The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
World’ s greatest explorer to share his life story at Scottish festival
When you invite the world’s greatest living explorer to an event, you can expect extreme stories of survival and risking life and limb, and that’s what Sir Ranulph Fiennes will be sharing – and more – at this year’s Fringe by the Sea, in North Berwick in August
He’s crossed Antarctic ice caps, summited Everest and is the oldest Brit to have climbed the north face of the Eiger – not bad for someone who suffers from extreme vertigo!
It’s true, world-famous mountaineer Sir Ranulph Fiennes – who interestingly trained with the SAS before being chucked out – initially ruled out climbing the world’s highest mountain because of this at-times debilitating condition that affects balance and feels like everything around you is spinning.
But it wasn’t until his wife died, that Sir Ranulph (real name Sir Ranulph Twisleton-wykehamfiennes, 3rd Baronet OBE) set himself the challenge of overcoming his vertigo and reaching the top.
However, the expedition in 2004 did not go smoothly as the 78-year-old adventurer explained.
“I just wanted to do something, anything to distract me. So I did months and months of training and then I got a heart attack when I was 300 metres from the top and my friend got hypoxia on the way down.
“I told the doctor when I got down to base camp that I was never trying it again but he told me that if you go up the other side, from Nepal, it’s dead easy!”
The determined explorer, who was inspired to become an explorer during his time in the British Army, attempted Everest a second time, the “easy” way, four years later in 2008.
But that trip was also plagued with disappointment, and sadness.
Sir Ranulph reveals: “I nearly got to the top, didn’t get a heart attack, but the body of my Sherpa’s father appeared in the snow, as he had previously died trying to climb Everest.
“There hadn’t been that much snow that year so the bodies just reappear. It was awful. The next year, 2009, by which time I was an OAP, I had worked out why I had failed twice: I was being too competitive. The next time I tried, I went with a Sherpa who was so fit, there was no point in trying to be competitive. I went very slowly that time.”
When he summited the great mountain, at the age of 65, he became the oldest Brit to do so.
He is still competitive and says that he regrets not having scaled all seven of the world’s tallest mountains, having climbed three of the seven, including
the highest one. If he had completed the feat, he could have added it to his long list of accolades and achievements, including being the world record holder as the only person to have crossed the whole of that Antarctic ice cap, the whole of the northern ice cap and to climb the highest mountain.
It’s called the Global Reach Challenge and the former Army captain is the only person to ever have done it.
He says: “The mountains that you can actually climb when you are in your seventies have to be much
lower than the ones you could have climbed before. There are only three of them out of seven I haven’t done, so it’s very annoying. I’m sure someone else will complete it soon.”
When he scaled the Eiger – which at 3,967 metres tall is less than half the height of Everest, at 8,949m – he seemed to conquer his vertigo, thanks to his trusted companion who had climbed Everest 11 times! He puts his success on the north face of the Swiss mountain down to this one man.
“He is very clever at teaching his climbers how
not to get vertigo temporarily. It’s pretty simple – don’t allow yourself to think below your feet at all. It seems obvious but don’t look down!
“The north face of the Eiger has killed off 80 people but I could only do it because of that guy.”
However, when it came to climbing a ladder back home, Sir Ranulph, who remarried in 2005, was not so successful, he laughed: “Last August at home, the gutters got full of leaves, and I was too scared so I sent my wife up and I held the ladder!