British adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes was issued with an Explorer II in the late 1990s. He attributes his survival to his watches; in one instance ( having fallen down a crevasse ) the strap of his watch tangled with his ski-pole handle and caught him before he fell to oblivion! In these photos he wears a Rolex Oysterquartz model 17000, which went out of production around the millenium.