Thursday's best TV: Our Everest Challenge with Ben Fogle & Victoria Pendleton

Top of the world: Ben Fogle on the summit of Mount Everest. His team-mate Victoria Pendleton had to abandon the climb
CNN Vision
David Sexton30 August 2018

Mount Everest is the very peak of endeavour, isn’t it? Everest has now been summited, as they call it, by some 4,000 climbers, although 300 have also died in the attempt. In the short summer climbing season there are queues to make the final stage.

Ben Fogle, now 44, says he’s dreamed of “climbing her” since he was a boy. Rather disconcertingly, he keeps referring to Everest as “her” — although perhaps other mountaineers do the same?

Our Everest Challenge follows Fogle and the former Olympic cyclist Victoria Pendleton as they attempted to climb Everest in May this year. In the preview version I’ve seen, surprisingly little explanation is given of why precisely they are so set on doing this. Perhaps such an ambition is perfectly self-explanatory?

A little delving reveals that the expedition, which took two years to prepare, was supported by Fogle’s friend Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein of Jordan in memory of her father, and it raised funds for the British Red Cross. Moreover, on reaching the peak, Fogle dedicated his climb to his son Willem, stillborn in 2014.

Climb: Victoria Pendleton and Ben Fogle trekking to Mount Everest Base Camp
CNN Vision

But none of this features in the programme we see and we are left, as so often with these adventures and challenges, with the impression that it is about the stars themselves and their need to sustain their careers. The real driver here is television itself, the making of a programme.

Accordingly, the secret star of this show is cameraman Mark Fisher, who has taken incredibly vivid, scary shots on the mountain. You see Fogle struggling to take a step — and realise that this is not a selfie, so there must be somebody else there who has not only climbed as far but is hard at work as well.

This was Fisher’s first ascent of Everest too, it emerges, although both were guided by the leading European climber of Everest, Kenton Cool, who has now been up 13 times.

Victoria Pendleton, whose career since retiring from cycling has been curious, taking in jockeying and boxing, has to abandon the climb at an early stage, as has already been widely reported. Great fitness isn’t enough if your physiology is not suited to altitude, a scientist, who has himself summited Everest, explains.

Pictured: Ben Fogle and Victoria Pendleton
CNN Vision

She is devastated, saying she used to feel like a superhero. “It’s the first time in my life I’ve really felt like my body is failing me.” Welcome to that human club, Victoria, which many more of us join on a tough day on London Transport, rather than in the Himalayas.

From the summit Fogle makes a hugely emotional address: “I am on the roof of the world! This is for all those people who were told they couldn’t. Anything is possible if you put your mind to it. I really hope this will inspire people, not to necessarily climb this mountain, but I want you all, promise me one thing: go climb your Everest.” That’s probably a better idea than climbing Everest itself, he concedes.

Our Everest Challenge itself might give most of us all we need to know about how gruelling and frightening, as well as inspiring and beautiful, it is to climb that mountain.

There’s a service right there. The sight of that queue to claim the peak might also make some of us think that climbing Everest is an expression of primordial self-assertion too and we’d just as soon she was left in peace in the future.

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