as their individual talents . To illustrate this point , when Bunting -- a warrant officer in the British Army -- was compiling a team of soldiers to attempt an ascent of Everest 's notorious West Ridge the first quality he and the rest of the selection panel looked for was not climbing expertise , but compatibility . `` A lot of people think that when you go and do something like that , you immediately look for all the best climbers in the army , '' he says . `` But what we based our selection process on , compatibility was first . '' Of course , all team sports rely upon a strong dynamic between the individual members . But there can be few disciplines in which the stakes are as high as in mountain climbing , where your life often literally rests in someone else 's hands . Bunting , 40 , led the expedition of 21 army mountaineers to Everest 's West Ridge two years ago . It was a daunting undertaking . Of over 2,200 climbers who have made it to the top of the world 's tallest peak since it was first conquered ,
LONDON , England -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- A veteran of over 20 years of mountain climbing , Dave Bunting has been in some pretty tight scrapes . Soldier mountaineer Dave Bunting on Mount Everest . His team tried to summit via the mountain 's notorious West Ridge in 2006 . He and his climbing partner once watched in terror as a huge avalanche careered down a Himalayan mountainside straight for them . They were miraculously spared when the wall of snow parted on either side of the promontory where they were standing at a distance of just 50 meters . On another occasion he spent an agonizing night hanging precariously over a 3,000-foot -LRB- 900 meter -RRB- drop during an electrical storm in the Alps . He estimates he was electrocuted `` half a dozen times '' during the course of the night . Faced with the fearsome power of nature mountaineers like Bunting rely on one indispensable ally -- other mountaineers . Teamwork is essential in climbing . The first successful ascent of Everest was as much about the bond of trust that existed between modest New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and his diminutive Sherpa , Tenzing Norgay ,