Ranulf (Ran) Fiennes has been described as Guinness World Records Play as the world’s greatest living adventurer. He was the first person to reach the North and South Poles by surface means, the first person to traverse Antarctica entirely on foot, and completed the northernmost unsupported polar expedition and the first and longest unsupported expedition on the Antarctic continent. At the age of 65, he climbed Mount Everest.
Sir Lanulf took time out of his busy schedule to discuss his book with Peter Moore, coldhis latest expedition, the coldest journeyis also his biggest regret as a polar explorer.
How did you start exploring?
That was when I was in the military, right in the middle of the Cold War. I was stationed in Germany with French and American troops, facing the mighty might of the Warsaw Pact forces across the Iron Curtain. We waited months and months and years and years for them to attack, and they didn’t. As you can imagine, this was boring for the soldiers, so naturally they took out their aggression on each other and started beating each other up.
The police, tasked with stopping this from happening, started taking us out for “adventure training” – canoeing, skiing, rock climbing, etc. I did expedition or adventure training in Germany for about five years. So, when I got kicked out of the military for not having been to Sandhurst, I suddenly found myself eight years in the military without a job. So my wife and I thought we could turn our adventure training into some form of earning a living.
Did you get any advice?
I was lucky enough to meet Chris Bonnington, who has already started doing something similar. He was also a former tank officer and turned rock climbing into a livelihood for his family. Chris realized that no one is going to pay you to plan, organize and launch an expedition, but if you are sponsored, you don’t have to. If it works, you can spend the next few years teaching and writing about it for a living. This has also become our policy.
What drew you to cold places in the first place?
It has everything to do with making a living as an explorer. You don’t get sponsored unless you have the chance to break some world record or be the first to get somewhere. If an expedition does something that has proven impossible before, like reaching the North Pole without support, then that’s what you want to pursue. Unless you’re a mountaineer or sailor, the polar regions are the ones you can concentrate on at the time.
Do you have many competitors?
No matter which area we decide to specialize in, we can never be alone. There will always be others trying the same thing. It’s always a tough competition. But in our particular field of polar exploration, it turns out that the main enemies, well, competitors are the Norwegians. They think the polar regions are theirs.
Interestingly, your first expedition is in Norway.
This is purely coincidental. I was in the army, and the hydrological committee in Oslo was looking for people to complete surveys of two of the 28 large glaciers that lie 6,000 feet above the plateau. The only way to get the whole team and all the survey gear onto the glacier at 10,000 feet was to parachute them down. We ended up forming a team that could skydive or soon learn to do so, and the expedition started to take a more interesting form. We lived through blizzards of icy life and made almost fatal mistakes.
Was that your first experience of cold?
Interestingly, the temperature never drops below minus 8 degrees. If you’re British, or like me, born in South Africa, minus 8 degrees is pretty cold. But the most important lesson I’ve learned from this is that people who might be really good friends, great people with a good history, might actually be useless in the cold. So we set out to develop a way to select the right people, rather than just make up the numbers with more people.
How important is it to choose the right person?
Our principle is to select people for expeditions according to their character and to teach them the necessary skills. You can’t change personality, but you can teach skills. If you’re lucky, like the group I’m hanging out with right now in Antarctica, they’ll be a little bit of both.
What is involved in the selection process?
We started selecting expedition members for the project the coldest journey The expedition is currently in Antarctica and last year in northern Sweden. We have a three-person selection team right now, and they can get very unpleasant when it comes to drafting. They’re usually good guys, but whenever I go on an expedition, we’ll bring them together to choose a new group.
Will you recall what you have learned from previous expeditions?
Not just my expeditions, but those of others who came before me. My predecessors in the past 150 years, why do so many people die in horrific circumstances. When we succeeded them in the 1960s, what lessons did the next generation (us) learn. We were able to learn a lot of lessons about what not to do, so we were able to gradually start breaking world records where they didn’t. And the Norwegians don’t.
Of course, it’s not just about breaking world records. Your expeditions also have scientific value.
I never pretended to be a scientist. But I lead scientists on expeditions and give them opportunities, especially the current expedition to Antarctica, that they wouldn’t have otherwise. So I don’t claim to be a scientist, but my expeditions produced scientific results.
Is there a fine line between being reckless and pushing boundaries?
Recklessness is foolish because it usually brings expeditions to a halt. The purpose of this expedition is to succeed. The best way to succeed is to identify risks upfront and avoid them. That way you have a better chance of success, which in turn makes your sponsor more likely to pass up next time.
Having said that, if you’re actually doing something that no one has done before, like trying to cross Antarctica during the polar winter, problems are more likely to arise because no one can teach you what to do wrong. Do and you have to do something, not bad planning.
I was shocked to learn the amount of money needed to carry out these expeditions. You must raise £30 million for an expedition from one pole to the other. That was in the 70’s. There is a lot of money to be raised.
That’s why we’ve spent seven years, pro bono, planning and organizing something that will probably fail. If it fails after seven years, you have nothing to show for it. In fact, when this expedition set out, that one, it would have been three years of travel, and even at the end of those three years, until the last two months of the whole thing, we were likely to fail. Then 11 years of hard work will be in vain.
How difficult was it to organize the expedition?
It was just me and Dr. Mike Stroud skiing, dropping fuel and food in eight places by parachute. But the foreign ministry would not accept it because the continent has no aid facilities for nine months of the year.
So instead of two skiers, we had two 25-ton vehicles carrying 100 tons of fuel and an extra doctor and mechanic just to meet the requirements of the Foreign Office.
Was it a difficult decision to quit your latest expedition due to hand problems?
It’s actually a pretty simple decision, because any fool will know that if a particular part of your body isn’t working properly for some reason, is going bad, and in some cases frostbite, and for your particular The mission is critical and in that particular expedition, you have to quit.
What is the biggest remaining challenge?
What we’re doing now is traveling across Antarctica in winter.
What is the greatest improvement you have made in the past 20 years?
1994 Polar-orbiting satellites are launched, enabling the use of GPS.
Until then, using the sun, watch and shadow to navigate 1,800 miles in an area with no obvious features was the most efficient way. Now, at the end of the day, we almost know exactly where we are.
Is there competition between different expeditions?
It gets a little annoying and competitive. Norwegians accuse us of whoring and the Royal Geographical Society engages in a stand-up with top Norwegians. This is very unpleasant.
Having said that, there is respect and camaraderie as well. When Børge Ousland heard that I had climbed Mount Everest, I received a beautiful postcard. We’ve all crossed two ice caps, and the first of us to scale Mount Everest will be the first to conquer the Big Three as explorers. He sent a beautiful postcard saying “well done” which was so kind of him.
Do you have any regrets?
Apparently, I unfortunately developed diabetes at the wrong moment, which caused my hands to move like they used to, and caused me to quit the last expedition. Especially the other party, in the same situation, there is no problem.
What to do if you lose your finger?
I lost them eleven years ago, but that hasn’t stopped me from winter climbing Everest.
How do you feel about what new adventurers have to do — tweet, blog, film their every move?
My wife calls me a technological dinosaur. The most techy thing I own is a 12 year old Nokia with a 1″ x 2″ screen. I’ve learned to use it to receive text messages, but I haven’t bothered to learn how to send them. But you can’t ignore the new method. this expedition, the coldest journey, has a website, tweets, blogs and all that stuff. I just let the rest of the team handle it.
What advice would you give an explorer starting today?
Choose an area of specialization, whether polar, mountain or nautical. Join the Royal Geographical Society and find out all about it from their archives. Their expedition advisory office will also provide reports on all recent expeditions. You can save a lot of time by doing the groundwork there.
Finally, you wrap up your new book with a discussion about climate change. What is your opinion on this issue?
This has gotten very emotional! Listening to the scientists who accompanied us on the expedition, it’s clear they don’t believe either of these claims. But they are very keen to somehow find irrefutable evidence. Results from our recent expedition to Antarctica will help make this happen. Satellite discoveries must be validated on the ground in winter and summer, and our people will be able to do that in a meaningful way.
Sir Ranulph’s latest book, Cold: Extreme Adventures in the Lowest Temperatures on Earthcan be ordered amazon Now.For more information on his latest expedition, visit the coldest journey website.
