1. Sir Ranulph Fiennes to attempt record
winter Antarctica trek
Veteran explorer describes planned 2,000-mile trek in temperatures as low as -90C as his
greatest challenge to date
Maev Kennedy, Monday 17 September 2012
The appalling challenge of a six-month 2,000-mile walk across the south pole, in the perpetual darkness of the
Antarctic winter when temperatures can plummet to -90C, proved, perhaps inevitably, irresistible to the veteran
explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes.
Fiennes' hero, Captain Robert Falcon Scott, wrote "great God, this is an awful place" when he finally reached the
south pole a century ago, before freezing and starving to death with his team on the return journey. Apsley Cherry-
Garrard called his own trek "the worst journey in the world". Ernest Shackleton abandoned another expedition as the
weather closed in to save the lives of his crew.
Those journeys were made in summer. Nobody before has attempted, still less achieved, crossing the pole in winter.
In a prepared statement, Fiennes said: "This will be my greatest challenge to date. We will stretch the limits of human
endurance.
"Britain and the Commonwealth has a strong heritage of exploration, from Captain Cook 300 years ago to the present
day. As such, it is fitting that a Commonwealth team should be the first to fulfil this last great polar expedition."
However, in person, at the launch at the Royal Society of The Coldest Journey, Fiennes could not really explain why
anyone should contemplate such a venture, still less a man aged 68 who has survived cancer, major heart surgery, and
the loss of most of the frozen finger tips on one hand – which he cut off himself with a saw bought specially for the
purpose. "It's what I do," he said, looking slightly puzzled at the question.
Fiennes – officially the world's greatest living explorer, according to the Guinness Book of Records – was the first,
with Dr Mike Stroud, to cross the Antarctic continent unsupported; the first to cross both polar ice caps; the oldest t o
climb Everest, finally conquering it in 2009 aged 65 on his third attempt, after suffering a major heart attack on his
first; and the first to traverse the globe from pole to pole, with the late Charles Burton. He described this trip as one of
the last great challenges, "now that everyone's grandmother goes up Everest at the weekend".
He admitted his wife, Louise, and six-year-old daughter are not thrilled. "But I've never done anything else, it's how I
earn my living. And you're much more likely, statistically, to die on the roads here than on the polar ice."
He shrugged off suggestions he might be too old for such jaunts: "If you're still lucky enough to be able to walk
around, you might as well go for it." As with Scott and his great rival Roald Amundsen, who beat him to the South
Pole, it was rumours of a Norwegian team preparing for the same challenge that goaded Fiennes into an expedition
which he himself dismissed as impossible 25 years ago. Another Norwegian recently achieved the winter crossing of
the Arctic.
After training in the Swedish Arctic in a relatively balmy -40C, his team will sail from London on 6 December on a
South African research ship, the SA Agulhas – leased at a bargain price from the South African Maritime Safety
Authority.
The ice trek proper will begin on 21 March, the equinox that marks the official start of the polar winter, from the
Russia base of Novolazareskaya. Fiennes and his five team members must then climb more than 3,048 metres on to
the inland plateau, trek for several hundred miles with all the supplies and equipment they need, descend another
3,000 metres, and finally cross almost another 2,000 miles to reach the Ross Sea.

2. If they reach Captain Scott's old base at McMurdo Sound, via the South Pole, by the spring equinox six months later,
they will still have to wait for months until the sea ice retreats enough for their ship to collect them.
The saddest man on the ice will be Stroud, who for
decades was Fiennes' joint expedition leader and
medical officer. He dreamed up this adventure but
finally concluded a fortnight ago that he could not
join it – mainly because more than a year away
from his work at Southampton University would
pummel his pension entitlement.
He will sail with them and then wave them off. He
is currently desolately interviewing for his own
replacement. It takes a special temperament to fit
into a "very small, very isolated group in very
extreme conditions", he said – so isolated that space
travel researchers will be monitoring their progress,
in a project dubbed "White Mars".
His replacement must cope alone with any medical
emergency – not just trivialities such as coughing
blood from lungs damaged by the icy air,
experienced by both Stroud and Fiennes on their
last Antarctic expedition, when each was hauling
220kg of supplies. In the event of what he terms "a
howling disaster" the team will carry a dead body
with them – in cold storage, as he pointed out
cheerfully.
This time Fiennes and Stroud's replacement will
lead the way on skis, towing relatively light
ground-penetrating radar equipment. The radar
should give the two following tractors 30 to 40
metres warning of ice crevasses, which could
swallow them whole in a few seconds. The tractors
are heavily modified standard machines, stripped
down and rebuilt, every piece of plastic replaced
with more resistant silicone, and adapted to run on
aviation fuel, each towing about 70 tonnes in
equipment and the living pods. The team will
include an engineer and a mechanic able to make
running repairs, but in the event of calamity will
have to camp out until summer, the earliest a rescue
mission could reach them.
Stroud estimates each team member will need around 6,000 calories a day from freeze-dried supplies, although he
and Fiennes consumed up to 11,000 calories each on their last Antarctic expedition.
Fiennes just hopes there are good flapjacks, the highlight of each of his last days on the ice – until he noticed that
Stroud was giving him a much smaller one. He demanded to be allowed to choose his own, but after a week realised
that his still looked smaller.
"As you get hungry, it has a bad effect on your personality," he explained - the only glimpse he offered into the
internal workings of the mind of an extraordinary man.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/17/ranulph-fiennes-antarctica?INTCMP=SRCH