Last updated 13:03, Monday, 19 May 2008

Mountaineer Jamie Andrew and his best friend Jamie Fisher were stranded for days on an ice ledge in the Alps, while a ferocious winter storm blew around them.

• Slideshow: more photos of Jamie

Jamie Andrew on the ascent of Ben Nevis

The adventure was to end in tragedy. Jamie Andrew lost his hands and feet to frostbite while his friend died beside him, only hours before they could both have been rescued.

Afterwards Jamie was left in deep despair, fearing he would be unable to walk or perform even simple tasks for himself ever again.

But he made a miraculous recovery – and has not only returned to mountaineering but has also taken up ski-ing and marathon running.

The determination and self-belief he showed in bouncing back from his disabilities made him the ideal man to launch a new campaign encouraging sport and exercise in Cumbria.

Jamie, 38, believes he can use his story and his experiences to help others realise that it is possible to overcome what can seem insurmountable problems – and achieve almost anything if you set your mind to it.

It is nine years since Jamie’s life was transformed. He and his climbing partner Jamie Fisher had set themselves a special challenge by tackling one of the French Alps in the depths of winter.

Both men were experienced climbers when they decided to make an ascent of the north face of Les Droites in January 1999.

They had no idea it would leave one of them dead and the other severely disabled.

Within two days the pair had reached the summit.

But then an unexpected and ferocious storm engulfed the mountains and they were trapped on a tiny ice ledge near the top of Les Droites for five days and five nights.

By the time a rescue helicopter arrived, Jamie Fisher had died from hypothermia and Jamie Andrew was only hours from death himself.

He was luckier than his friend and survived, but suffered severe frostbite, and in hospital he had to have part of both arms and both legs amputated.

It seemed he would never walk again – let alone climb mountains.

Yet in less than four months he was walking on artificial legs. And within 18 months, despite his disability, he had climbed Ben Nevis, the UK’s highest mountain, raising £15,000 for the British Red Cross in the process.

Jamie was born in Bearsden near Glasgow in August 1969, but was never particularly sporty as a child.

That changed when, at the age of 16 he first tried rock climbing.

“I had never really been interested in sport, so I didn’t expect to like it,” he recalls. “But I was hooked.”

He explained: “It’s an amazing physical and mental challenge.

“It really pushes the boundaries of what you believe is possible – it’s at the very end of your endurance.

“And it’s getting back to nature at its wildest. To me it has everything.”

Jamie studied electrical engineering at Edinburgh University. But his passion for climbing led his career in a different direction, and he became an industrial rope access technician, which involved abseiling down tall buildings to carry out maintenance and construction projects. He helped build oil rigs, repair viaducts and paint the Forth Railway Bridge.

It was on January 25 1999 that he and his friend Jamie Fisher headed for Les Droites on what proved to be Jamie Fisher’s last climb.

“It was a big challenge but we didn’t expect to have too much difficulty,” Jamie recalls.

“We were experienced and we worked together well, so we expected it to take us two or three days.”

And when the storm blew up on the summit they knew how to handle it.

“As a mountaineer you are prepared to deal with unforeseen circumstances and unforecast weather conditions, and we coped very well to begin with.

“We got ourselves established and survived well for the first few days.”

But what they didn’t know was that the storm would last as long as it did, and that they would be trapped on the ledge for the next five days.

“There is only so much the body can take,” Jamie said. “My friend died a couple of hours before the helicopter arrived.

“I was just hanging on there. In another couple of hours I would have died too.”

Because of the severe frostbite he was suffering, doctors had to amputate Jamie’s arms below the elbow and legs below the knee.

At first this left him completely devastated. “It was too appalling even to contemplate,” he remembers.

But he began to realise how fortunate he was to have been rescued in time, unlike his friend.

“It dawned on me that I had been the lucky one, that I had been given a second chance,” he said.

And his recovery was incredibly swift.

Within three and a half months he was walking again on prosthetic limbs and despite losing his hands he had re-learnt everyday skills such as washing, dressing and feeding himself.

He left hospital and was able to return to work, as a manager of the rope access company where he had been employed.

He wanted to be active again – and decided there was only one way to find out if he could be.

“What I realised during my rehabilitation was that the best way to discover whether it was still possible to do the things I wanted to do was to give them a go and see.

“To my surprise I found that I could.”

So he began climbing again, first on some of the low hills near his home in Edinburgh.

And by June of the following year he had conquered Britain’s highest mountain Ben Nevis.

That month he also married his long-term girlfriend Anna Wyatt.

Two years later Jamie ran the 2002 London Marathon, raising another £22,000 for the Red Cross, and in 2004 he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, raising £5,000 for a leprosy centre in Tanzania.

That year he also published his autobiography, Life and Limb.

Jamie and Anna now have a three-year-old daughter, Iris, and two one-year-old twins, a son Liam and daughter Alix, and some of his ambitions are on hold while his children are young.

“I want to see them grow up as happy and healthy as possible,” he says.

But he adds: “There are so many more things worth doing.

“I want to run more marathons and learn to canoe. And there are many, many more mountains in the world that I would like to climb.”

As a freelance writer and speaker, Jamie now sees his job as encouraging people to climb their own personal mountains, whatever form they might take.

“What I do is tell my story and hope my experiences and achievements will inspire others to tackle the obstacles they face in life,” he said.

“It seems to me that our greatest limitations are the ones we impose on ourselves.

“I want to encourage others to throw out these misconceptions, and be all that they can be.

“Nothing is impossible. If you set your mind to it you can achieve almost anything.”

Jamie was the ideal speaker to invite to Carlisle for the inaugural conference of Cumbria Sports Partnership last week.

That conference brought together decision-makers from across the world of sport, including councils, youth groups, sports governing bodies, schools and others.

They will all have to work together if they are to encourage more people in Cumbria to become active and get involved in sport. And Jamie’s address to them received the loudest round of applause of the conference.

Richard Johnston, the partnership’s business manager, said teamwork and agreeing on targets would be key to promoting sport, and all the delegates had been motivated by hearing Jamie speak.

“Jamie has a truly amazing story,” Mr Johnston said. “He talked about team work, setting goals, choosing targets and reaching them.

“He shows how you can overcome adversity, and what you can achieve.

“I think everyone left the conference feeling inspired.”