A Paraglider Was Sucked 32,000 Feet High In A Ferocious Storm
When paraglider Ewa Wisnierska woke up with a terrifying jolt, she was startled by the freezing cold winds whipping all around her. She realized her head was lolling backward and her arms were hanging limply by her side. Then, it all clicked, and she remembered where she was — thousands of feet in the air, powerless to stop a raging storm carrying her higher into the heavens. Staring death itself in the face, her story then took a stunning turn.
Moving to Germany
In the years leading to her incredible experience in the sky, Wisnierska was having fun living her life like a nomad with only one goal — to pursue paragliding as far as it would take her. Born in 1971 in Nysa, Poland, she moved to Germany at 20 years old.
She had fallen head over heels in love with a Polish boy who was living and working there. They soon married — although it wasn’t exactly by choice.
Changing her life completely
In 2006 Wisnierska told paragliding website Sky Fly, “That time it was not possible to stay in Germany as a Polish girl. So, we didn’t have any other option than marriage. This changed my name to Cieslewicz.”
Unfortunately, it soon became clear that their troubled union wasn’t going to last. She wound up leaving her husband, admitting, “Some years later something changed me. My life changed completely.”
Paragliding enters her life
Alone in a foreign country, Wisnierska soon found something compelling to latch onto. Growing up, she had attended a sports school and tried a few different activities — all of which helped her maintain her athletic body.
But as she put it, in her adulthood, “I’m [a] very lazy person, not doing any kinds of sports.” In truth, what she actually meant to say was “any sport except paragliding!”
A world without frontiers
“There is no sport making me as free and happy as paragliding does,” explained Wisnierska, before adding, “Flying and traveling… changed my point of view. I’m very happy about it. I prefer the world without frontiers.”
She had initially begun paragliding training in her native Poland, but when she was living in Germany she saw first-hand that its schools were a cut above those in her homeland.
You should fly competitions
Wisnierska explained, “That was why I decided to learn in Germany. When I got my license, I knew it will change everything. I left Hamburg for South Germany and had nothing except flying in my head.”
She continued, “Three years later some friends told me, I should fly competitions.” Wisnierska hadn’t considered competing before, but at the suggestion of her pals she thought, “Okay, I will try.”
Winning competitions right out of the gate
Amazingly, Wisnierska needed no time to adjust to competitive paragliding — in fact, she took to it like a duck to water! She revealed, “In the first year I won all competitions.” Well, that wasn’t quite true, as she went on to explain.
She clarified, “Except the European Championship because I entered the start cylinder too early the last racing day. Thus, Petra Krausova won. I beat Louise Crandal in the Nordic Open and reached the second position in overall results.”
The victories just keep coming
Wisnierska’s early victories didn’t just stop there. She revealed, “My personal success in 2004 was the sixth rank in the German Open and in the German League within just one year.”
The fierce competitor added, “This gave me the motivation for 2005. I never dreamed about winning four of [the] five PWCs in Women’s category and reaching 20th position generally — but it happened!”
A paragliding nomad
At this point in her career, Wisnierska couldn’t have cared less if she was actually able to make a living with paragliding. After all, she freely admitted, “I have neither a flat nor any apartment.”
She explained, “I live in my car and don’t need to pay any rentals every month. This way of life is not very expensive. And I don’t need any luxury. I prefer having time to money.”
Living like a bird
Wisnierska likened her free-spirited, nomadic lifestyle — with no responsibilities or property tying her down to Earth — to “living like a bird.” She claimed, “I don’t worry about the future.”
But she did admit, “Maybe it will change one day. Maybe I will wish to have a family and my own home. But I haven’t found the right place to stay yet. And currently I enjoy my life and flying.”
A mission to popularize paragliding
Living in the moment and never thinking too far ahead was very much Wisnierska’s philosophy in her personal life. Having said that, she did think about the future when it came to paragliding.
She explained, “I would like to make our sport more popular and show more people how fantastic it is. I’m going to make a movie about the beautiful art of flying, which paragliding is.”
Preparing for the World Championships
All of this eventually led Wisnierska to the tiny Australian town of Manilla in New South Wales. It was early 2007 and 200 paragliders due to take part in the Paragliding World Championships the following weekend had gathered to get in some practice flights.
As Wisnierska ascended Mount Borah, a 500-foot cliff, wearing specialized clothing designed to be protective at 5,000 feet, she felt her excitement rising. She was about to leap once again into the great unknown.
Seeking good thermals
Jumping from such a height would give each flyer good “thermals” — air currents which rise and allow gliders to catch a lift. When Wisnierska jumped off the cliff, everything initially went according to plan.
In fact, for nearly an hour she soared through the sky without a care in the world. But then the unthinkable happened — to her horror, she saw something tearing a path toward her with frightening inevitability.
A storm sucks her into the sky
A swirling vortex of cloud had formed and was beginning to drag everything in its vicinity towards it. Over the next 15 minutes, Wisnieska’s team on the ground watched in horror as the violent storm clouds sucked her higher and higher up into the blackened sky.
Just imagine the sheer speed and ferocity of these winds — it’s believed Wisnierska was dragged from a height of 2,500 feet to a terrifying 32,000 feet within just 15 minutes.
Spiralling through the vortex
Wisnierska later revealed the harrowing details of being dragged higher and higher into the sky — all while she was completely powerless to stop it happening. She explained, “I found myself being pulled up and up at a violent rate.”
Scarily, she added, “I was trying to fly around the clouds, but I got sucked into them at a speed of 65 feet a second and then I started to spiral.”
A jolt like a Formula One car
The terrified glider went into more intricate detail with Black Rabbit Special about what it actually felt like to be dragged so violently upward into the sky as lightning cracked all around her.
She explained, “I got a jolt of very strong lift, like I was in a Formula One car. My head was pushed back, and my body pressed into the harness. My eyes kind of rolled back.”
You can’t imagine the power
“I was shaking all the time,” continued the champion athlete. “It was dark, like the night. Lightning was flashing all around me, huge hailstones were battering me, and there was nothing I could do about it.”
She added, “I knew then that the chances of my survival were almost zero.” With quiet contemplation, she admitted, “You can’t imagine the power. You feel like nothing in that power, tossed around like a leaf from a tree.”
Radioing for help
Wisnierska told BR Special, “I had to work to keep the glider open. I realized then it was dangerous. I knew I had to say something to my crew, to my team leader.”
She continued, “I told him I was in trouble and that I was in a cloud, and it was raining and hailing, and I could not do anything. That was all I could say.”
Coming up with a plan
After radioing in, Wisnierska then tried to keep her wits about her. She revealed, “It was very scary, but I didn’t panic. I knew I was in deadly danger, but I just kept trying to think of what I could do.”
She revealed, “I considered releasing the paraglider and using my reserve chute. But the reserve chute is not rated for free-fall speeds, and being a round [standard] parachute, I’d have no control.”
Reaching a deadly altitude
As Wisnierska tried desperately to slow her ascent in any way — not to mention keep herself from letting the panic and fear overwhelm her — she noticed something incredibly worrying. She revealed, “Ice was forming on my sunglasses and instruments,”
This development meant she had risen to an altitude human beings weren’t meant to be exposed to. She added, “I couldn’t get any air — and then I passed out.”
A blessing in disguise
That’s right — stranded in the raging skies at a height taller than Mount Everest and being battered from all sides by the elements, Wisnierska’s body simply went into shutdown mode. Amazingly, though, experts believe this may have been exactly what saved her life.
When human beings pass out, their heart rate slows and so do all bodily functions. It’s similar to when an animal hibernates for the winter.
40 minutes later
When Wisnierska came to, still being dragged through the air at a frightening pace, she initially had no idea how long she’d truly blacked out for. However, she then revealed, “It was about 40 minutes later that I woke up.”
She explained, “I thought I must have been unconscious for about a minute but then saw from my watch how long I had been out. From my instruments I saw I was as high as 6,900 meters.” That’s 22,600 feet!
Hoping that the clouds bring her somewhere safe
Wisnierska told The Sydney Morning Herald, “I was still flying but I realized I didn’t have the brakes in my hand. I saw my hands and the gloves were frozen…”
She added, “I didn’t have the brakes, and the glider was still flying on its own. I was thinking I can’t do anything, so I only have to wait and hope that the clouds were bringing me out somewhere.”
A glimmer of hope
Soon, though, a terrible dread set in about the fact Wisnierska was still so high in the sky. She confessed to The Age, “It was very hard. I wanted to see how high I was, but when I saw I closed my eyes again.”
After 15 more minutes of being pelted by enormous hailstones in the minus 50 temperatures, Wisnierska must have thought she was a goner — but then she noticed something which gave her a glimmer of hope.
The possibility of survival grows
To her amazement, the exhausted glider realized she wasn’t gaining in altitude anymore — she was falling! She revealed, “I thought, ‘Okay, try to spiral down again.’ After a while I saw the Earth, and I thought, ‘Wow, I probably will survive!’”
Stunningly, Wisnierska even found some dark humor in the situation, telling the BBC, “I could see the Earth coming — wow, like Apollo 13 — I can see the Earth!”
Searching for somewhere to land
As she descended toward the ground, the injured flyer tried to find a sensible place to land. She told BR Special, “I couldn’t see any roads. If I just landed, I might have had to walk for a day to get help.”
Then, her savior emerged — she spotted a farm with a huge pasture which would accommodate her landing. She admitted, “I just managed to make it, landing about 500 meters from the fence.”
The relief of having her feet back on the ground
Safely back on land, Wisnierska simply lay there for a while. She explained, “I was so cold and so tired, I just curled up on the ground to try to warm up.”
After a few minutes, though, a sound broke through her daze. She revealed, “My cell phone started ringing. I forgot all about it.” It was her ground team frantically calling to see if she was still alive!
Reunited and it feels so good
It turned out Wisnierska had landed on a farm 40 miles away from where she jumped in Manilla! Against all the odds, her parachute hadn’t sustained any significant damage, so she managed to land fairly safely.
Thankfully, her worried team were able to rush directly to her landing site thanks to the GPS device she was carrying, which allowed them to keep tabs with their high-tech monitoring equipment.
Escaping with fairly minor injuries, all things considered
The stricken flyer was then rushed to a local hospital. Naturally, doctors were afraid Wisnierska may have sustained brain damage from the high altitude, freezing temperatures, and physical battering she sustained.
Mercifully, though, she escaped with only a collection of bumps and bruises, as well as frostbite on her ears. She told The Standard, “I don’t believe in God. But I do believe in angels. I think they were the ones who brought me back safely.”
Winning the lottery ten times over
Godfrey Wenness — president of the Manilla Sky Sailors Club and organizer of both the Paragliding World Championships and the training event — honestly feared Wisnierska had died on his watch.
He told The Standard, “She was covered in ice. Her ears were nearly frozen off up there. It’s like winning the lottery ten times in a row — the odds of her surviving were that long.”
She can’t believe she’s alive
Wenness also spoke to SMH, explaining, “She’s got bruises all over her body from the hailstones and she’s recovering from frostbite to her extremities.” With barely restrained disbelief, he went on to talked about the enormous hailstones Wisnierska encountered.
He exclaimed, “Apples, oranges, up to rockmelon size. And her glider kept flying perfectly which is the amazing thing in this whole thing. Basically, she can’t believe that she’s alive.”
The science says Wisnierska should have died
Indeed, high-altitude expert Dr. J. Kenneth Baillie backed this up to BR Special. Based on the science, Wisnierksa really shouldn’t have survived. He said, “It’s generally accepted that if you are suddenly transported to an altitude above 7,000 meters, you will die within 10 or 15 minutes.”
This is equivalent to 32,000 feet, which Wisnierska exceeded when pulled upward. At that height the air contains only a quarter the level of oxygen a human normally breathes at sea level.
Hypothermia may have saved her life
Wisnierska did experience hypothermia during her ordeal — and this, on top of passing out, helped save her life. You see, hypothermia slows the metabolism, which in turn lessens the amount of oxygen a body requires.
This is why some patients who have suffered heart attacks or endured heart surgery are submerged in ice baths to purposely bring about hypothermia, as it will make their brain demand less oxygen.
Not everyone was so lucky
Over the next few days, as Wisniewska recovered from her brush with certain death, she was dubbed by many as “the luckiest woman in the world” — a statement that was soon thrown into even starker focus.
Sadly, it emerged that He Zhongpin, a Chinese paraglider who was part of the same practice flight as Wisniewska, was killed in the storm. His body was recovered the following day.
He’s body was found even further away
The 42-year-old Chinese paragliding team member was found even further away from Mount Borah than Wisnierska — 75 kilometers away, to be exact. While she got lucky and miraculously survived, it seems he received no such good fortune.
It was believed Zhongpin died in one of two ways — either he froze in the sub-zero temperatures of the storm, or he suffocated when the winds made it impossible to breathe.
Experience can mean nothing when dealing with the elements
Zhongpin, like Wisnierska, was by no means an inexperienced paraglider. He had represented his country in the sport he’d been living day and night for a decade, yet he was still fatally caught out by the storm.
Australian Hang Gliding Federation manager Chris Fogg told SMH, “This system sounds as if it was pretty strong — he could have been taken up at 1,200 feet a minute and beyond.”
Trying to find an explanation in tragedy
Wenness then weighed in, revealing that everyone taking part in the test flight had actually been thoroughly briefed about the storm formation that morning. He firmly stressed, “The other flyers in the area had given the storm clouds a wide berth.”
Regarding an explanation for why Zhongpin would have been caught up in the storm, Wenness reluctantly guessed, “Maybe he was trying to thread the needle between two cells, but we don’t know.”
You do not fly anywhere near them
Naturally, this would have been an incredibly dangerous thing to do, with Wenness saying, “You do not fly anywhere near them — not even 747s fly through storm cells.” Fogg seconded that sentiment.
He explained, “Most pilots will try to get down to the ground before they get close to something like that.” Wenness was adamant that, if Zhongpin had indeed decided to go toward the storm, it “99.9 percent” was what caused his death.
Wenness has an unusual take on the situation
Wenness then took an unusual tack — he argued that the incident actually showed how safe paragliding is, as opposed to highlighting its dangers! He said, “Look, Ewa got caught up in a storm that produces some of the most violent weather on the planet.”
He continued, “She was unconscious, and this glider kept flying. This is weather where if you flew into it in a 747, you’d have 350 people killed.” Many might have disagreed with him, but Wenness’ theory at least made some modicum of sense.
I cannot give it up
Overall, though, did the traumatic experience convince Wisnierska to give up on paragliding? Heck no, it didn’t! She told The Age, “Flying is too fantastic to stop because of an accident!” and reiterated to BR Special, “I cannot give it up.”
In fact, even though she invested in a new glider after the incident, she did toy with the idea of sticking with the one which saved her life! Makes sense, right — it could be seen as her good luck charm, after all!