Sir Ranulph Fiennes
Why did you decide to climb the Eiger?
Well, in around 2002, polar expeditions came pretty much to a situation where various groups or individuals, including my own group, had knocked off the big geographical and physical challenges at both ends of the world. So my group, in particular Mike Stroud and myself, moved on to other physical challenges, one of which, in 2003, was to try to run a marathon on every continent in seven days.
On that particular challenge, we were due to leave on 31 October 2003, but in June I had a massive heart attack and double bypass and was in a coma for three days. When I awoke, I rang up Mike to put it off for a year, but our sponsors couldn’t, because it had been very complicated to organise – we had to do it that year. So I had three and a half months of learning how to walk again, then how to walk uphill, then, a month later, how to start jogging with a big raw scar and wires tying my ribs back together – but we did it. Then, in early 2005, Sibusiso Villane from Swaziland (the first black man to climb Mount Everest by the south side) asked me if I would climb Everest with him to raise £2million for Great Ormond Street.
Another reason I went was to confront my fear of heights as I had, many years before, rid myself of a similar fear – of spiders – when I was in the Arab army because of forced confrontation with them over a three-year period, and I thought that Everest would do it. But it didn’t. Everest is just a long trudge and you’re on a fixed rope all of the time – there’s no climbing [on the route they took] and no heights; it’s just big snowy slopes down below. So I’d heard that the north face of the Eiger is fairly vertiginous and chose that.
Isn’t the north face route one of the most dangerous routes up the Eiger?
Well, it’s prone to rockfall, particularly since things started warming up in the world. I met a British climber – one of the top six mountaineers in the UK – called Kenton Cool, and when I asked him, he said that he would only accompany me if I trained over the intervening year. And so, during January last year, I started being trained in the Alps, doing five days a month with him and one day a month on rock in Bristol.
How’s it going – are you feeling confident?
Sometimes I do, but I fall off a lot. I still can’t look over big buildings, but I’ve been taught that when the panic starts to build up, you have to look upwards and try to work out the next hold. I have a problem with my left hand – half my thumb and half my fingers from the knuckles up aren’t there and they aren’t as good as the fingers on my right hand. Luckily, however, my left hand can still grasp a specially made ice-axe.
What made you choose the Marie Curie Delivering Choice Programme as the sole beneficiary?
Well, I knew of Marie Curie Cancer Care because I had done some work for them 15 years previously and, also, my late wife Ginny died of cancer. My mother and two of my three sisters also died the same way, all within 18 months of each other, so I spent a lot of time in hospital wards. When Ginny was able to get out of bed, we would visit the ladies in other beds in the NHS wards when we noticed that they never had any visitors. Many of them said that they would much rather be at home than in a lonely place where other people get a lot of visitors and you don’t. Marie Curie offers a way around this that’s available to people with no money. But there just aren’t enough nurses to go around, so if the public rises to our invitation to make a donation, we’ll be able to provide
a lot more nurses.
Why do you take up such daring, dangerous and enduring challenges? What motivates you?
Well, if I didn’t do an expedition next year, I would find it difficult to pay the bills, unless I wrote a book. If I’m doing that, I am financially okay but, failing that, I need to write or give lectures. So, I suppose, like anybody else who goes AWOL from their job, I won’t get an income. It’s been my job since I left the army in 1970.
What character traits are required to undertake the kind of endurance challenges you’ve done?
Well, I’ve never been able to say that a particular person couldn’t do a particular expedition. Whether they are small and weak or are very obese, they may well be able to do certain expeditions. It helps if they are enthused by whatever project they’re a part of, and it helps if their enthusiasm isn’t easily put off by discomfort. And that’s it, I’m afraid. If you try generalising in order to make selection processes easier, you can miss out on a gem of a person who appeared, under your generalising rules, to be no good.
Do you have any more challenges in the pipeline?
Well, the people with whom we did the Zambezi expedition – on the same dates as Livingstone, 150 years before – are organising a conservation expedition to Zimbabwe involving mainly black rhino and lions.
February 2007
Well, in around 2002, polar expeditions came pretty much to a situation where various groups or individuals, including my own group, had knocked off the big geographical and physical challenges at both ends of the world. So my group, in particular Mike Stroud and myself, moved on to other physical challenges, one of which, in 2003, was to try to run a marathon on every continent in seven days.
On that particular challenge, we were due to leave on 31 October 2003, but in June I had a massive heart attack and double bypass and was in a coma for three days. When I awoke, I rang up Mike to put it off for a year, but our sponsors couldn’t, because it had been very complicated to organise – we had to do it that year. So I had three and a half months of learning how to walk again, then how to walk uphill, then, a month later, how to start jogging with a big raw scar and wires tying my ribs back together – but we did it. Then, in early 2005, Sibusiso Villane from Swaziland (the first black man to climb Mount Everest by the south side) asked me if I would climb Everest with him to raise £2million for Great Ormond Street.
Another reason I went was to confront my fear of heights as I had, many years before, rid myself of a similar fear – of spiders – when I was in the Arab army because of forced confrontation with them over a three-year period, and I thought that Everest would do it. But it didn’t. Everest is just a long trudge and you’re on a fixed rope all of the time – there’s no climbing [on the route they took] and no heights; it’s just big snowy slopes down below. So I’d heard that the north face of the Eiger is fairly vertiginous and chose that.
Well, it’s prone to rockfall, particularly since things started warming up in the world. I met a British climber – one of the top six mountaineers in the UK – called Kenton Cool, and when I asked him, he said that he would only accompany me if I trained over the intervening year. And so, during January last year, I started being trained in the Alps, doing five days a month with him and one day a month on rock in Bristol.
How’s it going – are you feeling confident?
Sometimes I do, but I fall off a lot. I still can’t look over big buildings, but I’ve been taught that when the panic starts to build up, you have to look upwards and try to work out the next hold. I have a problem with my left hand – half my thumb and half my fingers from the knuckles up aren’t there and they aren’t as good as the fingers on my right hand. Luckily, however, my left hand can still grasp a specially made ice-axe.
What made you choose the Marie Curie Delivering Choice Programme as the sole beneficiary?
Well, I knew of Marie Curie Cancer Care because I had done some work for them 15 years previously and, also, my late wife Ginny died of cancer. My mother and two of my three sisters also died the same way, all within 18 months of each other, so I spent a lot of time in hospital wards. When Ginny was able to get out of bed, we would visit the ladies in other beds in the NHS wards when we noticed that they never had any visitors. Many of them said that they would much rather be at home than in a lonely place where other people get a lot of visitors and you don’t. Marie Curie offers a way around this that’s available to people with no money. But there just aren’t enough nurses to go around, so if the public rises to our invitation to make a donation, we’ll be able to provide
a lot more nurses.
Why do you take up such daring, dangerous and enduring challenges? What motivates you?
Well, if I didn’t do an expedition next year, I would find it difficult to pay the bills, unless I wrote a book. If I’m doing that, I am financially okay but, failing that, I need to write or give lectures. So, I suppose, like anybody else who goes AWOL from their job, I won’t get an income. It’s been my job since I left the army in 1970.
What character traits are required to undertake the kind of endurance challenges you’ve done?
Well, I’ve never been able to say that a particular person couldn’t do a particular expedition. Whether they are small and weak or are very obese, they may well be able to do certain expeditions. It helps if they are enthused by whatever project they’re a part of, and it helps if their enthusiasm isn’t easily put off by discomfort. And that’s it, I’m afraid. If you try generalising in order to make selection processes easier, you can miss out on a gem of a person who appeared, under your generalising rules, to be no good.
Do you have any more challenges in the pipeline?
Well, the people with whom we did the Zambezi expedition – on the same dates as Livingstone, 150 years before – are organising a conservation expedition to Zimbabwe involving mainly black rhino and lions.
February 2007
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