KenTheExAD

It's a long one, but basically it was a combination of treacherous weather meaning that the emergency automatic chute-opening thing (sorry, I don't know the technical term), which was supposed to pop at 800 feet, I think, was set in different atmospheric conditions to the ones the jumper experienced in the dive. He was jumping face up, to catch Bear jumping out behind him, so couldn't see the ground. He was supposed to be jumping from I think 3000 feet, and being very experienced was going to count and turn on 8, but because of a miscommunication jumped at 2000 feet. He didn't check the altimeter on his wrist because he was focussed on getting the shot and his hand would have gone into frame.

So when he turned on 8, he was very, very close to the ground. He pulled the ripcord on instinct and the chute got about halfway open. He hit the branches of the only tree in the entire landing zone (which probably helped save his life), and performed some sort of textbook roll on landing. He walked away from something which would have killed less experienced jumpers.

I thought he'd died because in the mountains, with only one satphone and the plane to communicate (we were at the airstrip, not the landing site), the first we heard about the jump was the pilot on landing, saying that he hadn't seen the parachute open, and that he thought Eddie had hit the ground. Without the plane in the air, we suddenly found that we had no way of communicating with the landing site (a huge oversight), and it took us an hour to drive there. The entire time I was convinced Eddie had died on my watch.

Well, I suppose the only "cheats" per se were that whenever Bear had to do something dangerous, like jumping off a waterfall, we'd thoroughly check it out first, testing the depth, checking for hidden obstacles underwater, etc, before letting him jump off.

There is not a snowball's chance in hell I would drink elephant poo juice.

We had proper food packed with us, but I would occasionally try some stuff Bear had - like live fish, or the rocks in Mexico.

Arguably Simon, the cameraman (not crew, one man) has the toughest job of anyone. He would have to negotiate exactly the same terrain as Bear (so would we all), but lugging a heavy camera which obscured his vision making it much more dangerous for him, and having to keep up with Bear (while the director AP and I would usually lag a little way behind).

We would try to control the risk where possible, though. We shot Bear walking along the edge of a 600-foot cliff in Copper Canyon, and Simon was following him with the camera, but could not see the edge because his eye was on the eyepiece and the camera was obscuring his field of vision towards the cliff. So we had our mountaneering safety guy, Dave (the other unsung hero of the series) put a harness on Simon and keep a hand on him at all times, ready to pull him back if he looked like he was getting too close.

He didn't need to on any of the episodes I did, so I can't vouch either way, but having seen some of the stuff Bear would put in his mouth, I'd be confident saying that yes, I'm pretty sure he did.

Sadly, I have to admit that the crew would go back to a cabin every night. Only Bear stayed out.