Climbing Everest: An extract from the bestselling Mud, Sweat and Tears

BEAR GRYLLS spent three years as a Trooper with 21 SAS Regiment, before breaking his back in a free-fall parachuting accident in Africa. Grylls recovered and went on to become one of the youngest climbers ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest. He first hosted the hit Discovery Channel series Man vs. Wild, which became one of the most-watched shows on the planet, reaching an estimated 1.2 billion viewers. Since then he has gone on to host more extreme adventure TV shows across more global networks than anyone else in history, including Running Wild with Bear Grylls and the Emmy Award-nominated interactive Netflix show You vs. Wild. His autobiography, Mud Sweat and Tears, spent fifteen weeks at Number 1 on the Sunday Times bestseller list and he has written over ninety books, selling in excess of nineteen million copies worldwide. He is an Honorary Colonel to the Royal Marines Commandos, the youngest ever UK Chief Scout, and the first ever Chief Ambassador to the World Scout Organization, representing a global family of some fifty million Scouts. He is married to Shara, and together they have three sons: Jesse, Marmaduke and Huckleberry.