[[Image:Siberia-FederalSubjects.png|thumb|300px|        Siberian Federal District        Geographic Russian Siberia        Historical Siberia (and present Siberia in some usages)]]

Siberia (; ) is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union (USSR) from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th to 19th centuries.

Encompassing much of the Eurasian Steppe, the territory of Siberia extends eastward from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between the Pacific and Arctic drainage basins, and southward from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and the national borders of Mongolia and China. Siberia makes up about 77% of Russia's territory (13.1 million square kilometres), but has only 28% (40 million people) of Russia's population.

Etymology

Some sources say that the word Siberia originates from the Turkic for "sleeping land". Another version is that this name was the ancient tribal name of the Sabirs, Turkic nomads later assimilated to Siberian Tatars. The modern usage of the name appeared in the Russian language after the conquest of the Siberian Khanate.

Borders and administrative division

The term "Siberia" has a long history. Its meaning has gradually changed during ages. Historically, Siberia was defined as the whole part of Russia to the east of Ural Mountains, including the Russian Far East. According to this definition, Siberia extended eastward from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific coast, and southward from the Arctic Ocean to the border of Russian Central Asia and the national borders of both Mongolia (which included Tuva) and China.

Soviet-era sources (''Great Soviet Encyclopedia'' and others) and modern Russian ones usually define Siberia as a region extending eastward from the Ural Mountains to the watershed between Pacific and Arctic drainage basins, and southward from the Arctic Ocean to the hills of north-central Kazakhstan and the national borders of both Mongolia and China. By this definition, Siberia includes the federal subjects of the Siberian Federal District, and some of the Urals Federal District, as well as Sakha (Yakutia) Republic, which is a part of the Far Eastern Federal District. Geographically, this definition includes subdivisions of several other subjects of Urals and Far Eastern federal districts, but they are not included administratively. This definition excludes Sverdlovsk Oblast and Chelyabinsk Oblast, both of which are included in some wider definitions of Siberia.

Other sources may use either a somewhat wider definition that states the Pacific coast, not the watershed, is the eastern boundary (thus including the whole Russian Far East) or a somewhat narrower one that limits Siberia to the Siberian Federal District (thus excluding all subjects of other districts). In Russian, the word for Siberia is never used as a substitute for the name of the federal district.

! subject	! administrative center
Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug	Khanty-Mansiysk
Kurgan Oblast
Tyumen Oblast	Tyumen
Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug	Salekhard
Altai Krai	Barnaul
Altai Republic	Gorno-Altaysk
	Ulan-Ude
Chita Oblast
Irkutsk Oblast	Irkutsk
	Abakan
Kemerovo Oblast	Kemerovo
Krasnoyarsk Krai	Krasnoyarsk
Novosibirsk Oblast	Novosibirsk
Omsk Oblast	Omsk
Tomsk Oblast	Tomsk
	Kyzyl
	Yakutsk

! subject	! administrative center
Amur Oblast	Blagoveshchensk
Chukotka Autonomous Okrug
Jewish Autonomous Oblast	Birobidzhan
Kamchatka Krai	Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky
Khabarovsk Krai	Khabarovsk
Magadan Oblast	Magadan
Primorsky Krai	Vladivostok
Sakhalin Oblast	Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk
Chelyabinsk Oblast	Chelyabinsk
Sverdlovsk Oblast	Yekaterinburg

Major cities

Major cities include:

Barnaul

Irkutsk

Kemerovo

Krasnoyarsk

Novokuznetsk

Novosibirsk

Omsk

Tomsk

Tyumen

History

The Siberian Traps was formed by one of the largest known volcanic events of the last 500 million years of Earth's geological history. The event continued for a million years and is considered the likely cause of the "Great Dying" about 250 million years ago, which is estimated to have killed 90% of species existing at the time. At least three species of humans lived in southern Siberia around 40,000 years ago: ''H. sapiens'', ''H. neanderthalensis'', and an unknown type of hominin, nicknamed "Woman X" for the time being.

Siberia was occupied by differing groups of nomads such as the Yenets, the Nenets, the Huns, the Iranian Scythians, and the Turkic Uyghurs. The Khan of Sibir in the vicinity of modern Tobolsk was known as a prominent figure who endorsed Kubrat as ''Khagan'' in Avaria in 630. The area was conquered by the Mongols early in the 13th century. With the breakup of the Golden Horde, the autonomous Siberia Khanate was established in late 14th century. The Yakuts migrated north from their original area of settlement in the vicinity of Lake Baikal under the pressure of the Mongol expansion during the 13th to 15th century.

The growing power of Russia to the west began to undermine the Siberian Khanate in the 16th century. First, groups of traders and Cossacks began to enter the area, and then the Russian army began to set up forts further and further east. Towns like Mangazeya, Tara, Yeniseysk, and Tobolsk sprang up, the latter being declared the capital of Siberia. At this time, ''Sibir'' was the name of a fortress at Qashlik, near Tobolsk. Gerardus Mercator in a map published in 1595 marks ''Sibier'' both as the name of a settlement and of the surrounding territory along a left tributary of the Ob.

By the mid-17th century, the Russian-controlled areas had been extended to the Pacific. The total Russian population of Siberia in 1709 was 230,000.

Siberia remained a mostly undocumented and sparsely populated area. During the following few centuries, only a few exploratory missions and traders entered Siberia. The other group that was sent to Siberia consisted of prisoners exiled from western Russia or Russian-held territories like Poland (see katorga). In the 19th century, around 1.2 million prisoners had been sent to Siberia. The first great modern change to Siberia was the Trans-Siberian railway, constructed in 1891–1916. It linked Siberia more closely to the rapidly-industrializing Russia of Nicholas II. From 1801 to 1914, an estimated 7 million settlers moved from European Russia to Siberia, 85% during the quarter-century before World War I. From 1859 to 1917, over half a million people moved to the Russian Far East. Siberia is filled with natural resources and during the 20th century large scale exploitation of these was developed, and industrial towns cropped up throughout the region.

In the times of the Soviet Union, the earlier katorga system of penal labor camps was replaced by the new one, administered by the GULAG state agency. According to official Soviet estimates, more than 14 million people passed through the ''Gulag'' from 1929 to 1953, with a further 7 to 8 million being deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union (including entire nationalities in several cases). 516,841 prisoners died in camps from 1941 to 1943 due to food shortages caused by World War II. At other periods, mortality was comparatively lower.The size, scope, and scale of the GULAG slave labor camp system remains a subject of much research and debate; for example, Australian professor Stephen Wheatcroft argues that these penal camps were neither as large nor as deadly as is often claimed. Many Gulag camps were positioned in extremely remote areas of north-eastern Siberia. The best known clusters are ''Sevvostlag'' (''The North-East Camps'') along Kolyma river and ''Norillag'' near Norilsk, where 69,000 prisoners were kept in 1952. Major industrial cities of the Northern Siberia, such as Norilsk and Magadan, were originally camps built by prisoners and run by ex-prisoners.

Geography

With an area of 13.1 million km² (5.1 million square miles), Siberia makes up roughly 77% of the total area of Russia. Major geographical zones include the West Siberian Plain and the Central Siberian Plateau. Siberia covers almost 10% of Earth's land surface (14,894,000 km²).

Eastern and central Sakha comprise numerous north-south mountain ranges of various ages. These mountains extend up to almost three thousand metres in elevation, but above a few hundred metres they are almost completely devoid of vegetation. The Verkhoyansk Range was extensively glaciated in the Pleistocene, but the climate was too dry for glaciation to extend to low elevations. At these low elevations are numerous valleys, many of them deep, and covered with larch forest except in the extreme north, where tundra dominates. Soils are mainly Turbels and the active layer tends to be less than one metre deep except near rivers.

The highest point in Siberia is the active volcano Klyuchevskaya Sopka, in the Kamchatka peninsula. Its peak is at .

Mountain ranges

Altai Mountains

Anadyr Range

Baikal Mountains

Chamar-Daban

Chersky Range

Dzhugdzhur Mountains

Gydan Mountains

Koryak Mountains

Sayan Mountains

Tannu-Ola Mountains

Ural Mountains

Verkhoyansk Mountains

Yablonoi Mountains

Lakes and rivers

Anabar River

Angara River

Indigirka River

Irtysh River

Kolyma River

Lake Baikal

Lena River

Lower Tunguska River

Novosibirsk Reservoir

Ob River

Popigay River

Stony Tunguska River

Upper Angara River

Uvs Nuur

Yana River

Yenisei River

Grasslands

Ukok Plateau — part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Geology

The West Siberian Plain consists mostly of Cenozoic alluvial deposits and is somewhat low-lying. Many of the deposits on this plain result from ice dams; having reversed the flow of the Ob and Yenisei Rivers, so redirecting them into the Caspian Sea (perhaps the Aral as well). It is very swampy and soils are mostly peaty Histosols and, in the treeless northern part, Histels. In the south of the plain, where permafrost is largely absent, rich grasslands that are an extension of the Kazakh Steppe formed the original vegetation (almost all cleared now).

The Central Siberian Plateau is an extremely ancient craton (sometimes named Angaraland) that formed an independent continent before the Permian (see Siberia (continent)). It is exceptionally rich in minerals, containing large deposits of gold, diamonds, and ores of manganese, lead, zinc, nickel, cobalt and molybdenum. Much of the area includes the Siberian Traps which is a large igneous province. The massive eruptive period was approximately coincident with the Permian–Triassic extinction event. The volcanic event is said to be the largest known volcanic eruption in Earth's history. Only the extreme northwest was glaciated during the Quaternary, but almost all is under exceptionally deep permafrost and the only tree that can thrive, despite the warm summers, is the deciduous Siberian Larch (''Larix sibirica'') with its very shallow roots. Outside the extreme northwest, the taiga is dominant. Soils here are mainly Turbels, giving way to Spodosols where the active layer becomes thicker and the ice content lower.

Climate

{| style="width: 800px;" |- | |- | |- |Vegetation in Siberia is mostly taiga, with a tundra belt on the northern fringe, and a temperate forest zone in the south. |}The climate of Siberia varies dramatically. On the north coast, north of the Arctic Circle, there is a very short (about one-month-long) summer.

Almost all the population lives in the south, along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The climate in this southernmost part is Humid continental climate (Koppen ''Dfb'') with cold winters but fairly warm summers lasting at least 4 months. Annual average is about 0.5°C, January averages about and July about , while daytime temperatures in summer typically are above 20 °C. With a reliable growing season, an abundance of sunshine and exceedingly fertile chernozem soils, Southern Siberia is good enough for profitable agriculture, as was proven in the early twentieth century.

The by far most common climate in Siberia is continental subarctic (Koppen ''Dfc'' or ''Dwc''), with the annual average temperature about and roughly average in January and in July, although this varies considerably, with July average about 10 °C at the taiga - tundra ecotone. The southwesterly winds of Southern Siberia bring warm air from Central Asia and the Middle East. The climate in West Siberia (Omsk, Novosibirsk) is several degrees warmer than in the East (Irkutsk, Chita). With a lowest record temperature of , Oymyakon (Sakha Republic) has the distinction of being the coldest town on Earth. But summer temperatures in other regions reach . In general, Sakha is the coldest Siberian region, and the basin of the Yana River has the lowest temperatures of all, with permafrost reaching . Nevertheless, as far as Imperial Russian plans of settlement were concerned, cold was never viewed as an issue. In the winter, southern Siberia sits near the center of the semi-permanent Siberian High, so winds are usually light in the winter.

Precipitation in Siberia is generally low, exceeding only in Kamchatka where moist winds flow from the Sea of Okhotsk onto high mountains – producing the region's only major glaciers, though the volcanic eruptions, and low summer temperatures allow limited forests to grow. Precipitation is high also in most of Primorye in the extreme south where monsoonal influences can produce quite heavy summer rainfall. Despite the region's notorious cold winters, snowfall is generally quite light, especially in the eastern interior of the region.

Researchers, including Sergei Kirpotin at Tomsk State University and Judith Marquand at Oxford University, warn that Western Siberia has begun to thaw as a result of global warming. The frozen peat bogs in this region may hold billions of tons of methane gas, which may be released into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas 22 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. In 2008, a research expedition for the American Geophysical Union detected levels of methane up to 100 times above normal in the Siberian Arctic, likely being released by methane clathrates being released by holes in a frozen 'lid' of seabed permafrost, around the outfall of the Lena River and the area between the Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea.

Economy

Siberia is extraordinarily rich in minerals, containing ores of almost all economically valuable metals—largely because of the absence of Quaternary glaciation outside highland areas. It has some of the world's largest deposits of nickel, gold, lead, coal, molybdenum, gypsum, diamonds, diopside, silver and zinc, as well as extensive unexploited resources of oil and natural gas. The Khanty-Mansiysk region is home to 70% of Russia's developed oil fields. Russia contains about 40% of the world's known resources of nickel at the Norilsk deposit in Siberia. Norilsk Nickel is the world's biggest nickel and palladium producer.

Agriculture is severely restricted by the short growing season of most of the region. However, in the southwest where soils are exceedingly fertile black earths and the climate is a little more moderate, there is extensive cropping of wheat, barley, rye and potatoes, along with the grazing of large numbers of sheep and cattle. Elsewhere food production, owing to the poor fertility of the podzolic soils and the extremely short growing seasons, is restricted to the herding of reindeer in the tundra — which has been practiced by natives for over 10,000 years. Siberia has the world's largest forests. Timber remains an important source of revenue, even though many forests in the east have been logged much more rapidly than they are able to recover. The Sea of Okhotsk is one of the two or three richest fisheries in the world owing to its cold currents and very large tidal ranges, and thus Siberia produces over 10% of the world's annual fish catch, although fishing has declined somewhat since the collapse of the USSR.

Demographics

Siberia is home to approximately 38 million people. It has a population density of about three people per square kilometer. Most Siberians are Russians and Russified Ukrainians. There are approximately 400,000 Russified ethnic Germans living in Siberia. Such Mongol and Turkic groups as Buryats, Tuvinians, Yakuts, and Siberian Tatars lived in Siberia originally, and descendants of these peoples still live there. The Buryats number 445,175, which makes them the largest ethnic minority group in Siberia. According to the 2002 census there are 443,852 Yakuts. Other ethnic groups include Kets, Evenks, Chukchis, Koryaks, and Yukaghirs. See the Northern indigenous peoples of Russia article for more. Officially, 40,000 Chinese live in the Russian Far East, but the actual figure is believed to be much higher.

About 70% of Siberia's people live in cities. Most city people live in apartments. Many people in rural areas live in simple, but more spacious, log houses. Novosibirsk is the largest city in Siberia, with a population of about 1.5 million. Tobolsk, Tomsk, Tyumen, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk and Omsk are the older, historical centers.

Religion

Siberia is regarded as the ''locus classicus'' of shamanism and polytheism is popular. These native religions date back hundreds of years. The vast terrority of Siberia has many different local traditions of gods. These include: Ak Ana, Anapel, Bugady Musun, Kara Khan, Khaltesh-Anki, Kini'je, Ku'urkil, Nga, Nu'tenut, Numi-Torem, Numi-Turum, Pon, Pugu, Todote, Toko'yoto, Tomam, Xaya Iccita, Zonget. Places with sacred areas include Olkhon, an island in Lake Baikal.

There are a variety of beliefs throughout Siberia, including Islam, Orthodox Christianity, Tibetan Buddhism, and other denominations of Christianity. An estimated 70,000 Jews live in Siberia. The predominant group is the Russian Orthodox Church.

Transport

Many cities in Siberia, such as Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, cannot be reached by road, as there is virtually none connecting from other major cities in Russia or Asia. The best way to tour Siberia is through the Trans-Siberian Railway. The Trans-Siberian Railway operates from Moscow in the West to Vladivostok in the East. Cities not nearby the Railway are best reached by air or the separate Baikal-Amur-Railway (BAM).

References

External links

Siberian Expedition website, by Benjamin Isitt

Map of Siberia

Summer in Siberia

Category:Asia Category:Eurasian steppe Category:Geography of Russia

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name	Ray Mears
birth date	February 07, 1964
birth place	Kenley, London
known for	Bushcraft and survival techniques
occupation	Television presenter and author
nationality	British
children	}}

Raymond Paul "Ray" Mears (born 7 February 1964) is an English woodsman, instructor, author and TV presenter. His TV appearances cover bushcraft and survival techniques, and he is best known for the TV series ''Ray Mears' Bushcraft'', ''Ray Mears' World of Survival'', ''Extreme Survival'', ''Survival with Ray Mears'', ''Wild Britain with Ray Mears'' and ''Ray Mears Goes Walkabout''.

Early life

Mears grew up in Kenley, Greater London, and the North Downs, where he discovered a countryside abundant with wildlife. Educated at Reigate Grammar School, a co-educational independent school in Reigate, Surrey, he learned to track foxes in the forest at a young age. As a boy, he desired to sleep out on the trail, but unable to afford camping equipment, he resorted to setting up camp using what he could find in his surroundings.

Interests

Mears's enthusiasm for his subject, combined with his broad knowledge of survival and the uses which may be made of plants, trees and other natural materials found in woodland, forest or desert, have made him a popular figure in TV broadcasting in the UK. He has travelled extensively across the world for his TV series and has learned survival techniques from the indigenous peoples he has met. In his programmes he demonstrates his knowledge of the wild, how to find food from seeds, berries, roots and other growing things, and how to survive by constructing temporary shelters, fires and canoes from natural materials.

Mears is particularly interested in the survival of groups of resistance fighters and partisans for extended periods during the Second World War, such as the Norwegian heavy water plant saboteurs (see ''The Real Heroes of Telemark'') and the Bielski brothers in Belarus (see ''Extreme Survival'').

Personal life

Mears met his long term partner, Rachel, in 1992 when she attended one of his five day survival courses. The couple lived in East Sussex with her two adult children, and married in 2005, after Rachel was diagnosed with breast cancer. Rachel died from cancer in 2006, aged 50, and her ashes are scattered in the Ashdown forest near their home.

In 2005, Mears was a passenger in a serious helicopter accident while filming a documentary in Wyoming. The helicopter in which he was travelling with his camera crew struck the ground during a steep low level turn, and broke apart, rolling to a stop. The fuel tank was ruptured in the accident, and escaping fuel covered Mears and the crew. No fire occurred, and Mears was able to escape the wreckage and assist in the rescue and first aid of one of the crew who was badly injured. Mears escaped uninjured.

Non-television work

Mears started his bushcraft company aged 19. Mears' first book, ''The Survival Handbook'', was published in 1990. Mears has continued to publish books, both standalone works, and as accompaniments to his TV series.

In September 2007, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Oxford Brookes University, and in the same year he began to deliver public lectures across the United Kingdom on his experiences in front of and behind the lens.

In July 2010, Mears was asked by Northumbria Police to help them track fugitive killer Raoul Moat, after he fled his temporary tent-based shelter in the village of Rothbury.

Television

Mears has made a number of series for BBC television, visiting various parts of the world and covering such topics as bushcraft and survival skills, the traditional culture of indigenous peoples, and the achievements of noted explorers.

In 2009 he was approached by ITV to present a planned revival of its long-running nature documentary series ''Survival''. The resulting three-part series was rebranded ''Survival with Ray Mears'' and broadcast on ITV1 in 2010. Each episode followed Mears as he used his tracking skills to locate bears, wolves and leopards. In a ''Radio Times'' interview to promote the series, Mears complained of being typecast by the BBC. This series was followed by ''Wild Britain with Ray Mears'', also broadcast by ITV.

Series

''Wild Tracks'' (BBC, 1994)

''Tracks'' (BBC, 1994–97)

''Ray Mears' World of Survival'' (BBC, 1997–98, 2 seasons of 6 episodes each)

''Ray Mears' Country Tracks'' (BBC, 1998, 2002–03)

''The Essential Guide to Rocks'' (BBC Education, 1998)

''Ray Mears' Extreme Survival'' (BBC, 1999–2002, 3 seasons of 6 episodes each)

''Ray Mears' Adventure Special'' (BBC, 2001) – Mears takes Ewan McGregor into the Honduran jungle on the trail of the prehistoric people of the Mosquito Coast.

''Ray Mears' Real Heroes of Telemark'' (BBC, 2003)

''Ray Mears' Bushcraft'' (BBC, 2004–05, 2 seasons of 5 episodes each)

''Ray Mears' Wild Food'' (BBC, 2007, 5 episodes)

''Ray Mears Goes Walkabout'' (BBC, June 2008, 4 episodes) – Mears tours the Australian outback. An accompanying hardcover book was published in the UK by Hodder and Stoughton in March 2008. In the series Mears meets one of his heroes: Les Hiddins (aka "The Bush Tucker Man").

''Ray Mears' Northern Wilderness'' (BBC Two, Autumn 2009, 6 episodes) – Mears follows in the footsteps of pioneers who opened up Canada, such as Samuel Hearne, John Rae and David Thompson.

''Survival with Ray Mears'' (ITV, Spring 2010, 3 episodes)

''Wild Britain with Ray Mears'' (ITV, Autumn 2010, 6 episodes) - To be followed in 2011 by extended 60 minute episodes with exclusive additional content to be broadcast on UKTV's natural history channel Eden.

Books

''The Survival Handbook'' (1990)

''The Outdoor Survival Handbook'' (1992)

''Ray Mears' World of Survival'' (1997)

''Bushcraft'' (2002)

''Essential Bushcraft'' (2003)

''The Real Heroes of Telemark: The True Story of the Secret Mission to Stop Hitler's Atomic Bomb'' (2003)

''Ray Mears' Bushcraft Survival'' (2005)

''Wild Food by Ray Mears & Professor Gordon Hillman'' (2007)

''Ray Mears Goes Walkabout'' (2008)

''Vanishing World - A Life of Bushcraft'' (2008)

''Northern Wilderness'' (2009)

Quotations

Quotations by Ray Mears include:

''"Bushcraft is what you carry in your mind and your muscles."''

''"The great thing about bushcraft is that wherever you go, the skills go with you."''

''"One of the great things about bushcraft is that skills you learn in your back garden can be used all over the world."''

''"Knowledge is the key to survival and the best thing about that is: it doesn't weigh anything."''

''"You cannot underestimate the importance of preparation."''

''"As far as I'm concerned, these people are just showmen."'' On Bear Grylls

See also

Les Hiddins aka Bushtucker Man

Mors Kochanski

Lofty Wiseman

Richard Proenneke

Les Stroud - in Survivorman

Bear Grylls

Rüdiger Nehberg (''Sir Vival'')

Bruce Parry British anthropologist

Lars Monsen Norwegian adventurer and journalist

References

External links

Ray Mears' own web site

Ray Mears on MySpace

Ray Mears @ IMDb

Ray Mears' Survival shows on Dave (UKTV)

Photographs of 2005 helicopter accident

itvWILD">Wild Britain on itvWILD

Ray Mears Woodlore Facebook page

Ray Mears Bushcraft Official Youtube page

Category:British television presenters Category:British writers Category:1964 births Category:Living people Category:Old Reigatians Category:People from Kenley Category:Survivalists

de:Raymond Paul Mears fr:Ray Mears nl:Ray Mears ro:Ray Mears ru:Рэй Мирс

name	Bear Grylls
birth name	Edward Michael Grylls
birth date	June 07, 1974
birth place	United Kingdom
residence	A barge moored by Battersea Bridge on the River Thames, England An island on Llŷn Peninsula, Abersoch, North Wales
occupation	Chief ScoutAdventurerExplorerAuthorMotivational speakerTelevision presenter
spouse	Shara Cannings Knight
children	Jesse, Marmaduke, and Huckleberry
parents	Sir Michael GryllsLady Grylls (née Sarah Ford)
website	BearGrylls.com
footnotes	}}

Bear Grylls (born Edward Michael Grylls, 7 June 1974) is an English adventurer, writer and television presenter. He is best known for his television series ''Man vs. Wild'', known as ''Born Survivor'' in the United Kingdom. He was the youngest Briton to climb Mount Everest, doing so at age 23. In July 2009, Grylls was appointed the youngest ever Chief Scout at the age of 35.

Personal life

Grylls grew up in Donaghadee, Northern Ireland and Bembridge on the Isle of Wight. He is the son of the late Conservative party politician Sir Michael Grylls and Lady Grylls (née Sarah Ford). His maternal grandparents were Patricia Ford, an Ulster Unionist Party MP and Neville Ford who played first-class cricket. He has one sibling—an elder sister, Lara Fawcett, a cardio-tennis coach who originally gave him the nickname 'Bear' when he was a week old.

Grylls was educated at Eaton House, Ludgrove School, Eton College, where he helped start its first mountaineering club, and Birkbeck, University of London, where he graduated with a degree, obtained part-time, in Hispanic studies in 2002. From an early age, he learned to climb as well as sail from his father, who was a member of the prestigious Royal Yacht Squadron. As a teenager, he learned to skydive and also earned a second dan black belt in Shotokan karate. He now practices Yoga and Ninjutsu. He also became involved in Scouting, beginning at age eight, as a Cub Scout. He speaks English, Spanish, and French. Grylls is a Christian, describing his faith as the "backbone" in his life.

Although Grylls was christened 'Edward' he has legally changed his forename to 'Bear'. Grylls married Shara Grylls (née Cannings Knight) in 2000. They have three sons: Jesse, Marmaduke, and Huckleberry (born 15 January 2009 via natural childbirth on his houseboat).

Military service

After leaving school, Grylls considered joining the Indian Army and spent a few months hiking in the Himalayan mountains of Sikkim and West Bengal, Assam. He then briefly attended the University of the West of England where he was a member of the Officer Training Corps. In March 1997, he joined the British Army and after passing on his second attempt United Kingdom Special Forces Selection (where he claims he was one of four to have passed out of his group of 180), from 1994-1997, he served in the part-time United Kingdom Special Forces Reserve, with 21 Regiment Special Air Service, 21 SAS(R), as a trooper, survival instructor and Patrol Medic.

In 1996, he suffered a freefall parachuting accident in Zambia. His canopy ripped at , partially opening, causing him to fall and land on his parachute pack on his back, which partially crushed three vertebrae. Grylls later said: "I should have cut the main parachute and gone to the reserve but thought there was time to resolve the problem". According to his surgeon, Grylls came "within a whisker" of being paralysed for life and at first it was questionable whether he would ever walk again. Grylls spent the next 18 months in and out of military rehabilitation at Headley Court before being discharged and directing his efforts into trying to get well enough to fulfil his childhood dream of climbing Mount Everest.

In 2004, Grylls was awarded the honorary rank of Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Naval Reserve.

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 wall of ice called the Lhotse face, before he made the ascent with the ex-SAS soldier Neil Laughton.

Other expeditions

Circumnavigation of the UK

In 2000, Grylls, led the first team to circumnavigate the UK on a personal watercraft or jet ski, taking about 30 days, to raise money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). He also rowed naked for 22 miles in a homemade bathtub along the Thames to raise funds for a friend who lost his legs in a climbing accident.

Crossing the North Atlantic

Three years later, he led a team of five, including his childhood friend, SAS colleague, and Mount Everest climbing partner Mick Crosthwaite, on the first unassisted crossing of the north Atlantic Arctic Ocean, in an open rigid inflatable boat. Suffering weeks of frozen spray and icebergs, battling force 8 gale winds, hypothermia, and storms in an eleven-metre-long boat through some of the most treacherous stretches of water in the world including the Labrador Sea, the Denmark Strait, and the stretch made famous by ''The Perfect Storm'', Grylls and his team were just barely able to finish the journey from Halifax, Nova Scotia to John o' Groats, Scotland.

Paramotoring over Angel Falls

In 2005, Grylls led the first team ever to attempt to paramotor over the remote jungle plateau of the Angel Falls in Venezuela, the world's highest waterfall. The team was attempting to reach the highest, most remote tepuis.

Dinner party at altitude

In 2005, alongside the balloonist and mountaineer David Hempleman-Adams and Lieutenant Commander Alan Veal, leader of the Royal Navy Freefall Parachute Display Team, Grylls created a world record for the highest open-air formal dinner party, which they did under a hot-air balloon at , dressed in full mess dress and oxygen masks. To train for the event, he made over 200 parachute jumps. This was in aid of The Duke of Edinburgh's Award and The Prince's Trust.

Paramotoring over the Himalayas

In 2007, Grylls claimed to have broken a new world record by flying a Parajet paramotor over the Himalayas, higher than Mount Everest. Grylls took off from , 8 miles south of the mountain. Grylls reported looking down on the summit during his ascent and coping with temperatures of . He endured dangerously low oxygen levels and eventually reached , almost higher than the previous record of . The feat was filmed for Discovery Channel worldwide as well as Channel 4 in the UK.

While Grylls initially planned to cross over Everest itself, the permit was only to fly to the south of Everest, and he did not traverse Everest out of risk of violating Chinese airspace.

Journey Antarctica 2008

In 2008, Bear lead a team of four to climb one of the most remote unclimbed peaks in the world in Antarctica. This was raising funds for Global Angels kids charity and awareness for the potential of alternative energies. During this mission the team also aimed to explore the coast of Antarctica by inflatable boat and jetski, part powered by bioethanol, and then to travel across some of the vast ice desert by wind-powered kite-ski and electric powered paramotor. However, the expedition was cut short after Grylls suffered a broken shoulder while kite skiing across a stretch of ice. Travelling at speeds up to 50 km/h (30 mph), a ski caught on the ice, launching him in the air and breaking his shoulder when he came down. He had to be medically evacuated.

Longest indoor freefall

Grylls, along with the double amputee Al Hodgson and the Scotsman Freddy MacDonald, set a Guinness world record in 2008 for the longest continuous indoor freefall. The previous record was 1 hr 36 mins by a US team. Grylls, Hodgson, and MacDonald, using a vertical wind tunnel in Milton Keynes, broke the record by a few seconds. The attempt was in support of the charity Global Angels.

Northwest Passage expedition

In August 2010 Grylls lead a team of five to take an ice-breaking rigid-inflatable boat (RIB) through of the ice strewn Northwest Passage. The expedition intended to raise awareness of the effects of global warming and to raise money for children's charity Global Angels.

Media

Grylls entered television work with an appearance in an advertisement for Sure deodorant, featuring his ascent of Mount Everest. Bear was also used by the UK Ministry of Defence to head the Army's anti-drugs TV campaign, and featured in the first ever major advertising campaign for the world renowned shop: Harrods. Grylls has been a guest on television programs, including ''Friday Night with Jonathan Ross'', ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'', ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'', ''The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'', ''Attack of the Show'', ''The Late Show with David Letterman'', ''Jimmy Kimmel Live!'' and ''Harry Hill's TV Burp''. Grylls recorded two advertisements for Post's Trail Mix Crunch Cereal, which aired in the US from January 2009. He also appeared as a distinguished instructor in Dos Equis' Most Interesting Academy in a webisode named "Survival in the Modern Era". He appeared in a five-part web series that demonstrates urban survival techniques and features Grylls going from bush to bash. He also has marketed the Alpha Course, a course on the basics of the Christian faith. Warner Bros. had asked Grylls to appear in its remake of the film ''Clash of the Titans''

Grylls is a bestselling author. Grylls' first book, titled ''Facing Up'', went into the UK top 10 best-seller list, and was launched in the USA entitled ''The Kid Who Climbed Everest''. About his expedition and achievements climbing to the summit of Mount Everest. Grylls' second book ''Facing the Frozen Ocean'' was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award 2004. His third book was written to accompany the series ''Born Survivor: Bear Grylls''. (Released in America in April 2008 to the ''Man vs. Wild'' Discovery television show) It features survival skills learned from some of the world's most hostile places. This book reached the ''Sunday Times'' Top 10 best-seller list. His also wrote an extreme guide to outdoor pursuits, titled ''Bear Grylls Outdoor Adventures.''

He has a series of children's adventure survival books titled: ''Mission Survival: Gold of the Gods'', ''Mission Survival: Way of the Wolf'', ''Mission Survival: Sands of the Scorpion'' and ''Mission Survival: Tracks of the Tiger''.

''Escape to the Legion''

Grylls filmed a four-part TV show in 2005, called ''Escape to the Legion'', which followed Grylls and eleven other "recruits" as they took part in a shortened re-creation of the French Foreign Legion's basic desert training in the Sahara. The show was broadcast in the UK on Channel 4, and in the USA on the Military Channel. In 2008, it was repeated in the UK on the History Channel.

''Born Survivor / Man vs. Wild''

Grylls hosts a series titled ''Born Survivor: Bear Grylls'' for the British Channel 4 and broadcast as ''Man vs. Wild'' in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S.A., and as ''Ultimate Survival'' on the Discovery Channel in Europe, Asia, and Africa. The series features Grylls dropped into inhospitable places, showing viewers how to survive. Man Vs Wild debuted in 2006 and went on to become the number one cable show in all of America and now reaches a global audience of over 1.2 billion viewers. The second season premièred in the US on 15 June 2007, the third in November 2007, and the fourth in May 2008.

The show has featured stunts including Grylls climbing cliffs, parachuting from helicopters, balloons, and planes, paragliding, ice climbing, running through a forest fire, wading rapids, eating snakes, wrapping his urine-soaked t-shirt around his head to help stave off the desert heat, drinking urine saved in a rattlesnake skin, drinking fecal liquid from elephant dung, eating deer droppings, wrestling alligators, field dressing a camel carcass and drinking water from it, eating various "creepy crawlies" [insects], utilizing the corpse of a sheep as a sleeping bag and flotation device, free climbing waterfalls and using a bird guano/water enema for hydration. Grylls also regales the viewer with tales of adventurers stranded or killed in the wilderness.

In some of the earlier episodes, ''Man vs. Wild / Born Survivor'' was criticized by some sources for misleading viewers about some of the situations in which Grylls finds himself. Discovery and Channel 4 television subsequently pledged production and editing transparency and clarification related to the criticism.

''Worst Case Scenario''

Grylls' latest project is titled ''Worst Case Scenario'' and airs on Discovery in the USA. It is based on the popular books of the same name.

Chief Scout

On 17 May 2009, The Scout Association announced Grylls would be appointed Chief Scout following the end of Peter Duncan's five year term in July 2009. He was officially made Chief Scout at Gilwell 24 on 11 July 2009 in a handover event featuring Peter Duncan in front of a crowd of over 3,000 Explorer Scouts. He is the tenth person to hold the position and the youngest Chief Scout since the role was created for Robert Baden-Powell in 1920.

Charities

Many of Grylls' expeditions and stunts have raised money for charitable organisations. Grylls is an ambassador for The Prince's Trust, an organisation which provides training, financial, and practical support to young people in the United Kingdom. He is also vice president for The JoLt Trust, a small charity that takes disabled, disadvantaged, abused or neglected young people on challenging month-long expeditions.

Global Angels, a UK charity which seeks to aid children around the world, were the beneficiaries of his 2007 accomplishment of taking a powered para-glider higher than Mount Everest. Grylls's held the highest ever dinner party at in aid of The Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme, and launched the 50th anniversary of the Awards. His successfully circumnavigating Britain on jet skis raised money for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. Grylls' Everest climb was in aid of SSAFA Forces Help, a British-based charitable organization set up to help former, and serving members of the British Armed Forces, and their families and dependents. His 2003 Arctic expedition detailed in the book ''Facing the Frozen Ocean'' was in aid of The Prince's Trust. His 2005 attempt to para-motor over the Angel Falls was in aid of the charity Hope and Homes for Children. In August 2010, Grylls continued his fund-raising work for Global Angels by undertaking an expedition through the Northwest Passage in a rigid inflatable boat. Many of his expeditions also support environmental causes such as his Antarctica expedition and his circumnavigation of Britain which tested a pioneering new fuel made from rubbish.

In 2011, Grylls was in New Zealand during the February 2011 Christchurch earthquake. Following the incident, he appeared on New Zealand advertisements encouraging people to donate money to help rebuild the city.

Other work

Outside of TV, Grylls works as a motivational speaker, giving speeches worldwide to corporations, churches, schools, and other organizations. He is also a spokesperson for and owner of a Juice Plus franchise. Grylls has his own outdoor survival clothing range produced by British manufacturer Craghoppers as well as a knife manufactured by Gerber.

See also

Ranulph Fiennes, British adventurer and a hero of Grylls' growing up

Bruce Parry, British adventurer and TV presenter

Les Hiddins, Australian survival expert and TV presenter

Les Stroud, Canadian survival expert and TV presenter

Ray Mears, English survival expert and TV presenter

References

External links

North West Passage Fundraising Page

Video for North West Passage

Journey Details for North West Passage

Official Born Survivor website

BearGrylls.com official website

Video of Bear Grylls confirming that he will be the new Chief Scout for the UK

Video from the Gilwell 24 event showing the investiture of Bear Grylls as Chief Scout for the UK, by the previous incumbant Blue peter presenter Peter Duncan

Adventurer Bear Grylls' battle with back pain and high cholesterol

Category:English Christians Category:Living people Category:1974 births Category:Old Etonians Category:Old Ludgrovians Category:Alumni of Birkbeck, University of London Category:English explorers Category:English mountain climbers Category:English non-fiction writers Category:English motivational speakers Category:English television presenters Category:British karateka Category:English people of Northern Ireland descent Category:British summiters of Mount Everest Category:Special Air Service soldiers Category:Artists' Rifles soldiers Category:The Scout Association Category:Survivalists

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