Sir Ranulph Fiennes, cousin of actors Ralph and Joseph Fiennes, is probably the greatest living explorer.

Fiennes, born in March 1944, is an adventurer & author was the first man to visit both the North and South poles, and the first man to walk across Antarctica, and one of the oldest men to summit Mt. Everest (at age 65).

He was a British Army Officer and a counterinsurgency officer in the Sultanate of Oman. He’s written 19 books. Despite suffering a heart attack and triple bypass just months before, in 2003 Fiennes ran 7 marathons on 7 continents in 7 days, all to benefit charity.

In 2007, despite his fear of heights, Fiennes climbed the North Face of the Eiger (known as the “Wall of Death”) to raise 1.8 million pounds to benefit a cancer charity (at age 63).

On one of his polar expeditions, in the year 2000, Fiennes’ sled containing his supplies fell through thin ice into the waters of North Pole, forcing him to pull them out by hand. He sustained frostbitten fingers and, despite doctor’s orders to allow the dying tissue to sit for 4 months, chopped off his fingers with a fretsaw in his own backyard woodshed. “Common sense,” he is reported to have said later.

I think we can all agree that this is an extraordinarily Fierce Gentleman.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing.Sir Ranulph Fiennes

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Also published on Medium.