3:02 AM
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Bear's story of progressing from a broken back in hospital to the summit of the world's highest mountain, is one that touches people globally.As he says live on stage: "I remember lying there during those long months of recovery and suddenly this dream that I had clung to so tightly and for so long, of climbing Everest, just felt a million miles away. It was beyond what I could believe and I remember vividly looking at the pictures my late father had given me of Everest years earlier, and taking them down. I dismissed it as something childish and something that could no longer become a reality."
But Bear continued to persevere against all the odds and eventually after three months on the mountain, during which four climbers had tragically lost their lives, he was edging ever closer.
"I remember clearing that final lip, lying on my stomach, heaving for oxygen, and looking up in disbelief, that just 200m away was the place that had captured me since I was a little boy. The roof of the world. But however many of these pathetic shuffles I took it never got any closer. I remember the adrenalin beginning to pump - you feel it as this very physical presence that fills your muscles and your veins but which also very quickly leaves you with this weakness that follows as you struggle to maintain that intensity…"
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