Stephen Venables' reputation as a mountaineer was established when he became the first Briton to ascend Everest without oxygen, back in 1988. He's now President of the Alpine Club, author of eight books, and pioneer of numerous new routes in the Himalayas, the Andes, and elsewhere. And that's the tip of the CV-berg...
We caught up with him in Kendal to find out about his early mountaineering exploits in Surrey, £140 Alpine seasons, and cheese and salami mountaineers' snacks:-)
The south of England isn't the most obvious place to start mountaineering. How did you get involved in the first place?
Oh god! Well, I like wild landscapes and I always did. The nearest hill to where I lived was Box Hill in Surrey, where I first put on skis on a very icy afternoon in 1963. In the same year I went to North Wales for the first time, and also the Lake District, where I remember looking up at these green hills and thinking, 'I want to be up there'. We went for a walk on Crinkle Crags in the mist and I just loved it.
Were there any mountaineers who inspired you at the time?
No, because I didn't know any. No one from my family was involved in mountaineering apart from a cousin of my father's who died on the Matterhorn in the 1940s.
How did you finance your early expeditions?
I was quite parsimonious because I didn't have much money. My first climbing trips involved hitching or borrowing the car and going off to Wales, the Dorset sea cliffs, or the sandstone cliffs in Kent. Then I started climbing in the Alps in my university summer holidays. I remember my first Alpine season cost £140 for nine weeks!
My first big expedition was to Afghanistan in 1977 when I was 23. We got a grant from a wonderful organisation called The Mount Everest Foundation which supports expeditions. In those days it covered half the cost of the expedition, which was about two and a half thousand pounds in total. Two of us went to Afghanistan by bus; the others flew out there.
You've put up a lot of new routes since then. Do any stand out as your favourites?
I climbed a beautiful peak in the Kishtwar region of Kashmir, just to the south of Zanskar, called Kishtwar Shivling, with Dick Renshaw. I'd seen the peak in 1979 and I went back to climb it in '83. It was about 6000 m and for me it was just what a climb should be - varied, with snow and ice, beautiful rock, gorgeous surroundings, and it had never been touched before. We had seven days of perfect climbing.
The Everest expedition is the one that you're best known for. Did that affect you?
I didn't mind it because I've always wanted to write about mountaineering and the Everest expedition was a very useful boost to my saleability. I've no problem at all with that.
Have there been times when you've thought 'I don't want to carry on with this?'
Oh often, yes.
How do you motivate yourself at those times?
I've often turned back from things, including a number of solo routes where I've decided: 'actually, I don't want to do this; there's too much to lose.'
But generally how do people motivate themselves? I think you just remind yourself that you've had some extraordinary, wonderful experiences in the past and that you might have those again. There's a slight element of head in the sand - when fellow mountaineers die on expeditions you think, 'I'll be careful; it won't happen to me'. You know that's illogical but we all tend to hide behind it anyway.
Now that you have family back at home, has your calculation of risk changed?
Yes. Actually, I've done very little hard cimbing in the last few years. I had a bad accident when my first son was a baby and I was very lucky not to be killed. When I regained consciousness I assumed that was it. It wasn't, but since then I've been less committed to hard climbing. With children, your attitude to life changes. I do sometimes miss the intensity of back to back expeditions but I also missed out on things when I was away - the pleasures of home.
So you want to spend more time at home now?
Yes. Also, there's so much lovely climbing in Europe. I went climbing in Spain for the first time last year, never having been there before. You don't have to go to the ends of the earth for exciting climbing. On expeditions you spend whole weeks sitting in a tent in a storm and thinking: 'what am I doing here? I could be rock climbing in the Lake District!'
What do you do to train for high altitude eexpeditions when you're in the UK?
Bugger all, I'm afraid. I'm very unfit.
You don't have a training regime then?
Occasionally. When I was younger I went to climb a mountain in Pakistan that I was quite worried about, so I did some running to improve my cardiovascular performance, but I'm much less good about that now. I have several injuries as well and I find that running aggravates them. I use my bike to get around, to do the shopping, and so on, but I've never trained intensively.
Climbing in the UK is more of a leisure pursuit then?
Yes, I do it because I enjoy it. So many people go crag climbing as training for the real thing, but in fact it's all the real thing. Rock climbing is so pleasurable in its own right.
Do you have a favourite area of the UK to go rock climbing in?
I love the Lakes but my favourite area is the north of Scotland. I haven't actually done much climbing there because I'm always there with friends or family who don't climb, but I think the north of Scotland has the biggest and best crags.
As well as mountaineering, you're involved in a lot of societies. You've been Vice-President of the BMC, you're President of the Alpine Club, and you're also President of the South Georgia Association.
Yes, if you hang around for long enough you get sucked into these things. I've been a member of the Alpine Club for just over thirty years now and I've lived on and off in London or the South so I've often been involved in meetings. I received a phone call a few years ago asking if I'd be the next President. I gulped and said 'can I think about it?' but my wife told me: 'you really ought to do it'. Now that it takes up all my time she asks: 'why are you always going to all these meetings?!'
Why did you say yes? Is it because these organisations have helped you in the past and you want to pass that on?
It's a bit of that, a bit of vanity, and basically because it's an honour. It would be churlish to say 'no'.
What are your plans for the future? Do you have any upcoming expeditions?
I have a book to complete this winter; that's the most urgent thing. In fact I'm going to have to turn down a trip to Antartica as I'm behind with the book, which is annoying. I want to get stuck into it but other things keep getting in the way, like ridiculous committee meetings.
What's your next book about?
I haven't got a title yet but it's going to be about all my early climbing expeditions, finishing on the summit of Everest.
And finally, what's your favourite snack to eat on the mountains?
Erm, let me think, I really like some nice cheese and salami!
Stephen's next book will be published by Hutchinson, part of the Random House group, so watch out for that. You can read about his ascent of Kishtwar Shivling, in Kashmir, in his first book, 'Painted Mountains', which won the Boardman Tasker prize in 1986.
Also have a look at the Alpine Club who are in the middle of their one hundred and fiftieth birthday celebrations, with a full programme of events to mark the occasion.
Kit Lambert
