Items related to Cold Signed
Synopsis
Few humans have evolved who can survive and thrive in the bitter cold. Below a certain temperature, death is inevitable. This book is about this aspect of our environment and about Sir Ranulph Fiennes' own life experiencing the extreme cold, from his adventuring apprenticeship 40 years ago on the Greenland Ice Cap to masterminding over the past 5 years the crossing of the Antarctic during winter; the 'coldest journey on Earth', where temperatures will regularly plummet to minus 92ºC. Cold has altered history on many great occasions. Hannibal crossed the high Alps under conditions of extreme cold; soldiers of the mighty armies of Hitler and Napoleon died in their thousands on the frozen Russian steppes from frostbite gangrene. In the past 150 years men and women have also seen the cold as a natural challenge as adventurers and explorers from all over the world have attempted to conquer the coldest regions of the globe. Today, parts of the world subject to extreme cold are the focus of intense geopolitical pressure, as President Putin claims Arctic coastal waters to be Russian, in readiness for the predicted melting of sea-ice, sending submarines to plant Russian flags on the seabed as a warning to would-be non-Russian mineral prospectors, and similar claims are made on the Antarctic. And yet a few degrees of climate change in Antarctica could easily trigger the detachment of huge ice sheets which would slide into the Southern Ocean. As sea levels rise some of the biggest coastal cities in the world would be submerged - a catastrophe that would render insignificant the most devastating of past tsunamis. Sir Ranulph Fiennes has spent a lifetime working in conditions of extreme cold - his frostbitten fingers are a testament to the horrors that man can experience in such temperatures, but he also knows that the life he has led owes a great deal to the cold. Both scientifically rigorous, historically questioning and intensely personal, this book is both a warning of the dangers we face with our relationship to the cold and celebration of a life lived in some of the extremist temperatures known to man.
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Review
'Fiennes' new book provides unsparing accounts of his expedition hardships, including months drifting on a disintegrating, polar-bear-haunted Arctic ice floe, and seeking shelter from 200mph winds while pitching his tent in the icefields of Antarctica... A stirring read' Book of the Month, Lonely Planet Traveller Magazine
'How did you lose several fingers? A mystery. I know what I can and can't do at minus 30 and minus 40. It was a normal icy day. I was not in a danger zone. If you try peeling a banana with mitts on, you can't. Therefore you take them off. I took 'em off and saw my hand had gone white. The same hand had done a winter ascent of the Eiger. I knew what it had got itself into. I had to get back to safety, which meant putting the hand in my crotch, the only warm place. I was in a whiteout. An Irishman came back very kindly to help - endangering himself' Kate Kellaway
'One of the world s greatest living explorers has described in a new book how his wife s thoughtfulness enabled him to survive a heart attack on Everest. The brush with death is one of several narrow escapes recounted in Cold' Sian Griffiths, Sunday Times
'Perhaps when you are as driven as he is you can never be fulfilled but Fiennes, who once used a fretsaw to cut off his frost-bitten finger tips, is probably assured of legend status. Not just because of the £14m he s raised for charity, his contribution to science and his catalogue of physical achievements, but that he personifies, as this book testifies, the indomitability of the human spirit and the belief that anything is possible' Flemmich Webb, Independent
'Tracing the history of polar exploration, [Fiennes] finds men deranged by isolation; ruthless captains abandoning unwanted crew in the uninhabitable Arctic; scurvy merrily rotting the gums of every man it touches. He relates, in juicy detail, stories of cannibalism and the public outcry they provoked at home' Stefanie Marsh, The Times
'This celebration of the most brutally cold places on Earth covers man s early discoveries through to the first crossing of the Antarctic during winter.' --Evening Standard
About the Author
Sir Ranulph Fiennes was the first man to reach both poles by surface travel and the first to cross the Antarctic Continent unsupported. In the 1960s he was removed from the SAS Regiment for misuse of explosives but, after joining the army of the Sultan of Oman, received that country's Bravery Medal on active service in 1971. He is the only person yet to have been awarded two clasps to the Polar medal for both Antarctic and the Arctic regions. Fiennes has led over thirty expeditions, including the first polar circumnavigation of the Earth, and in 2003 he ran seven marathons in seven days on seven continents in aid of the British Heart Foundation. In 1993 Her Majesty the Queen awarded Fiennes the Order of the British Empire (OBE) because, on the way to breaking records, he has raised over £14 million for charity. He was named Best Sportsman in the 2007 ITV Great Briton Awards and in 2009 he became the oldest Briton to reach the summit of Everest.
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