Quest for Adventure

by Chris Bonington

  As soon as they had got themselves organised after take-off, Andy collapsed on to the bunk and went into a deep sleep. He had been working flat out for days. Colin, on the other hand, was well rested and very happy to take over the controls. They weren’t going fast but the voyage was smooth and their equipment was functioning well. The balloon was heading further south than any of their predecessors, crossing miles of empty desert over Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Niger. They even called up the airstrip at Timbuktu to ask if there was any conflicting traffic for a balloon on its way round the world to be told, ‘Not today.’

  They flew on over Saudi Arabia and the Indian Ocean without incident but not very fast. Their best speed on the voyage was a very brief spell at fifty-nine knots achieved over Saudi Arabia, yet they had plenty of fuel and were in for the long haul. They took the world’s endurance record for long-distance balloon flight while over India, beating the record made by Breitling Orbiter 2 the previous year. Andy was banking on using his skill as a balloonist and the accuracy of the forecasts on weather and wind speed from his control centre to ease the balloon around the south of China.

  The risk he was forced to accept in these more tropical climes was that of thunder storms. They hit their first storm system over Thailand. Huge cumulonimbus clouds were building up around them. They could hear aircraft asking air traffic control for diversions to avoid the weather. They were right in the middle of it. Andy had gone to bed and Colin was trying to edge the balloon down a narrow canyon between huge cloud walls, his only means of steering the adjustment of altitude by turning the burners off and on.

  Suddenly the balloon was engulfed in cloud. There was a deafening roar and it swung violently from side to side. The variometer needle was off the scale at 2,000 feet a minute upwards and then, almost as quickly, it indicated 1,500 feet a minute down. Andy tumbled out of his dreams and they burned and burned their way out of trouble, Andy taking hold of the emergency propane valves at the top of the capsule while Colin screamed out the instrument readings. There were frightening pauses as the balloon seemed to lurch uncontrollably and then accelerate upwards while the whole envelope flapped and tore above them.

  It was difficult to know when to start burning again. But the aim was most definitely to move up. Eventually Colin asked Andy whether they were yet clear of cloud and he confirmed they were. The balloon was at 29,000 feet, only 2,000 feet below its ceiling. Timing the shutdown of burners was a fine judgement in itself because to burn through the ceiling would have spilt a lot of gas and sent them downwards again. The balloon levelled out and they sat back in their seats with a cup of lemon and ginger tea (for the first time in the flight they later had a cup of something a little stronger to calm their nerves). It had been a close call. They were now flying at their ceiling of 31,000 feet and at last were above the clouds, but there were more storms ahead over Laos and Vietnam.

  Then yet another crisis occurred when they heard from Bangkok air traffic control that Laos and Vietnam refused them permission to enter their air space. They made a hurried satellite phone call back to England to wake Lou de Marco, who had recently retired as Head of Flight Operations at the Civil Aviation Authority, and who had organised all their permits for them. An hour passed and they learnt they had, after all, been given clearance. The storm clouds had dissipated and the balloon headed over Vietnam and across the China Sea, neatly by-passing Hainan Island, which belongs to China, by making a series of small adjustment to altitude. They had succeeded in getting around China and were now heading with fair winds parallel to the Chinese coast, north towards Japan. They had been in the air for sixteen days but still had sufficient fuel to complete the circumnavigation, provided they could rejoin the jet streams over Japan.

  It had been a remarkable achievement to get round China and still be capable of completing their voyage. Two days later they were over Japan. There were three choices of jets streams, a southerly one that would take them to Hawaii where thunder storms were forecast, a central one which was also heading for storm activity, and a northern one, starting in north Japan, that would give them a clear run across the Pacific towards Vancouver. They headed for this, confident that they could reach it before the next storm system developed. Andy retired to the bunk for a good night’s sleep convinced that the next morning they would be on their way across the Pacific.

  As dawn broke Colin saw that they were between two layers of cloud with great plumes of snow falling around them. He asked Martin Harris back at Mission Control for instructions and was told to keep edging northwards. They desperately needed some sunlight to recharge the batteries to run the fuel pumps and power their communications system but, even at 18,000 feet, cloud was still above them and they were being blown back to the east. Andy had had so much confidence in his solar panel recharging system he had not brought along any emergency lithium batteries. Had they kept going up to their ceiling of 31,000 feet to get above the clouds and recharge the batteries, their meteorologist warned them that they would have entered the jet stream taking them to Hawaii and cumulonimbus clouds rising up to 55,000 feet – something they definitely wanted to avoid.

  Colin woke Andy. ‘How’s the world?’ he asked, his familiar start to-the-day remark. ‘Not great. Come and have a look,’ was the reply.

  Their prospects were bleak. They were both all too aware of how near they had been to disaster in the storm over Thailand. There seemed no alternative but to ditch while they could still do so in control, close to land, with the rescue services ready to pick them up. Could they have gone on? Their most serious immediate problem was one of power. They didn’t have a generator to charge their batteries. Andy had decided it wouldn’t be necessary and wanted to save on fuel. They could manage without the fuel pumps, since they had three days’ supply of propane for emergencies, but they would have been helpless without their communication system. They certainly had sufficient fuel to cross the Pacific and, had they had a good run, to cross America and the Atlantic as well. I suspect that the memory of their narrow escape over Thailand had a profound influence on their decision.

  They ditched off Japan on 7 March. They had improved their endurance record to eighteen days, but had completed only forty-one per cent of the journey, less than halfway in terms of distance. However, they had lived to tell the tale and they remained good friends.

  Meanwhile Piccard had finally received permission to cross Chinese air space and launched Breitling Orbiter 3 at Chateau d’Oex on 1 March, a week behind Cable & Wireless with no real chance of catching them up. He wasn’t discouraged, believing that there was a good chance of the competition failing to get round China. At the start of their voyage they were forced to backtrack, heading south-westwards over the Mediterranean to join the southern jet stream over Morocco. Once in it, they were swept along at a good rate over Mali and Algeria by 3 March, but it was on that day they learnt that Andy Elson and Colin Prescot had rounded China and therefore now had a good chance of completing the circumnavigation.

  Piccard told me that he and Brian Jones were not unduly despondent. They got on well together, and were confident in their balloon which had been changed back on to a propane fuel system and, under Brian’s meticulous and very methodical supervision, had not had the acute technical problems experienced on the two previous flights. Both teams still had a long way to go. It was a matter of picking the best possible route, guided by their meteorologists and the control centre. Four days later, over the Yemen, they learnt that Cable & Wireless had ditched. They were now on their own.

  The balloon continued its methodical, relatively slow course across the Arabian Sea, over India and into the air corridor China had allowed them. They had to stay south of the 26th parallel, and keep south of the Himalaya and Tibet. It was a very narrow corridor and needed all the skill of Pierre Eckert and Luc Trullerman, the two meteorologists, to place them in it. By 10 March they had crossed south China and were over the Pacific heading for Hawaii. This was the most dangerous part of the e
ntire voyage. Their trust in the meteorologists was stretched to the limit when they were rerouted on a course that took them far to the south of the originally planned line to find a promised jet stream that had not yet even formed. Pierre and Luc had run computer projections of the more direct northerly route to find that the same bad weather pattern that had defeated Branson and his crew would overtake them. A radical change of plan, however, is always difficult to take, particularly when it is dictated from a comfortable control room on the other side of the world to two people already fatigued and stressed from eleven days in the confines of a pressurised capsule. They were both afraid, but shared their fear and through this gained the courage and confidence to follow the advice of the meteorologists.

  It continued to be frightening, They were heading slowly for one of the most empty parts of the Pacific where, if they had been forced to ditch, rescue would have been a long time arriving. There was even doubt about how much time they would have to abandon the capsule before it sank or capsized. To make matters worse they sighted huge cumulonimbus clouds to the south and, as it became dark, they wouldn’t be able to spot them until they were actually engulfed. In addition, it was now bitterly cold in the capsule. They were run down, undernourished and unable to exercise. This was the toughest part of the voyage for they were surrounded by uncertainty, but buoyed by the strength of their own relationship. Brian’s gentle sense of humour and Bertrand’s philosophical strength, combined with their innate trust in the team in their control room back in Geneva, helped them through, although at times Alan Noble, their director, pushed them sorely. He seemed to have frequently adopted an unnecessarily acerbic tone in his instructions to the balloonists.

  They were also having problems with the valves of the burners and eventually diagnosed the fault as icing up. The only solution was to lose height to thaw them out so they dropped down to 6,000 feet over an empty, still ocean, opened the hatch and climbed out to feel the warmth of the sun and breathe fresh air. They had also been instructed to dump every bit of surplus weight to try to improve their ceiling for the anticipated flight in the high jet stream.

  They ascended to altitude once again and began the slow crawl towards their hoped-for jet stream. The pressure continued to build with growing friction between the balloonists and Alan Noble reflected in terse faxes and, more worrying, Bertrand began suffering from severe headaches. Brian tried to lighten the atmosphere with limericks faxed back to control. They were still having problems with the burners and therefore decided to make another descent to try and fix them. They dumped even more surplus weight and returned to altitude.

  At last, around day fifteen, they began to build on speed and were being blown in the right direction at a height of 34,000 feet towards the coast of Mexico. Their meteorologists had got it right and success seemed possible, though the fuel situation was still critical. They couldn’t afford to lose the jet stream. And there were still crises. They tried to drop two of their empty canisters just before reaching the coast, but only one fell and they suspected that the other had somehow jammed. They were afraid it might become dislodged when over land and kill someone on the ground, but they were loath to lose height once again, so tried every device they could think of, including jumping up and down in the capsule, to dislodge the offending canister. By this time they were over Mexico and when it finally worked itself tree, they just had to hope it had fallen on to empty ground.

  They were now sweeping over Mexico and then they lost the jet stream and began drifting off course towards Venezuela. They were in despair, faced once again by the threat of failure and, even more serious, both Brian and Bertrand became short of breath, gasping for air. There were fears that they were hypoxic, but the oxygen was flowing freely. They wondered if it could be a build up of carbon dioxide and cleaned all the filters but the reading once again showed up as normal.

  Medical experts in Switzerland were consulted and one came up with the possibility that they were suffering from pre-oedema of the lungs from breathing exceptionally dry air for days on end. They started wearing oxygen masks which not only increased their supply of oxygen but also trapped and recirculated the moisture from their breath. A friend of Bertrand, who was a doctor practising hypnotism, called in at the control centre and suggested he talked to Bertrand over the phone to help him to relieve his stress.

  Bertrand was at the controls and there seemed just one last chance of getting them back on course to find the jet stream – to climb as high as possible. Bertrand opened up the burners regardless of the shortage of fuel, reached a height of 35,000 feet and started to swing on to a track of eighty-two degrees. They were still only travelling at forty-two knots per hour, but it was in the right direction and they were once again in with a chance. He was even able to call his wife Michele on his mobile phone, picking up a signal from one of the Caribbean islands. He experienced a sense of euphoria, flying literally on top of the world, talking to the woman he loved and feeling that success had been snatched from the very jaws of defeat.

  They now began to increase speed as they swept over the Atlantic carried by the jet stream. There were still problems, since they were flying through several busy airline routes, but with some persuasion from their own control room they were given a corridor at their required altitude. It was now easier to ignore the bitter cold and the tempo of success was building up with floods of e-mails and requests for interviews from the media. Both Steve Fossett and Richard Branson sent their congratulations with those of thousands of others.

  They were swept over the Atlantic reaching speeds of over 100 miles per hour and crossed the coast of Africa at 5.36 a.m. But they could see nothing. The coastal desert was uninhabited and not a single light glimmered out of the darkness, though the dawn was superb as the sun crept up above the horizon, casting its long shafts over the desert. They crossed the magic and invisible finishing line of 9.27° west at 10.00 a.m. GMT on 20 March to be the first men to circumnavigate the globe by balloon. In achieving this they had accomplished what is perhaps the last great terrestrial first and, as if to underline their victory, they flew on to Egypt to land in the desert twenty hours later at 6.00 a.m. GMT, on 21 March. They had flown 25,361 miles in twenty-one days, both a world distance and endurance record.

  It was very much the story of the tortoise and the hare. On paper they were the least experienced participants. But Bertrand Piccard, who did not even have a balloon licence when he won the Trans-Atlantic Race in 1992 as Wim Verstraeten’s copilot, and Brian Jones, who had never made a long-distance flight before he joined Breitling Orbiter 3 at the last minute, in fact made an extraordinarily strong team, complementing each other’s skills and qualities. Piccard had learnt a great deal from his flights on Breitling Orbiter 1 and 2, while Brian Jones, quietly systematic, was a very competent practical balloonist who both liked Piccard and gave him his total support. In Bertrand’s words, ‘We took off as pilots, flew as friends and landed as brothers’.

  They had the benefit of a very high level of support and guidance from their flight control centre with superb wind and weather forecasting but, perhaps most important of all, they also had those lucky breaks with the weather – the key factor in so many great adventures, whether making the first ascent of Mount Everest, sailing round the world single-handed or reaching the Poles.

  – Chapter 16 –

  Round the World

  The first circumnavigation of the world by microlight, 1998

  Walls of rain swept over foam-flecked waves. He was 200 miles from Greenland with 200 miles to go to the safety of Iceland. Brian Milton was flying a contraption that looked like a yellow motor scooter suspended from a hang glider. He was buffeted by the winds and his ground speed had dropped to twenty miles per hour. His microlight didn’t look as if it was meant to fly. It was travelling more slowly than the clapped-out second-hand Vespa I owned in the late 1960s, and yet he was in the middle of the longest ocean leg of his attempt to circumnavigate the world. It was 15 July 19
99 and he was on the home leg of a journey in a vehicle, halfway between an early flying machine and a hang-glider, a journey which only a man of his dogged tenacity would have completed.

  Brian Milton, stocky with a broad face that has the quality of a slightly angry bulldog, is neither a rich entrepreneur like Richard Branson, nor a charismatic public figure, but he has always had an adventurous streak. He drifted into BBC radio as a freelance journalist when he was thirty, found he loved the work and eventually became editor of BBC Radio London’s breakfast programme. He also got married, had two children, bought a big comfortable house near St Albans and seemed to be settling into a steady BBC career.

  He stumbled across hang-gliding, which was still in its infancy, in 1974 when he interviewed a man called Brian Wood who had just managed to stay in the air for eight and a half hours – a record at that time. Milton was intrigued and offered to make a thirty-minute programme about hang-gliding on condition that Wood taught him to fly.

  In those days there were no formal qualifications or procedures. You were simply told what to do and launched by yourself from the top of a hill. Brian Milton’s first flight was off the Devil’s Dyke in Sussex, and from that moment he was hooked. After buying his first hang-glider, he soon started taking part in competitions which in those early days were slalom events with a course of just over a mile round markers placed on the ground. He came second in one of the national competitions and it wasn’t long before he became involved in hang-gliding politics, creating the British Hang Gliding League, and taking charge of the training of the British team. His influence took the team to the top of international hang-gliding, but not without conflict. Indeed Brian Milton’s path is strewn with controversy, the product of a single-minded drive and a short fuse. He also became interested in the development of microlights (the concept of putting an engine on a hang glider to give it powered flight), test flying some of the early machines.