Edward Michael "Bear" Grylls

Everest
On 16 May 1998, Grylls achieved his childhood dream (an ambition since his father gave him a picture of Everest when he was eight) and entered the Guinness Book of Records, as the youngest Briton, at 23, to summit Mount Everest, just eighteen months after injuring his back. However, James Allen, an Australian/British climber who ascended Everest in 1995 with an Australian team, but who has dual citizenship, beat him to the summit at age 22. The feat has since been surpassed by Jake Meyer and, at age 19, by Rob Gauntlett.
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". Grylls' Everest expedition involved nearly four months on the mountain's southeast face. On his first reconnaissance climb he fell into a deep crevasse and was knocked unconscious. The following weeks of acclimatisation involved climbs up and down the south face, negotiating the Khumbu Icefall (a frozen river), the Western Cwm glacier, and a 1,500-metre (5,000 ft) wall of ice called the Lhotse face, before he made the ascent with the ex-SAS soldier Neil Laughton.