AFTER a series of setbacks the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes yesterday finally began his five-day push to the summit of Everest. He has been preparing for the assault since the second week of March.

More than two months later, after weeks of acclimatisation exercises and an exhausting and seemingly endless wait at high altitude in Tibet, he has set off to conquer the world’s highest peak.

If Sir Ranulph, 61, achieves his goal, he will not only have raised £2 million for the British Heart Foundation but will have achieved his twelfth world record: he will be the first person to have traversed both polar icecaps and climbed the world’s highest mountain. Two Norwegians and one American have tried and failed.

In a year where weather conditions have turned back most of those that have attempted the mountain, Sir Ranulph is making his attempt in the brief weather window before the monsoon snows arrive.

In previous years many hundreds of people have climbed the mountain during the second half of May. But this year continuous high winds have turned back all but the most determined — and even they have occasionally come to grief. Two weeks ago, an experienced Slovenian climber died when he ran out of oxygen en route to the summit. His body is being retrieved by the Russian team with whom he was climbing. Last night it was confirmed that an Indian man has been found dead in his tent at 8,300 metres (27,230ft).

In the months leading up to their Everest attempt, the British-led ten-member and ten-Sherpa team has been forced to wait at 6,400m, at Advanced Base Camp, where the thin air causes deterioration of human health and gnaws at morale.

Sir Ranulph and the Jagged Globe team set off at about 10am yesterday Nepal time to climb for five hours to the North Col, a pass on a ridge between the east Rongbuk and the main Rongbuk glaciers, at 7,060m. It is the route made famous by the British expeditions of the 1920s and 1930s, the route on which Mallory and Irvine perished.

From the North Col, there follow four days of climbing to reach the 8,848m summit. If all goes to plan, Sir Ranulph will sleep at three further camps, at 7,500m, 7,900m and 8,300m, before making the final push.

The ascent follows a rocky ridge exposed to fierce winds and is considered by most climbers to be more difficult than the less exposed route on the Nepalese side. He will be climbing at a height where every physical action is a source of great exertion.

David Hamilton, the group’s leader and an Everest summiteer, decided to defer the attempt until now in the hope of higher temperatures and lower winds on summit day. Although others have reached the summit this year, including a British doctor, Julian Thompson, earlier in the week, Mr Hamilton felt it was unsafe to proceed until yesterday. “All the team members have been away from home for over two months and the strain is beginning to show,” he said.

“However, if we can get to the top within the next seven days our gamble on the weather will have been rewarded.”

The team will be climbing as two groups of five. Sibusiso Vilane, 34, the first and only black man to have scaled the mountain and the man who persuaded Sir Ranulph to take part in this expedition, will be travelling in the first group.

“Apart from the obvious exertion of summit day, the hardest part will be resting for four nights above 7,000m, where the effects of reduced oxygen causes people to lose appetite, motivation and the ability to sleep,” Mr Hamilton said.

Sir Ranulph has ascended as far as the North Col. “I don’t feel confident,” he said yesterday. “I feel curious as to how my body will react in a totally unknown zone. I don’t see how anyone could expect to feel confident when they’re ignorant as to their personal ability in an unfamiliar environment.”

The other Britons on the Jagged Globe Team are Neal Short, the assistant expedition leader, Jens Bojen, 62, and Ian Parnell, 36.

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