We hit the coast of Croatia as it was getting dark and flew on over the Balkans through the night. By the morning we were very low on ballast, and there were only three teams still flying with the German Willie Eimers slowly trying to creep up on us. We knew we probably couldn’t beat the Swiss, who had already landed long ago in Romania right on the coast of the Black Sea, but our track was taking us further south towards northern Greece and if we could keep going as far as the coast of the Aegean we might just pip them.
The Americans Richard Abruzzo and Carol Rymer Davies had taken a completely different route further south, with a longer crossing over the Adriatic to the bottom of Greece, which also might have won them the race. This was one of two options I had discussed with Luc Trullemans, but we had chosen the other one. We thought we had exclusive use of his meterological advice, but unbeknownst to us he was also advising Richard and Carol, which was a bit naughty. During the night we heard that contact had been lost with them and it was assumed they must have landed. Being a cynic and aware of all the possible ruses that pilots will try, I assumed they had probably just turned off their transponder, which isn’t allowed but is something you can get away with if you pretend it was malfunctioning. It’s happened before.
By the morning there was still no sign of them, and the weather was turning nasty with rain and much higher winds. With so little remaining ballast we couldn’t cope with the thermals that were taking us up and down a thousand feet, so we decided we had to land. There were a lot of dense woods below us in that part of Serbia, but eventually we found some open space and managed to put down. The Swiss had beaten us, and Willie Eimers grabbed second place by just overtaking and coming down in Macedonia. He’s a superb pilot, with probably 800 gas balloon flights to his name compared to my mere eight or so in total. I’ve probably got rather more respect for him than he has for me, since he considers me rather reckless, although he does concede me the backhanded compliment of saying that I am always a challenge to fly against as I’ve got no brain. But we reckoned third was an honourable position for a home team. It isn’t the best of manners to grab all the presents at your own party, after all.
It took us two hours to walk out to the main road, by which time the local police who had been alerted by Gordon Bennett control were driving up and down searching for us. They looked after us fabulously well, and only about another two hours later our trusty retrieve crew of Nigel Mitchell and Bob Wilson also arrived, having followed us by car all the way from the French side of the Channel. The police entertained us in the nearest village with lots of schnapps, slivovitz probably, so we were pretty wrecked when the police commandeered a local peasant farmer’s tractor and trailer and we had to set out with them to try and retrace our steps to find our balloon. The police all helped load it up, jackets off and sweating in the sun, but then had to drive us back to the police station in town. Obviously without stamps in our passports we were required to give statements about who we were and why we were there, and go through all the process of customs and immigration.
After a night in a hotel and yet more schnapps we headed back to England and Bristol, by which stage the devastating news about our American competitors was beginning to become apparent. Clearly they had been lost, and there certainly had been a big electrical storm over the Adriatic at the time, which was the main reason I hadn’t chosen that route myself. The speculation was that they’d been struck by lightning, with search and rescue out, and the US military put a couple of planes into the air. In such a situation you would normally want to get down low with your life raft ready, so hopefully the storm passes above you and if you are hit you might stand a chance, but it wasn’t until a couple of months later that their bodies were finally found. We’ll never know exactly what did happen to them, but it certainly put a pall over what is always bleakly called the Survivors’ Dinner, held that year in the Bristol Council Chambers the Saturday after our return. All thoughts were obviously with Richard and Carol, and their families who had flown over to be nearer to the search.
For the America’s Challenge the next year, in October 2011, I was back in Albuquerque with Jon Mason, flying in just the night before the race with Jon arriving from Australia where he now worked. Since this had been such a happy hunting ground for us we superstitiously repeated our routine, going to eat in the same diner on Route 66 before our take-off in early evening. Once again we hoped to keep low and try to follow the same pass through the mountains as we had before, but this time the wind wouldn’t take us that way and we found ourselves creeping up very slowly on the wrong side of the Rockies. Everyone else had gone high immediately, straight over the mountain range, and by the middle of the night were way out over the prairies. Our race was in danger of being a write-off almost before we started.
We hadn’t used any ballast yet, and Jon then pulled off an incredible piece of flying using the cattabatic winds that slowly sucked us up and through a valley, flying low all the way, and out the other side. We knew we still needed to stay at as low a level as possible whilst easting as far as we could, as otherwise the winds would drag us north and back into the mountains. So we crept on into the morning, by which time all the other balloons were hundreds of miles away and some had even landed already. As the day wore on we started to pick off some of the stragglers, including several of those we viewed as our major competitors such as the previous year’s winners. By the end of our third night we’d moved right up through the field and were now in second place. We could actually see the leading balloon ahead of us in the distance.
We followed them throughout the whole day, expecting them to land at any point, but they didn’t. We’d both travelled a long way to be there, so we felt damned if we were going to stop before they did, and remained confident we must have more ballast left than they could due to how we’d reached where we were. We weren’t far away from the Canadian border and it was getting on towards dusk, so we got permission ready to cross with a new transponder code. With night falling most people might have considered the sensible thing to do was land, since you want to do so in daylight and by morning we’d be up into the thick forests of Canada. This time however I’d bought my own balloon rather than borrowing one, and didn’t feel constrained by the same worries about returning it in one piece. The competitive urge was so strong that I really didn’t care about anything else and thought, we’ll just trash it, and keep going all the way to the Arctic if necessary.
There had been heavy rain recently with flooding, and I could see lots of water beneath us. It was about 6.00 p.m. but we couldn’t see the other balloon now, and more disconcertingly nor could we hear them on the radio. I asked Clive Bailey what was going on and he said they’d stopped, but he couldn’t answer my other question of whether they’d actually landed. It could just be a ploy on their part, maybe they’d dropped low and were simply hovering, playing doggo, hoping to trick us into landing ourselves, showing our hand, so they knew for certain they could beat us. I called the Albuquerque control and asked if they could confirm that the other balloon had indeed landed, and they said, ‘no Sir, we can’t confirm that.’ So, they weren’t doing us any favours. Perhaps they preferred the idea of an American team winning, but more likely they didn’t actually know themselves.
We were about 10 miles from the border and it was dark now as we carried on, when we finally got the confirmation we needed that the other balloon had landed. This left us a tricky choice, either of trying to land in the dark with all this water around, or push on until morning by which time we would be up into the thick woods. We’d landed in the dark before and were willing to risk that, but this time we were in a low level jet not that far above tree height that was carrying us along at 40 knots. Perhaps even lower down still it would be calmer, that was our hope. Everything was stowed for landing, with Jon ready to dole out our remaining sand and I had the trail rope out, but in the beam of our searchlight below all I could see was water. Shit! If we came down in that we would be disqualified. W
e had to get up again quickly and I pulled in the trail rope, and thank Christ I did as just then we barely skimmed over an electric pylon. This was certainly enough to get the adrenalin coursing through my veins.
Time to try again and this time it was just solid ploughed field that we thumped into, but there was no stopping us. The wind still dragged us along at 20 knots, bumping over the ground, the two of us crouched down in the basket for protection and desperately trying to pull the top out of the balloon. Crumbs, this was a lot more exciting, and a lot more dangerous, than any fairground ride. We were hurled around, ploughing up the mud which sprayed in around us, but by the time we finally did come to a halt we’d left a furrow two thirds of a mile long. Thank goodness for big American fields. We were both bruised and winded, but we couldn’t stop laughing hysterically.
When we contacted the Albuquerque ground control they’d already called the local police to say there was an aircraft down, and they and the border patrol were out to find us. There were about six vehicles running around out searching, but we were sitting in this field in the middle of nowhere. Then, in the distance, we saw two lights approaching. It was a farmer and his girlfriend who had been following the race on the news. When they saw we had landed they got our co-ordinates from the website, worked out exactly where we were, and came to get us. They took us to the main road where the police now were, and not much more than an hour later our retrieve team arrived. The farmer helped us fetch the balloon from the field with his massive flatbed truck, we packed everything away and said goodbye and thanks to everyone, and then it was off to find the nearest hotel for a shower and dinner before starting the long drive back to Albuquerque the next morning.
The trip back is a whole lot more fun when you’ve won, and our reception when we returned was pretty satisfying too in a different way. I’ve always loved America and Americans, but their reaction to our victory was a bit churlish. They were distinctly miffed about losing to some Brits, which they didn’t like one bit, no siree! But this added the America’s Challenge to our names alongside the Gordon Bennett Cup. Although there are a lot more British entries to both competitions these days the only other British placing in either to date came from a young woman called Janet Folkes, who took a third place in the America’s Challenge but has tragically since died of cancer.
I’ve certainly felt more actual sheer and unalloyed pleasure from my time spent in a balloon than anything else I have done, even if my achievements at the poles or climbing have brought their own very different rewards and feelings of satisfaction. I probably only have one more target I want to aim at in the same-sized balloon that I did the Atlantic. No one’s ever done this and it sounds like fun. I’ll keep you posted.
Afterword
I’ve had a truly wonderful life (so far!) and I consider myself incredibly fortunate in having had the opportunity to try and do all the things I wanted to attempt and achieve. I hope I’ve managed to explain a little about the influences that led my passions to develop in the direction they have, a constant search for adventure and new challenges, but I wouldn’t pretend that things have happened in a way that followed any sort of organized plan. I’m certainly not a person, like some politicians maybe, who when young tried to sketch out their whole future career on the back of an envelope for instance. Everything that has happened to me really just seems to have been taking the logical next step that presented itself at the time. Completing the Seven Summits wasn’t initially my plan, but once it was pointed out to me that it was within my grasp I pursued it with all the obsessive commitment I have. Being the first person to achieve the explorers’ Grand Slam was really just the result of knowing I couldn’t truly say I had proved myself until I’d made it to the North Pole. I suppose it is pretty obvious by now that having a fairly bloody-minded aspect to your personality goes with the territory, for someone like me.
Things have also happened as they did because I am not, nor have ever wanted to be, a professional at what I do, doing it for a living primarily. I am, or have become, an industrialist and businessman with a hobby in adventure, even if that hobby is an obsession that I have largely managed to make financially self-supporting. I am very lucky and grateful that so many individuals, businesspeople and companies—including my own colleagues, in allowing me so much time away—have been prepared to back me over the years, and I am also able to run expeditions for people who want their own taste of extreme adventure. I’ve now reached a time of life where I am slowly hoping to retire from industry and devote more time to my hobby, as there is so much I still want to do, but of course the new challenges I intend to set myself will be slightly different. I’ve achieved pretty much all I’ve wanted in mountaineering and polar expedition, and although I still climb and will certainly go back to Everest, and go to the Poles, it tends to be for shorter trips and often taking people for whom it is a new experience. I don’t really see this as passing on the baton to a younger generation, but I am frankly getting a bit old for some of the longer journeys and don’t quite enjoy them in the same way as I once did.
This was certainly part of the reason for my move into ballooning. None of what I’ve done would ever have been possible without the immense support from Claire over the years. Even though I’ve desperately wanted to be doing what I have I’ve always found it difficult to be separated from her when away, and of course that became increasingly hard after my three girls were born. I suppose it has always been a sort of balancing act, the urge to do something set against the guilt of disappearing somewhere inevitably dangerous, me worrying about them and knowing that they must be worrying about me. Over time I’ve felt those scales tip increasingly far in one direction, even if that isn’t going to make me spend all my time at home with my feet up by the fire. The loneliness of two months away on the ice, or three months getting ready for a crack at Everest, was always very hard. Even today, with the incredible changes in communications technology, the separation of such expeditions is rather different to, say, being in America waiting to spend a few days crossing the Atlantic in a balloon, during which time you are always on the end of a simple phone. But Alicia, Camilla and Amelia are twenty-four, twenty-one and nineteen now, and perhaps don’t need me in quite the same way, although it doesn’t always seem like that if my credit card would come in handy.
I’ve discovered a new passion, for sailing, something else I can put my cold weather experience to, and I will be sailing in the Arctic and Antarctic regions, retracing some of the great sailors’ trips and the journeys of the Vikings, going up Spitsbergen, to Iceland, Greenland, the Northwest Passage. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about having a crack at a duration record, which really would be something, and there are still a couple of hot-air balloon duration and distance records I have my eye on. It would also be great to do a gas balloon flight with Alicia, who has her pilot’s licence now, perhaps the Gordon Bennett or America’s Challenge. Whatever happens, I expect to be busy.
David Hempleman-Adams
Born 10 October 1956
August 1980: Mount McKinley, Alaska, USA—highest peak in North America
August 1981: Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania—highest peak in Africa
March 1983: Solo and supported Geographic North Pole—failed
February 1984: First man to walk solo and unsupported to the Magnetic North Pole
2–21 April 1992: Led first group to Geomagnetic North Pole
October 1993: Mount Everest—South route through Nepal
August 1994: Mount Elbrus, Russia—highest peak in Europe
December 1994: Mount Vinson—highest peak in Antarctica
February 1995: Mount Aconcagua, Argentina—highest peak in South America
May 1995: Carstensz Pyramid, Papua New Guinea—highest peak in Australasia. Seven summits completed
7 November 1995–5 January 1996: First Briton to walk solo and unsupported to the Geographic South Pole
February–March 1996: Magnetic South Pole
5 March�
��28 April 1997: Geographic North Pole with Rune Gjeldnes unsupported—failed
5 March–28 April 1998: Geographic North Pole with Rune Gjeldnes supported—first person to complete the Explorers’ Grand Slam
1998: First person to fly a hot-air balloon over the Andes
28 May–3 June 2000: First person to fly solo in a balloon to the North Pole
17 March–11 April 2003: First person to walk solo and unsupported to the Geomagnetic North Pole
September 2003: First person to balloon across the Atlantic in an open wicker basket. Two failed attempts September 2002 and 2003.
2004: Breaks airship speed record
2004: Flies Cessna light aircraft from Cape Columbia to Cape Horn
2004: Breaks world altitude record for an airship
2004: Breaks world distance record for an airship
October 2004: Breaks world altitude record for a Rozier balloon. AM-05, 41,198 feet
January 2007: Breaks AX-05 world altitude record for a conventional hot-air balloon. 32,480 feet
July 2007: Flies the smallest gas balloon across the Atlantic
October 2008: First British team to win the Gordon Bennett Balloon Race
21 May 2011: Mount Everest—North route through Tibet
No Such Thing as Failure Page 24