Hangglider get higher than Everest: Survives

[Lakie]

Canberra: A German paraglider was encased in ice and blacked out after being sucked into a tornado-like thunderstorm in Australia and carried to a height greater than Mount Everest. She survived.

"You can't imagine the power. You feel like nothing, like a leaf from a tree going up," Ewa Wisnerska told Australian Broadcasting Corp radio yesterday.

"I was shaking all the time. The last thing I remember it was dark, I could hear lightning all around me."

Wisnerska, 35, was carried to 9,144 metres while free-flying near Tamworth, 280km northwest of Sydney, in a practice run on Wednesday ahead of an international competition.

Wisnerska, a member of the German team, was rendered unconscious for almost an hour. She encountered hailstones the size of oranges, and the temperature plummeted to minus 50 degrees Celsius (minus 58 Fahrenheit).

"There's no oxygen. She could have suffered brain damage. But she came to again at a height of 6,900 metres with ice all over her body," one of Australia's most experienced paraglider pilots Godfrey Wenness said.

Wisnerska was admitted to hospital with severe frostbite and blistering to her face and ears, but has since been released. Wisnerska, whose flight was tracked by her personal GPS and computer, landed 60km from her launch site.