Guest of Honour - Kenton Cool OBE

The Autumn 2023 Banquet welcomed climber and motivational speaker Kenton Cool OBE. Roddy Martine looks at his life.

So often it takes a cataclysmic event to define an existence. For Kenton Cool OBE, it was
a fall from a rock face in North Wales at the age of 23.

The accident occurred on the Llanberis Pass and he was left with calcaneal fractures of both heel bones and told that he would have to walk with a stick for the remainder of his life. With the characteristic determination and grit that have sustained him throughout his chosen career, he resolved to overcome his affliction.

A year of surgery followed until he deemed himself strong enough to apply to join the British Association of Mountain Guides Scheme. Four months of creating industrial roped access for the Millennium Dome at Greenwich was followed by guiding for Jagged Globe, the mountaineering planners. It was then that he decided to co-found Adventure Base, now an established world adventure company. Among those who have taken part in Cool’s Mont Blanc expeditions are Sir Richard Branson with his son Sam, the broadcaster Ben Fogle and Princess Beatrice.

Born in Slough, Buckinghamshire, Cool was schooled in High Wycombe and graduated in Geological Science from the University of Leeds. However, his passion for mountaineering had begun when he joined the Scouts, leading to rock climbing. At the age of 19, he took part in his first expedition to Pakistan, an adventure which fired his imagination.

“At school I played hockey,” he reflects. “With hockey, you can have the best game of your life but you don’t have to prove yourself. Climbing is also a team sport but it is very much up to you as an individual to succeed.”

Overall, however, it is the shared experience that he finds so intoxicating, be it the close bond achieved through dependency on another human being for mutual survival, the thrill of reaching a summit, or the collective exhilaration of watching a sunrise or sunset. Some might say he is incurably romantic. He does not deny it.

While not inherently religious he concedes that in big mountains it is hard not to believe in some sort of higher being. “Society is stripped right back,” he observes. “You have to live in harmony with the team you are working with. It is an experience that brings out the best in everyone, a quality that is increasingly being lost in our everyday lives.”

Now firmly established as a leading Alpine climber, Cool principally operates in the Alps and Greater Ranges of the Himalayas as a fully qualified Guide and Expedition Leader of the International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations (IFMGA/UIAGM)

In 2003, he was nominated alongside his climbing partners for the Piolet d’Or award for a route on Annapurna III (7,555m) in Nepal.

In 2007, he embarked upon the first British guided ascent of the Eiger. Destiny has a habit of throwing like-spirits together and he joined forces with Ian Parnell and Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the first man to reach both North and South Poles, to raise £1.8 million for the Marie Curie Eiger Challenge Appeal.

Despite his many other expeditions, the ascent of Everest has been pivotal in Cool’s career. In the 2007 climb, Sir Ranulph turned back 300m from the top, but returned with Cool to triumph the following year. Together they raised a further £2.6 million for Marie Curie.

And there was an added bonus to Cool’s life as it was then that he met and married the performance coach and trainer Jazz (Jane) Black. The couple now live in Gloucestershire with their two children.

“It would be naive to say my wife isn’t concerned about the danger involved in my career but I was doing this before we met and she understands that my expeditions are very much my work occupation,” he admits.
“Of course, then the children came along and you have to enter into a pact. Everest has never really caused concern, but when I went to Pakistan to climb K2 in the Karakoram Range, at 8,611 metres the world’s second highest mountain, there was a degree of trepidation. Jazz remains my anchor and my rock.”

In 2012, Cool fulfilled an 88-year-old Olympic pledge to take one of the 1924 Olympic Gold Medals awarded to the British Everest Expedition for “outstanding feats of human endeavour”, to the Everest Summit, thus kick-starting the 2012 Olympic Games held in the UK.

He was back in the Himalayas the following year with climbing partner Dorje Gylgen to achieve the Everest Triple Crown. In the space of just seven days and without returning to Base Camp, they climbed the three mountains that make up the Everest Horseshoe – Nuptse (7,864 metres), Everest (8,850 metres) and Lhotse (8,516 metres) – an achievement hitherto thought to be impossible for the human body to sustain in such high altitudes. Cool has now reached the summit of Everest 17 times, this year accompanied by Richard Walker, Chairman of Iceland Food Group.

How appropriate he should be invited to become the Keepers of the Quaich’s guest of honour on the 70th anniversary year of Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary’s assent of Everest, coinciding with the Coronation of HM Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. Incidentally, this momentous occasion was commemorated by the release of the luxury blended Royal Salute from Chivas Brothers.

Cool admits to not being a dedicated drinker of Scotch, but reflects affectionately back to when he was 11 or 12 years old and his godfather Ken Buchanan came to visit his parents and share a dram with his father. “I’d be given a ginger ale,” he recalls. “Ken used to dip his finger into his glass to give me a taste. That taste has always stayed with me.

“For me, Scotch Whisky will always be associated with special occasions surrounded by people who have a deep meaning for me. More often than not that is when I am on an expedition. I always take a bottle of Scotch along with me and take home what is left over but it is never wasted. Sometimes, I take a chair outside of my tent in some high altitude and nurse a cup while looking up at a starlit sky and the shadows of the surrounding landscape. Often in total silence. Sometimes I share a dram with the sherpas.”

For a man whose remarkable working life is centred on courage and self-determination in a more often than not hostile environment, it comes as a surprise when he claims to really enjoy the ever increasing demands of his speaking commitments, to tour companies and for corporate events. He has developed a genuine flair for communication.

“To a great extent it is all about leadership,” he insists and goes on to compare the decisions that have to be made in conquering great mountains to those that are made in a boardroom.

“If I get something wrong, somebody’s going to die,” he explains with just a tinge of humorous irony. “In a boardroom somebody loses a job.”

Having earlier this year been on holiday with his family on the island of Arran off the west coast of Ayrshire, Cool enthuses about the timeless beauty of Scotland. “A lot of my early days were spent climbing in the Highlands – Suilven in Sutherland and around Torridon and Applecross,” he says.

He loves the remoteness, the changing seasons, and the smell of woodsmoke on the wind. “I’ve travelled all over the world, but Scotland’s scenery still takes some beating,” he concludes. “Such a pity it isn’t nearer to the Cotswolds.”

This article first appeared in the winter 2023 issue of The Keeper magazine