Bear Grylls: I probably came closer to dying then than I have ever done

Mar 24 2008 Robin Turner, Western Mail

ADVENTURER Bear Grylls has relived the terrifying moment a paraglider he was flying spiralled out of control and plummeted towards the ground.

Grylls, who lives on a remote island off the Welsh coast, was preparing in the UK for last year’s successful record attempt to fly a paramotor – a flimsy chute powered by a backpack propeller engine – over the height of Mount Everest when disaster struck.

Flying through an unexpected patch of turbulence, the wires on his contraption became tangled and the real-life action man and television presenter somehow managed to get the canopy back under control moments before he hit the ground hard, narrowly escaping serious injury.

The life-or-death incident will be shown on television for the first time tonight.mon

The feature-length documentary also features Grylls’s wife Shara sharing her fears for his life before the aviation attempt in May 2007 and of potentially having to organise his funeral.

Ex-SAS trooper Grylls, 33, lives with Shara and their two young sons in a nature reserve set on a 20-acre previously uninhabited island off North-West Wales.

He made the highest ever powered paraglider flight while carrying 168lb of equipment on his back.

He took off from Everest base camp with his friend Gilo Cardozo, who runs a small Wiltshire company, Parajet, which makes paramotors.

Mr Cardozo, 28, who designed and built the specially adapted high-altitude machine, reached a height of 28,000ft before his engine seized up in temperatures as low as -60C above the Himalayas.

But Grylls, who became the youngest British climber to conquer Everest in 1998 just two years after breaking his back in a skydiving accident, soared into the record books again by reaching an estimated height of 29,500ft.

Speaking of his test-flight crash, which happened less than a month before the record attempt, he said, “I probably came closer to dying then than I have ever done, and that is not a good place to be.

“It just means we have really got to cover our safety better.

“I had always planned this mission to be ambitious and safe. The bottom line is that it’s ambitious but not safe.”

He added, “I know how hostile and unforgiving that mountain can be. It snuffs people’s lives out in the blink of an eye.

“Have I really thought about the possibility of dying out there? In moments of darkness, yes.

“I’m putting my life at risk and I’m risking a lot for my family.”

His wife told the programme makers, “No one has ever done this – why do this? He could slam into the side of a mountain or the winds might just carry him somewhere, where he can’t do anything.

“It fills me with absolute horror. I just think it’s mad, you don’t need to do it.

“If you’re single and have nothing to lose, go for it. But he’s not.

“I always think, ‘What if he died, what would I do?’ It’s awful. I was thinking about what I would do for his funeral.”

Viewers will see Grylls break down emotionally at Everest base camp after being persuaded reluctantly by Neil Laughton, the mission’s safety adviser with whom he climbed the mountain a decade earlier, to abort the flight attempt until the next day.

Technical problems meant they missed a crucial three-hour weather window, although Grylls was still keen to try despite ominous clouds closing in.

Wiping away tears after realising Mr Laughton – who had promised Shara he would do everything possible to bring her husband back alive – had probably saved his life, he said, “There is so much emotion, so much fear and adrenaline. You try not to think about your family and the risk.”

Once the conditions were perfect, the pair took off in separate paramotors, wearing five layers of clothes including a fireproof suit, and arctic boots, three pairs of gloves and oxygen masks.

Mr Cardozo’s machine, which he finished building only at the last moment and was untested before they flew out to Nepal, failed at around 28,000ft, but Grylls soared for another 1,500ft – 10,000ft higher than the previous record – although the exact altitude was not recorded because the measuring equipment failed at -40C.

Afterwards, Grylls, who had to leave the SAS after a parachuting accident in 1996 left him with three broken vertebrae said, “Dreams are great but they have a price.

“It is impossible to overstate what an achievement Gilo has done, night after night in his workshop making and designing things.

“Everyone was telling him day after day it was impossible.

“The thing I have learned is that you have got to have faith in yourself and in other people, and together we are all much stronger.

“I think I have come away with the knowledge that I am never going to return again to Everest.”

Bear Grylls: Mission Everest is on Channel 4 at 9pm tonight