Death In the Clouds

Competitive paragliders from around the world have gathered in Australia for their world championship. So far their practise runs have been anything but uneventful.

A couple of weeks ago, "Nicky Moss, a member of the British team in the world championships, was attacked by eagles with a wing span of almost 3m, sending her into freefall 2,500m above the Australian Outback as she prepared for the event."

The Times of London reports that worse followed yesterday when two others got caught in a thunderstorm:

"A champion paraglider is being described as “the luckiest woman alive” after being caught in a storm that sucked her to an altitude higher than Mount Everest.

"Ewa Wisnierska is believed to have flown unconscious for almost one hour through a violent thunderstorm that catapulted her to the cruise altitude of a jumbo jet and left her body heavily bruised and covered in ice.

"Her paraglider came through the storm intact and she landed 60km (37 miles) from her launch site. Ms Wisnierska, 35, was treated in hospital for severe frostbite injuries to her face but was otherwise unharmed.

"He Zhongpin, a Chinese paraglider who flew into the same storm, was found dead on Thursday, 75km from his launch site. He is believed to have suffocated or frozen to death after being sucked up into the centre of the storm.

"Speaking from her hospital bed yesterday Ms Wisnierska, a German of Polish descent who is ranked among the top paragliders in Europe, described her journey through the violent storm. 'You can’t imagine the power — you feel like nothing, like a leaf from a tree going up,' she said. 'I was shaking all the time. The last thing I remember it was dark. I could hear lightning all around me. I knew I was in the middle of a thunderstorm and I could not do anything.'

"Her paraglider was equipped with a tracking system that clocked her ascent at 20m (65ft) a second once the storm began to suck her upwards, eventually reaching a height of 9,946m (32,000ft).

"Her descent was recorded at 33m a second. “I wanted to fly around the clouds but I got sucked up into it and started to spiral,” Ms Wisnierska said. 'I was thinking, I can’t do anything, so I only have to wait and hope that the clouds were bringing me out somewhere. Then I woke up and was thinking I was maybe unconscious for one minute. I didn’t know I was unconscious for so long.'

"She woke more than 45 minutes later and at a height of 6,900m to find herself still stuck in the storm, surrounded by darkness and with her gloves frozen. 'I saw my hands and the gloves were frozen and I didn’t have the brakes, and the glider was still flying on its own. It was amazing because the glider was still flying. I don’t know how it is possible because there was hail everywhere.'

"Doctors later told her that her blackout may have saved her life, because her heart and body slowed down. Temperatures at a height of 9,000m drop below minus 40C."