or more into the sky. We would be
woken up each day by the horns and gongs of the
monks scaring away the evil spirits. You can see the
peak of Everest from there, and it always has a
plume of snow blowing off it. At night when the
full moon illuminates it, the scene is breathaking. After dinner in the hut Sir Ed
would tell stories about his climbs. It left a
big impression on me. I guess it planted a
seed."
The seed lay dormant for many years while Kevin
finished a physics degree at Auckland University
and a Master of Philosophy at the University of
Cambridge. Kevin returned to New Zealand to work
in the International Economics group of The
Treasury, and the Energy Impacts group of the
Ministry of Commerce before becoming a Strategy
Consultant with The Boston Consulting Group.
That seed finally bore fruit when Kevin decided
to leave the corporate world to take part in the
2003 Trans-Atlantic Rowing Race - a 5000km epic
between the Canary Islands and Barbados in a 7m
plywood dinghy - an unusual choice for someone
who had never rowed before! Kevin used his
business skills to great effect, identifying and
innovating on the most critical elements of the
preparations. However, plans went awry just six
weeks before the start when his rowing partner
pulled out. The last minute replacement was
Jamie Fitzgerald, a 22 year old university
student.
"The Trans-Atlantic rowing race has a history of
crew relationships breaking down. I didn't know
what was in store for us."
They encountered storms, curious whales, sleep
deprivation, breakages, hallucinations, stinging
jellyfish and were dramatically thrown out of
their boat in a capsize just 130nm from
Barbardos, leading to a desperate and thrilling
sprint to the finish. In the end, they not only
won, but smashed the previous record by more
than 21 hours completing the gruelling challenge
in just over 40 days and 5 hours at sea. The story of the race is told in 'The Oarsome Adventures of a Fat Boy Rower.'
Two years with strategy groups in Telecom NZ
followed, before Kevin and Jamie teamed up again
to take on an even bigger challenge. An
unsupported, 1200 km manhaul to the South Pole –
a feat that fewer than 50 people have ever
achieved.
"Who hasn't read the story of Scott's expedition
and wanted to go down there and see it for
themselves? Antarctica is an amazing place, the
highest, driest, windiest, coldest continent on
Earth."
The motivation for this trip was three-fold: to
become the first New Zealanders to walk
unsupported to the South Pole; to commemorate
the 50 th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary's
South Pole expedition, and to work with the
Foundation of Youth Development to help raise
young people's awareness of outdoor pursuits.
To prepare for this the pair spent weeks
training in the Canadian Arctic (dodging polar
bears) in New Zealand's coldest industrial
fridge (dodging frozen chickens!) and dragging
tyres around the streets and hills of Wellington
and Auckland (dodging hooligans in Cortinas).
In Antarctica Kevin and Jamie spent fifty days battling worse than expected conditions, temperatures as cold as -40 degrees, frostbite, injury, whiteouts, endless sastruggi and gear failure.
"I thought after rowing the Atlantic that
nothing could ever be difficult again. But
Antarctica was brutal, there is nothing about
manhauling the sled down there that is easy.
Just when you think things are going ok
something will go wrong, like your glove gets
blown away, a tent pole breaks, or you fall into
a crevasse."
Finally, after 52 days of man-hauling their
sleds, they reached the South Pole. The first
New Zealanders to walk unsupported to the Pole
and the first people in the world to have rowed
an ocean and walked to a pole.
