Failure can be the real route success': Christian Bonington

Updated on: Tuesday, June 14, 2011

For someone who has taken part in 19 expeditions to the Himalayas, including four to Mount Everest in over 20 years, failures have made him what he is today. "To achieve something great in life, failure is inevitable but when a person learns from failures he can become successful," says mountaineer Christian Bonington, who is also the chancellor of Lancaster University, UK.

In his own life, he turned around failures into success stories and moved on from strength to strength. It took him a while to respond to his true calling. He dabbled with working in the army and worked as a management trainee before finally settling down to making a living out of professional climbing.

"In my early life and career, I failed many a time, but I kept trying," says Bonington. He went on to join the Royal Fusiliers before attending Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and on graduation, was commissioned in the Royal Tank Regiment in 1956. He spent five years in the army and then decided to move out of it. "I couldn't imagine living my life as an army person," says Bonington.

After he was with the Army Outward Bound School as a mountaineering instructor he got a chance to climb the Alps. He made the first British ascent of the South West Pillar of the Drus in 1958 and then the first ascent of the Central Pillar of Freney on the south side of Mont Blanc in 1961.

In 1961, he joined Unilever as a management trainee but after nine months realised that he could never combine a conventional career with his love of mountaineering and so he quit and got into making a living through mountaineering.

"When I left the army and Unilever, my mother was appalled but she allowed me to find my own way," says Bonington.

Times of India

Failure can be the real route success': Christian Bonington

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