+ "I had just completed and Army explosives course, where you learn to blow up as much as possible with as little as possible. And I was pretty good at it." Upon his return to England, Ranulph, with no formal “education” as such, had to think outside the box. “I lacked in “exam intelligence” which meant I had to go into something that requires looking very carefully at a problem, working out where the difficulties of the problem are, and attacking it from that side with the right people.” He married his childhood sweetheart, Virginia Pepper in 1970, who he credits with many of the expedition ideas. Together they launched a series of record breaking expeditions that kept them ahead of their international rivals for three decades. For Virginia’s support and involvement in the many expeditions she became the first woman to be awarded the Polar Medal for “outstanding service to British Polar exploration and research.” Virginia had the same love of adventure as Sir Ranulf and one of their first expeditions together was to find the Lost City of Ubar, which the Queen of Sheba had built thousands of years before. “My greatest achievement, the one that took the longest, was to find the Lost City of Incense in the greatest desert in the world. So for 26 years, after 8 separate expeditions we found the Lost City. It is now the biggest excavation works in Arabia.” A lot can be said there about perseverance. Virginia passed away in 2004 from cancer, aged just 56 years old and Sir Ranulf met and married Louise Millington and had a daughter and step-son from his marriage to Louise. The expeditions that Sir Ranulf has led (of which there are numerous) were varied and diverse but his interest in the Arctic and Antarctic regions was inspired by the need to follow the sponsorship. He explains, that without media coverage there is no sponsorship and the media were interested in the “cold” places. This led to the expedition to circumnavigate their way around the world from top to bottom, a feat they completed between 1978 and 1982. This route had never been done before and has never been achieved since! For many expeditions you can study what the person before you has done and see where they have gone wrong, but for many of Sir Ranulph’s expeditions, he went to places where no one had been before. For this he explains the need to have the right people on board. “Maybe you wake up in the morning and you look out of the tent and you see inbetween the two cliffs, everything is rumbled and full of holes. You want someone who is an expert at doing that type of project. So you take that particular person with you.” Some of his other achievements, which are extensive and at times seemingly impossible or equally foolish. He has been to the top of the highest mountain, traversed from the north to the south pole, and run seven marathons in 7 days in 7 countries. However each year, despite the challenges, Sir Ranulf has found another expedition to challenge his need for adventure. As you can imagine, a life full of adventure comes with some great “work stories”. One of the most extraordinary tales was during an expedition in 2000, to walk solo and unsupported to the North Pole. When his sled fell through weak ice and he was forced to pull it out by hand, he suffered extreme frostbite to his fingers on his left hand forcing him to abandon the attempt. Upon return to the UK the doctors wanted him to wait several months before amputating the severely frostbitten fingers, however he became impatient with the pain. “When I came back to the UK, they wouldn’t amputate my fingers for 5 months and my wife said I was getting irritable, so we bought a black and decker bench and a microsaw and in the garden shed, she bought me a cup of tea, and my thumb took me two days to cut off. The physiotherapist said I’d done a good job, but the surgeon was not happy.” In 2007, despite experiencing ongoing heart issues he decided to climb the Eiger in an attempt to overcome his lifelong issues of vertigo. “So I trained, because I couldn't climb. It’s 6000 feet of sheer rock face and in the first 300 feet I realised that I couldn't do it. But by then the charity cameras were filming it and I couldn't get out of it. It was horrific. When I got to the top I realised I hadn’t got rid of the vertigo and I decided I would never climb another mountain.” However that did not put him off climbing the highest mountain in the world, Mt Everest. After two failed attempts climbing (2005 and 2008), in 2009, at age 65 he reached the top. “I tried in 2005, not long after I had my first big heart attack. I did it from Tibet. On my last night when I was within 300m from the summit, I got a heart attack on the rope. I had glyceryl trinitrate in my pocket and I was by myself; it was pitch black and I was alone apart from my sherpa. I was trying to tell him I was about to die, you would think you would just take out the pills, unscrew the top and put the pills in your mouth but you've got these big mitts on, you’re holding onto a rope, its sheer, you’ve got ice, 12//WHERE ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS/#219
Sir Ranulph during his stint in the Sultan Army “I go on expeditions for the same reason an estate agent sells houses – to pay the bills.” Floating on an iceflow hoping to stay afloat during the Arctic melt ADVENTUREMAGAZINE.CO.NZ 13
Change language