Here is the last part of the story...
thank you for so much support everyone.
I am so pleased to be heading home!
Bear xx
'Yesterday we awoke to clear skies in the Himalaya - I knew we had a chance that might not come again. I put the team on action stations for a launch. By 7am, with Gilo & me squashed into all our 100kg of kit and oxygen and clothing, we sat waiting to do what so many had told us was impossible..to launch powered paragliders at 14500ft with over 100kg of kit. As we stood up to launch the wind was building and the cumulus clouds were pouring into the Everest valley..if we were to live we had no choice but to abort.
We would have one more chance the next morning...but we knew it would be tight. Weather windows on Everest are few and far between. It was now or never, literally. I slept less than twenty minutes in total. I was terrified.
By 445am we were awake.The Himalayan dawn was sub zero and the stars seemed alive. I had no appetitie but forced down a small bowl of porridge. Gilo and me tried calmly to dress in our mission Everest kit tent. The rest of the team, lead by Neil, laid out our canopies and manoevered our giant rucksack engines onto the launch zone. Together we were wired for sound and cameras as well as radios and oxygen. In between standing we sat down to rest.
By 630am we were calmly waiting for the cold night downdrafts to ease from the high mountains and the valley breeze that would come up the faces to begin.
Finally everything was perfect: the wind, the cloudless skies and us two pilots fully kitted up. The launch though was never going to be simple. The first one ended with the wing collapsing almost into my propellers. Half an hour later of resetting and I was beginning to flag. Lifting that amount of weight and attempting to control and launch a parachute from a mountainside at this altitude is truly exhausting, in a way I have rarely experienced. My pulse rate whilst stationary was over 148 bpm.
The second launch the throttle was straining and racing uncontrollably with the throttle being twisted as people struggled to help me stand; we had to abort again and re set.
Third time I was at my physical limit. The sceptics were on the verge of being proved correct. Neil held my hand and heaved me up one last time. I knew I had the energy for just one more attempt. Sweat was dripping into my instruments despite the sub zero temperatures. I leant back and ran, the canopy leapt up in the updraft and I was suddely airborne.
I spent a few minutes settling into my harness and adjusting my oxygen mask then soon Gilo was airborne too. Few pilots in the world could do this with such skill as he did. Then together we began to climb. As we lifted clear of the surrounding mountains the turbulance eased. Soon we were both at 25000ft, flying at almost 70mph under parachute. We were constantly monitoring our oxygen saturation levels. A fault up here & we would be unconscious in under 30 seconds.
Soon our gps's froze, followed soon after by our variometers. Our radios range was now reduced to being to hear base camp but them not hearing us. We reverted to simple morse code 'yes and nos'. As one by one different parts of our equipment began to fail my heart fell. All that we were depending on for our safety was dying in front of us; and all that now was working was our oxygen and our engines. Thank God. It felt incredible to be being powered up there by these parajet machines at such a speed, despite all the techies having told us us such an ascent rate was impossible.
My hands started to go numb above 25000ft and I tried to shield them behind my oxygen bottle on my lap. My mask was also beginning to freeze up before me; I was feeling suddenly very alone.
Then at 28000ft, just 1000 feet short of the summit Gilo's engine computer system shut down. He was forced to make the difficult decision to turn off his engine and glide down to safety. I had little choice but to steadily carry on alone. My parajet never missed a beat, feeling so smooth as it powered me higher and higher. Finally at 933am I could see that no other mountain in the world was above me. I was at 29,500ft. Below me was Makalu, Kanchenjunga, Lhotse, all the big boys and then of course Everest.
At base camp we had been confined by these giant mountains on all sides, but now for the first time the high Himalayan giants were all below us. We could see into Tibet, India and Nepal, all at the same time.
I did one lap then my engine faltered, but it had done all that had been required. Without the engine suddenly all was silent and I was hanging on cotton thin strings under a parachute soaring above the roof of the world. My oxygen was still high and I felt the luckiest man alive.
The flight down took a breath taking 45 mins of flying free through snow covered peaks. Gilo was by now safely on the ground and as I neared the valley we had chosen to land in, the turbulance increased as did the wind and cloud cover. If we had been half an hour later we would have been thwarted. Everest had allowed us the smallest of chances. I couldn't help but cry with gratitude to the mountain.
I shall never return to Everest again, but I do hold this terrifying mountain, that most special of mountains, in the highest of respect. And by Everest's and God's grace we were both alive. I landed in a heap; elated, exhausted, amazed and relieved. Gilo ran to hug me and together we knew we had somehow pulled off the impossible.
Gilo comments: "This has been a dream come true; and I always believed if we kept faith that we could pull this engineering epic off. This project has been so humbling, and I had no idea how huge this giant of a peak truly is, but I am so proud parajet has soared over the roof of the world."
In the words of Neil Laughton, our base camp manager and the man with whom I had climbed Everest with some nine years earlier: "this mission was significantly more dangerous than such a climb ever would be; they was so much that could go wrong and there would have been so little you could do to recover such an incident."
As a team with GKN we have raised over a million dollars for some of the world's most needy children. That feels amazing in itself. But as for me, I feel above all relief and pride; pride in my team and especially in Gilo. He defied all the odds and together we touched that place of dreams.
