No amount of research can prepare you for a meeting with Nigel Vardy. Tales of daring expeditions conjure a mental image of a Bear Grylls and Grizzly Adams hybrid.

In fact, he is dapper, urbane, despises sympathy and never stops laughing.

But the physical scars are evident. Nigel – an electrical control engineer and long-standing Prospect member – lost his nose, fingers, heels and toes to frostbite after a 1999 mountaineering expedition went wrong.

During his 13-month recovery the electricity industry changed beyond recognition, raising questions about his ability to return to work – personal and professional catastrophes that might have seen many 30-year-olds throw in the towel.

Describing the fateful trip to Mount McKinley, the highest in the Alaska range, Nigel says: “It was the best 17 days of climbing followed by the worst day of my life.”

He and fellow climbers were enjoying a challenging route when the weather changed. They reached the peak, miles from base camp, but within a couple of hours they were desperately seeking shelter from crosswinds of 60 miles per hour in temperatures of -60º.

“So much was hitting us so fast that we never thought about death or rescue, just what we were going to do immediately.

“In that sort of cold your temperature drops quickly – it’s the wind chill that kills you, so being exposed was not an option.”

The climbers squeezed into a crevasse to shelter and consider their next move. When the weather started to improve they realised they had to get back on to the surface, where their calls for help might be seen. Even though Nigel suspected frostbite had started to set in, his ability to comprehend their situation was impaired.

“I couldn’t work out why I was falling about like a drunkard. I couldn’t put two and two together and I was so cold. My mind just wasn’t thinking properly.”

They were airlifted to hospital but the flurry of media attention – Nigel was giving interviews from his hospital bed – distracted from his injuries.

“I had two epidural lines in my spine and all kinds of drugs. For weeks I was in denial. But I slowly came to terms with the fact my body would either recover or parts would die. They [medical staff] didn’t bandage or hide the damage.”

After two weeks Nigel’s frostbite had stabilised enough for him to fly back to a Nottingham hospital. Then reality kicked in. “I had been in a dream world in America, then suddenly your mum and dad are in tears because they see their son with the backside kicked out of him.”

He learned to use a laptop and do things like brushing his teeth and feed himself with frostbitten fingers that were by now “black and like granite”.

It was the start of a long process of learning to adapt, made harder after eight weeks when the fingers on his right hand were amputated.

“You know you’re going to lose them. You know they are black and cold but they are still part of you. I sat with them the night before surgery saying goodbye.”

Adjustment meant learning to use his left hand, but soon those fingers were also removed along with his heels and toes.

“That was the worst point. I woke up fighting the anaesthetic but still full of pain and ready to end it.”

With the help of family and friends, his mindset changed. “I woke up one day and thought: ‘Stop sitting on your backside like some sort of idiot, get up there and fight’.

“What pulled me through was the realisation that change is a constant. At times you don’t have a choice. My fingers were not going to grow back so I could either fight it or get on with it.”

His ability to adapt was tested further as during his absence from work, his employer, the East Midlands Electricity Board, had ceased to exist due to privatisation.

“I re-entered an industry I did not recognise. People I had worked with for years had left, offices had closed, and working methods had changed.

“I was still on crutches. Despite being an operational field engineer, I could not go into the field so I moved to the control room, where I still am.”

To date Nigel, who now works for Western Power Distribution, has been through one nationalisation and four takeovers.

“I know sometimes people don’t feel they have a choice when facing change. The new company walks in and says ‘forget whatever you’ve done in the past’.

“I’ve seen some people in meetings embrace change but others quaking in their boots. I related to them because when it happened to me, and PowerGen took over the East Midlands Electricity, I was in hospital. They kept the name but 80% of staff went within a week.”

“Colleagues congratulated me on having frostbite! Their view was that I was better off out of it because it was carnage – stressful as hell – but I was on sick leave.

“I was thinking: ‘I have my battles to fight,’ until I realised that, like with my injuries, change comes whether you like it or not. The only influence you have is how it affects you or how you affect it.

“Do you bend in the breeze? Do you think, ‘OK I might not agree with everything but I can cope?’ Or do you just say: ‘that is it’.

“When I came back into the control room I didn’t know if I could cope with a keyboard and shortened fingers. Could I type? Could I work in an office environment after being outside all the time? Could I cope with shift work?” But he did.

Asked if his approach stems from an addiction to danger Nigel laughs before admitting that his approach to risk is “different”.

“We all have safety rulebooks or operational manuals that say you can do this but not that.

“On a mountain you can’t work like that. You have to look at something and say ‘do I deem that safe or not?’ If I do, I’ll climb it.

“I find rulebooks hard because they say what you are doing is inherently dangerous but you’re safe if you do it like this. But there may be equally safe ways, better suited to your exact circumstances and without cutting corners.”

He compares it driving where all the Highway Codes in the world won’t stop people getting killed.

However, he acknowledges, at times you have to say that’s enough: “If I go further I’m going to hurt myself or other people.”

This attitude has seen Nigel return to mountaineering. He still loves its “tranquillity”, to the amazement of those in the media still following his expeditions.

He was even reported missing recently. A contact tried to reach in the Himalayas during some particularly nasty weather. “They rang my mobile, sent me an email and when they didn’t get a message back instantly presumed I was dead.

“But there is no service at the peaks and quite rightly. We did have unusual weather but we also had good Sherpa guides who said we couldn’t move.”

On his return to Kathmandu he had 650 emails and voicemails from worried friends and family. He fears our over-reliance on modern communication is destroying adventure.

“There are marvelous things in the world but people are more bothered about not being able to get a signal than a wonderful volcano or mountain range.

“So I lecture in schools about resilience. I try to get people to engage from an early age so we might enthuse a few of them to do something with their lives.

“I hope we are not just survivors, but thrivers. That rather than just going to work, coming home, having tea and watching a bit of telly, there is more to life.”

• Nigel “Mr Frostbite” addressed Prospect’s energy supply industry sector conference in June
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