Kay White and her son Lee in World First

Kay White and son, Lee, complete the 300 mile epic pioneering trek up the Skeleton Coast…

Kay and Lee White become the first humans to walk 300 miles of the Skeleton Coast, together. 

Kay White, founder of Redventure, and her son Lee, from Halesowen in the West Midlands, were selected to join a small team to trek 300 miles of Namibian coastline, where no man has walked before.

 The team of 14 were unsupported. So no food parcels, no water drops, and no vehicle support to back them up. No radio contact with the outside world. They were on their own.

 Each of them carried HALF their body weight on their backs, to ensure that they had all they need, and personal luxuries weren’t just limited, they weren’t allowed at all. Clothes were very limited, to allow room for all the equipment they needed to stay alive.

 The most important factor for survival was water. Every day they needed to filter 700 litres, giving them 70 litres of water. This took 5 hours every evening, after walking for 10 hours on rapidly deteriorating feet. Each team member carried just 4 litres with them for the day, with instructions to keep at least one for emergency. So drinking one litre before leaving camp, they had just 3 litres of water each, to walk another 10 hours in searing 30 degree heat.

 They burnt an average of 6-7000 calories EACH, while on food rations that provided them with just 2400 every day. They were slowly starving on their 20 day expedition. Lee lost half his body fat, falling from 19% of his bodyweight to just 8%. He lost 10 kilos in weight.

 Alongside them, nearly all the way, were the vast numbers of seals that inhabit the coastline. As friends they kept with them along the shoreline, stopping to watch them, as the team took a much needed break. As foes, the huge, angry bull seals, apparently in mating season, were very intimidating as they tried to enter the sea to get their water rations for filtering. While the rest tried to keep them at bay with loud noises and their walking poles, one of the team ran into the sea to collect the water. A terrifying ordeal of life or death for the team, as the water was not something they could live without. 

Kay’s highlight however, came when a baby pup seal came inquisitively up to her during one of the breaks, and within a foot of her feet, looked straight at her. A moment she will never forget.

Her low moment was when she sustained an ankle injury, on day 2 of the expedition. She then had to survive on very strong pain killers on a daily basis. But the hardest part of all ‘was feeling like a wounded animal, struggling at the back of the pack. Mentally that was the toughest’. Having never done an expedition with an injury, despite her North and South Pole expeditions, she felt truly challenged by this weakness.

Seals weren’t their only companions either. Creeping out of the tent in the middle of the night, for a necessary moment, Kay came face to face with a pair of eyes in the darkness. It was a jackal. Having never had human contact before it showed no fear at all, and before she knew it, 3 of its friends had arrived. Mid-moment, she leapt backwards into her tent, amid screams of delight and fear. They playfully took anything that was left out of a tent, and left it strewn about for them to find in the morning. Fortunately no boots were taken, as this would have spelt the end of someone’s adventure.

The sea, whilst a vital part of their day, was also very challenging. When the shorebreak was very steep, it caused great danger to the team trying to get water.

Kay and Lee both say that their feet have suffered the most, causing them excruciating pain on a daily basis, when they had to get their boots on each morning. To then walk for up to 10 hours each day, up 800 foot sand dunes, and crumbling cliffs, fighting off seal bulls in season, on water rations, and starvation food rations, has pushed them to their very limits.

But their sense of achievement is bursting out of them. They have survived one of the toughest expeditions, and have survived it together. This is a world first, a world record.

Their motivation and drive was to raise money for Cure Leukaemia, a cause that Kay has supported for many years, and for which she has raised over £250,000. Kay founded Redventure, which offers adventure trekking in order to raise money for Cure Leukaemia, which has now been running for over a year, with the aim to send adventurous souls to unusual places around the world, while raising much needed funds for the charity. It has proved very successful, and has raised great awareness for leukaemia and the Centre for Clinical Haematology, at Birmingham Hospital.

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