A British Everest summiteer has become the first man to fly higher than the top of the world in a powered paraglider.
Bear Grylls, who at the age of 23 became the youngest British climber to scale Mount Everest in 1998, achieved a feat that had been deemed impossible by many critics prior to the mission.
On 14 May 2007, Grylls and his fellow pilot and inventor of the parajet engine, Giles Cardozo, took off from the small Himalayan village of Pheriche, which lies at an altitude of 4,400m (14,435ft) about 20 miles (32km) south of Mount Everest in eastern Nepal.
For their amazing adventure the two pilots chose the main Himalayan climbing season, which is currently seeing more than 100 expeditions on both the north and south sides of Mount Everest.
However, Grylls, who reached the top of the world on 26 May 1998 and has lived through many other adventures, said the challenges of flying a paraglider at such a high altitude were different from mountaineering.
"The propeller, oxygen bottle and all the other equipment strapped to my back weighed more than 120kg (264lbs). It took me three attempts to get off the ground but when I was finally in the air, I noticed the crowd of people sitting on the ridge clapping and cheering," Grylls said on his return to Kathmandu.
Grylls and Cardozo flew successfully to 8,535m (28,001ft) when a fault in Cardozo's engine forced him to abort only 300m (984ft) below the summit. Grylls continued to ascend until he reached 8,990m (29,494ft) at 0933 local time.
After having waited for about two hours for the launch, which kept on being delayed due to technical difficulties, the Sherpas and employees of GKN, the UK-based technology company that sponsored the Everest mission, had started having their doubts whether this ambitious adventure would actually get off the ground.
"I thought they had a 30% chance at best as it meant getting all the equipment to the mountain at the right time and being lucky with the weather. They only had a three-day weather window, which is very tight," said Andy Elson, British adventure engineer and first man to fly over Mount Everest in a balloon in 1991.