LONDON, England (CNN)  -- 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 (900 meter) drop during an electrical storm in the Alps. He estimates he was electrocuted "half a dozen times" during the course of the night.
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Army officer Dave Bunting recruited a team of 21 soldiers to summit Everest
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The 2006 attempt was via the mountain's notoriously dangerous West Ridge
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They spent over three years preparing by building cameraderie and team spirit
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Bunting says personal ambition can sometimes get the better of climbers on Everest
"You are massively wrapped up in emotions there because you've spent three and a half years preparing for it," says Bunting, who now runs his own outdoor events company in the @placeholder.