The truth is, I need 10 lifetimes to scratch the surface of the things I'd love to do.

Nobody wants to end up super rich and famous - but divorced. I'm always clear on that and try to stay on the right side of the line.

You're not human if you don't feel fear. But I've learnt to treat fear as an emotion that sharpens me. It's there to give me that edge for what I have to do.

Is your ego small enough, and your backbone strong enough, to raise others up high on your shoulders?

Textbook survival tells you to stay put. Stop. Wait for rescue. Don't take any risks. But there'd been a whole host of survival shows like that and I didn't really want to do that.

I do see a lot of the hard end of ecology, and my feeling is that we live on a super-exciting planet but a super-fragile one.

I loved climbing because of the freedom, and having time and space. I remember coming off Everest for the last time, thinking of Dad and wishing that he could have seen what I saw. He would have loved it.