Edward Michael "Bear" Grylls (born 7 June 1974), known as Bear Grylls, is a British mountaineer, adventurer, author, television presenter and motivational speaker.Bear is a man who has always loved adventure. After breaking his back in three places in a parachuting accident, he fought his way to recovery, and two years later entered the Guinness Book of Records as the youngest Briton to climb Mount Everest, aged only 23. He has since led ground-breaking expeditions across the world.
Famous firsts achivement and world records :
Grylls first entered the record books in 1997 by being the youngest Briton to summit Ama Dablam in the Himalayas, a peak famously described by Sir Edmund Hillary as "unclimbable".
Then in 1998, Grylls claimed to have broken another record of becoming the youngest Briton, at 23, to summit Mount Everest, a claim also referenced on his personal website. However, James Allen, who Bear describes as "Australian" and ascended in 1995 with an Australian team, using an Australian passport, but has dual citizenship, was born in Britain, lived in Britain, and was referred to by the British press as British, beat him to the summit it at age 22.
Additionally, British climber Rhys Jones reached the summit on his 20th birthday in May 2006.
In an interview with David Letterman (June 2007) Letterman calls him "The youngest Briton to summit Everest" and Bear "corrects" him by saying another man (Michael Matthews) did it the following year but died on the way down, and regardless of his death it has become this man's record.
In 2000 Grylls led the first team to circumnavigate the UK on personal watercraft, to raise money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) Lifeboats. Three years later he led a team of five British men on the first unassisted crossing of the north Atlantic Arctic Ocean, in an open rigid inflatable boat. The team was hampered by giant waves, icebergs and storms.
In 2005 Grylls led the first team ever to attempt to paramotor over the remote jungle plateau of the Angel Falls in Venezuela. The team was attempting to reach the highest, most remote high tepuis, made famous by Conan Doyle's Lost World.
In 2007 Grylls claimed to have broken a new world record by flying a petrol-powered paraglider over the Himalayas, higher than Mount Everest (original claim, "over Mount Everest", and after being challenged, "above Everest" on his website).
His report of the flight described coping with temperatures of - 60C and dangerously low oxygen levels to reach 29,500 feet, almost 10,000 feet higher than the previous record of 20,019 feet. He also reported seeing people clapping and cheering on the ridge. The expedition raised $1 million for the charity Global Angels. Grylls described the expedition, filmed for a 2 hour film for Discovery Channel worldwide as well as Channel 4 in the UK, as "the hairiest, most frightening thing" he had ever done.
While Grylls initially claimed that the flight was over Everest itself, the permit was only to fly over the Pheriche Plateau, and later news reports indicated that he didn't approach Everest itself out of fear of violating Chinese airspace.
