Skydive Everest - The Team

 LEO DICKINSON – Skydiver, Mountaineer and Adventure Cameraman

Leo brings a depth of knowledge and skill to Everest Skydive that is unsurpassable as an Everest mountaineer, skydiver and adventure cameraman. He was amongst the first to skydive onto the North Pole and has also BASE-jumped Angel Falls. His films have won numerous awards. Notable are ‘Filming the Impossible, ‘Into the Blue and Black Holes’’ (on cave diving), ‘Right up the Zipper’ (on sky diving), ‘Ballooning Over Everest and Flight of the Windhorse’ (ballooning in the Himalayas).

Leo also made the TV documentary of the first ascent of Everest without (additional) oxygen ‘Everest without Oxygen’. His television programmes on Skydiving are well known ‘Sky-Boogie’ and ‘Up the Zipper’ and the ‘24 Stack’ record, entitled ‘Stacking in the Sky’. Leo has made more than 3500 skydives, some of them from 30,000 ft, and over 2000 of them with cameras. He will be filming Everest Skydive for distribution worldwide.

ANDY MONTRIOU – Professional Skydiver and BASE Jumper

Andy is a current skydiving world record holder, being part of the team that took the record to 357 skydivers, linked in freefall in Feb 2004 and then on to 400 in Feb 2006. He has made 5000 skydives and 400 BASE jumps. Like Leo, he was amongst the first to skydive onto the North Pole and has also BASE-jumped Angel Falls. Andy started his professional skydiving career after winning a gold medal at the British National Skydiving Championships in 1995. His first BASE jump followed shortly afterwards. Andy provides specialist training to individuals, organisations and BASE jumpers. He also arranges and undertakes other special aerial projects, often for film and television companies. He has been responsible for stunt coordination and safety during location filming for a variety of TV BASE jumping and skydiving programmes and films.

Holding all of the British Parachute Association (BPA) instructional qualifications and also holds United States and Spanish qualifications, Andy is also a Display Team Leader, registered with the UK Civil Aviation Authority. This means he is able to organise and arrange parachute displays at public events and other places that are not normally skydiving venues. He is a voting member of the British Parachute Association’s Safety and Training Committee. With over 2500 tandem jumps to his credit, Andy is Chief Tandem Master for Everest Skydive. Andy also holds USPA and FEADA (Spain) tandem ratings.

ANDY ELSON – Aeronaut, Cosmonaut, Specialist Life Support Systems

Andy has flown by open balloon to over 40,000 feet more times than anyone in history. In 1991 he was the first balloonist to fly over Mount Everest. Throughout the 1990s he designed and built all the capsules for all the international attempts to be the first to fly around the world (except for Richard Branson). These included the Swiss Breitling team and Steve Fossett. In 1998 he flew the Breitling Obiter 2 balloon with Whim Verstraten and Bertrand Piccard from Switzerland to Burma, setting a new world endurance record of 9 days. In 1999 he broke the world endurance record for any non-stop sub-orbital flying machine when he flew Cable and Wireless more than 12,000 miles from Spain to the Pacific in 18 days. For this he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Aero Club (previously only awarded 40 times to such pioneers as Louis Bleriot, the Wright Brothers, Alcock and Brown, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins). In 2002 he trained as a cosmonaut in Moscow. In 2003 he attempted to launch QinetiQ 1 (the biggest balloon in history) from a research ship off St Ives, UK. In 2004 he designed and built, in Britain, a capsule to carry five astronauts to the international space station. However, this was not publicised at the time due to contractual terms with the American clients. In 2005 he designed and built a pressurised capsule and balloon to carry Air Commodore Vijaypat Singhania to the current world hot air balloon altitude record of 70,000 feet above Mumbai. While primarily an aeronaut, Andy has considerable skydiving experience, and brings his knowledge of High Altitude Life Support Systems to Everest Skydive.

NIGEL GIFFORD OBE – Mountaineer, Skydiver, Adventure Logistician

Nigel is the creator of the Everest Skydive adventure and responsible for its overall management and logistics. As the founder of High & Wild UK Nigel has over thirty years experience in the professional adventure world, and is responsible for extreme adventures and special projects. Such adventures include remote treks and journeys from the Arctic to the Equator and beyond. Recent adventures have been rafting the Great Siang gorge of the Brahmaputra in the tribal areas of India, participating in the Saami reindeer migration in the frozen North, and the first ever trek to Everest’s Lho La. Nigel has recently introduced the use of supplementary oxygen for trekkers on Kilimanjaro, Tanzania to optimise the potential success rate of summiteers. He has run projects for 20th Century Fox Worldwide, Channel 4 TV and Discovery channel, GKN and NPower, and was part of the logistics team for Richard Branson’s Global Challenger balloon project based in Marrakech and provided some of Richard’s survival briefings. A member of the team that successfully climbed Mt. Everest in 1976, Nigel has been returning to Nepal ever since. In February 2007 he secured permission from the CAAN for a high altitude flight with powered paragliders in front of the Everest Massif. The project was an outstanding success in Nepal, with the pilots reporting a height of 29,500ft attained. A skydiver with over 1000 descents, he began preparations for the Everest Skydive two years ago, drawing on both his knowledge of the Everest area, its terrain, infrastructure and gaining the support of the Sherpa and Tamang peoples of Solu Khumbu.

DAVE WOOD – Professional Skydiver, Chief Instructor, Cornish Parachute Club

Dave is a managing director and the Chief Instructor of the Cornish Parachute Club. He retired from the Royal Air Force in 2006 after 32 years service to run his own Drop Zone in UK. Dave has made over 7,000 jumps; including over 2,500 High Altitude Low Opening (HALO) and tandem jumps. From 1978 – 2006, while working as a military parachuting instructor he gained a vast amount of knowledge in many different environments all over the world. Dave holds a number of BPA qualifications, including the BPA Advanced Instructor Qualification, and he is a voting member of the BPA Safety and Training Committee.

He has been involved in a number of TV programs which have required AFF and Tandems skydives to be conducted. In 1991 he qualified as a tandem master. Dave has also qualified as a United States Military High Altitude Tandem Master and qualified as a USA Military Tandem Examiner. He also qualified as an instructor of Military Freefall Oxygen systems (UK) and the Military Tandem Oxygen system PHAOS (USA). Dave is in charge of the parachuting operations for Everest Skydive, and responsible for all DZ control and management.

BEN WOOD – Professional Skydiver, Load Organizer and Aerial Photographer

Ben is a freelance skydiving instructor and aerial freefall photographer and operates www.skydivecornwall.com. Many photographs taken by Ben have been used in a number of promotional campaigns and books relating to skydiving. He has over 3000 jumps and over 1200 camera jumps. Ben has been the British National Formation Skydiving Champion in 2001 and 2002 he also won the Army Skydiving Championships in Germany and Cyprus in 2002 and 2003. Ben joined the Royal Air Force in 1997 as a Physical Training Instructor, he then transferred to become a Military Parachute Jumping Instructor in 2002 training airborne forces using various parachuting equipment.

Ben went on to work at various joint service training centres as a senior skydiving instructor. He left the military in February 2006 to work as a full time professional skydiving instructor. Ben is the Senior Everest Skydive Jumpmaster and Dispatcher. He is also responsible for providing the aerial photography for each 4 - way group or tandem on each “lift”.

RYAN DUKE – Ground Communications and Acclimatization Supervision

Employed with a major supplier of aircraft components as a specialist machine operator in optical materials, Ryan was one of the subjects for an extensive high altitude blood /oxygen absorption programme in Nepal in May 2007. It was during this time that he met Andy Elson and Nigel Gifford who were impressed with his eye for detail. 

The youngest of the management team, Ryan is responsible for Everest Skydive ground communications and the movement of people to their key locations during the acclimatisation phase.

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