SOME PEOPLE ARE JUST TOO WORRIED ABOUT DYING
He’s conquered Everest 4 times, navigated 800 miles of high seas in a tiny boat and survived for 50 days in the Yukon. Meet the Scottish antidote to the snowflake generation whose life is driven by the mantra:
IN a stinging blizzard that threatened to strip the skin from his face, Ed Wardle inched painfully along a knifeedge ridge towards the roof of the world. Struggling for breath and weakened by climbing this far up the world’s highest mountain, he could only just see, through the snowstorm, the ground plunging thousands of feet towards Tibet on one side and Nepal on the other.
For the first time, the Scot – a veteran explorer who has survived expeditions into the most remote and inhospitable corners of the planet – began to feel this was one adventure from which he might not return.
Last Sunday, more than a million TV viewers watched enthralled as ex-SAS soldier turned reality star Ant Middleton triumphantly battled to the top of Everest – filmed by Mr Wardle. Now the man behind the camera has revealed the terrifying risks he took to bring back the astonishing footage.
The modest 47-year-old from Cardross in Argyll was commissioned by Channel 4 to make the Extreme Everest documentary in spring this year. He has now tackled Everest six times, reaching the 29,029ft summit on four occasions, yet this was the first time he feared he might not survive.
He said: ‘Those were the worst conditions I’ve seen. It was very hard. I don’t fear for my life a lot because I focus on what I’m doing but yes, briefly this time I thought, “Maybe this is it”.’
BUT he reflects: ‘We overvalue our existence. We overvalue our lives individually to the point of not enjoying our lives, not fulfilling our lives. Don’t worry about dying, go out and do interesting things. ‘That’s scary to every mother to hear me saying that to their sons and daughters, but I completely believe it – slightly less so now I have a daughter, because I know she needs me to come home, at least for the next ten years or so, but don’t put so much value on staying alive. Put value on doing interesting, exciting things.
‘We stay in air-conditioned buildings and eat burgers. It’s rubbish. Everest is extraordinary.’
Brought up on a rural hill farm near Banchory, Aberdeenshire, he studied architecture at Aberdeen University but lost interest in it after his mother Penelope died.
Mr Wardle moved to Glasgow and got work as a TV production assistant, filming tycoon Sir Richard Branson’s adventures with hot air balloon flights. He was asked to make his first film of Everest in 2006. Now he says: ‘If people are making a film about Everest, they’ll phone me. Most times I’ll come back and think, that’s enough now. But each time I find something new and inspiring.’
This year, the weather was the worst yet. Ant Middleton was seen dismissing a warning to turn back. Mr Wardle recalls: ‘The wind was coming up vertically at us from the face in Nepal, carrying a lot of ice particles. It was like being sandblasted. Summit Ridge is about as wide as your boot. If you fell to the right, you’d fall a couple of miles into Nepal – and if you fall to the left, you fall a couple of miles into Tibet.
‘To clear your goggles, you have to take them off and scrape the ice off from the inside. But taking your gloves off is a huge issue as well, because you will lose your hands very quickly in those conditions.’
On his relationship with the show’s star, filming his every move, he reflects: ‘Ant’s a leader. He was co-operative, without wanting to be told what to do.
‘You bond in the face of adversity. We had a bottle of whisky when we got back down again.’
On the way back down, Mr Wardle recalls Mr Middleton describing his horror at seeing a Sherpa succumb to hypothermia: ‘Ant said he was still on top of the Hillary Step. His [the Sherpa’s] team left him behind,
thinking, “He’s totally capable, he’ll be coming along”.
‘But it was a very bad day and I was surprised that he was the only person that died. There could easily have been a lot more.’
And he should know, having witnessed a devastating avalanche that killed 16 Sherpas in 2014: ‘The Sherpas are all brothers, uncles and cousins. It was really upsetting.’
Mr Wardle’s other adventures include recreating Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic feat of endurance, crossing 800 miles of ocean in a small boat; surviving for 50 days in the Yukon wilderness in Canada; and breaking a British freediving record, reaching a depth of 178ft in two minutes and 11 seconds on a single breath of air with no fins.
‘I look at it as one of the best achievements I’ve done,’ he says proudly. ‘That was being a proper athlete.’
His wife Amanda, 50, has long been used to her husband’s dangerous adventures. He says: ‘I was climbing Everest when we met. She knew what I was about, and we do talk about it.’
But his seven-year-old daughter Gracie has her own opinions. He says: ‘When I got back from Everest this time, it was just like in the movies – she ran up and jumped on me and gave me a big hug.
‘Then she told me to shave off my beard.’