Mission Everest Parajet Expeditions

Conventional wisdom says that technology has tamed the elements and removed risk from almost every human activity. In early 2007 a team of adventurers turned conventional wisdom on its head. Their aim, to pit two pilots against the forces of nature with a mission to be the first to fly to a height above the summit of the world’s highest mountain using paramotors and reaching what explorers call the ‘ceiling of the impossible’.

What made this Everest flight such an incredible test of courage, scientific ingenuity and endurance?

The highest a paramotor had flown before was a shade over 20,000 feet, nearly 10,000 feet below the summit of everest where man and machine can encounter temperatures of -40C and winds up to 175mph blowing you into walls of rock. Therefore, the Everest team had to push aviation technology to new limits and just about every aspect of the kit and technology used had to be specially adapted and built to cope with the extremes they faced.

Bear Grylls, one of the world’s most renowned young explorers and who in 1998, at the age of 23, became the youngest Briton to climb Mount Everest, spearheaded GKN Mission Everest expedition.

Flying alongside Bear was Gilo Cardozo, the engineer behind the everest paramotor and highly experienced pilot. The two Mission Everest pilots were supported every inch of their record-breaking ascent by a base-camp team that included meteorologists, medical staff and communication experts.

On the 14 May 2007 the two pilots took off from the foothills of the high Himalaya, some 20 miles south of Everest in eastern Nepal. Once airborne, the intrepid pair flew north, over glaciers, towards Mount Everest. Once south of the infamous Nuptse Wall, a sheer ice and rock face that soars eight thousand feet high, the pilots began to circle and ascend towards their target altitude, achieving a world-record of 29,494ft.

The record-breaking flight lasted four hours - the achievement lasting forever. 

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