Richard in pole position to hit the heights in world challenge

South Pole, done. Mount Vinson, conquered. Aconcagua, scaled. Kilimanjaro, overcome. Carstensz Pyramid, vanquished. The North Pole, reached.

Six down, three to go for the former Leeds Carnegie rugby union player Richard Parks who is embarking on the 737 challenge, a seven-month race to the highest summits on the seven continents and the three poles – North, South and Mount Everest.

Joining the Welsh adventurer to experience the pain, the suffering and the elation is Olympic gold medal winning rower Steve Williams, who breached the North Pole and is now at Base Camp with Parks on their journey to the summit of Everest; and Sir Ranulph Fiennes, the greatest living explorer.

The sense of accomplishment when Parks reaches the top of the 18,510-foot high Mount Elbrus in the Russian Caucusus in a little over two months time may be hard to contemplate now, but there is no doubting the enormity of what he will have achieved when he finally manages it.

Parks will write himself into the history books as the first person to stand on the continental summits and all three poles in the same calendar year. He is pushing himself through the pain barrier to raise £1m for Marie Curie Cancer Care.

The financial target is a tall order, but as he is demonstrating with this challenge, Parks – who was born in Pontypridd and spent two years playing for Leeds – is at his best when raising the bar.

Everest is one of the most revered peaks in all of climbing and is also considered to be a geographical pole, tying in the seven summits and the three poles. The enormity of the task ahead of Parks was laid bare this week. “We heard news that sadly somebody died between camp three and four yesterday,” blogged Parks, who spent May Day at Base Camp.

“A heart attack. We also heard that some amazing person did CPR on him for over 1.5hrs above 7,400m, with all the teams in the area helping out. Everest gets a bad rap for people not helping each other, but that was amazing.

“It’s a sobering reminder of what’s ahead of us.”

What has gone before has been equally as treacherous, and just as exciting. Alongside 2004 and 2008 Olympic gold medallist Williams, Parks’s six-day trek to the geographical North Pole provided drama and daring.

The journey was made on skiis across pressure ridges and open ledges, pulling pulks (mountaineering sleds) of about 50kg to their destination.

At one stage a pulk fell on top of Parks’s head as he slipped off a pressure ridge, dazing the former Wales and Barbarians player, but in true determined fashion, the 33-year-old shook off the cobwebs and ploughed on.

On reaching the North Pole, where very few people have stood, Parks – whose decision to raise money for Marie Curie was inspired by his father Derek’s successful fight against cancer – wrote: “The ice is moving around above the pole so we were almost making 90 degree adjustments, sometimes coming back on ourselves to actually get over the pole. If you had been looking at it from the outside it was a bit like the Benny Hill show! We were going back on ourselves, left and right, to get exactly on the North Pole.

“So very few people get the opportunity to arrive at the North Pole on foot so it was an amazing feeling but it didn’t really sink in until the following morning when we woke up in the tent.

“I got goose pimples and shivers when I actually thought about standing on top of the world.”

During those dark and exacting hours en route to the North Pole, Parks’s mind will no doubt have drifted back to the day two years ago when the inspiration struck him to set himself such a daunting challenge.

His rugby career – that reached the heights of international acclaim and a Powergen Cup triumph with Leeds – had just been ended by a second operation on his shoulder.

“Lying in bed following the operation, I was suddenly faced with the reality of life without professional rugby, which had been at the centre of my entire adult life,” he recalls. “I became scared of the unknown future that lay ahead. I suffered a mixture of frustration, despair, and even anger. I was deeply depressed – it was a dark place for me.”

Such a feeling of falling off a cliff is not uncommon for professional sports men and women whose careers can be brought to a shuddering halt in their mid-thirties. Cocooned in the surreal bubble of sport, they have been out of touch with the real world for much of their life.

Rather than finding someone to hold his hand as he fell, Parks decided to reach out and grab the cliff-face in front of him. “I happened to be reading Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ book,” he continued, “which somehow became intertwined with a phrase from my Nan’s funeral ‘The Horizon is only the Limit of our Sight’.

“It had an immediate effect on me, helping me find the courage and mental strength to face my fears and my future head on.

“Reading about Sir Ranulph’s experiences had a profound effect on me. The mental, physical and technical challenges of Polar travel and climbing the seven summits captured my imagination. I’ve learnt that our lives are made up of many chapters. We can never go back and we cannot foresee our future.

“However, we can take charge of how we choose to live.”

Parks pulled his life up by the toe picks and reached the South Pole on December 27, staying there until New Year’s Day to fulfil his goal of reaching each landmark in one calendar year.

If everything continues to go to plan and the unforgiving weather is favourable, the pioneering adventurer should reach the Roof of the World some time between May 16 and 22.

By the end, Parks will have climbed more than 135,000 feet in achieving the astonishing feat of a World First 737 challenge.

To follow Richard and give to his chosen charity, log on to www.737challenge.com

Timetable OF A GLOBAL TREK

Leg 1: Dec 12, 2010-Jan 2, 2011 – The South Pole,

Leg 2: Jan 5, 2011-Jan 19, 2011 – Mount Vinson, Antarctica, 15,670ft

Leg 3: Jan 21-Feb 9 – Aconcagua, South America, 22,267ft

Leg 4: Feb 12-Feb 21 – Kilimanjaro, Africa, 18,864ft

Leg 5: Feb 24-Mar 18 – Carstensz Pyramid, Indonesia, 15,629ft

Leg 6: Apr 1-Apr 12 – The North Pole

Leg 7: Apr 14-May 31 – Mount Everest, Asia, 28,320ft

(Jun 1-Jun 12) Mount Everest contingency

Leg 8: Jun 14-Jun 30 – Mount Denali, North America, 20,320ft

Leg 9: Jul 3-Jul 18 – Mount Elbrus, Europe, 18,054ft