Bear Grylls’ near-death experiences from boa constrictor attack to falling 16,000 feet

Bear Grylls is a man we all know for eating raw deadly snakes, drinking his own urine, eating goat testicles, and generally finding truly disgusting – yet oddly admirable – ways to survive in the wilderness. Through his years entertaining audiences on his various shows – most recently Celebrity Bear Hunt – the 50-year-old daredevil has encountered some situations that made him grateful to be alive.

Even before he hit our TV screens, Bear was pushing himself to the limits of what humans are capable of – all the while clocking up an almighty 21 near death experiences. Chatting to Louis Theroux on his interview series, Bear said: ‘There was a lot of danger in the early days, we had so many narrow escapes. ‘I was bitten by snakes, caught in rapids, parachute failures, avalanches, you name it.’.

Louis asked Bear about his claim in his book that he’s had 21 near-death experiences, to which the survivalist replied: ‘Yeah, and it was starting to happen all too regularly. ‘The show’s got to push the boundaries, everything’s got to be bigger and better, and I’ve got three young boys who were super young at this stage – I was like, ‘”why am I doing this?”‘. Why indeed…. Before Bear was prodding venemous snakes with sticks and chopping their heads off on TV, he wasn’t your regular 20-something, teenager, or child.

He had a penchant for danger even in his early years. ‘One of my first close shaves was as a kid,’ he revealed on his YouTube channel teaser for Bear Uncut. ‘I tried to cross the harbour at low tide and it was always this sinking mud,’ he said. ‘Everyone always said never go near the harbour at full tide so I thought, “I wonder if I can get across it.”‘. About half way across it, Bear knew it was ‘a bad idea’. He began to sink, and could see people gathering to watch and call the emergency services.

‘Eventually I managed to get my feet out, wriggle like a seal, and made it across.’. He got away with his life, but was in ‘so much trouble’ with his mum, who made him do chores for the emergency services who were called out due to his foolhardiness. In March 2021 Bear revealed that coming face-to-face with an eight-foot boa constrictor while filming for his show Animals on the Loose was his scariest moment yet.

A video snapshot of the incident saw the massive snake choking him underwater. He told The Sun: ‘We were in this deep, dark, flooded ravine. We knew we had this big, maybe eight-foot, boa constrictor in there. They’re incredibly dangerous and unpredictable. ‘Once they wrap, you can’t breathe or move, and if it takes you down you’re in big trouble. I had two safety guys nearby, but they were on edge about doing it.

To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video. Up Next. ‘They said, “If this thing gets you underwater you’ll be in trouble, fast”. I got in, couldn’t touch the bottom, and suddenly I felt that thing grab me and start pulling me down. ‘Then it got a grip around my neck. It caught me out. I hadn’t anticipated how fast, powerful and heavy it would be. Every time I surfaced I saw the guys giving me the thumbs-down rescue signal, but I said no.’.

As the snake gripped him tighter Bear recalled running out of breath, describing the encounter as ‘terrifying and very intense’. ‘I’ve never been so scared in my life,’ he said, adding that it all happened very fast and he managed to break himself free. Aged just 21 in 1996 – before anyone had ever heard his name – Bear was skydiving over Zambia during an SAS training exercise when he very almost died.

His parachute failed to inflate and he fell 16,000 feet and broke his back in three different places, narrowly avoiding being paralysed. In 2021 Bear revealed he was still in pain years after the fall, as he wrote on Instagram: ‘People sometimes ask me if my back ever hurts having broken it all those years ago in a parachuting accident. ‘The answer is every day. And the treatment I get for it can be quite intense but life can at times be a battle for everyone and most people have their stuff to carry with them through the adventures.’.

Bear spent the best part of the next year in military rehabilitation, learning how to move again. In classic Bear form, he used the parachute accident as fuel for his ambitious adventures, and plotted to climb Mount Everest. At 23 in 1998, he became the youngest Brit at the time to summit. Bear has since credited Spencer Matthews’ oldest brother Michael Matthews for beating him to the record. However, somewhere on his return journey, Michael died.

Bear’s journey up the world’s highest mountain was not without fatalities, as he lost four climbers in the three months he was up there. In Bear Uncut, the TV star admitted he had ‘a bunch of close calls on that mountain’ himself. ‘I very nearly lost my life down a deep crevasse, I was almost taken by an avalanche that missed me by 100ft,’ he said, listing the many dangers of such a climb.