Jim
Introduce yourself: Name, hometown, things you’re into: James Cooper, raised in the toon, living in Fort William on the West coast of Scotland for the past 12 years’ish. Still trying to not grow up, go running in the hills, not hurt myself on bikes and generally misadventure around the world.
Where did you grow up and what was it like? I grew up in Newcastle. My granny lived in Wallsend (near Byker of Byker Grove fame) and a I spent a lot of time with her while my folks were at work when I was younger. My mum was a travel agent and I’m pretty lucky she worked mega hard and we got a lot of free travel so I got to see the world from a young age!
What do you do these days and have you taken any of that childhood experience into your adult life? At the moment I split my work life between a bunch of different things with a focus on advising TV productions on high risk activities - whether that’s throwing people out of helicopters, negotiating whitewater or rigging a ropes challenge off the side of a building - I’m pretty thankful to be able to call it work! Spending my youth trying to balance the line of having a lot of fun and staying out of trouble, that definitely set me up well.
In recent years you’ve found yourself working on some awesome productions with rigging and access work, how did that come about and what’s the coolest place you’ve visited through that line of work? - I feel very lucky to have travelled to some awesome locations for work, whether it be iconic Indiana Jones locations in Jordan and Mexico, right through to flying about Norwegian fjords and volcanos in DRC. By far my number 1 location has got to be the Sugar Loaf mountain cable car in Rio. We got to hang out on the roof of one of the cabs while it was in motion and relive one of my favourite Bond scenes - the fight with Jaws, from the Moonraker film.
Have you any decent celebrity stories you can share (feel free to anonymise if needed)
You seem to live a wild life of outdoors activity, mountain rescue and fell running; what draws you to these pursuits?
You took on the winter Spine this year, a feat not for the faint of heart, how did that come about? So on of my team mates from the rescue team had entered after she realised their was an MRT class which actually had a reduced entry price - I kinda figured it wouldn’t be so bad if I DNF’d if I wasn’t paying full price. Paid the money and took the ride!
When dot watching I was stoked to see you and your fellow Mountain Rescue Teammates staying together all week. Was that planned? We said from the beginning the main objective was to get to the end and figured the best way for all of us would be to stick together. The girls definitely kept me on track for staying awake on the trail a few times- I developed a good ability to sleep walk!
What happened with the spork? We must’ve been about 70 to 80 hours in, I can’t quite remember as I was burst. We’d hit a checkpoint and the thought of going up onto the Cheviots in a storm at 2am really wasn’t appealing. Thankfully we found a wee church that was open that we could get our heads down. After a few hours sleep I tried to get my shoes back on and they were so swollen there was no chance. To cut a long story short, after a bunch of Codeine I used my spork as a shoe horn and rammed my feet in for the final 20 odd miles. I walked the first few miles like I was on a hot tin roof, had a massive piss then it was if my feet had magically shrunk to normal size. I’m convinced I pissed all the oedema out!!
WERE the conditions on the winter Spine as you expected them to be, or worse/better? I’m not sure what I expected really? We kinda just thought, we spend a shit load of time going out into Scottish west coast weather when it’s at its absolute worst, how bad can the Spine be? I think I’m more at home in a winter environment than mid summer. We started the race and went straight into some absolutely honking weather on Great Shunner Fell - I’d planned on staying dry so had my full battle Goretex on which I’m glad of - I think that first 8 hours snapped a fair few folk. 96 hours of Goretex isn’t good for the chafe - let’s just leave it at that. #chefsarse
Of a race rated as being “Britain’s most brutal”, what moments stood out the most for being 1) the best and 2) the worst? I think the best is a toss up between a night of hallucinations on Hadrian’s wall after a half hour laydown in a public toilet and seeing my girlfriend Sarah at one of the final CP’s where she was working as a medic. The worst was coming over Cross Fell ( which definitely snapped a few more folk!) in another spell of honking weather - you know it’s bad when yore trying to follow a GPS with a lazy eye and you keep going in a circle - Hannah had an asthma attack too which really added to the joy of that section!!
What advice would you give to anyone who want to get into the world of Mountain Rescue, or indeed wants to take on something as challenging as the Spine course in winter? I get asked a fair bit about the mountain rescue thing - best advice I could give is get out in the hills and enjoy yourself. Find out how you react when you bite off more than you can chew. Learn to look after yourself. Enjoy the process. A rescue team will train you in the rescue stuff but you’ve gotta put the effort in to get the outdoor experience. For the Spine or other big challenge? What’s the worst that could happen? I look at it and ask if I reckon I’ve got a 50% chance of being able to complete it, that’s pretty good odds, I’ll go for it.
Any words of wisdom to round this off? I’m not a fan of all this Nimsdai motivational bullshit that seems to be everywhere on the internet so I’ll leave you with a quote from alpine badass Mark Twight.