Quest for Adventure

by Chris Bonington

  It was worse for Per as he watched the balloon vanish into the cloud. Several miles from shore, his chances of swimming to land were minimal, as were his chances of being spotted by a passing boat or plane – a swimmer in rough seas is barely visible from a distance. Fortunately Per was a strong swimmer, since his father had made him swim daily, winter and summer, in the cold lakes of Sweden. He has a fair amount of body fat and, perhaps most important of all, a sanguine resilient nature. This was just one more crisis to come through.

  Branson’s first reaction was to parachute. He even climbed out of the gondola and prepared to jump, but at the last minute decided against it. The last time he had jumped had been with other skydivers. He had pulled the wrong release and had jettisoned his main chute. One of the other divers had pulled the reserve chute for him. He was now on his own in the cloud, 8,000 feet above the sea. And even if he managed to get down, what then? He could well drown.

  He changed his mind and resolved to keep flying. He reckoned he had about thirty minutes of fuel left. Something might happen. Back in the gondola he took off the parachute, joggled the burners on and off to make a smooth descent and peered through the porthole into the opaque cloud. At last he came out of the cloud, saw storm-flecked waves beneath him, but he also picked out a helicopter.

  He got the balloon down, this time made his jump and a few minutes later was hauled out of the sea. A British frigate, HMS Argonaut, just happened to be in the area with a helicopter in the air. But where was Per? He spent altogether two hours in the bitterly cold sea before being picked up by a couple of youngsters in an inflatable, guided in by the helicopter whose lifting winch had jammed. The Atlantic crossing had been a superb achievement but they had both been very very lucky to survive.

  But the risk game is addictive. Just a few years later, they were contemplating the inevitable next challenge – to cross the Pacific by hot-air balloon. Once again there were false starts. Their first attempt from Japan in 1989 ended in farce when the balloon fabric, which had been laid out on the ground prior to inflation, delaminated with a night’s frost. They returned in 1991 and had an eventful, nail-biting flight. They had a good take-off but the winds of the jet stream were so strong they had difficulty in pushing up into it, their huge canopy being snatched by the wind and trailing out in front of them. It was as if they were bumping up against a solid ceiling of moving air. Then, with the balloon accelerating as if hauled by a thousand wild horses ahead of the gondola, which was tilted on its side, suddenly they were part of the jet stream, travelling at the same speed as the racing air, at peace with the elements.

  But not for long. It was time to drop their first empty fuel tank. They descended out of the jet stream. Per pushed the button and suddenly the capsule lurched sideways to an angle of about fifteen degrees to the horizon. Could some of the cables have parted? They had a video camera that looked straight down and, re-running it, Branson saw that instead of just one empty canister falling, there were three. They had jettisoned two full canisters, the result of faulty wiring on the explosive bolts and had lost half their fuel only 1,000 miles into their flight.

  But they had a more immediate problem. With the sudden loss of weight the balloon was careering out of control upwards. They must stop its climb as it approached 42,000 feet, as this was the ceiling for their pressurised cabin. Higher than that and the windows could burst out, the instant decompression killing them in seconds. They stabilised at 42,500 feet, and edged back down to a safer altitude.

  Per, exhausted, cat-napped on the floor, leaving Richard in charge, with the challenging task of keeping the huge balloon in the narrow corridor of the jet stream’s aerial travelator.

  ‘Even at this amazing speed, it still takes an hour to fly 200 miles and we had 6,000 of them to fly. I tried not to be daunted by the length of the journey ahead, but concentrated on each fifteen-minute section. I was desperately trying not to fall asleep. My head kept dropping forward and I pinched myself to keep awake. I suddenly saw an eerie light on the glass dome above us. I looked up and marvelled at it: it was white and orange and flickering. Then I yelled: it was fire. I squinted at it and realised that burning lumps of propane were tumbling all around the glass dome, just missing it.’

  Per reacted quickly, telling Richard to gain height so that the combination of extreme cold and lack of oxygen would put out the fire. They took the balloon to 43,000 feet, well above the balloon’s safety limit, before the fire died.

  Their situation was still serious. The gondola remained tilted, they were above one of the emptiest stretches of the Pacific, a storm was raging below, there could be no question of ditching and they had lost half their fuel. They also lost radio contact for seven hours with their control centre at San Jose in California which had the vital information on weather patterns that would help them select the right height at which to fly.

  At last, Branson got through. The support team had been getting desperate, envisaging the capsule ditched somewhere in the vast wastes of the world’s largest ocean. Bob Rice, the flight director, was able to tell Branson that the jet stream they were riding at that moment was about to swing round to the west to take them back into the centre of the Pacific, but if they lost height to reach 18,000 feet, they should find another jet stream that was sweeping north-east toward the Arctic. This at least would take them to land, though much further north than they had originally planned, amid the cold mountain wilderness that guards the Pacific coast of Canada. Bob also gave them the news that the West was bombing Baghdad. The Gulf War had started.

  They lost height, found the new jet stream and were swept with even greater speed towards the coast of America, crossing it after only thirty-six hours of flying time. But they were still not out of trouble. They were heading for a blizzard. They would have to cross the Rockies before they could hope to make a landing. Even when they were over relatively flat ground, it was covered in dense forest. They had to find a frozen lake on which to land. Per opened the hatch and Branson climbed out on to the top of the capsule in the bitter cold. It was snowing hard, but there wasn’t a breath of wind as they were travelling with it. He could see the tops of the tall dark pines, like a thousand daggers pointed upwards, racing by beneath them. He took out the retaining pins on the explosive bolts holding the cables attached to the canopy and then remained on top to try and spy an open space on which to land. They were tearing further and further into the Arctic wildness, further away from any kind of help from the ground.

  At last he saw a space ahead, a frozen lake. Branson climbed back into the capsule, Per cut the burners and they plummeted down, hitting the ice at around forty miles per hour. This time the explosive bolts worked. The envelope was carried by the wind out of sight over the dark wall of trees and the capsule skidded to a halt. They had crossed the Pacific and miraculously had survived. They even managed to raise Watson Lake Flight Services to tell them that they were sitting waiting to be picked up on a frozen lake in the middle of a forest – only to learn there were 800 lakes in the area.

  While they waited for eight hours in a temperature of –60 °F, Per was already proposing the next venture – to fly round the world non-stop. After all, they had crossed the Pacific, having lost two fuel tanks, and still had fuel to spare. Branson couldn’t help wondering why he had entrusted Per with his life, reflecting on the narrow escapes they had had. They had been through so much together and yet there was a barrier between them:

  ‘I knew that he had pushed the technological boundaries of balloon flying further forward than anyone, but it was sad that we hadn’t developed a stronger bond with each other. I get close to most of the people that I spend a long time with. But Per is not a team player. He is a loner. He’s often difficult to read. He is someone who is quick to criticise. I’d been brought up to look for the best in people. Per always seemed to find the worst.’

  Per felt hurt by these comments, feeling that he had led and organised the team in his first company Thunder & Colt and t
hen Lindstrand Balloons, which had not only built the balloons but had also provided ground control for all the flights that had captured so many records. He felt he was very much the taxi driver, the hired hand, delivering Richard Branson the fame and publicity that Per considered was Branson’s principal drive.

  I came to know Per in 1989 after the Atlantic crossing and just before that of the Pacific. I had become involved in a venture to fly in a balloon over Everest. It was the brainchild of Hasseeb Zafar, a London-based accountant who wanted to get into the sponsorship business. He examined all the potential adventure records that could be achieved and came up with this idea, the balloon being the perfect advertising hoarding for a company logo. He found a sponsor in Star Micronics, from Japan, the world’s second largest computer printer company. He invited Per Lindstrand, as one of the world’s most accomplished balloonists, to be the pilot and asked me to take part in the press conference to launch the venture. I was intrigued and couldn’t resist the temptation to try to become involved and actually fly over the mountain I had climbed just a few years before.

  It was planned for the autumn of 1989. I set aside the time, became involved in the logistic planning and even had a few balloon flights. It was suggested that I should learn to parachute but I have always had an instinctive fear of jumping and decided that jumping out of a balloon over Everest would lead to almost certain death so declined the invitation, Per had a try at climbing on the Bossons Glacier above Chamonix where we went for a publicity balloon flight over Mont Blanc. He discovered that he disliked climbing as much as I did the thought of skydiving.

  I enjoyed Per’s company. He has a wry, if at times sharp, sense of humour and I could see that he would always be cool in a crisis, but I felt he was never fully committed to the project. When he insisted on postponing it until the spring of 1990, saying that preparations were not sufficiently far advanced, I decided to pull out. I had already taken on other projects in the spring but, perhaps more to the point, I had serious doubts about trusting myself to the basket of a balloon dangling below a thin envelope of heated air. I began to realise how little I knew about ballooning and, although Per would be doing all the flying, I still found the prospect frightening. I was discovering that I was a climber, not an all-round adventurer. The fact that I suspected, correctly as it turned out, that Per wanted to delay the flight to fit in with his plans to cross the Pacific with Branson also influenced me.

  Leo Dickinson, a filmmaker and ex-climber, who had taken to the air as a free-fall parachutist and had already been involved in ballooning, crossing the Annapurna range with the Australian, Chris Dewhirst, was delighted to take my place. In the short term my doubts were justified. The spring attempt was hindered by a revolution against the king of Nepal that led to the balloon being stuck in customs while Per waited impatiently at the Everest View Hotel close to their objective. By the time the balloon was at last cleared, he had lost patience and doubted whether the winds would ever be right for the attempt. Leo claims he was keen to have a go, even after Per had left for home, but they lacked a pilot prepared to fly and abandoned the attempt.

  Leo, who has never lacked determination, persuaded Ian Smith, the UK managing director of Star Micronics, to stay with the project. He brought in a balloonist and engineer called Andy Elson to act as technician and reserve pilot who succeeded in raising the money in Australia for a second balloon so that the two balloons could film each other. This had always been Leo’s scheme. Leo crewed with Chris Dewhirst, while the second balloon was flown by Andy Elson and Eric Jones, a long-time friend of Leo’s who was both an outstanding solo climber and free-fall parachutist. This time, with a fully committed team and the benefit of what they had learnt the previous spring, they succeeded, though not without some narrow escapes. Andy Elson’s burners went out three times when close to Everest and they started to plunge. They had to relight them each time using the flint strikers but then found that flame was so intense it was melting the fabric of the balloon. He had to coax the burners to give just enough heat to ease the balloon over the top of Everest, clearing it by about 1,000 feet.

  This all happened in 1991, ten months after the crossing of the Pacific. It is surprising how quickly adventurers forget the sense of fear and the discomforts they have suffered. It was not long before Richard Branson decided to join in the race to be first to fly round the world. There is no way he could have stood aside as the contestants began to line up. He named his balloon Virgin Global Challenger and could at least justify the costs as publicity for his Group.

  But there was a pause. The world was plunging into recession and no one wanted to invest in ballooning. It wasn’t until 1995 that the race got going with Branson being the first at the starting gate. He and Lindstrand decided to add a third pilot, Rory McCarthy, another successful businessman, who was a joint venture partner with the Virgin Group. He was a hang-glider pilot who had set an altitude record for hang-gliding in 1984 by being dropped from a height of 36,700 feet from a balloon piloted by Lindstrand.

  Branson planned to set off very early in the year from Marrakesh in Morocco, poised to catch the winter jet stream which he hoped would waft them across to Northern India, but the jet stream didn’t materialise and they returned home without making a launch.

  That same year, 1995, another contender emerged. Steve Fossett is a millionaire businessman, not so much an entrepreneur as a brilliant financier in the options market. In 1999 I met him in Colorado at a party hosted by Tim Cole, his flight director. He was on his way from Washington to Florida to take lessons in aerobatics, flying his own Cessna Citation, at $17,000,000, the fastest non-military jet on the market. Stocky and quiet, there was no side to him, no flamboyance. In a group he listened rather than held court, and yet there was a focused self-confidence. I interviewed him at 6.00 a.m. the following morning over breakfast, before he took off for Florida. He had changed into a white shirt with captain’s bars, symbol of the hours he had spent learning how to fly a sophisticated twin-engine jet and the image he wanted to project.

  Fifty-three years old, born of middle-class parents in California and the second of three children, he had a happy and conventional upbringing, being taken back-packing by his father and then becoming a Scout. He was always very competitive, but wasn’t attracted to team games. Average at school in academic studies, he just managed to get into Stamford and achieve his degree, before joining IBM as a systems engineer. He couldn’t see himself getting to the top of IBM and so moved into the financial industry, joining Merrill Lynch. His career then took off and after a few years he went independent, specialising in trading. He made a huge fortune. He told me:

  ‘I was a natural for trading. I was never quite so good at being an employee in a big business organisation. I wasn’t very good at pleasing people in office politics but it turns out that in trading I’m very competitive. You know, on the floor of the Exchange, competition is paramount. You try to be the fastest and the most aggressive – you must have seen scenes of people waving their arms aloft – so I could be very competitive but I could also be relaxed, work very, very quietly, very methodically. It’s a theoretical business where our speciality is stock options and there are ways of valuing stock options so that you can determine, from your computer model, what you should pay, when they’re available too cheap you buy them and when they’re too expensive you sell them, and you work out spreading strategies to keep your exposure to market more or less neutral. So it’s based on probabilities of success. If you reiterate that enough times it translates into an income. But using sound probability type approaches, that was compatible to me, plus the competitiveness.’

  It’s all very similar to playing the adventure game and he used the wealth he acquired to pursue individual competitive challenges. Unlike Richard Branson, who bought in the expertise to achieve his records, Fossett wanted to do it for himself. He used his wealth to put in place the necessary hardware and infrastructure and to speed the learning curve in the activity
he chose, but this was aimed at achieving personal excellence. His list of achievements is impressive. He has swum the English Channel, taken part in the Iditarod Dogsled Race and the Iron Man Triathlon, skied from Aspen to Vale in a record 59 hours, 53 minutes and 30 seconds and taken part in the Twenty-Four Hours Le Mans Sports Car Race. He also attempted to climb Mount Everest, but had problems with the altitude, found it took too much time and perceived that he could only get to the top by being heavily reliant on others. He didn’t repeat the attempt.

  In 1990 he made a major decision to give his adventure sports first priority, devoting three-quarters of his time to them and keeping his business just ticking over, once again in contrast to Branson, who continues to expand his businesses and squeezes in his adventures when he can.

  At first Fossett concentrated on sailing, breaking eight long-distance sailing records, including the fastest crossing of the Pacific, both with a crew and solo. He also raced, gaining a further eight race records. Fossett was always looking for challenges. He had followed Dick Rutan’s Earth Wind project to be the first man to fly non-stop round the world without refuelling, had thought about ballooning, but it wasn’t until 1993 that he focused on it.

  ‘I was in Paris, on my way to Le Mans to do some qualifying rounds when I passed a shop with some scarves in the window; one of them had pictures of the famous aviators of history – Lindbergh, Armstrong, Rutan and so on. So I started thinking about it and said, you know this stuff isn’t as inaccessible as you think it is. And whoever makes it round the world first by balloon, they will have earned themselves a place in this pantheon of aviation. So just symbolically I bought this scarf and gave it to my wife.’

  He didn’t waste time. He bought a Rozier balloon from Cameron Balloons, on the grounds that they had a good track record, and started taking lessons, getting his licence that same summer. Rozier balloons are named after the pilot of the first manned balloon flight, Pilâtre de Rozier, who conceived the idea of combining buoyant gases and hot air in hybrid balloons in the 1790s. He was also the first person to die in a balloon, while trying to cross the English Channel. Workable designs relying on the de Rozier concept were not possible until recently. The top section of the main gas bag is filled with helium to provide a passive source of lifting power but when helium is cooled at night, it loses its buoyancy and the balloon sinks; when it overheats during the day, the balloon can rise uncontrollably. To provide a dynamic ballast system, a cone-shaped bag is inflated with air heated by burning propane or kerosene. Pilots can control the amount of fuel burned to maintain a steady altitude, or to seek altitudes with advantageous wind directions. Cameron Balloons covered the entire assembly with a lightweight shroud of aluminised film, which reduced the effects of solar heating and slowed nocturnal cooling. The gondola hung below.