Episode 2 Richard Parks: Conquering the World

Richard Parks is an extraordinary individual

who set out to conquer the highest peaks and poles of the world

in a race against time.

His challenge - to stand on the highest summit of each

of the world's seven continents and the three poles,

North, South and Everest, the highest, within a seven-month period.

Hey, Mum, can you hear me? It's Richard.

The driving force was to raise money for Cancer Support,

and his mum and dad, coming from a cancer-ravaged family,

were his backbone.

Having left the South Pole on January 1st 2011,

he then climbed Mount Vinson on Antarctica,

Aconcagua at the top of the Andes

and, by the end of February, he'd scaled Kilimanjaro in Africa.

After early delays, he was back on schedule,

with five targets remaining,

and the highest mountain in Australasia the next hurdle.

A series of flights to Indonesia, and on to the island of West Papua

and the mountain of Carstensz,

situated in the middle of dense tropical jungle.

Carstensz, first conquered in 1962.

Only a few hundred people have ever climbed to the summit.

Its inaccessibility, the jungle and political instability in the region

being the biggest hurdles to prospective climbers.

It's so remote, and so few people get the opportunity to climb it,

and although we did it the harder way,

I believe it was a purer experience, and I'm really grateful

that we did trek in,

because I got a better appreciation of the continent, of the people,

of the environment, and a experience

which at the time was really grim and uncomfortable,

but in hindsight, it was just an amazing experience.

From the town of Ilaga, it would take

six or seven days' trekking to reach base camp.

There isn't an easy way to get to Carstensz.

Eight, nine or ten-hour days with temperatures rising

from 20 degrees at 7:30 in the morning,

humidity at 90%, and, of course, the rain.

This is brutal.

And it's only day one.

No one footstep is the same as the last.

A lot of places are shin-deep mud.

It's just a real grind.

What an awesome feeling.

We finally get above the jungle.

The long, hot, uncomfortable days

and nights under the jungle canopy were now over,

a chance to set up camp.

But there were more hardships to come.

The porters were finding the expedition hard work.

Twice they refused to go any further

until pay rises were agreed with the Papuan leader.

One porter turned back, suffering from malaria.

After another pretty intense negotiation

with the Papua porters this morning, we're back on the trail,

and we're going to be arriving at base camp tonight.

Which, I've got to say, I'm pretty excited about.

It's been five days trekking through the jungle

and the swamps of the Alpine region, and now to be actually in

or amongst the mountains is a pretty awesome feeling, actually.

I see the light at the end of the tunnel.

After a week of arduous trekking, they were close to 14,800 feet,

and Richard still hadn't caught a glimpse of Carstensz.

That's our team mascot there.

That dog's been following us since Ilaga. It's pretty amazing, actually.

We're at just under 4,500 metres,

and this is the last day until we get to base camp.

We're about an hour away from base camp now.

It's gone pretty quickly today.

It's just nice to get the mind occupied,

as opposed to just long trudging.

That's my first sight of Carstensz Pyramid.

You can see it there, just behind this ridgeline,

disappearing into the clouds.

Despite having the lowest summit altitude of the seven peaks,

it's the most technically demanding.

All of Richard's mountaineering skills will be called upon,

and one chasm with a 300 foot drop was almost catastrophic

for one of the group.

When we got there, there was a fixed cable going across,

and there was maybe three or four safety lines.

You have no idea who's fixed them, when they fixed them...

Just pull him across.

Yeah.

Chris, Chris, just hang for a while.

Ah, ah!

Watch your hands. Watch his hands.

Almost there.

Two metres, two metres.

I clipped into all four of the safety lines,

so you'd be bloody unlucky if all four went.

It's certainly not for the faint-hearted.

The final route to the summit is virtually vertical,

along precipices with sheer drops

and jagged corners over the north face.

The summit range was fantastic,

but they were pretty severe drops either side,

it was a pretty sharp summit ridge.

I'm about ten metres away from the summit of Carstensz Pyramid.

Leg number five.

And I guess the halfway mark for me.

Oh, it's been a tough day today.

On 16th March, Richard successfully summited Carstensz Pyramid.

The most elusive and mysterious leg of the challenge had been completed.

We'd really worked for it, I felt like I'd earned it.

There was a lot that could have gone potentially wrong.

I'd heard stories of political instability between the tribes,

believe it or not, people getting kidnapped out there, the weather,

there's all kinds of things that potentially or logistically

could have gone wrong with that, so it was more relief than anything.

This leg, though, had been mentally and physically

extremely difficult to deal with,

and as feared, Richard's knee had taken a battering.

My knees from the descent are still sore,

and my muscles are just screaming at the moment,

but an amazing feeling to stand on the summit yesterday.

Yeah, it's a great feeling this morning,

but my body is absolutely shattered.

He returned to the UK for some rest and intensive medical treatment

before setting off again.

The North Pole and Everest would be the next challenges

ahead of Richard, and he'd be accompanied on both legs

by Olympic gold medallist Steve Williams.

Ever since we met, I could see it in his eyes

how focused he is, how determined he is.

The challenge for him is more than just the nine legs.

It's a real mission for him.

It's going to be a world first, no-one else has ever done it.

Lots of people have done similar things,

but they either haven't done all of what he's going to do

or in the same timescale he's going to do it,

so that speaks for itself.

On March 30th, they travelled to Norway, where they faced delays

as an ice runway was being built for their flight to the Arctic.

It wasn't until April 6th that they could take off

on the first passenger flight of the year to land on the Arctic ice.

After four days of delay, we've finally got a green light to go.

And, uh, pretty nervous!

At last.

Mate, we've finally got the green light to go, then.

Fingers crossed.

We haven't taken off yet.

The party of explorers, scientists and adventurers

were then flown by helicopter to the 89th degree,

where the difficult and dangerous hike to the Pole would really begin.

The North Pole was brutally cold,

and mentally you just had to be absolutely on it,

every second of the every day.

Everything you did had a consequence.

Well, we're on our own now.

For the next five days,

they'd ski across the lethal icy wastelands,

pulling their sleds, known as pulks, with all their kit and supplies.

To cross the 111km, they'd average around 20km a day

at temperatures of minus 40,

and that would get them to the Pole, hopefully, on April 11th,

but well behind schedule for Everest.

The team had to be constantly wary of the surface below them.

There were a number of narrow escapes -

the icy waters on this occasion lapped around their feet,

and they quickly tried to move to firmer ground.

A serious crack can appear at any time,

and slipping into the icy Arctic is a real danger.

The exact position of the geographic North Pole is marked

by a Russian flag on the seabed under the polar icecap.

The ice on the surface moves,

and so finding the exact spot is a challenge in itself.

They had to use GPS technology,

a global navigation satellite system,

to track their whereabouts and the elusive North Pole marker.

We were making these drastic directional changes,

because if you can imagine,

the geographic North Pole is a stationary position

at the bottom of the sea, and we're on a floating lid of ice,

which is moving above it.

We ended up almost chasing it.

Steve and myself are stood on the geographical North Pole.

What an amazing feeling.

This truly is, you know,

a beautiful and hostile environment.

Top of the world.

That was a particularly dangerous leg,

and certainly one that I was really happy to get...

You know, to get over successfully.

There's our taxi home, Steve.

Eh?

There's our taxi home.

From the North Pole to London,

and within six days they were already flying from Kathmandu

to the frighteningly tiny runway of Lukla in Nepal.

The landing strip is short and sloping,

and is commonly known as the most extreme airport in the world.

The flight from Kathmandu into Lukla was...

Just before we took off, I heard it was rated

as one of the most dangerous flights in the world or something like that.

Probably a good thing I learned that last minute.

The delays in getting to the Pole now meant they'd lost precious

acclimatisation time on Everest, and some doubts were creeping in.

'I've been rock-solid confident that I'll be nothing but successful

'from the challenge's conception.

'However, yesterday, there was an element of doubt in my mind,

'and that really rocked me, really played on my mind last night.'

'So, today was the first time we actually got sight of Everest on the trek in.

'Honestly, I didn't really spend too long looking at it.

'I can only relate it back to my playing days, really -

'I never really dwelt too much on my opposite number,

'I didn't want to really empower them, and that's a bit like this one.

'I don't really want to be paralysed by thinking too hard about it.'

They met up with all kinds of people

who had their own special reasons for attempting Everest.

An 82-year-old man wanted to be the oldest person ever to summit.

Tragically, he died en route.

'There've been fatalities on other mountains

'while I've been there on this challenge,

'and you hear of them, but you just disassociate with them,

'you don't know them, you've not met them.

'This was a little bit different,

'because we'd met this Nepalese guy on the trek in,

'and I had so much admiration for him -

'obviously, trying to be the oldest man to summit Everest

'is pretty phenomenal.

'When I heard that, sadly, he had passed away,'

it was the first time I'd actually had a connection,

and it was sad, if I'm being honest.

And it, um...

..Certainly rocked me for a day or two.

The original plan was that Richard and Steve

would join up with a full climbing expedition

organised by the logistics team of the challenge,

but this group had already had three weeks of acclimatisation on Everest.

The delays on the North Pole now meant that climbing with this group

was impractical and dangerous.

Along with their expedition leader, David Hamilton,

they would need to devise a different and risky strategy.

'We sat down with David Hamilton, the expedition leader.

'The challenges we had were that we were almost four weeks behind

'every other team there, and we really didn't have that much time.'

What's the last date we should aim for?

I think it's probably the 26th.

There's no fall-back plan, is there?

If the weather doesn't play along, you don't have a second chance.

Conditions on Everest dictate that climbing can only occur

at a certain time of the year.

Within that season,

weather conditions are key to a successful summit.

These are the weather windows that climbers hope will come their way.

It took them 12 days to get to Base Camp,

and as they took part in the Puja -

a religious ceremony to bless their trip -

the main group were leaving for the higher camps.

It would be another three weeks before Richard

could make a push for the summit.

Patience and a measured build-up might lead them to success.

CHANTING

'I guess I could say that I'm nervous on many levels

'about the climb ahead.

'Quite simply, I haven't got that luxury.

'Any weakness or doubt that I've got in myself or strategy

'will be ripped open at altitude.'

You know, my psyche has to be rock solid,

and, um...

I just can't afford to let any doubt into my head at all, really.

This is it, 2 o'clock in the morning, May 20th.

God willing, sunrise in three days' time we'll be up at the top.

Richard's strategy was not the traditional shuttle climbing -

up to one camp and return to a lower camp to sleep,

and prepare the body for higher altitude.

To conserve energy, his push, although more risky,

involved one long exposure to extreme altitude.

This season had been particularly cold,

with more cases than for many years of frostbite,

snow blankness and retina freezing of the eyes.

'I knew, physically, it was going to be tough,

'I was prepared for that, but the constant self-doubt,

'the constant questioning was really draining.'

Every mental decision I made,

every thought I had, every physical action I did,

it was as if it was put under a microscope mentally.

There were definite signs that the climbing season

was rapidly coming to an end, with Camp Two starting to crumble,

avalanches and rock slides on the increase.

We're about three hours in to the climb up to Camp Two.

The ice fall never really ceases to amaze me

how much it changes from time to time.

We're about 6,100 metres.

The air's getting pretty thin now.

There she is.

This is probably the best view we've had of Everest

since I've been here.

One slip crossing five ladder crevasses would be fatal.

Progressing 1,000 metres at this stage through the Western Cwm

is a painstaking process.

Then comes the most impressive wall of Everest - the Lhotse face.

They pass the body of a Japanese climber here

who died a few days earlier.

Supplementary oxygen now plays a vital part in aiding breathing,

but as they moved from Camp Three to Camp Four,

Steve climbed again without an oxygen mask.

It's a risk that I wouldn't have taken, personally,

because the summit was my target,

but if you don't believe in your own ability,

if you don't believe in yourself,

well, then what's Steve even...

What were any of us doing on the mountain, anyway?

So, I completely get why he did it

and why he had the confidence to do it.

The death zone above 7,900 metres, 26,000 ft,

is the point at which there isn't enough oxygen in the air

to sustain human life,

although a handful of individuals have succeeded.

Steve and I are here in Camp Four, just under 8,000 metres.

Really grateful to get to the tent and out the wind.

'The tent was just rattling and shaking, it was just wild,'

it was like something from another planet, I guess,

the closest maybe I'll get.

Obviously at that altitude we're on oxygen or supplementary oxygen,

so you can't even really breathe for that long up there.

I knew that we weren't going to summit that night,

and I just couldn't imagine the winds dropping.

Last night we had to abort our summit attempt due to really high winds.

This means we've got an extra 24 hours up here in the death zone

just under 8,000 metres,

and we're going to aim to attempt again tonight.

I had a weird one last night.

I was just lying on the floor,

and I was shaking so much, I was so cold.

This floor, we've got that much foam mat,

and underneath that it's just very cold ice and rock,

and my legs and arms were just shaking uncontrollably.

We've just got to keep our nerve.

We've got to stay strong, stay focused and just wait.

I think she'll give us our chance, I really do.

May 24th, and a prediction for low winds

meant that a summit attempt was possible.

But this would be their final opportunity.

It was literally now or never.

That was the first time I actually thought to myself,

we're going to have to do this, it's now, this is it.

The wait was agonisingly long for the whole team.

The family and friends back in Newport, powerless to help.

As they left Camp Four at 9 o'clock at night,

given the right conditions, they could summit in about nine hours.

Steve slowly slipped behind Richard as they neared the summit ridge.

Richard's mask froze and stopped supplying him with oxygen.

The incredible Sherpa Mingma, on his 17th ascent,

gave him his mask, and Richard continued.

One slip, one wrong step, there'd be no recovery.

Tears of joy, not only at the top of Everest,

but also back in Newport, as Richard phoned home.

-Hi, Rich.

-Hi, Rich.

I'm fine, thanks, very proud.

Exhausted ourselves and very tired,

I'm going to bloody bed now.

Love you.

God bless, Rich, we love you.

Take care, we love you.

Oh, my God...

Steve Williams also summited, but, as they descended to Base Camp,

it was obvious that the mountain had left her mark.

It's been a tough two-and-a-half days.

Just been to see the medical centre here.

What I thought was a bruise on my toenail

is actually frostbite in my right big toe.

To go from the elation of standing on the summit of Everest

two-and-a-half days ago, to now being told

that it's 50-50 that I'm going to make it to Denali...

..And even worse than that, it's 50-50

whether I'm actually going to lose my toe or not.

I just don't know, I just don't know what to say.

An emergency helicopter flight,

immediate treatment at Kathmandu Hospital

and a flight back to the UK as soon as possible.

With time running out,

Denali would now become increasingly hard to surmount.

With a frostbitten foot,

would he even be allowed to attempt the summit?

And even the last leg of Elbrus looked in jeopardy,

as terrorist activity forced the Russian government

to close the mountain region.

The race against time and the whole challenge

was in serious danger of collapsing.

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