"Fascinating reading."
-Tony Blair, Prime Minister of England
"A vivid and inspiring read."--Kirkus Reviews
"I highly recommend this remarkable book, and I know its readers will be as spellbound as I have been."
--Michael, Prince of Kent
"Bear Grylls, the youngest [Briton] to ascend Everest, did so agter many months recovering from a broken back. He writes convincingly of feat and doublt. This is an honest and compelling story."
-Sir Ranulph Finnes, author of Mind over Matter: The Epic Crossing of the Antarctic Continent.
"Bear Grylls is a young man with skills beyond his years, both in climbing and story telling. This book, like the feat of summiting Everest itself, is a great triumph of the human spirit."
--Mike Tidwell, author of In the Mountains of Heaven: Tales of Adventure on Six Continents
Description
In 1996, a twenty-three-year-old soldier in the British Army was flying over an African desert on a routine parachute jump. He had a lot to look forward to-a long career ahead of him in the army, a beautiful girlfriend back home. But those dreams were cut short when his parachute failed to open at eleven thousand feet. He had cracked three vertebrae and come within a fraction of severing his spinal cord. A grueling eight months of physical therapy followed. Bear had to retrain his muscles to do all of the things we take for granted-how to sit, stand, walk, even breathe. Eighteen months after his accident he overcame incredible odds to reach the peak of Everest.
THE KID WHO CLIMBED EVEREST is a tale of courage and determination. Bear's quest for funding for his expedition, his seventy days on Everest's southeast face, and a narrow brush with death after a fall into a crevasse at nineteen thousand feet, make the story an essential read for anyone who's ever had a dream and made it come true.