Up

by Ben Fogle

  One of the seracs had been released, unleashing a vast avalanche that was racing down the steep slope in our direction.

  Life went into slow motion. I watched Mark, closest to the avalanche, as he paced back and forth looking for somewhere safe. He was on a cliff edge with nowhere to shelter, nothing to hide behind. I watched in horror as he realised his vulnerability.

  My attention turned to Kenton and Victoria. I could see Kenton but for one horrible moment there was no sign of Vic. I soon realised he was on top of her. He was using his body to shield her from the impact of the avalanche.

  It’s strange how people react in a moment of extreme danger when your very life is in jeopardy. When James Cracknell and I had capsized in the Atlantic Ocean, thousands of miles from land, I had found myself in open water, without a life jacket or safety harness and with just an upturned boat. I felt sure I was heading to meet my maker. Strangely, there was no fear, just a resignation of death. I felt slightly annoyed at myself for letting it happen, and then I noticed some barnacles that had grown on the underside of the boat.

  During our journey, James had insisted that we get into the shark-infested waters every couple of days to scrape off the barnacles, the presence of which, in James’s mind, would otherwise slow us down.

  ‘How did we miss those barnacles?’ I wondered, as I surveyed the upturned hull and prepared to die.

  Here on Everest, I was watching as an avalanche raced towards us – all in slow motion. The rumble of snow and ice reverberated through me. It rose like a moving beast as the thinner, lighter snow at the front billowed up in a threatening cloud.

  I marvelled at Kenton’s heroism and then glanced up at Mark who looked like a rabbit in car headlights. I stood rooted to the spot. There was nothing to do. I just hoped it would be quick. The avalanche continued to speed towards us and I felt the cold wind and snow of the snout. I closed my eyes and waited for impact.

  Nothing.

  I opened my eyes and there was no sign of Mark, just a huge cloud of powdery snow. As the dust settled, Mark was still standing there, on top of that cliff, rooted to the spot.

  The avalanche had stopped just a few metres from us. It was pure luck that we hadn’t been any higher and that there hadn’t been enough weight or speed in the avalanche to reach us. I wiped the snow and ice from my face and in stunned silence we carried on down through the icefall. The unflappable Mark looked shell shocked. He had been closest to the impact and he had been sure it would reach us.

  The avalanche had been another reminder of the inherent risks of being here and of the lottery of passing through the icefall. I felt a sickness deep within as we continued our descent towards the comparative safety of Base Camp below.

  The relief as we reached the tents was palpable. We were worn ragged from the thin air, and the endurance-sapping physical stress of the climb and the draining emotion of fear and vulnerability had taken a huge toll on all of us. When the entire climbing party got back to Base Camp, we retreated to our tents to recover.

  At altitude high up in the mountains, you grow accustomed to suffering. In some ways, you become desensitised to it. Headaches and nausea become the norm. It has always amazed me how quickly we adapt to a new routine or environment. We humans are pretty astonishing with our chameleon-like ability to blend in with a new environment. No matter the desert, the ocean, a jungle, caves: we have an ability to adapt and overcome.

  Mountains, and Everest in particular, are often described as a ‘suffer-fest’ – if you can put up with the suffering then your chances of success are pretty high. The thing is that many people have a pretty low threshold for discomfort and pain. If you think about it, it isn’t difficult to get through life without experiencing much pain and suffering. We have it pretty easy now compared to more brutal times.

  We often hear nowadays about the sensitive ‘snowflake’ generation. The reference usually describes the ease with which they are offended, but it could easily be used to refer to physical prowess. Where once we toiled in the fields, the mines and the factories, automation has reduced the physical toll. Hands are now more used to a keyboard or smartphone screen than a pick axe or a pitchfork.

  As it happens, I think humans need physicality. We need to sweat and toil. We need to feel physically exhausted. The problem with modern society is that we are all mentally shattered, but our bodies are largely unchallenged. We could describe the popularity of gyms, running and fitness in general, which is at an all-time high as people search for an alternative outlet for their physicality.

  But even health and fitness can be smoke and mirrors in a society that places more importance on aesthetics than it does on substance. Social media and our vanity-obsessed society places more adulation on a rippling six-pack than it does on a solid pair of legs that can run for a couple of hours.

  As a child, I was never sporty. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I hated it. A late learner, I can still remember a special swimming race that the school had to put on for me and another boy who couldn’t swim. We had to run the width of the pool. Part of my hate of sport was a resignation to failure. I ‘knew’ that I wasn’t going to do well, so I just sort of gave up.

  It has taken me more than 25 years to learn the power of positive thinking. I like to think of myself as an optimist, but I haven’t always been like that; on the contrary, I was a world-class pessimist. Pessimism breeds negativity and throughout my childhood I created a toxic attitude of failure. Failure was such a big part of my childhood. I failed in almost everything I turned my hand to.

  I failed to stay at one school and ended up going to five different schools, and then to two different universities after dropping out of the first. I failed my exams. I failed to get into any teams. I failed my driving test seven times. I failed to get into drama school.

  Failure loomed over me like a big black cloud. In retrospect, I could see that I was creating most of the gloom myself. My mind was set to negative. I had approached everything with the expectation of failure. The result was a fearful acceptance of failure that dogged me for years.

  I’m not sure when or how I finally shook off the manacles of negativity. I’m not really sure when I stopped looking down and started looking up, but little by little that heavy dark cloud began to evaporate and was replaced by a bright sunbeam, and I think it was probably travel that really helped purge the pessimism. You see you can’t really fail at travel. So much of life seems to be loaded to either success or failure, win or lose, pass or fail, in or out, but travel seemed to give me a fresh outlook. No one judged me, I was free to make my own path, there was no right and wrong.

  I was 18 when I first travelled to South America alone. I travelled the length of the Brazilian Amazon on a cargo ship and then ended up teaching in the Ecuadorian Andes. The freedom and hope that came with travels through the unknown was heady and intoxicating. I found the whole experience enlightening. It sounds like a cliché, but I really did find myself.

  Freed from the baggage of familiarity back at home, failure became a distant memory. From a world in which I had been ‘tested’ since I was seven years old, I felt like I had been released. It is probably why I still have such a problem with the modern education system. In the UK, we still place far too much pressure and expectation on exams. By relying on exam results to define a child, we are artificially inhibiting the growth of those who are no good under pressure. Exams are great for those who can cram information and then regurgitate it word for word. Indeed, there are plenty of jobs for which this skill is very useful.

  It still surprises me how backwards or downwards looking our education system is. I often wonder why children are still being educated in the relatively clinical confines of a classroom when they could be learning in the outdoors. Plenty of other nations have adopted wilderness education successfully.

  Now all of this is not to say that failure isn’t necessary, indeed it is crucial to life. As Winston Churchill once said, ‘If you haven’t failed, then you hav
en’t been trying hard enough.’ Just like risk, it is pretty easy to mitigate failure, largely by taking the easy option.

  At my school I remember being placed in a Maths class for those likely to fail their GCSEs. We were taught the basics to ensure a C grade. By doing so, we were relegating ourselves artificially.

  I’m still not sure this was the best way to approach academia. When it is so loaded towards exam results, parents, schools, tutors and pupils will all work out how best to beat the system. When this happens, it simply becomes about ticking boxes and getting a single letter (A, B, C, D) that defines you.

  Think about it. Isn’t it incredible that you can take a human being, brimming with their own unique talents and abilities, and confine that person to a single letter? We love to categorise and place people within strata and the academic category is a very easy one to use. We place so much adulation on the ability to get an A grade in an exam. Now, without wanting to devalue that hard-earned grade, what good is that in the school of life?

  Will an A grade help you find water or forage for food? Will it help you build a shelter? Will it help you communicate diplomatically with a tribe of people with whom you have no common language? Will it help you survive alone in an ocean? I’m not saying that we need all of these life skills, after all we have created a society in which we can avoid almost all of them, but is the mark of a great man or woman, the sum of their exam results? The answer is no. And yet society still obsesses about them. Your exam results will define your future.

  Not only will they determine where and if you go to university or get a job or apprenticeship, but they also have the ability to shape your emotions. Take it from me, when you keep failing your exams, you descend into a perpetual cycle of negativity. It sucks you down into a vortex of pessimism, the ‘cloud’ grows and you instinctively become downward looking.

  I’m not saying this is always the case. There are some strong-willed individuals who are able to show their brilliance through music, drama, art or sport. They are able to shield themselves from the shadow of the cloud by shining elsewhere.

  But, for me, I can still remember the overwhelming feeling of gloom when I got my A level results: C, D, N. I couldn’t see how I was ever going to shake ‘failure’. I decided to place all my energy in drama. My mother was an actress. My best friend, Milly Fox, was already a successful actress in her own right. I had performed in a number of plays at school, one of which had even transferred to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Acting felt like something I was actually good at. It gave me confidence and happiness.

  Then I got rejected by all 10 acting schools that I applied for.

  They say ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’, but I can tell you, those few months after the drama school rejections were pretty bleak. I couldn’t see a way out. I felt like I was trapped in a hole: I could see the light above, but I couldn’t reach it. All around was darkness. I touched depression. That will probably give you an insight into my fear of failure.

  I am still deeply fearful of it, but my attitude and resilience have changed. The first time I really confronted my fear of failure proactively was when I signed up to run the Marathon des Sables, a 180-mile six-day race across the Sahara desert.

  To this day, I’m not really sure where my decision came from. It certainly wasn’t from any sane, level-headed place. I had never run in my life; maybe once, aged eight, at sports day but apart from that I had spent most of my life ‘allergic’ to sport. Why I suddenly thought I would be able to run 180 miles is beyond me. I suppose it was already evidence of my shift in attitude. I was beginning to look up rather than down.

  Those six days remain some of the most uncomfortable and painful of my life, but the experience was profound. Somehow, I found the inner strength to overcome physical adversity.

  I returned from the desert with a new resolve. The experience had strengthened me in unexpected ways. For the first time, I hadn’t failed. I had completed the task. I hadn’t done so in a record-breaking time and I hadn’t done so with much elegance, but I had finished it. In some ways, the Marathon des Sables was an introduction to a world in which completing was just as important as competing.

  Let’s be honest, the world is such a competitive place that society naturally places a worth on hierarchy. In the animal kingdom, it is structured by strength. The alpha will always dominate. In society, I think we put a lot on our meritocracy. We like to believe someone has earned their position.

  Sport is one of the arenas in which a combined show of strength, stamina and mental fortitude can separate one individual from another. Failure in sport depends on the athlete. James Cracknell used to describe anything but a gold medal as failure. For James, coming second was failure.

  I suppose it’s all relative. If I even reached the Olympic arena of sport, I would feel like I had won. To be chosen to represent your country would be enough, but when you have spent your life working towards a single goal, the line between success and failure becomes much more profound. I suppose you could argue that the lower you set your bar, the lower the chance of failure, but also the lower the sense of achievement.

  Winston Churchill has a couple of more useful things to say on the subject: ‘Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm’ and ‘A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.’

  And of course, arguably his greatest rousing quote was: ‘Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense.’

  It is easy to sit here hypothesising about the spirit of human resilience and determination, but of course we all fail at some time. But, and I think this is the crucial point, we must fail because without failure there is no success. One necessitates the other. As much as I despise failure, I also recognise that it has played a crucial role in making me the person who I am.

  Some of the most insufferable people I know have never failed. This breeds the arrogance of certainty. We need failure to make us more rounded, more humble. It’s just that we don’t want too much of it, or it creates a slightly broken spirit that spends the rest of their life trying to prove their self-worth through success wherever they can find it.

  Sportsmen and women are of course the exception. They have been able to combine their unique physicality with the human need to perform. I think it’s one of the reasons I have found myself drawn to them as expedition companions even despite my allergy to the sporting arena.

  James Cracknell and I were complete strangers when we set off in our little rowing boat. I hoped that by partnering with James, not only was I teaming up with someone who could actually row a boat, but I was also going with someone who had the right mental aptitude: James had the competitive genes that I seemed to be missing. For someone fearful of failure, it was not only odd that I had teamed up with one of the most fiercely competitive and driven athletes in the world, but I had also joined a race across the Atlantic.

  For some, rowing the Atlantic with a mate would be challenge enough, but I have always confronted my weakness face on. Accept it and work with your weakness, that’s always been my mantra. Acknowledging it is the first step towards overcoming it. Weakness is not synonymous with failure. Although there are many who will attribute all the negatives with failure, I happen to disagree. It’s all about how you approach it and what you ultimately consider success.

  Victoria and I both had an honest and philosophical approach to Everest. We went into the project with our eyes wide open. We both understood the risks, and after nearly two years of preparation, we also both knew the variables.

  Unlike the professional sporting arena in which Olympic-level athletes are surrounded by a collaborative team of experts that focuses on everything from muscle tone and mental wellbeing to nutrition and even sleep, here in the mountains we would be on our own.

  We had a world-class climber in Ken
ton Cool, but it was different to the sporting stage, and I suspect it was easier for me than Victoria who was more used to a small army of support staff than a few smiling sherpas. Victoria and I had talked at length about achievement, goals and what we wanted to get out of Everest. One of the main differences was our drive behind the climb. Mine was a childhood dream. Victoria’s was more a post-competitive Olympian challenge.

  Retirement can be pretty tough for all of us but particularly for athletes who have often passed their peak by the time they are 30. Where do you go after you have been the best in the world, competing at a professional level?

  In the process of their intense training, many athletes have become institutionalised. They have been told when to wake, eat, sleep, and exercise all their lives. Their lives have been fully absorbed in their sporting excellence and then, suddenly, one day it is over. Like a food product that is past its sell by date, they find themselves discarded, often even before they are mouldy and when they are still perfectly fresh and ripe.

  Victoria, to my mind, was dropped far too early. She is an astonishing sportswoman. Her drive and focus are extraordinary for someone who admits they never really enjoyed cycling that much. To have that kind of determination is remarkable and gives a revealing insight into her mental and physical aptitude.

  She is also her own worst critic. I have never seen someone beat themselves up so much. It’s like self-flagellation. Perhaps it was what drove her on to win her nine world titles and two Olympic golds, but it was also infuriating to be around.

  We often climbed mountains in record time. We would all be euphoric with our experience, except for Victoria who would be criticising herself for the extra two minutes she spent stopping on the way up.

  It was so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, perhaps a couple of extra minutes in a 12-hour climb, but Victoria never let it go. It was like perpetual disappointment. However much Kenton and I tried to pull her up, she would drag herself down. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t sometimes spill out to affect the team.