The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
MY LIFE IN TRAVEL
He’s scaled the world’s tallest mountains and survived the harshest climates, but his idea of a perfect holiday lies right here
I’VE HAD VERTIGO SINCE I WAS A CHILD and I thought that climbing Mount Everest would teach me to confront it. I first tried to summit Everest via the Tibetan northern route which involved a lot of time spent higher than 27,500ft, in the notorious “death zone”. I suffered a heart attack on the last night, within 1,000ft of the summit ridge.
WHEN I TRIED AGAIN in 2008, I took the easier route through Nepal. That year I got up to the Buttress, a famous spot on the ridge. After we passed three dead bodies, I lost all of my morale. My sherpa, Tundu, told me to return a year later, when I would be 65 years old, and he would teach me how to get to the top.
Well, Tundu got me to the top that year, no problems at all, but it did nothing to cure my vertigo.
NEVER LOOK DOWN IS THE BEST ADVICE I received from [English mountaineer and guide] Kenton Cool. He wouldn’t even consider climbing the north face of the Eiger with me unless he first taught me how to climb to a standard where he was sure his own life was not at risk. After training hard, it took us three days and nights to scale the great vertical face. Kenton led the way with experienced climber Ian Parnell. The whole way they told me never to look down, which propelled me along all the way to the summit but, again, did nothing to help my vertigo.
MY THUMB TOOK TWO DAYS TO REMOVE after my solo expedition to the North Pole in 2000. My sled fell off a bridge of ice blocks, pulling my tent and cooker with it. I plunged my hand into the water to retrieve them but my glove lost its insulation and by the time everything was back, I’d lost feeling in my left hand. The doctors back in the UK wouldn’t amputate for five months, so my wife found our microsaw and we hacked it off ourselves.
I BURNED 11,000 CALORIES PER DAY while doing the first unsupported crossing of the Antarctic continent with Dr Mike Stroud in 1992. It was a 2,000-mile crossing. I weighed 15½st when I set off and by the halfway point at the South Pole I weighed under 9st, despite eating 5,600 calories every day. That’s the coldest expedition I’ve done because I’d used up all of my body fat and that’s your natural insulation on an expedition.
NO HUMAN HAD EVER BEEN VERTICALLY AROUND EARTH until my 1979 expedition with Charles Burton, where we set out in an ice-strengthened ship and got back three years and two days later. We were a single team of three people including my late wife Ginny, who was our base commander and the first woman to receive the Polar Medal from the Queen. Not a single inch of the 52,000 miles of land and sea was covered by plane. It was the first time anyone had travelled around the globe from pole to pole.
VINSON IS MY FAVOURITE MOUNTAIN because I just love Antarctica. It’s all snow and ice, until you get to the very top and there’s a bit of rock – I don’t like rock, whereas snow I’m not so upset by. To get an entire mountain covered in snow is just bliss for me.
I HAVE A PASSION FOR SAVING WILDLIFE and for anti-poaching but finding a solution often feels like an impossible task. I once went to the African Lion and Environmental Research Trust in Zimbabwe for two months with my stepson and helped to look after two lion cubs whose parents had been killed by poachers.
MY MOST MEMORABLE EXPEDITION was finding the lost city of Ubar in Oman after 26 years of looking for it. We eventually found it in 1992 on the eighth attempt. We started looking for it in 1968.
THE MOST INTERESTING FOOD I’VE EATEN is goat and rice. I was commissioned out to the Arabian Desert for two years when I was in the British army. I had 60 wonderful Arabs and Baluchis in my special reconnaissance force. We had to eat what was there, which meant it was always goat and rice, but it was made fanciful and delicious by the different curry flavours used by the locals.
My sherpa, Tundu, got me to the top of Everest but it did nothing to cure my vertigo
IF I COULD TAKE A HOLIDAY FOR PLEASURE, by which I mean one with my family and not other mountaineers, it would be to Sutherland in north-west Scotland to see the wildcats with my wife and daughter. I do love to see animals being saved from extinction. There aren’t many near-extinct species in the United Kingdom aside from the Scottish wildcats and there are only 1,000 or so of those prowling about, so we’d be incredibly lucky to spot one.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes will be speaking at The Telegraph Ski & Snowboard Festival on Fri
Oct 25. Tickets are available at skiandsnowboard.co.uk (10 per cent online discount with code RAN10) or phone 0844 412 4650.