Legend: Third time lucky for Sir Ranulph Fiennes

22-May-09

The man is nothing if not dogged. This evening, as I type this, a 65-year-old heart-attack and cancer survivor should be putting one leg, slowly in front of the other in between gasps for oxygen, en route for the highest point on earth. I write ’should’ because facts are a little hard to come by. The man in question is Sir Ranulph Fiennes, and he’s making a secret unpublicised third attempt on the world’s highest mountain. His team, guided by Kenton Cool, left camp 4 at 7.30pm local time today and should, if all goes to plan, be on the summit some ten hours later. Such refusal to be defeated is a reminder of what made the Guinness Book of Records call him the ‘world’s greatest living explorer’ almost 30 years ago. You’re a legend Ran.  Keep sucking in that O2!

Ran pictured at base camp earlier this month

20-May-09

A long time since the last blog. A lot has been going on since my ascent of the Tour Ronde with Kenton, from the exciting, such as the visit to the Arc’teryx factory in Vancouver (my new word is hydrophobic!) which included a couple of days gear testing at Callaghan Lodge. Damn! To the mundane – the hours spent behind my laptop (alas, it’s where most daylight hours go), the night shifts at the Daily Mail, the endless phone calls, emails and work on projects… walking my dog twice a day, seeing a personal trainer, trying to stick to a running schedule (something I’m not very good at), watching Sammy Wanjiru win the London marathon and running alongside the lead runners along the final straight with my four-year-old boy… a couple of weekends in the country, biking, running and kayaking in Chichester Harbour with my partner Sarah (we saw a seal!) to spending last weekend re-visiting a long-lost friend in the Peak District – Stanage Edge. How long ago did I last visit? Three, four years? Too long. It’s so great to be back on rock again – even if my knuckles are flayed raw and muscles I didn’t know existed are sore.

But all the while this has been going on, life for three explorers up in the Arctic has been one Groundhog day after another. For the last 68 days Ann Daniels, Martin Hartley and Pen Hadow have been drilling holes in the Arctic sea ice, often covering a pityingly small distance in their dutiful quest to survey ice depth over as big an area as possible. It is a daily war of attrition in one of the harshest elements on earth. The biggest challenge is not the cold or physical struggle but against boredom and the little voices in the head that question why you’re doing this.I managed to record a message for the team on their last re-supply. “Keep going,” I shouted down the phone. There are a lot of expeditions that claim they’re motivated by environmental concerns. There are very few where it is the primary motive. Go see what the team are up to yourself. www.catlinarcticsurvey.com 

PS, Sir Ranulph Fiennes is currently on his way to camp 3 on Mt Everest. As I exclusively reported in the Telegraph a couple of weeks ago, he’s making his third attempt on the mountain and has hired Kenton Cool once again. Clearly Kenton has been busy in the intervening period too.

5-May-09