We’ve over 100 members of the disabled community and over 300 supporters currently engaged with the AGS. Here’s a quick intro to a few of our members

Martin Hewitt

AGS Founder

Adaptive Grand Slam team leader, Martin Hewitt, is the founder the AGS. Martin served eight years as a commissioned officer with the Parachute Regiment. He worked on operations and training exercises in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and North America. Martin was injured whilst leading his men in combat in Afghanistan. These injuries paralysed his right arm and ended his military career. 

Challenges completed: Mt Denali, Mt Elbrus, Mt Kilimanjaro, Mt Aconcagua, The Geographic North Pole, The Geographic South Pole, Mt Vinson, Mt Manaslu. Mt Everest. Mt Pumori, The Marathon Des Sables, Grand Paradiso, Cumbria Challenge, Yorkshire Challenge.

Harry Taylor

LEAD GUIDE

Harry Taylor is a former British SAS member, mountaineer and security advisor. He founded ‘High Adventure’ with Loel Guinness, an extreme sports company specifically designed to set records in climbing, paragliding and skydiving. His team set a world distance flight record for a paraglider at 150.6km in Namibia. In 1991, with close friend Charles “Nish” Bruce he made a tandem skydive with oxygen from 27,000 ft over Badajoz in Spain. Taylor flew a tandem paraglider from Cho Oyu (8,201m) Tibet and was also the first British paraglider pilot to fly from Denali, Alaska. Harry is the Adaptive Grand Slam team lead trainer and guide guide. Harry, is also the co-founder of a specialist production and extreme experience company Mission X.

Challenges completed: Too many to list

TERRY BYRNE

Terry served twice in Iraq with 2 Para as a Private and Lance Corporal. He passed the SAS Briefing Course but chose to go to Afghanistan in 2008 as the Lead Section Commander for C Company, leading all of the Battalion and Brigade operations. Terry was injured in August 2008, sustaining a below the knee amputation of his right leg with a damaged right hand and amputated little finger. He was the fastest ever amputee to be discharged after just 4 months. Since his injury, Terry has gone on to achieve a position on the GB cycling team, obtaining several World Records, including winning the World Championship for team sprint. In June 2014, Terry successfully summited Mont Blanc (4,810m) in Italy and Mont Elbrus (5,462 m) in Russia.

Challenges completed: Mt Elbrus, Mt Kilimanjaro, Mt Aconcagua, Mt Blanc Challenge, Cumbria challenge, Yorkshire challenge, Grand Paradiso. Attempted: Mt Denali (Thwarted due to bad weather), Mt Everest (Injured stump climbing Mt Pumori)

Sam Baynes

By her own admission, Samantha Baynes didn't climb mountains before becoming involved with Adaptive Grand Slam, but she has always been into fitness and a keen skier.

“At 02:30 on 1st January 2016, I was found after sledding and falling 50m off the side of a mountain in Austria,” Samantha explains. “I sustained four skull fractures and traumatic brain injury, fractured c5 in my neck, fractured L3,4,5 in my lower back and brachial plexus injury where my c5 and c6 nerves were avulsed out of the spinal cord. I was unconscious and kept in an induced coma for about two weeks. I had to re-learn how to walk, talk, eat and basically live again.”

The result? Six months after her accident, Samantha had nerve transplant surgery. Three weeks after that, she embarked upon her first hike with the Adaptive Grand Slam team.

Samantha says: “I owe my recovery, progress, goals, and drive to the Adaptive Grand Slam. There are no excuses, an adaptation can always be made and you can achieve anything you put your mind to. I want to show society that you can overcome the biggest challenges if you have the right mindset, and the AGS team will help you develop that mindset to achieve your goals, whatever they may be.”

Challenges completed: Gran Paradiso Mt Kilimanjaro Everest base camp trek, Yorkshire challenge, Cumbria challenge.

Jake Gardner

Jake Gardner served with the RAF Regiment for four years as a Gunner with 15 SQN, based at RAF Honington. He was medically discharged after being injured in Afghanistan in 2013 when he was thrown from an armoured vehicle, sustaining a complex fracture to his arm, nerve damage, and lower back problems.

Jake comments: “I heard about Adaptive Grand Slam through Help for Heroes and immediately knew that I had to get involved. I spoke to Martin Hewitt and got myself up to the Black Mountains in Wales for the selection weekend. When I got a phone call telling me that I had been given a place for the summit attempt of Mount Aconcagua, I was over the moon.”

Jake's motivation for getting involved with AGS centres his desire to achieve what he describes as “something pretty punchy with a great bunch of like-minded people,” and to demonstrate that life doesn't end or slow down when you get injured or medically discharged from the military. “You can still excel, regain confidence, achieve big goals, adapt with limitations caused by injuries, and push yourself,” Jake explains.

Jake has always been into sports, having been part of his Squadron’s rugby team, along with skydiving, sailing, rock climbing, ultra endurance marathons and triathlons, as well as cycling 350 miles over five days across the Western Front. He is now a qualified Mountain Leader.

Challenges completed: Mt Everest, Mt Aconcagua, Mt Elbrus, Remote Pack Rafting Expedition Sierra Leone, 260km Ultra endurance marathon in the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan, Gran Paradiso, Yorkshire challenge, Cumbria challenge.

Jordan Creeney

Jordan Creeney served as a Gunner with the RAF Regiment for five years. In June of 2013, he sustained severe lower limb injuries in Afghanistan, resulting in the loss of his left leg below the knee, and subsequent medical discharge.  

Jordan has always been an active individual, with sports and physical activity playing a major role in his lifestyle, both before and after injury. He is an avid motorcyclist on both road and racetrack, and enjoys the challenge of adapting bikes and prosthetics to suit his Injuries.

Through life as an amputee, Jordan has developed a keen interest in prosthetic rehabilitation, and has gained a wealth of knowledge and experience thanks to an Ambassadorship role with Össur, a market leader in non-invasive orthopaedics.

Jordan’s involvement with AGS was born from a desire for challenge, and an interest in leveraging his experience to assist others on the pathway to recovery. He wishes to be open about the aspects of life after injury which are often acutely challenging, and to encourage the notion that adversity can be a vehicle for personal growth and development.

Challenges completed: Gran Paradiso, Cumbria Challenge.

Stephan van Niekerk

In 2009 Stephan sustained life changing injuries after stepping on an explosive device while serving with the Rifles regiment. The explosion resulted in the loss of both legs, one above and one below the knee, some fingers and other parts. Having been a keen cyclist for most of his life, Stephan took to cycling again post injury having completed routes such as the King Alfreds Cycleway and the Battlefield Bike Ride. For a bit of fun, he also hurls himself downhill on a mountain bike

OBITUARY

Matt Nyman was an AGS core team member, and is missed by us all

Matt Nyman

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again… who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat” – Theodore Roosevelt

Matthew Randy Nyman (43), of Denver, CO, died February 3, 2021, as he lived – bravely ascending new heights – following an avalanche near Anchorage, Alaska. 

The beloved son of Randy (Pam) Nyman and Rebecca (Chuck) Hickman; husband of Kristina Crichton; father of Aiden Nyman-Laughman, 15, and Maddox Nyman-Laughman, 9; brother of Heidi Broussard; and stepfather of Wesley Crichton Polka, 10; Matt was an adored husband, loving father, dear brother, caring friend to many, and inspiration to all who met him.

Born January 3, 1978, in Waterloo, IA, Matt entered the military upon graduation from Waterloo West High School in 1996.  He proudly served in the 2nd Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment, completed Infantry training, Airborne school, and the Ranger indoctrination program before being selected in 2002 to serve in the elite 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment. As a Sergeant First Class with the U.S. Army’s Special Operations Forces, Matt was deployed to Afghanistan in 2002 and Iraq in 2005. While in Iraq, he sustained life-threatening injuries in a helicopter crash that required leg amputation and years of extensive rehabilitation. Those challenges, however, did not deter Matt, who persisted to regain his physical and cognitive abilities and became a skilled mountaineer.  

In the last 10 years, Matt scaled the world’s largest peaks – Denali, Elbrus, Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, Gran Paradiso and Lobouche.  Matt continued his military service following his injury, first as a Senior Operations Officer for the Joint Special Operations Command and later with the U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM). While serving with USNORTHCOM, he integrated U.S. assets within Mexican governmental agencies to identify, track, and dissolve criminal networks and coordinated USNORTHCOM’s multi-national government exercise to reduce nuclear weapon proliferation and prevent large-scale terrorist attacks. In 2015, Matt entered the Executive MBA program at Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, quickly becoming a sought-after strategic transformation leader across military, government, and corporate America. After graduating in 2017, he became the Director of Security Monitoring and Response at Mastercard.  Under his leadership, Mastercard’s global team of cyber-security experts thwarted threats from attackers around the world.  At the time of death, Matt was the Cyber Security Fusion Center Director with American Family Insurance.  He helped lead the strategic transformation of how they managed the central security network across the organization.

As a Board Member for the Endangered Species Protection Agency, Matt’s tactical expertise and military experience supported disruption of transnational criminal organizations and helped to reduce poaching of critically endangered animals across Africa.  He also was a part of many other charity organizations, including the Adaptive Grand Slam of global wounded warriors.  Matt was on track to climb the tallest peak on each continent to inspire other veterans to overcome their own challenges.

Matt met his wife Kris, at Washington University and together they integrated their families – including Aiden, Maddox and Wesley – and supported each other’s personal and professional pursuits.  Their once-in-a-lifetime love was punctuated by global travels that fuelled Matt’s natural curiosity and adventurous spirit. One of Matt’s biggest sources of joy was the birth and life of his two sons, Aiden and Maddox.  They spent many hours enjoying the adventures of the outdoors, which included camping under the stars, skiing, and dune bugging across the Continental Divide.  After Matt and Kristina blended their families together, they continued all of these adventures plus many more, including hours of Nerf gun wars at home.