Ranulph Fiennes: Encyclopedia II - Ranulph Fiennes - Adventurer

Ranulph Fiennes - Adventurer

Since the 1960s Fiennes has been an explorer. He led expeditions up the White Nile on a hovercraft in 1969 and on Norway's Jostedalsbre Glacier in 1970. Perhaps his most famous trek was the Transglobe Expedition that he undertook from 1979 until 1982. Fiennes and Charles Burton journeyed around the world on its polar axis using surface transport only, covering 52,000 miles and becoming the first people to have visited both poles by land.

In 1992 Fiennes led an expedition that discovered the lost city of Ubar in Oman. The following year he joined with nutrition specialist Mike Stroud in an attempt to become the first to cross Antarctica unaided. They were forced to call for a pick up on the Ross Ice Shelf.

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 several fingers, forcing him to abandon the attempt. On returning home, his surgeon insisted the necrotic fingertips be retained for several months (to allow regrowth of the remaining healthy tissue) prior to amputation. Impatient at the pain the dying fingertips caused, Fiennes removed them himself (in his garden shed) with an electric saw (He first attempted to use a hacksaw with limited success).

Despite suffering from a heart attack and undergoing a double heart by-pass operation just four months previously, Fiennes joined up with Stroud again in 2003 to carry out the extraordinary feat of completing seven marathons in seven days on seven continents. Their route:

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 that the Singapore marathon had been by far the most difficult because of high humidity and pollution. He also said that his cardiac surgeon had approved the marathons providing his heart-rate did not exceed a 130 beats per minute; Fiennes later confessed to having forgotten to pack his heart-rate monitor, and as such does not know how fast his heart was actually beating.

Fiennes reached 28,500 feet in a 2005 attempt to climb Mt. Everest. He has joined the Victoria Falls Expedition, celebrating the 150th Anniversary of David Livingstone's discovery of Victoria Falls (this expedition started on the 2nd of Novenmber, and originally took David Livingstone 4 years).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Adventurer", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki