Terry Fletcher meets a former miner who became one of the world's leading mountaineers and is now helping youngsters reach for the top

It’s the startlingly unlikely combination of Margaret Thatcher and Arthur Scargill that Andy Cave has to thank for catapulting him from the noise and grime 3,000ft underground to the pristine summits of the Himalayas. He was a teenage apprentice miner when their ideologies clashed in the year-long pit strike of the 1980s and unwittingly opened his eyes to a world beyond the closed communities of the colliery villages where he grew up.

From those inauspicious beginnings he is now internationally acknowledged as one of the world’s most innovative mountaineers, pioneering unimaginably difficult routes up sheer precipices on four continents. Along the way the boy who left school with no qualifications has also earned a degree and a PhD.

Now, having survived frostbite, avalanche and near starvation as well as the death of a climbing partner, he has a new mountain to climb, inspiring teenagers from the same background to follow their own dreams.

Andy’s remarkable story and achievements have put him in demand as a motivational speaker, encouraging corporate high-fliers and City traders, but his toughest audiences are not in the glass towers and boardrooms but in the down-to-earth setting of former coalfield classrooms.

He recalls that when he left school he had no educational role models and followed his father and grandfather underground. ‘I did not know anyone who had stayed on after 16. It just seemed natural to go down the pit.’

Ironically it was the pit strike that proved to be his escape route. He had just started underground at Grimethorpe Colliery, near Barnsley, when the strike began in 1984. Away from picketing duties and between spells desperately scavenging for food and coal he escaped to the tranquillity of the Peak District.

‘Until then I never knew such beauty could exist 40 minutes from the pit. Miners did not go climbing, probably because they were too knackered after a shift underground.’

With so much spare time on his hands he threw himself at the crags and within three months had graduated to some of the hardest test pieces. It was astonishing progress, like a footballer rocketing from Sunday morning kick-abouts to the Premiership in half a season.

Climbing also introduced him to a world beyond the insular pit villages like his native Royston. He met Sheffield students and realised there was another way of life, involving travel and adventure. ‘For a start I realised that I’d been working 12 hour night shifts underground while they were doing 12 hours of lectures in a whole week,’ he says. He knew then that he would not be a miner.

Although he supported the strike he was fighting for a job he no longer wanted. Nevertheless, he resolved to stay in the pit for another two years to earn enough to go climbing and to college, treating the hard graft and deprivation as training. Between expeditions he studied, got a degree and then a PhD in socio-linguistics and qualified as a mountain guide.

These days he lives in the Peak District and the Alps, making his living writing, lecturing, guiding and motivating others, including children. He says:

‘When I was growing up I did not know anyone who had been to university so I never thought of it. It’s still tough in their communities but I try to open their eyes to the possibilities.

Teenagers have always been the same; they don’t want to listen to parents or teachers because they’re not cool. But I show them videos of my climbs and photos of where I’ve been and tell them about my adventures. That gets their attention. And then I can talk to them about following their own dreams and working to make them happen.’

Once he left the pit he cashed in his miner’s pension for �1,500 to finance three quick trips to the Himalayas. There, despite his slight frame and glasses, he found that he had the strength and determination to climb into the thin, oxygen-starved air of the high mountains yet still perform at the highest standards.

In 1997 he and a friend, Brendan Murphy, decided to try to force a new route up the vertical north face of Changabang, a 6,864m peak in the Himalayas. Although much lower than the true giants, like Everest and K2, the mountain is acknowledged as one of the most technically difficult. They climbed in audacious Alpine style with no fixed ropes or fixed camps. Instead they carried everything on their backs, sleeping on tiny ledges or suspended from pitons. It is an exhilarating style of climbing but leaves the climbers terrifyingly exposed if anything goes wrong.

They succeeded in climbing the face but on the descent Brendan was swept away by an avalanche. Andy and two other climbers who had been on the mountain had to battle their way back to base camp, grief stricken, dehydrated, half-starved and frostbitten.

Brendan’s death robbed Andy of the urge to climb in the Himalayas but slowly he returned to the mountains, gradually falling in love again with the massive granite walls of the Norwegian fjords, the wind-raked faces of Patagonia and the pristine summits of Alaska. Though he trots out the mountaineers’ mantra that no summit is worth your life he’s driven to challenge the remotest unclimbed faces.

‘I realised that what actually motivated me was climbing hard, as fast and as light as possible. There is something incredibly compelling about pushing yourself into the unknown with a good friend. You have to commit to each other and to the mountain but afterwards you are left with such clarity. It’s irresistible.’

Andy Cave’s award-winning books Learning to Breathe and Thin White Line are published by Arrow, priced �8.99. For more information about his speaking, visit www.andycave.net