People who rock
Ex-Marine Scott Ra■s●ey was left blind in one eye from an IED explosion. Since then he’s been walking up mountains. Trai● finds out more...
Ex-Marine Scott Ransley discovers a new uphill purpose in life
I was a Royal Marine with 42 Commando.
My company was given the job of raiding an IED (improvised explosive device] factory in Afghanistan, but to get there we were going to have to cross a minefield. My friend stood on an IED and was killed, and I got a load of shrapnel to the face, leaving me, basically, without a right eye. It was the end of my career in the Marines, and so after a transition period I finally left in 2014.
After I left I got a phone call from my old Sergeant Major. He said “You all right, Ranners? Do you want to walk 1000 miles?” And I said, “Yeah, why not?!” So I did the Walk of Britain with Walking With The Wounded in 2015. I originally did it to go away and do something like I was able to with the Royal Marines – a group of people with one goal, trying to get it done – but it really opened the door for me to all the things you can get up to, like raising money and helping people.
There was this one woman on the Walk of Britain. I don’t even know her name. We were climbing Ben Nevis and she came to meet us, with her two brown Labradors. She was singing our praises, and talking about how inspirational we all were and all that sort of thing. She said: “I’ve never had the guts to do Ben Nevis on my own, but I heard you guys were doing it, so I thought, if they can do it, I can do it.” She came with us, and she enjoyed it so much that she did Snowdon and Scafell with us too – bearing in mind she’d never dared to do any of them in her life. It wasn’t until the last peak that she told someone she’d got terminal cancer and had only three months to live. I’d been speaking to her for ages, because she had these two dogs and I love dogs. And she’d not once mentioned it. When I found out, through somebody else, I thought it was amazing. To think she found us inspirational – it left me feeling very humble.
After getting my Green Beret, summiting Denali in 2017 has got to be my biggest achievement so far.
Denali was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done besides Commando training, no doubt. It was extremely cold. On summit day it was around -45°C. It was hard, hard work. There are no Sherpas, everything you need you have to carry on your back. I got stuck in a tent for nine days in a storm. On the way up, one of our guys started getting water on the lung. I summited, but on the way back down I started to get the early stages of cerebral oedema – which is when your brain starts to swell. The views were brilliant though!
I also climbed Kilimanjaro, with five police officers from the South Wales Police in 2015. It was quite funny because we [the Marines] were all mega squared away with everything – our kit admin and where we put things and how we conduct ourselves in the night and things like that – and the police officers were just all over the place. So it was good to learn from each other and help each other out, to see things from a different perspective. So we laughed about it and got on together.
Quick-fire:
Favourite UK mountain? Snowdon
Weirdest place you’ve slept? An American jail. Something to do with a Taser fight between Royal Marines on Virginia Beach! What’s next? I’m due to climb Everest in April 2019.
Tent or luxury accommodation? Oh, I’m going to have to say luxury, because you never know when you’re going to get it again! I’ve spent that many times in ditches and bushes, anything with a roof on will do me.