By Balloon Endeavour: Everest

WIND WHISTLES

Everest is one of those symbols of man's achievement.

To take the oldest form of flight

across the most spectacular mountains on Earth

is one of life's great things to do.

For 10 years, Chris Dewhirst has nurtured a dream.

A vision of ascending over the summit of the world

in a chariot of fire.

A hot-air balloon.

A celebration of the first ascent of humankind over 200 years ago.

Now we're moving closer to that moment of truth,

I imagine I'll feel amazingly frightened

and incredibly exhilarated at the same time.

Chris has tried once before, but the balloon fell short of Everest.

Then it became a matter of honour.

And I felt I'd never feel satisfied with myself unless I did it.

But now there are others who would have the same dream.

Everest by balloon has become a race.

But the mountain is indifferent to the ambitions of man...

..and his puny flying machine.

In the little Himalayan state of Nepal,

nestled between the two giants of China and India,

the 20th century has only just touched down.

FAINT CHANTING

They call it Sagarmatha.

That's the Sherpas, you know, mother goddess of all earth.

But I just think it's another mountain.

But I'll tell you what, I'm glad I've got those prayer flags on the balloon

because when you're in Nepal, you really feel that it's important

to have a foot in both camps when it comes to this sort of thing.

This trip is different from last time.

I'm married to Heather.

This time, I've promised someone that I'm going to come back.

That I'm not going to get killed, that I'm going to survive.

It was from this place in Kathmandu

where Chris took off for his first flight in 1985.

Taking off from this square here was just extraordinary.

In my imagination, I thought we had twice the space we'd got,

but now I'm back here, I think,

"God, we actually put two balloons up in here

"and we didn't knock one of those temples over? That was luck!"

Well, we flew a long way towards Everest,

but we fell short by ten miles.

We ran out of fuel, we were too slow in the air.

And we failed on that expedition.

We had one balloon up a tree

and the other stretched on the side of a mountain.

So when I got a call from Leo to say,

"Would you like to fly this balloon over Everest?" I couldn't believe it.

I thought it was an opportunity that I could never let go past again.

I thought it was an opportunity that I could never let go past again.

Leo Dickinson is a world-famous adventure cameraman.

He specialises in filming the impossible.

Leo flew with Chris on the first expedition.

And after it failed, he pledged that he'd bring it back to life again.

Very few people get a chance to fly in a balloon over Mount Everest.

Very few people get a chance to fly in a balloon over Mount Everest.

And so it's very important for me to get the best possible film

so that I can share these experiences.

Leo is like a sort of dog with a bone, you know.

He buries it, he digs it up, he buries it again,

he digs it up, he gnaws at it.

He doesn't like things to flop.

He doesn't like unfinished business.

So it's his nature to keep going at a project, I think.

And good on him, too, because he stayed with it

and he got back on the wagon when it started rolling again.

LAUGHTER

British balloonist Andy Elson

and mountain climber Eric Jones

will fly a second balloon to film the big flight.

Eric Jones, I've only ever seen him on Leo's film

where he soloed the north face of the Eiger.

He has the great capacity and the coolness

to make things succeed for him.

My motto is life is adventure or nothing at all.

I've got to have this bit of adrenaline flying and having a good time.

And I just hope that I'm fortunate enough to stay healthy

to be able to do it for a few more years.

Andy? You're going to enjoy this!

I don't know how you Welsh mountain goats get up here.

Andy's a balloonist and an engineer.

He's flown across the Alps, Mont Blanc,

the Aiguille du Midi, all of those,

but nothing as big as Mount Everest.

Mont Blanc wouldn't even get a name in the Himalayas.

Peter Mason had the job of expedition organiser.

It took him three years because of political uprisings.

First in Tibet and then in China, in Tiananmen Square.

Then in 1990, democracy finally caught up with the kingdom of Nepal.

Everything was go for a launch in the spring of 1990.

We came back to Kathmandu.

And would you believe it? We got caught in another uprising.

This time in Nepal,

the last place we expected to have political problems.

We'd heard that a number of tourists had been shot in the streets.

We could hear the gunfire. There were demonstrations.

Kathmandu was not a very safe place to be in those three days.

And we very reluctantly took the decision to postpone the project.

We were now looking at doing it with two balloons.

A second balloon as a camera platform.

Which, of course, doubled the amount of paperwork.

I must have amassed a million words of correspondence.

It was a nightmare. A nightmare of paperwork.

OK, thanks very much. Thank you. Thanks.

Thank you.

The mountain of paperwork completed,

the mountain of equipment now snakes its way up the Khumbu Valley,

the gateway to Mount Everest.

Ahead lies a backbreaking six days' trek to base camp at Gokyo.

We've got five tonnes of gear,

two caterpillars making their way up the mountain,

three tonnes of food, 150 porters, 50 yaks,

all to get two lighter-than-air machines over Mount Everest.

An 100lb load for a porter is worth triple money,

so a lot of the porters will seek the heavy loads for that reason.

We have a ballooning expedition,

a meteorological expedition

and we have a camera expedition.

And there's bound to be a certain amount of problems.

At 16,000 feet, they become accentuated

because altitude has a strange effect on the human body

and on the human mind.

You know what's happened this time?

I've been left holding the baby.

I was invited to go ballooning over Mount Everest

I was invited to go ballooning over Mount Everest

by this group of Australians six years ago.

And they let me down - they didn't have the permission.

So we went for a nice flight across the Himalayas.

We, now, the British, have got this bit of paper

from the Chinese that says,

"Yeah, go fly over Everest if you want to."

So I've brought the Australians back, saying,

"OK, here's the baby back, guys. Let's go and do it."

So I guess it's appropriate that this is a British expedition.

They had the first person die on Everest,

they were the first to fly over Everest in 1932.

I guess they might feel a little bit disappointed

that they've got an Australian pilot.

Chris seems to spend half his time at least taking to Heather.

And I would like to spend at least half his time talking to me,

and it's not happening.

I don't feel as if I'm forming this bonding relationship with Chris.

And it's important because

we're going over the top of Mount Everest together.

We've got ten days sitting at Gokyo.

I'm going to be with the party the whole rest of the way up the trek.

Don't you think...? You listen! Let me finish!

You've just accused me of abandoning the team, destroying team morale.

You're right on your bloody high horse, it gives me the...!

I think it's being the local soap opera, actually.

We've got the mothers' committee out there with their knitting.

I wonder how many stitches they've dropped?

I was there! No, you weren't...!

You're an old bloody woman! I was away for one night from this team.

I just knew right from the start that I wasn't wanted.

All I'm needed for is a jockey in the bloody balloon! You were not!

That I'm not a leader of the project,

that all I'm here for is to fly that balloon for you guys.

I've asked you three times if you will assume the role of expedition leader.

Everyone's looking up to you. You're the guy who'll get all the glory.

You're the guy who's going to go down in history.

I'm not interested in all the glory on this, Leo.

I'm not interested in all the glory on this, Leo.

I'm not interested in going down in the history books.

I'm simply saying that, as a mate,

for somebody that's got me on your first trip,

I've now got you on our trip,

I just want to share these experiences.

I've got Mandy with me, you've got Heather with you.

I don't actually want to stay in the same tent with you...!

CONTINUES INDISTINCTLY

We have an enormous investment in these yaks.

This gear is very delicate.

So if we've got this far without losing any gear, we're fortunate.

They've got four legs and our little porter up there,

who's carrying about the same weight, has only got two.

I was just congratulating us

on getting so far after a week on the trail

when one of the porters yelled out that a yak had taken a tumble.

So apparently, the yak went 15 metres rolling down the gorge.

Luckily, the yak's all right,

which is more than can be said for the cameras.

Well, I've never seen a lens looking like that before.

My whole reason for being here is to film.

And I spent a couple of years preparing.

And when this yak fell off the track with my cameras

and broke and bent them and so forth,

it put me in a state of shock. I was in mourning.

Right, anybody want to pray to their gods?

WHIRRING

WHIRRING

Well, good old Photo-Sonic!

We have a working movie camera.

Well, it looks like you said the right things to the right gods, Leo.

You've got it working. Is the zoom working, as well?

Yep, the little zoom is working, too.

Challenging Everest can be costly.

Leo got off lightly compared to a recent Japanese expedition,

who attempted to fly Mount Everest from the Tibetan side.

They were tracking towards Everest,

but they were so awestruck by the surroundings,

they felt they weren't getting anywhere,

that they weren't travelling fast enough.

You don't realise just the scale that you're in.

The Japanese pilot decided that they wouldn't get over Mount Everest,

they didn't have the speed, so they aborted their flight.

And as they came down, they got caught in a wind eddy

and they were smashed at the side of a mountain.

Their basket was burnt and the pilot was almost killed.

They were very lucky to get away with their lives.

FAINT SHOUTING

To climb, to fly, to do something with Everest

which is spectacular, has great meaning for people in the west.

But it doesn't have that meaning for people who live in the east.

For the Sherpas who live here,

I don't think they care very much whether you climb Everest or not.

And I think that's very interesting,

that Everest is no more than a dwelling place for the mountain gods.

For us, it has some other strange significance.

People who live in the west are accountants.

And they measure success by the height of the mountain they climb.

I started to feel really nervous,

excited and a little bit anxious.

And bringing home the reality

that we're going to cast ourselves adrift over Everest in a hot-air balloon.

It's a pretty wild concept, isn't it, really?

Gokyo is to be our home for as long as it takes to do the flight.

For the Hindus, Gokyo is a sacred place.

When Shiva was creating the world,

he drove his trident into the ground

and created the three lakes of Gokyo.

At 16,000 feet, it's one of the highest dwelling places on earth.

Gokyo is dramatically close to Everest.

Only 14 miles away.

15 minutes of flying time at 30,000 feet.

We'll have to climb out of here so fast to get over the summit.

The Sherpas, too, believe in the magic of this place.

A plunge into the lake can bring lasting fertility.

Every summer, the Sherpas bring their yaks

to the high pastures of Gokyo

to fatten them up for the winter treks ahead

as they ply their trade over the high mountain passes to Tibet.

The three families of Gokyo village make a living

from trekkers and from mountaineers

that come through this place on a daily basis.

We're important to the economy, really.

When we arrived, we doubled the population of Gokyo.

I probably have a romantic image of the Sherpas.

In one hand, I think their life is simple,

but on another plain, they have a complex set of demons

that they have to struggle with every day.

Perhaps their life is just as complex as ours in another way.

LAUGHTER

Well, the Sherpas of Gokyo

have their fortune tellers and their mythology and we have ours.

Martin Harris, our weatherman.

Martin Harris, our weatherman.

Martin arrived at Gokyo with 18 steel boxes and set up camp.

When Martin spotted the hut that he wanted,

he quickly had it modified by two local carpenters

and it became the most sophisticated meteorological station in Nepal.

He looked after us in 1985.

And for him, it's unfinished business,

just as much as it is for us.

We've got satellite pictures, we've got the radiosondes,

we've got weather fax, charts,

such as people have never ever had up here,

as a meteorological station near Mount Everest.

We get to see how the jet stream is developing to the north of us

and how the monsoon is going away to the south.

What we're basically doing

is looking at a wild animal in this area.

If the animal wags its tail or sneezes,

we've got to make sure we monitor it

because that might be the significant feature.

We've got to lift off to the next section.

Three, two, one, lift.

Martin has Russian and American satellites

to look down on the moods of Sagarmatha.

And radio communications to anywhere in the world.

This is almost better than I've seen it put up on a playing field in England.

There are two assistant meteorologists, Jackie and Lisa,

to help maintain a 24-hour weather watch.

RAPID BEEPING

Everyone speaks to their own gods. We put our faith in technology.

But the Sherpas, they put their faith in the spirits of the mountains.

Every expedition takes their Sherpa prayer flags.

And it's really important to have them blessed

because then we take the blessings of the local lamas with us

across the mountain as we fly.

TRIBAL SINGING

But you can't live in the Himalayas without absorbing

some of the spiritual meaning of the place.

Some of the Sherpas believe

that the head lama of Tengboche Monastery

has flown across the Himalayas on one of his previous lives

and left his footprints in the summit.

And that what we're doing, really, is just re-enacting that flight.

You look at cultures going back 10,000 years

and the idea of flying in high places

and gliding above mankind

has always been a very important part of any culture.

There's nothing more spectacular than taking the earliest form of flight

into the Himalayas to the highest mountain in the world

and really marry together two mythologies.

The mythology of Everest and all its history,

together with the history of flight.

The assembly and rehearsal begins for the big flight.

With all the survival gear and parachutes on board,

there's little room for the balloonists in the basket.

Yeah, it's really tight.

If the balloon doesn't raise quickly enough to get over Everest,

it must be because of a fuel or burner problem.

In which case, I'll ask Eric if he'd like to get out.

LAUGHTER

Done.

Yeah. How much gas are you going to take, Chris?

Er...probably about 500 litres of fuel, we'll be taking on the flight.

That'll give us hopefully about four and a half to five hours' duration.

The good news is that the basket's big enough for me

and we're going to get it up and over Everest.

The bad news is I'll have to put you on a platform out here to do the filming.

I can't get inside because your ego's too big, Chris.

LAUGHTER

What's this? These are postcards of the Dalai Lama

if we meet some friendly Tibetans.

The Dalai Lama, huh? Might give us a free meal.

We have a selection here of, um...

It's currency in Tibet. Yes.

These are some snow stakes,

some figure-of-eight descenders.

Rock pitons, ice pitons.

In here, we have food for two men for ten days.

We've got some morale boosters, which include some salami,

cheese and fruit cake from your loving wife.

Eric Jones is one of the most experienced mountain climbers in Europe,

having soloed some of the most difficult peaks in the Alps.

Well, teaching Andy a bit of ice climbing

because he hasn't done anything on ice before.

It's very important for him to know basic things about the mountains

in case we have an emergency and come down there.

The only reason we'll bail out of the balloon

is if there's a fire in the basket.

And after a fire in the basket, then mountains are quite tame, really.

At 20,000 feet above Gokyo,

the balloons will take off very rapidly

towards the summit of Everest.

Our climb rate has to be at least a thousand feet a minute.

As the balloons climb up towards Everest,

we don't just have to clear Everest at 29,000 feet,

which is the height of Everest,

but we have to clear Everest by another 3,000 or 4,000 feet beyond.

but we have to clear Everest by another 3,000 or 4,000 feet beyond.

And the reason for that is

this streaming laminar air that rushes up the face of Everest

explodes like Coca-Cola out of a bottle behind Everest.

And so there is enormous turbulence and rotors

that sometimes reach up to 3,000 or 4,000 feet higher than the summit.

And if the balloons are caught in that rotor,

then we'll be killed, we'll be destroyed.

Oh, my God, he's dead! Where's the doctor? Where's the hospital?

Oh, shit!

Now, rule number one, don't panic.

Because if you panic, you've got two patients.

And two patients is never better than one.

No matter what your worst fears are,

no-one's dead until I say they're dead.

So even if there is no heartbeat, no breathing

and everything looks terrible,

start cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

So it's right there, leaning forward,

pushing on the heel of the hand...

Dr Glenn Singleman is a specialist in expedition medicine.

I'll never forget Glenn showing us the best part of the body to eat.

It's a bit off Chris' backside.

The worst that can happen is that one of the other people can die.

Just do your best, whatever that amounts to,

and if the person dies, we'll deal with that situation later.

Sometimes I look up at those mountains

and it's almost like as if there is a spirit of Sagarmatha.

And I talk to it and I say,

"Don't take him away from me. Give him back. Let him be safe."

"Don't take him away from me. Give him back. Let him be safe."

They don't care and they don't make decisions, they just exist.

Mount Everest grows before your eyes.

The great tectonic plates of India and Tibet crunching into each other,

grinding the mountain skyward.

And they're forever being worn down by the glaciers and by the weather.

You can see the moraine moving.

Boulders will crash and tumble, ice will fall. It's really awesome.

But these mountains have an insidious power.

Altitude.

At 16,000 feet, it can have dramatic effects on the body.

What happened to Lisa is to be a warning to those who would dare to go higher.

We had to climb 2,500 feet.

I was doing quite well, I was monitoring my progress compared to Jackie,

but I thought that my chest was getting very cold

and the top of my chest was closing in and getting narrower.

I couldn't breathe, so that's so distressing

that you have to have something happen quickly.

OK, start pumping.

Start pumping. Come on, pump.

We put Lisa into a gamma bag.

It reduces the altitude by 5,000 feet by increasing the pressure.

It's like a portable iron lung.

It helps her breathe and keeps her alive.

OK. We're at maximum pressure. Slow down the pumping, Andy.

I was constantly aware that

it was taking another human being to keep me alive, it wasn't a machine.

But it's just really draining and distressing

to have to think about breathing. I mean, you take it for granted.

Now, what's happening is she's got high-altitude pulmonary oedema.

It's a rather catastrophic change in your lungs,

where the plasma proteins leak out inside your lungs

and you actually start drowning in your own fluid.

It's very easy to die from this condition. Many people have died.

Because it's deadly and it happens very suddenly

and you die very quickly.

Lisa spent eight hours in that bag and it saved her life.

I didn't think about dying at all.

Lisa's crisis brought us all together

and made our differences seem rather trivial.

Five, four, three, two, one, go.

Ooo! Oh, they've tangled. Oh, they're separated.

Are they going straight up into that anabatic flow, up over Gokyo peak?

We monitored the weather daily with these radiosonde balloons.

Each of them had a radio transmitter

and it would give us the direction of the wind

and the speed at different altitudes.

That was critical to the success of the expedition.

There's a one-degree shift back to the left,

but for the last three minutes, it's been shifting right.

That is turning probably 260.

We've spent an enormous amount of money on this project

and that's a pressure which I hope he isn't feeling,

but I think his main concern is

that he's waited over seven years to do this flight

and he doesn't want to miss the chance to do it.

I think if we get that information consistently

in the next 24-48 hours, we're going. It's adequate.

But the mountain will not be taken easily.

After three weeks, they are still waiting

for the jet stream to carry them over Everest.

Patience is beginning to wear thin.

I don't like waiting.

Increasing tension, stress and anxiety

as we just hang about for the right winds at the right altitude.

There are 20-odd people who are all contributing in major ways

to the success of the project,

but they're all very different people,

so there's a lot of clashes of personality, a lot clashes of ego.

It's most important to be patient on this kind of expedition

because so much has been put into it.

The first opportunity to get the balloon across Everest, we missed.

At 9:00 last night, I had a flight plan

that would take us three miles south of Everest.

Six hours later, we've got a flight plan that will take us four miles south of Everest.

So basically, in six hours the distance has deteriorated a mile.

We weren't ready and we should have been.

I think we're jumping the gun. I don't think we're mentally prepared.

The team isn't in harmony. We're not even discussing...

We're 12 hours away from flying

and we're not even discussing with the four people flying.

The wind's almost on target,

but we're separately doing our own flight plans.

This is crazy.

We're not working together on this, and we should be.

It's a team! And you're not playing as a team player!

As each day went past,

it was becoming more and more and more dangerous.

The wind speeds at altitude were becoming so great

that it was jeopardising the safety of the expedition.

OK to launch. Launching.

We were pretty well wired to go for tomorrow morning

on information that had come through yesterday

on the current wind trajectory at 30,000 feet.

That's deteriorated and it's continuing to deteriorate.

And it's probable we won't go in the morning and everyone's upset.

And it's probable we won't go in the morning and everyone's upset.

Mason would have done anything. Moved Everest if he could.

I would say if the situation doesn't deteriorate from what we've got now,

then I think we should fly tomorrow.

You're happy for us to miss Everest by five or six miles?

I'm not happy about it, but if we don't have an alternative

and if the indications are it'll get worse before it gets better,

if indeed it does get better, I do have to consider

how much longer we can spend sitting here waiting.

The defined goal has always been to fly over Mount Everest.

Anything else is totally unacceptable.

OK, off she goes.

The next indicator showed the wind coming back on course for Everest,

and I couldn't believe it.

It felt suddenly that it was all coalescing.

I'm just looking down at the radiosondes

and we needed to take quite a few of them during the night

and we needed to take quite a few of them during the night

because we've reached a crucial decision stage in the project.

RAPID BEEPING

After a month in Gokyo,

when the waiting seemed like it would never end...

..the weather balloon, the satellite picture

and the high altitude wind forecasts

all started to say the same thing.

The next morning would be clear for takeoff.

After ten years of waiting, the moment had arrived.

The perfect morning.

Now the urgency was to take off

before the sun heated the land

and created the first thermal breezes.

I knew the moment I stepped into the balloon, I would focus.

But that hour prior to takeoff was very frightening to me

because we were launching balloons so close to Everest

and I knew there was no turning back once we'd got off the ground.

I feel like an astronaut on countdown.

The button's been pressed.

The biggest fear for me is the half-hour leading up to

the actual start of whatever you're doing.

I get really scared.

It's quite difficult to control yourself.

In the half an hour when pre-breathing oxygen,

I was really just trying to keep calm, organised and together.

But there was a moment there when I thought,

"Maybe I shouldn't do this."

I'm very pleased. It's looking good.

It's looking good.

The hotter it is outside,

the hotter you've got to make your balloon to fly.

The atmospheric temperature was much higher than we expected.

I think we probably had a little bit too much weight on board, as well.

I found that I had a balloon that was operating so hot

that we were in a very dangerous situation of losing it.

And I thought, "Well, we either abort or we go.

"And if we go, I've got to coax this balloon

"over Everest without it falling apart."

And I made that decision just on takeoff.

It was a tremendous relief when I saw Bish

get this suspended camera box finally in place.

That was at least half my reason for being there,

was to have the automatic cameras recording this flight.

Heather had already decided I was doing it and she got on with her job.

I don't think she really realised how worried I was.

There will come a moment

when the connection between me and Chris is just gone.

This is necessary for Chris' survival.

Yes, I suppose dying is a very real possibility.

Be careful!

Don't do anything I wouldn't do!

What? Don't do anything I wouldn't do!

If anything happens to Leo, it's meant to happen

and there's nothing I can do to change it. It's fate.

It's a golden moment for anyone

to take a balloon over the summit of Mount Everest.

It was the moment of truth. We were taking off into the void.

We knew not where we would end up.

We knew not what would happen to us.

It was a very stressful moment.

It was a wonderful moment, too.

FAINT SHOUTING

Three years...three years and God knows how many weeks waiting here,

and look, isn't that beautiful?

May the winds welcome you with softness,

may the sun bless you with his warm hands,

may you fly so high and so well

that God will join you in your laughter

and send you gently back into the loving arms of Mother Earth.

Good luck, guys! Good luck!

SOBBING

The last time I saw Andy was two minutes after takeoff.

I looked down and he'd left.

And figured that, "He'll be here shortly."

And that was my last thoughts, really, about Andy and his balloon.

Andy and I didn't have good communication going.

And if there was any reason why the two balloons separated

and one went in front of the other, that was the reason.

You really don't want to operate a balloon hotter than about

140 degrees Celsius for any length of time at all.

I'm absolutely convinced our balloon temperature was well over 160,

probably closer to 170,

because the needle actually went off the end of the dial.

So I was incredibly worried that we would lose the top of the balloon

at any stage during the flight.

That it would just fall out.

When you're looking at Mount Everest

and it looks like this huge black pyramid,

I thought to myself, "Oh, just like a shark's fin!"

And then I thought, "I wonder if that's my own conscience

"just poking a little shark's fin through into the here and now?"

But that pyramid increased dramatically in size

as we flew directly towards the summit.

It enlarged and enlarged and enlarged. It was enormous!

My instruments were saying that we were going to get up and over the summit of Everest,

but my instincts were very doubtful about that.

I was driven by an unresolved demon somewhere in my spirit.

It was almost as if I wanted to look down on the summit of Everest,

to scour the summit for the remains of Mallory and Irvine.

To look for all those expedition climbers that have been lost on Everest.

RADIO: "All stations, this is Star Flyer One.

"We're just crossing Everest now. Does anyone copy?"

We crossed Everest and we enjoyed that moment of splendour.

That incredible, magical moment. One we'll never see again.

Leo insisted on shaking hands in true British tradition,

so of course, I complied with that. That was fair enough.

HE LAUGHS

The balloon is revolving all the time

and it's giving me this fantastic panorama to film

eight of the world's highest mountains.

As we flashed over the summit at 100 kilometres an hour

and I looked back on to the Hillary Step and onto the summit itself,

it became a totally different mountain.

It was so bright and it was so different from the other side,

I'd thought we'd lost Everest.

It was all white and crystalline and beautiful and fluted.

It was like rowing across the River Styx in Greek mythology,

coming from the underworld to the real world.

And it really felt like that.

It was like going from the dark, black, forbidding area

of the west side of Everest

to this beautiful, illuminated summit of a fluted mountain.

It was really quite a phenomenal feeling.

Leo turned around to me as we passed Everest at 34,000 feet,

running his finger across his throat, saying he was out of air.

I knew he wasn't out of air, but it did mean that he had hypoxia.

I wanted to see how bad it was,

so I asked him what his date of birth was.

And he said his name was Leo.

I knew it was pretty serious then. Huh!

Instead of doing what I wanted you to do, which was give me more air,

you came up with a real dumb question and you asked me my name.

I thought, "I think Chris must be hypoxic.

"Why does he want to know my name? He must know who I am."

When I asked you the question about your birth date

and you came out with your answer, I thought,

"Why is he giving me his star sign?"

HE LAUGHS

Because he came out with, "Leo," I thought, "This is really weird!"

I'm clearly dissatisfied with the answers I'm getting,

so I carry on filming.

LAUGHTER

RADIO: "This is Star Flyer One on 199.7.

"At the moment, we're crossing Ama Dablam.

"I'm almost out of fuel

"and we'll probably be landing just south of Roxar.

"Do you copy that message?"

If he was happy, I was happy and I'd keep filming.

But Chris seemed to be getting more and more agitated.

It was because we were running short of fuel.

And we had to find somewhere to land very, very quickly.

And the options open to you in the middle of Tibet,

just on the other side of Everest, are fairly minimal.

Chris said to me, "We're looking for somewhere to land quite soon."

I said, "How soon?" He said, "A matter of minutes."

It was only just going to do it.

And I put the balloon into a rapid descent,

but we spun like a top on the way down.

RADIO: "This is Star Flyer One on 199.7. Anyone receiving me?

"I'm almost out of fuel

"and we'll probably be landing just south of Roxar.

"Do you copy that message?"

You could see these tiny little yak pastures

and a road that led into them.

All right, Leo, I told you I would land us on a road!

Not bad, huh?

Not bad, mate. All is forgiven.

And you sort of expand your whole consciousness as you're descending

to let yourself become the whole balloon.

It gives you a much better feeling of where you're going.

Coming in to land, Leo!

I slowed the descent rate down to 300 feet a minute,

about 300 feet above the ground

and scooted in into a ground surface wind

of about 30 kilometres an hour,

which is really too fast to land in safely.

Is it going to be hard?

Well, the problem is, during the flight, I burnt my rip line.

Oh, here it is!

I saw this mountainous moraine wall

approaching us at about 15 miles an hour

and it's full of huge boulders.

FAINT SHOUTING

FAINT SHOUTING

Get off! Get off!

Chris fell on top of me and I had to push him off.

Oh, hell, we're going up again!

Suddenly, we're 90 feet off the ground again.

Chris is trying to relight the burners, but it's far, far too late.

So we're going to hit another wall now.

A bigger one...and harder.

And out of control.

For a split-second, I thought, "My cameras are out there.

"I should have brought them in. Too late."

Chris was starting to brace himself

against the opposite side of the basket.

That told me more than he could have explained in words.

This isn't going to be a normal landing.

I was catapulted from the bottom of the basket

right over the side, in the way that we were going.

Chris?!

Where are you?

Chris?

Hello?

COUGHING

Oh!

Ah! It's so painful coughing.

Hello, please come in.

We have crash-landed rather heavily, a balloon.

Two miles from the road. Come in, please.

God knows where Andy and Eric are.

I'm actually at the point where we landed

and we've moved boulders a yard across. That was the impact.

Oh, God, Chris, why did you do this to me?

All I wanted was a quiet flight over Mount Everest.

Well, I want to walk to where the balloon is

just to see its final resting place.

I can't get enough air in!

Oh! God, it's painful!

Everything's disappeared now.

Chris has disappeared off the face of the earth.

You can't believe this landscape. It looks like the moon.

But the bloody balloon went on and on and on, like a ping-pong ball.

It threw us out as if it was angry.

As if somehow we'd gone across Everest,

we'd done what we wanted to do,

but the gods weren't happy

and it shook the balloon to bits.

It is completely and utterly destroyed.

My 16mm Aaton is destroyed, but it still runs.

It's not looking totally sharp, but I've shot a bit of film.

Oh, dear.

Anyway, we're lucky.

We have achieved our goal, we flew over Mount Everest.

Beautiful.

But the damage to the balloon and the equipment,

that's going to cost a lot.

Oh, shit!

I can now see the balloon basket

surrounded by a dozen Tibetans

who have never seen a balloon before.

And I personally never want to see another one.

The end of a two-mile...drag.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds' worth of damage.

The end of a long road.

And now it ends here, with a broken rib

and...a lot of pain.

But a lot of enjoyment.

I suppose, in retrospect.

SOBBING

And I thought he must have been in a lot of pain.

He was crying because of the pain.

He said, "No, no, it's not the pain," he said,

"It's just a 10-year project that's now over

"and I don't know where to go from here."

You know, that was really something very special to get that from Leo.

And I think the Tibetans who were around, too,

were fairly shaken, perhaps, by the fact that

here was this westerner that had dropped out of the skies

and sat down on the ground and started to cry.

It was really quite beautiful.

It's pretty emotional. I haven't cried, even when my father and mother died.

I thought I couldn't cry again.

And it had stopped and it looked so sad,

this balloon that had taken us so far, so high.

It was just there, dead.

And I think it was part of me that was in sympathy with it.

It was just the end of a... It was the end of the story.

But I think to walk away from a balloon landing like this one

where we hit at 30 kilometres an hour just with a bit of gear damage,

was really a pretty cheap price.

Oh, the gods were very kind to us.

It could have been a lot worse.

Andy and Eric flew directly over Mount Everest, too.

But they almost lost their lives

when their burner went out four times.

And in saving themselves, they burnt the balloon control wires.

But they eventually managed to make a perfect landing in the next valley

10 miles away.

I never felt that we'd been in a race, but there was no way

I was going to let Andy beat me over Everest, that's for sure! Huh!