Bear Grylls - A Real Byoshower Hero

Byoshower is a product for outdoor heroes and once you've read the biography below, I feel confident that you will agree with us when we say that this guy is the epitomy of what we call an adventurer.  Bear Grylls is most definitely a Byoshower hero.  From climbing Mount Everest to attempting to paramotor over the world's highest waterfall..  Bear Grylls has so many adventures under his belt, it's no wonder he has been made Chief Scout.

Edward Michael Grylls, nicknamed Bear by his Sister, is a true British adventurer, as well as a writer and television presenter.  He is best known in the UK for his television series Born Survivor, known as Man vs. Wild in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.  He is one of the youngest Britons to climb Mount Everest, doing so at age 23. In July 2009, Grylls was appointed the youngest ever Chief Scout at the age of 35.

Bear Grylls was educated at Eaton House, Ludgrove School, Eton College, and Birkbeck, University of London, He learned to climb and sail from his father at an early age.  He earned a second dan black belt in Shotokan karate as a teenager.  He now practices Yoga and Ninjutsu. He also became involved in scouting, beginning at age eight, as a cub scout.

After leaving school, Grylls considered joining the Indian Army and spent a few months hiking in the Himalayan mountains of Sikkim and West Bengal, Assam.  From 1994 to 1997, after passing United Kingdom Special Forces Selection, he served in the part-time United Kingdom Special Forces Reserve, with 21 Regiment Special Air Service, 21 SAS, as a trooper, survival instructor and Patrol Medic.  He claims that he served in North Africa twice.

In 1996, he suffered a freefall parachuting accident in Kenya.  His canopy ripped at 1,600 feet (500 m), partially opening, causing him to fall and land on his parachute pack on his back, which partially crushed three vertebrae.  Bear Grylls spent the next 18 months in and out of military rehabilitation at Headley Court before being discharged and directing his efforts into trying to get well enough to fulfil his childhood dream of climbing Mount Everest.

In 2004, Grylls was awarded the honorary rank of Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Naval Reserve.

In 1998, Grylls achieved his childhood dream, and a record, as the youngest Briton, at 23, to summit Mount Everest, just eighteen months after breaking his back.  Grylls' expedition involved nearly four months on Everest's southeast face:  From his first reconnaissance climb on which he fell in a crevasse and was knocked unconscious, regaining consciousness to find himself swinging on the end of a rope, to the weeks of acclimatisation climbs involving climbing up and down the South Face, negotiating the Khumbu icefall (a frozen river), the Western Cwm glacier, and a 5000 foot wall of ice called the Lhotse face, to the grueling ascent with the ex-SAS soldier Neil Laughton, involving climbing for hours in the night, that took him past extreme weather, fatigue, dehydration, last-minute illness, sleep deprivation and almost running out of oxygen inside the death zone where air is three times thinner than at sea level.

To prepare for climbing at such high altitudes in the Himalayas, in 1997, Grylls became the youngest Briton to climb Ama Dablam, a peak described by Sir Edmund Hillary as "unclimbable".

In 2000, Grylls, led the first team to circumnavigate the UK on a personal watercraft or jet ski, taking about 30 days, to raise money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI).  He also rowed naked for 22 miles in a homemade bathtub along the Thames to raise funds for a friend who lost his legs in a climbing accident.

Three years later, he led a team of five, including his childhood friend, SAS colleague, and Mount Everest climbing partner Mick Crosthwaite, on the first unassisted crossing of the north Atlantic Arctic Ocean, in an open rigid inflatable boat.  Battling force 8 gale winds, hypothermia, icebergs and storms in an eleven-metre-long boat through some of the most treacherous stretches of water in the world including the Labrador Sea, the Denmark Strait, and the stretch made famous by The Perfect Storm, Grylls and his team were just barely able to finish the journey from Halifax, Nova Scotia to John o' Groats, Scotland.  He was awarded an Honorary commission in the Royal Navy as a Lieutenant-Commander for this feat.

In 2005, Grylls led the first team ever to attempt to paramotor over the remote jungle plateau of the Angel Falls in Venezuela, the world's highest waterfall. The team was attempting to reach the highest, most remote tepuis.

In 2005, alongside the balloonist and mountaineer David Hempleman-Adams and Lieutenant Commander Alan Veal, leader of the Royal Navy Freefall Parachute Display Team, Grylls created a world record for the highest open-air formal dinner party, which they did under a hot-air balloon at 25,000 feet, dressed in full mess dress and oxygen masks. To train for the event, he made over 200 parachute jumps. This was in aid of the The Duke of Edinburgh's Award and The Prince's Trust.

In 2007, Grylls claimed to have broken a new world record by flying a Parajet paramotor over the Himalayas, higher than Mount Everest.  Grylls took off from 14,500 feet, 8 miles south of the mountain looking down on the summit during his ascent and coping with temperatures of −60 °C . He endured dangerously low oxygen levels and eventually reached 29,500 feet, almost 10,000 feet higher than the previous record of 20,019 feet. The feat was filmed for Discovery Channel worldwide as well as Channel 4 in the UK.

While Grylls initially planned to cross over Everest itself, the permit was only to fly to the south of Everest, and he did not traverse Everest out of risk of violating Chinese airspace.

In 2008. Bear Grylls, along with the double amputee Al Hodgson and the Scotsman Freddy MacDonald, set a Guinness world record for the longest continuous indoor freefall.  The previous record was 1 hr 36 mins by a US team. Grylls, Hodgson, and MacDonald, using a vertical wind tunnel in Milton Keynes, broke the record by a few seconds. The attempt was in support of the charity Global Angels.

Bear Grylls entered the world of television with an appearance in an advert for Sure deodorant, featuring his ascent of Mount Everest. Grylls has been a guest on television programs, including Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Attack of the Show, The Late Show with David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Harry Hill's TV Burp.  He has also appeared in a five-part web series that demonstrates urban survival techniques and features Grylls going from bush to bash.

Grylls is a bestselling author. Grylls' first book, titled Facing Up, went into the UK top 10 best-seller list, and was launched in the USA entitled The Kid Who Climbed Everest. About his expedition and achievements climbing to the summit of Mount Everest. Grylls' second book Facing the Frozen Ocean was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2004. His third book was written to accompany the series Born Survivor: Bear Grylls. (Released in America in April 2008 to the Man vs. Wild Discovery television show) It features survival skills learned from some of the world's most hostile places. This book reached the Sunday Times Top 10 best-seller list.

Grylls filmed a four-part TV show in 2005, called Escape to the Legion, which followed Grylls and eleven other UK "recruits" as they took part in a shortened re-creation of the French Foreign Legion's basic desert training in the Sahara. The show was broadcast in the UK on Channel 4, and in the USA on the Military Channel. In 2008, it was repeated in the UK on the History Channel.

Grylls hosts a series titled Born Survivor: Bear Grylls for the British Channel 4 and broadcast as Man vs Wild in Australia, Canada and the U.S.A., and as Ultimate Survival on the Discovery Channel in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The series features Grylls dropped into inhospitable places, showing viewers how to survive. The second season premiered in the US on 15 June 2007, the third in November 2007, and the fourth in May 2008. Grylls is currently[when?] filming the fifth season.

On 17 May 2009, the The Scout Association announced Grylls would be appointed Chief Scout following the end of Peter Duncan's five year term in July 2009.  He was officially made Chief Scout at Gilwell 24 on 11 July 2009 in a handover event featuring Peter Duncan in front of a crowd of over 3,000 Explorer Scouts. He is the tenth person to hold the position and the youngest Chief Scout since the role was created for Robert Baden-Powell in 1920.

All of Grylls' expeditions and stunts have raised money for charitable organizations.  Grylls is an ambassador for The Prince's Trust, he is also vice president for The JoLt Trust.

Outside of TV, Grylls sometimes works as a motivational speaker and has his own outdoor survival clothing range produced by British manufacturer Craghoppers.

How he fit's all this in we do not know!

Article put together from a wide variety of sources that are referenced below.

References

External links

• Official Born Survivor website
• BearGrylls.com official website
• Video of Bear Grylls confirming that he will be the new Chief Scout for the UK
• Bear Grylls at the Internet Movie Database
• Video from the Gilwell 24 event showing the investiture of Bear Grylls as Chief Scout for the UK, by the previous incumbant Blue peter presenter Peter Duncan
• Adventurer Bear Grylls' battle with back pain and high cholesterol