At the High End of the Everest Base Camp Trek

Trekking to Everest Base Camp is an essential part of the route for every Everest summit attempt. There's various Everest Base Camp treks and most start with a flight in to Lukla airport at a height of 2860 metres. Each of these trekking routes provides a picturesque and rewarding way to tackle the rise in altitude of 2500 metres to Everest Base Camp on the Nepal side, situated at 5360 metres in elevation. Importantly, these Everest treks incorporate rest days to provide trekkers and mountaineers with a chance to get used to the thinner air while enjoying the scenery on the route.

For mountaineers, the trek to Everest Base Camp is the beginning of their adventure. When they reach the head of the Khumbu Valley, they establish their Everest Base Camp on the Khumbu glacier as they launch in to the final stages of their training and acclimatisation that comes before any summit attempt. It is a gradual technique that can take months, and often years, of preparation and planning.

For the famous television survival specialist, Bear Grylls, his 1998 expedition to Everest's summit took months to complete. At that time, he was the youngest Briton to safely reach the peak. The following year, his British record was then eclipsed by Rob Gauntlett from Sussex, aged nineteen.

But in nine years later, Bear Grylls returned to the Everest trekking region and made an even more audacious and unsafe venture. He tried to fly a paraglider to an altitude exceeding the summit of Mount Everest. Bear would fly in a supercharged vehicle designed by his mate Giles "Gilo" Cardozo, trying to exceed the existing altitude record for paragliding of twenty,017 feet (6101 metres).

In May 2007, the team set up their "Mission Everest" Base Camp having trekked with their heavy equipment to an altitude of 4400 metres in Nepal. On the day of the flight, with hours' worth of nice weather, fuel and oxygen, Bear and Gilo launched themselves in to the air strapped to what appeared to be small over a stool with a motor and parachute attached. For more help visit .

Soon they were spiralling up to a height further than that capable by the camera helicopter that was following their progress. However, the cameras onboard the paragliders showed a spectacular sight of a ribbon of blue sky merging in to the blackness of space above, which at the heights they reached they could see although it was daytime.