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THE
MAIL ON SUNDAY |
Copyright
2004 Associated Newspapers Ltd. |
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Picture the scene. You're hauling a 160kg sled up an ice block, at temperatures of minus 50C. The peak is in sight, your fuel supply's good and - so far - you've avoided eye contact with polar bears. But as you reach the peak and prepare for descent, you realise one of the gravest dangers of all. How do you negotiate the slippery downward slope and avoid being caught up by the sharp metal runners of your sled? 'You can bring the sled right up between your legs, so you're almost straddling it,' says Tarka L'Herpiniere. 'You can leave the sled on the peak and extend the linking rope with more and more knots until it's possible to walk to flatter ice, then pull it towards you. Or you can try to keep it at your side. Inevitably, the sled will hit you at some point. Basically, you hope for the best - you hope to save your head.' Tarka, a 22-year-old student of sports technology at Bath University, is a devotee of extreme sports who makes a study of 'saving his head'. Next February, he will embark, possibly solo, on a bipolar expedition. The first leg of his Primal Journey will start in Canada, and he hopes to reach the North Pole 45 days later. Then in November he will set off for Antarctica and trek for 65 days to the southern polar cap. Primal Journey marks the first of a series of such projects, and will, Tarka hopes, attract future sponsors. 'There is,' he says, 'something appealing about going to the lost continent, which no one really gets to reach.' Part British, part Australian, part French, Tarka grew up in Courcheval in the French Alps, where he joined the Club des Sports, which trains its pupils in mountain sports up to national level. At six, he learned to rock climb, and at 18, progressed to ice climbing. His favourite sports are sky diving and the still more death-defying base jumping - leaping from bridges and tall buildings with a parachute. 'With base jumping, there's no emergency 'chute. I did a base jump in London, off St George's Hospital, and I broke my ankle - my parachute was still opening as I hit the ground.' This man is super fit. He skis cross-country, swims and runs. Two years ago, he effectively ran eight marathons in eight days - 205 miles, between Rennes and PErigueux in France. Primal Journey has evolved considerably since he first came up with the idea. 'Originally, I wanted to circumnavigate the globe with no fossil fuel, using all my sports skills in one trip. But it's turned into something completely different.' When I first laid eyes on Tarka, in Bath, he was giving directions to a lost tourist. I'd been expecting a flighty thrill-seeker, but I found him charming, articulate and sincere. He greeted me with a kiss and chatted warmly, cracking jokes about his sister (a school rebel turned security guard) all the way to a little restaurant where he'd reserved the whole top floor so we could hear each other speak. Why not his flat? 'I don't have any chairs,' he laughed. 'I've had to sell them with everything else.' Impetuousness runs in the family. Tarka's French-Australian father, Philippe, and English mother, Thea, got engaged the day they met. 'They were working in Scotland as ski instructors and got snowed in at a lodge. They stayed together for 20 years, which for a one-night stand is pretty good. My mum now lives in Courcheval, and my dad in Val d'IsEre. Everybody gets on really well.' Did the separation distress him? 'I was a bit cross at the time. I went and got a tattoo between my shoulder blades.' At seven, Tarka was sent to Farleigh, a boarding school in Andover, Hampshire. Before that, he attended a state institute in France. 'It was very rough. We had to fight to get a seat on the bus. We would be beaten by teachers - my best friend had his face smashed through a computer screen. It made me quite self-aware and selfprotective, so when I came to England and somebody laughed at my name, I pinned him against the wall. But at Farleigh everybody came from nice backgrounds and nobody did that kind of thing. I began to fit in when I realised I didn't need to be so aggressive. It was a big change in life and I've always been thankful for it.' From Farleigh, Tarka went to Cheltenham College. 'Mum said I couldn't go because it was too expensive. So I got all the scholarships I could, until the fees were nonexistent, then rang her and said I was going.' There has been no shortage of role models for this man. He speaks fondly of his hero, 'Great Uncle Billie', who turns out to be William de Courcy King, aged 94, the round-the-world yachtsman and balloonist who revolutionised air-to-land communication and map reading. Uncle Billie, a delicious eccentric, now divides his time between a property in Hampshire and his wife's Irish family home, Castle Leslie, where Paul McCartney got married. 'Of course, there were all these famous people at the wedding. Uncle Billie began by chatting to Tom Cruise's agent, who was so interesting Billie thought he was Tom Cruise. Then he started talking to Cruise himself, but thought he was really dull. He said, "I was sure a famous person could never be so boring." Great-great-grandmother Cecilia Wilkinson, for her part, sailed the world in her yacht, Imatra, before taking up skiing aged 70. His grandmother, Diana Evans, in her youth a ballerina in the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, trekked to the foothills of the Himalayas aged 64, and is now keen, aged 90, to do some climbing. An expedition on the scale of Primal Journey will depend on sponsorship funding to the tune of Pounds 300,000, and, while manufacturers have promised products, the major contributors have yet to commit. 'Without the money, the project, essentially, is just 22 months of me wasting peoples' time. We have to find sponsors that aren't in conflict. We have to decide how many to take on board. I need them for even the basic stuff such as equipment and thermal underwear. At the end of the day, these big sponsors are giving me money to fulfil my dreams, and I need to show that every detail has been planned to the last pound.' Already there have been major setbacks. The team handling his finance and PR quit, and television presenter Patrick Wintertin, a family friend who was to accompany him on Primal Journey, slipped a disc. 'I went from having a full team and three potential sponsors to it being just me. That was two days before I went to Spitzbergen in Norway (for training in the Arctic Circle) so I was pretty gutted.' The crack about having 'no chairs' turns out to be true. Tarka has sold his TV, his radio, his motorbike and every stick of furniture to keep going. He has even parted with a diamond tiepin left to him by his grandfather. Happily, he now has a new team of helpers and is more determined than ever to make the project happen. 'I would never fail to reach a goal because of something that was in my control. If I was mauled by a bear I'd say, "Fair enough, I'm going to go back, get fixed up and try again." I'd never let myself fail by staying in bed.' Daily preparation is mental, physical and practical. He will actually sit in the university freezer to test equipment. His fitness routine is no less inspired. 'I wear the harness I'll be wearing on the trek and I have a set of tyres that simulates the weight I'll be pulling. I'll be trekking across the fields, and suddenly the tyres will jam, because curious cows have put their hooves in them. You've got to get out and train. Things don't work. Things fall apart - and you've still got to keep going. That's the hard bit.' He also has to work out in the gym. 'Muscles either side of your spine can get cut because of the way the harness sits, so we try to build that area up to protect it.' He has to build up muscle in his back and legs, and lose it from his triceps and forearms, as well as gaining fat. A dietician has Tarka eating foods high in omega fatty acids. On the expedition he will survive on freezedried meals. 'I need to put on at least a stone of fat, to be 16 stone... It's quite hard to look in the mirror and see myself chubby, especially when I've been training so much. It's not something everybody would want to do,' says the master of understatement. Tarka's expedition has made demands on all aspects of his social life. 'My friends think I'm a loser,' he says. 'But I don't regret it. I've still got loads of friends. They get on with their things, and I get on with mine. 'Drinking was one of the first things I had to give up - for the money I needed to save, not because of training. Fortunately, I've never smoked...' Tarka's mother, Thea, is worried sick, of course. 'It's awful,' she told me. 'If I let myself think about it too long, I feel empty. In fact, I was just warming up to the idea of it when he told me he was going solo. I was dizzy with worry. I'll try to convince him to find someone else to go with him. You have to be supportive. I was secretly hoping this was all just a passing phase but he's stuck with it, and I take my hat off to him.' So that she could understand the appeal of base jumping, Tarka once got his mum to film him doing it. 'I wanted to show her what it's like to do it. In the film, the camera seems to be shaking so much I think she passed out, but afterwards she was far more understanding.' As for Tarka's father, 'He's quite pragmatic. He's just like, "Well, you're an idiot. If you want do it you just go and do it. Be cold and lonely..."' Training and the prospect of the expedition have done little for Tarka's love life. His last relationship, with a fellow student, ended 23 months ago. 'That was at the beginning of the project,' he says. 'I got on very well with her but she didn't like me coming home and playing videos of me jumping off suspension bridges. When I proposed this project, she just said no. It's a heavy burden to ask a girl to put up with. I train hard, and for long hours, and I'm going to be gone for 150 days next year.' Apart from bitter cold and recalcitrant sleds, the Arctic presents another danger: the polar bear. 'It's a beautiful creature, but it's a killer. You can't go past it as that's turning your back on it, and you can't retreat - if it sees you, it will have you. So you sit quietly and let it get on with whatever its doing until it goes away.' He has firsthand experience of this. 'I saw one in Spitzbergen. It scared the living daylights out of me. I had to wait six hours for it to pass.' So what does he plan to do when he gets back from the trip? He imagines himself designing sports equipment, or doing officer training. 'I got a scholarship to Sandhurst a few years back. I like some of the opportunities the army offers, and I was always interested to see how hard these people push themselves. That said, I don't really want to be slung up with a gun and sent off to war.' And what of the other projects in the pipeline? 'Somebody said the other day that it was impossible to swim the Atlantic, so I'm going to see if I can do that,' he laughs. 'And maybe ski down Everest...' If he succeeds on his mission, Tarka will be the youngest person to have reached both poles. But he's not doing this to set records. 'To me, the fact that I'm going be the youngest person to do this is completely irrelevant, but because it is such a selling point for my sponsors I'm going to use it. Personally, I couldn't really care if I was the oldest person. I want to do it and I'm going do it. These are things I want to achieve.' For sponsorship enquiries, email info@milkpr.co.uk, or visit www.primaljourney.org.uk.
QUESTION TIME INTERVIEW Five people you would like to have to dinner?
'Uncle Billie, Eddie Izzard, Billy Connolly, my friend Joyce, who'd be
better behaved than the others, and I'd leave a space for a latecomer
who might drift in.' What did you buy on your last shopping trip? 'A specialist
climbing harness.' Which song means the most to you? 'Madonna's La Isla
Bonita. I was lost with a friend in the Brecon Beacons in Wales, and all
we had was a radio for company - that song seemed to be played a lot.'
First poster on your wall? 'One of a dragon and a knight.' If this expedition
was called off, what would you do instead? 'Start the next one.' When
did you last get drunk? 'Almost a year ago to the day.' What's your most
expensive mistake? 'I was ice climbing when I got myself stranded. I had
to cut myself down, leaving Pounds 1,000 worth of equipment behind.' If
you were a superhero, what would your special power be? 'Being able to
hold my breath underwater indefinitely.' |
