Ranulph Fiennes
Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes, 3rd Baronet , commonly known as Sir Ranulph Fiennes and sometimes as Ran Fiennes, is an English explorer, writer and poet, who holds several endurance records.
Fiennes served in the British Army for eight years, including a period on counter-insurgency service while attached to the Army of the Sultanate of Oman. He later undertook numerous expeditions and was the first person to visit both the North Pole and South Pole by surface means and the first to completely cross Antarctica on foot. In May 2009, at the age of 65, he reached the summit of Mount Everest.
Guinness Book of Records founding editor Norris McWhirter in 1984 named Fiennes as the greatest living explorer. Fiennes has written numerous books about his army service and his expeditions as well as books on explorers Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton.
Early life and education
Fiennes was born in Windsor, Berkshire, on 7 March 1944, nearly four months after the death of his father, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes. While commanding the Royal Scots Greys in Italy Fiennes' father trod on a German anti-personnel S-mine and died of his wounds eleven days later in Naples on 24 November 1943. He was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Order. Fiennes' mother was Audrey Joan, younger daughter of Sir Percy Newson. Fiennes inherited his father's baronetcy, becoming the 3rd Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes baronet at his birth.After the war his mother moved the family to South Africa, where he remained until he was 12. While in South Africa he attended Western Province Preparatory School in Newlands, Cape Town. Fiennes then returned to be educated at Sandroyd School, Wiltshire, and then at Eton College.
Career
Army officer
After failing to gain entry into the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Fiennes attended Mons Officer Cadet School. After completing several months' training, on 27 July 1963 he was granted a short service commission in his late father's former regiment, the Royal Scots Greys. He was later seconded to the Special Air Service where he specialised in demolitions.Offended by the construction of a temporary sandbag dam built in Castle Combe, Wiltshire, by 20th Century Fox for the production of the 1967 film Doctor Dolittle, Fiennes with others plotted to blow up the dam but the police foiled the plan. Fiennes was fined £300 for conspiring to cause a public mischief, and £200 for unlawfully possessing explosives; he and a co-conspirator were dismissed from the SAS. He was initially posted to another cavalry regiment but was eventually permitted to return to the Royal Scots Greys.
Fiennes spent the last two years of his army career seconded to the Sultan of Oman's Armed Forces. At the time Oman was experiencing a growing communist insurgency supported from neighbouring South Yemen. After familiarisation, he commanded the Reconnaissance Platoon of the Muscat Regiment, seeing extensive active service in the Dhofar War. He led several raids deep into rebel-held territory on the Djebel Dhofar, and was decorated for bravery by the Sultanate.
After eight years' service Fiennes relinquished his commission on 27 July 1971.
Expedition leader
Since the 1960s Fiennes has been an expedition leader. He led expeditions up the White Nile on a hovercraft in 1969 and on Norway's Jostedalsbreen Glacier in 1970. A notable trek was the Transglobe Expedition he undertook between 1979 and 1982, when he and two fellow members of 21 SAS, Oliver Shepard and Charles R. Burton, journeyed around the world on its polar axis, using surface transport only. Nobody else has ever done so by any route before or since.As part of the Transglobe Expedition, Fiennes and Burton completed the Northwest Passage. They left Tuktoyaktuk on 26 July 1981 in an 18 ft open Boston Whaler and reached Tanquary Fiord on 31 August 1981. Their journey was the first open boat transit from West to East and covered around 3,000 miles, taking a route through Dolphin and Union Strait following the south coast of Victoria Island and King William Island, north to Resolute Bay via the Franklin Strait and Peel Sound, around the south and east coasts of Devon Island, through Hell Gate and across Norwegian Bay to Eureka, Greely Bay and the head of Tanquary Fiord. Once they reached Tanquary Fiord, they had to trek a further 150 miles via Lake Hazen to Alert before setting up their winter base camp.
In 1992 Fiennes led an expedition that discovered what may be an outpost of the lost city of Iram in Oman. The following year he joined nutrition specialist Mike Stroud to become the first to cross the Antarctic continent unsupported; they took 93 days. A further attempt in 1996 to walk to the South Pole solo, in aid of the Breast Cancer Campaign, was unsuccessful due to a kidney stone attack and he had to be rescued from the operation by his crew.
In 2000 he attempted to walk solo and unsupported to the North Pole. The expedition failed when his sleds fell through weak ice and Fiennes was forced to pull them out by hand. He sustained severe frostbite to the tips of all the fingers on his left hand, forcing him to abandon the attempt. On returning home, his surgeon insisted the necrotic fingertips be retained for several months before amputation, to allow regrowth of the remaining healthy tissue. Impatient at the pain the dying fingertips caused, Fiennes cut them off himself with an electric fretsaw, just above where the blood and the soreness was.
Despite suffering from a heart attack and undergoing a double coronary artery bypass operation just four months before, Fiennes joined Stroud again in 2003 to complete seven marathons in seven days on seven continents in the Land Rover 7x7x7 Challenge for the British Heart Foundation. "In retrospect I wouldn't have done it. I would not do it again. It was Mike Stroud's idea". Their series of marathons was as follows:
Originally Fiennes had planned to run the first marathon on King George Island, Antarctica. The second marathon would then have taken place in Santiago, Chile. However, bad weather and aeroplane engine trouble caused him to change his plans, running the South American segment in southern Patagonia first and then hopping to the Falklands as a substitute for the Antarctic leg.
Speaking after the event, Fiennes said the Singapore Marathon had been by far the most difficult because of high humidity and pollution. He also said his cardiac surgeon had approved the marathons, providing his heart-rate did not exceed 130 beats per minute. Fiennes later said that he forgot to pack his heart-rate monitor, and therefore did not know how fast his heart was beating.
In June 2005, Fiennes had to abandon an attempt to be the oldest Briton to climb Mount Everest when, in another climb for charity, he was forced to turn back as a result of heart problems, after reaching the final stopping point of the ascent. In March 2007, despite a lifelong fear of heights, Fiennes climbed the Eiger by its North Face, with sponsorship totalling £1.8 million to be paid to the Marie Curie Cancer Care Delivering Choice Programme. Kenton Cool first met Fiennes in 2004, and subsequently guided him in the Alps and Himalayas.
In 2008 Fiennes made his second attempt to climb Mount Everest, getting to within of the summit before bad timing and bad weather stopped the expedition. On 20 May 2009 Fiennes reached the summit of Mount Everest, becoming the oldest British person to achieve this. Fiennes also became the first person to have climbed Everest and crossed both polar ice-caps. Of the other handful of adventurers who had visited both poles, only four had successfully crossed both polar icecaps: Norwegian Børge Ousland, Belgian Alain Hubert and Fiennes. In successfully reaching the summit of Everest in 2009 Fiennes became the first person to achieve all three goals. Ousland wrote to congratulate him. Fiennes continues to compete in UK-based endurance events and has seen recent success in the veteran categories of some Mountain Marathon races. His training nowadays consists of regular two-hour runs around Exmoor.
In September 2012 it was announced that Fiennes was to lead the first attempt to cross Antarctica during the southern winter, in aid of the charity Seeing is Believing, an initiative to prevent avoidable blindness. The six-man team was dropped off by ship at Crown Bay in Queen Maud Land in January 2013, and waited until the Southern Hemisphere's autumnal equinox on 21 March 2013 before embarking across the ice shelf. The team would ascend onto the inland plateau, and head to the South Pole. The intention was for Fiennes and his skiing partner, Dr Mike Stroud, to lead on foot and be followed by two bulldozers dragging industrial sledges.
Fiennes had to pull out of the Coldest Journey expedition on 25 February 2013 because of frostbite and was evacuated from Antarctica.