‘I do question whether I should be here’
Ben Fogle and Victoria Pendleton are on a mission to conquer Mount Everest. They tell Peter Stanford why nobody could stop them
The insides of Ben Fogle’s tent at Everest Base Camp in Nepal are decorated with pictures of his wife, Marina, and their two children. Dotted around, too, he says, are favourite cuddly toys that his eight-year-old Ludo, and Iona, six, gave their dad to take with him to keep him safe as he tries, with Olympic cyclist Victoria Pendleton, to reach the summit of the world’s highest mountain.
“The photos and toys remind me constantly of home,” admits the TV presenter, talking by satellite phone from 17,000 feet up in the Himalayas. It is afternoon and two weeks into their mission. The two adventurers have just returned to Base Camp after successfully completing their first “rotation” – three days and nights on an acclimatisation climb. They still have at least one more rotation to do and then they must wait for the right weather to try for the 8,848m summit, which could be at any time in the next four weeks.
Accompanied by Kenton Cool, a 44-year-old Brit who has reached the summit 12 times already, they have already been to the first two camps (out of four) that measure out the path to the top of the world. This included a night-time ascent over the Khumbu Icefall. Fogle describes that part as “unbelievably daunting”.
Sitting next to him is Victoria Pendleton, who is in a buoyant mood. “It feels good now we’ve had a go,” says the 37-year-old London gold medallist. “We managed things quite well on the climb. For me, getting over all those jaggedy pieces of ice, and the ladders over plunging crevasses, has removed a few of the demons.”
Fogle, though, is in a more reflective mood. They will now have three nights in their own tents to recuperate – they had to share in the more cramped conditions higher up the mountain as there is not enough space for more tents – before heading off on the next rotation up to Camp 3 on Monday.
Marina Fogle took some convincing,
‘It was creaking and groaning, and we only had the light of our head-torches’
her husband has admitted, that the Everest adventure was a good idea, with one report saying that his father-in-law, a retired GP, was sent out with the expedition to “keep an eye on him”. In fact, he simply went to base camp because it was something he had always wanted to do and is no longer there. For Ben, his thoughts are never far from home – especially as he has letters from his family in his bags to last him for every day of the trip. “Sometimes I find them really empowering,” he confides, “but other times opening them can make me weepy. It depends on how emotionally strong I am feeling.”
Today’s message was from his daughter, attached to a photograph of her birthday party last year. “She wrote that she’d be ‘praying to God’ that I’d be back for the next one,” says Fogle.
Despite the crackly line, there is no missing the catch in the 44-yearold’s voice. Last year, six people were killed attempting to climb Everest. In the 64 years since Sir Edmund Hillary first reached its summit, 280 have perished trying to follow in his footsteps.
It is a thought which is ever present in Fogle’s mind as he psychologically prepares for the challenge ahead. He and Victoria – who are, he says, “bonding well as a team” – navigated the Khumbu Icefall at night because it was safer. (During the day, the warm sun causes it to melt and move.)
“But still it was creaking and groaning, and we only had the light of our head-torches. To distract myself from how scary it was, I found myself replaying in my head parts of my life back at home.” It gives him a perspective, he says, on what he is
trying to do and the risks attached.
“Victoria and I have both gone into this with our eyes wide open to the dangers. Nothing is more important than our self-preservation. The summit is our goal, our dream, but those little notes from my children remind me that it is far more important that I get home safely and in one piece.”
Pendleton’s take is more sanguine. “If you have a family, of course you miss them, and especially if you have children, because of the risk you are taking. For me, though, we’ve just been too busy to think about the risks. There’s never been a moment just to focus on myself.”
Unlike Fogle, she hasn’t been making satellite calls home. “I stick to text messages and keep it brief. My family is very much aware that no news is good news.” It sounds a bit brusque, especially with husband, former Team GB sports scientist Scott Gardner, back at home. He, she says, knew better than to try to talk her out of the Everest trip.
“Unfortunately, he knows me too well,” she says, “so he knows he wouldn’t have been able to convince me out of it. I’m very stubborn when I want to be.
“One of the hardest things,” she reflects, “is that I know I’ve put my family through hell. When I retired from cycling, my mum said, ‘you know you never need to do anything like that again’. So I took up horse racing. It’s in my nature.”
Interviewed before her departure for Nepal, she described signing up for this challenge as a midlife crisis. Is that still how it seems now she’s actually on the mountain?
“Yeah, midlife crisis: getting a motorcycle licence, dyeing my hair weird colours. There is so much more fun to have. Everyone seems very surprised that I haven’t just settled down and had children.”
What does she think? “I’m surprised, too, in many ways, but I can’t really explain it. Maybe that’s what it is. I don’t know. It’s not like I’m doing bad stuff.”
Though both Fogle and Pendleton say separately that they are different personalities, they also believe their differences complement each other. “He’s very relaxed,” says Victoria of Ben. “It would be hard to faze him. For me, he is a very calming influence.” Physically, he is super-fit, which she says helps.
For Victoria, so far, her biggest challenge has been struggling to sleep in the high altitude. “Every breath is difficult. You feel very sleepy but your sleep is very broken because, now and again, you have to take a deep breath and it wakes you up. I spend a lot of time having cat naps, and I’m just not a snooze sort of person.” And what she is missing most, she says, is a bathroom. “Here it is a shower in a freezing cold tent with a water bucket. There is a pee-tent, with a general hole in the corner. And a number-two tent, which is just into a plastic barrel, because human waste has to be removed from the mountain.”
But these are conditions she knows that she will have to get used to as they could be here for another month, as they wait for the “sweet spot” that occurs each year in May when the weather is just right.
For Ben, more time means more reflection: “I do question whether I should be here, but I know part of any adventure is always going to be the element of risk,” he says. “And this is going to be one of the greatest adventures I am ever going to experience.” This from a man who has already rowed across the Atlantic with James Cracknell and trekked with him to the South Pole in the footsteps of Captain Scott.
Fogle and Pendleton’s attempt on the summit of Everest is being undertaken to support the British Red Cross, the Anything Is Possible Foundation and UN Environment [for whom Fogle is Patron of the Wilderness]. And, he adds, for himself. “Life up in the high Himalayas is so different from anything I have ever experienced before, or will again: the landscape, the acclimatisation, the people you meet along the way.”
There will, he acknowledges, inevitably be more moments of doubt and more bouts of homesickness. “But what I hope is that my previous experience will enable me to focus on what I am here to do. I have spent a lifetime embracing risk in various guises.”
Perhaps, he suggests, the lure of Everest also has something to do with its reputation. “It can too often be seen in a negative light. It is a place where people focus on the terrible tragedies, but what I am determined to do is steer away from all that.”
‘Notes from my children remind me it is far more important that I get home safely’