"It's absolutely pristine. It's as God made it."

by Paul Goodman

Former Cabinet Ministers tend to wind down after they've left the Commons, not to climb up the highest mountain in Antarctica.  Michael Forsyth is the exception that proves the rule.  Late last December he undertook what he calls the "Mount Vinson Challenge", seeking to reach the summit of this 16,000 foot or so peak and raise £350,000 for the CINI and Marie Curie charities.  The former helps to improve nutrition, health, education and protection in India, the latter provides assistance to terminally ill patients at home or in hospices.  Jonathan wrote about the venture at the time, and I thought I'd follow it up with an interview.

This is harder to do than it seems, not because Forsyth is an cranky or curmudgeonly subject, but because his website tells you almost everything you'd want to know about the expedition: why he went, where Mount Vinson is, how logistics are provided, what he ate, and so on - as well as a blog.  But talking to him helps one to get a sense of the experience more fully.  We meet in the House of Lords, go briskly up to his room - which he shares with two others peers - and go back brisky down again: one of his colleagues wants to work there.  We find a space in the immense grandeur of the Royal Gallery.

Lean, direct and spare, Forsyth looks little older than he did when he lost his Stirling seat in 1997, having served as Margaret Thatcher's Secretary of State for Scotland.  To label a him Thatcherite would be be an understatement: he's one of the guardians of the flame, and a politician from the pre-spin age, unnervingly inclined to press a policy because he thinks it's right, rather than withhold it because he's worried it might be unpopular.  It was presumably for this reason that George Osborne asked him to chair a Tax Commission during the early Cameron years of opposition, the conclusions of which are well worth looking at.

Forsyth began hillwalking in Scotland as a child, before moving on to rock, snow and ice climbing in his teens.  I ask the inevitable question: why Mount Vinson?  Why leave your family during the Christmas season - especially when one's scarcely in the flower of one's youth - for the icy wastes of Antarctica, even for a charitable cause?  "It's a spiritual thing," he replies.  "There are miles and miles of snow...the most spectacular views.  There's time to think...you're on your own.  It's the most beautiful environment."  Unlike other mountains he's climbed - Aconcagua, Kilimanjaro - Vinson is "absolutely pristine.  It's as God made it."

There is, he adds, "an element of risk - objective dangers you can't do anything about."  Was he ever in danger?  "There were not really dangerous moments, but there were moments when I was scared.  On one of the training days we went up to a ridge and there was a lot of loose rock, and I have a bit of a phobia about loose rock."  I struggle for a moment with the idea of a man who's a phobia about loose rock seeking to climb mountains.  On another training day, the temperature when he set out was relatively warm, the destination very cold, and he arrived "absolutely shivering...that was just me being inexperienced."

It's a salutory tale.  I know, intuitively, that a mountaineer can't simply turn up at the place of his choice and begin to climb - just like that.  But it's hard to understate the degree of preparation needed.  One must be very fit.  (Forsyth prepared by climbing mountains in Scotland.)  One needs an experienced guide.  (He had David Hamilton, and "If David Hamilton tells to me do something, I do it.)  One must wear perhaps six layers of clothing - Forsyth set out with too little on the day I just described - have the necessary equipment, bring the right food.

"I would wake up in the morning in my sleeping bag quite warm," Forsyth said, "But it would be minus 45, and there'd be a layer of ice on it that had come from my breath, so the kit is essential."  Beside a sleeping bag and mat, he and Hamilton would have brought ice axes, ski poles, carabiners, ascenders and crampons.  The food seems to have made up for the exertion.  "It was absolutely fantastic."  The steak when he returned to base camp was "best steak I've ever eaten".  There were other climbers on Vinson - the highest peak in Antarctica - but just Forsyth and Hamilton on his own adventure.

Protecting the environment is paramount.  Mount Vinson is "just untouched.  You're not allowed even to have a pee on the way up the mountain, because there isn't a lot of snow - so if you pee in the ground it immediately freezes, and the winds - which are tremendous - then blow...and you get a yellow brick round of stalagtites all the way up the mountain."  I will spare readers the details, but solid wastes had to be transported back and forth from base camp.  He was persuaded by what he describes as "the formidable combination of Sir Ranulph Fiennes and Marie Curie Cancer Care" to undertake the climb.

Forsyth has a long record of climbs for charity - confirmation, were it needed, that mainstream Conservatives give to charities as well as back them, and have hearts as well as heads.  Political careers are sometimes compared to mountain climbing, and it's tempting to try to squeeze Forsyth, as it were, into this figure of speech.  But with his insistent burr and unwavering views, he strikes me more as a scrapper and fighter.  Rightly or wrongly, I feel a question on the economy's in order, and he plunges into it.  "We have a Business Secretary who gives the impression of being anti-business at a time when we need to expand business opportunities."

"I hope that the Government decides to use more than one club.  At the moment they have one club called deficit reduction, but they need have a club called the supply side.  That means further reductions in public expenditure in order to fund tax cuts.  It also means not playing to the gallery and doing daft things, however superficially popular, such as more paternity leave - allowances that are transferable, and add to the cost of business."  Enough of all that, though, and back to mountains.  Which one's next?  Forsyth smiles tightly.  "I promised my wife that won't do another expedition.  And she replied: 'That's what you said last time'."