Ranulph Fiennes
In June 2005, Fiennes had to abandon an attempt to be the oldest Briton to climb Mount Everest when, in another climb for charity, he was forced to turn back as a result of heart problems, after reaching the final stopping point of the ascent. In March 2007, despite a lifelong fear of heights, Fiennes climbed the Eiger by its North Face, with sponsorship totalling £1.8 million to be paid to the Marie Curie Cancer Care Delivering Choice Programme.
In 2008, Fiennes made his second attempt to climb Mount Everest, getting to within 400 metres of the summit before bad timing and bad weather stopped the expedition. On 20 May 2009, Fiennes reached the summit of Mount Everest, becoming the oldest British person to achieve this. Fiennes also became the first person ever to have climbed Everest and crossed both polar ice-caps. Of the other handful of adventurers who had visited both poles, only four had successfully crossed both polar icecaps: Norwegian Børge Ousland, Belgian Alain Hubert and Fiennes. Fiennes, in successfully reaching the summit of Everest in 2009, therefore definitely became the first person ever to achieve all three goals. Ousland wrote to congratulate him. Fiennes continues to compete in UK-based endurance events and has seen recent success in the veteran categories of some Mountain Marathon races. His training nowadays consists of regular two-hour runs around Exmoor.
Seven Summits
In 1992, Junko Tabei became the first woman to complete the "Seven Summits". Mary "Dolly" Lefever became the first American woman to climb the "Seven Summits" on March 11, 1993, when she climbed Australia's Mount Kosciuszko. Earlier in 1993, she had become the oldest surviving woman to have reached the summit of Mt. Everest; she was 47 years old. In January 1996, Chris Haver became the first American to climb and ski all seven summits. Yasuko Namba was famous in her native Japan for becoming the second Japanese woman to reach all of the Seven Summits including Everest, where she died during the storm of May 1996 during her descent.In 2000, Croatian mountaineer Stipe Božić completed the Seven Summits. In May 2002, Susan Ershler and her husband, Phil, became the first married couple to climb the "Seven Summits" together. The first person to complete Seven Summits without the use of supplemental oxygen on Mount Everest is Reinhold Messner. Miroslav Caban is probably the second climber to finish the project without supplemental oxygen on Everest (finished in 2005 with Carstensz). Ed Viesturs also summitted all peaks without supplemental oxygen. Between 2002 and 2007, Austrian climber Christian Stangl completed the Seven Summits (Messner list), climbing alone and without supplemental oxygen, and reported a record total ascent time from respective base camp to summit of 58 hours and 45 minutes.