‘My hands were frozen’: A paraglider soared nearly 9km high – by accident

A paraglider in China who had intended simply to test some equipment instead ended up unwittingly reaching barely survivable heights.

Peng Yujiang, a 55-year-old paraglider in Gansu province, on Saturday morning flew nearly 8600 metres above sea level – more than 28,000 feet – in the Qilian mountain range of north-west China’s Qinghai and Gansu provinces, state media reported.

Peng Yujiang, 55, flew nearly 8600 metres above sea level. He was apparently a victim of what paragliders call cloud suck, in which they are rapidly drawn upwards.Credit: BBC

The episode was captured on a camera attached to his equipment and showed the harrowing conditions he experienced.

Peng rose to a level almost on par with Mount Everest’s summit and aviation flight paths. His face and body are covered in frost and ice in the video, which was originally posted to social media and later shared by Chinese state media.

“I felt the lack of oxygen. My hands were frozen outside. I kept trying to talk on the radio,” Peng said in a video recorded after the incident, according to Sixth Tone, an English-language, Chinese state-owned outlet.

Local media reported that Peng was testing equipment as part of “ground handling training” – a step that paragliders say is critical to managing safe launches – at an altitude of 3000 metres above sea level, or about 10,000 feet.

But a strong wind suddenly lifted him into the sky. He could not control the glider or land as the draft grew stronger and he was pulled up above the clouds.

Peng was apparently the victim of a potentially dangerous phenomenon that paragliders call cloud suck, in which a pilot is rapidly drawn upwards into a cloud.

At extreme altitudes, people risk hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation, because of the thin air. Severe hypoxia can cause organ damage or death.

Still, Peng managed to land about 30 kilometres away from where he took off. In stable health and recovering from his surprise flight, he has since said, “Thinking about it still makes me quite scared,” China Daily reported.

The local sporting authority in Gansu province said on Wednesday that Peng, who is a licensed paraglider, would be barred from the sport for six months. It also noted that flying activities at sites in the area would be suspended for an unspecified period, local news media reported.

But the association deemed Peng’s incident an accident, based on his statement that he did not have a flight planned and was doing ground handling training, which does not require participants to register plans in advance, the reports said.

A second pilot was also banned from flying for six months because he released footage of the incident without permission, the authority’s report said, according to the South China Morning Post.

Peng was not the first paraglider to accidentally reach such extreme heights.

In 2007, Ewa Wisnierska – a champion Polish paraglider who competed on the German national team – reached about 10,000 metres, or over 32,000 feet, on a practice flight just days before the World Paragliding Championships near Manilla in northern NSW.

She accidentally broke the paragliding height record in the process. Her ascent was treacherous, and she passed out in the air, eventually landing more than 80 kilometres away from where she took off, on a farm.

Another paraglider who was caught in cloud suck that day did not survive.

“Today, I still fly – but just for pleasure and to give courses to the people who come to my paragliding school. Competing no longer makes any sense to me,” Wisnierska told People magazine last year.

“This definitely changed a lot of priorities and made me realise that there are much more important things in life than championship cups and medals.

“I often ask myself why was it that I survived and this other pilot did not?”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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