In February 2007, days before the start of the World Paragliding Championships in Manilla, a small town in New South Wales, Australia, Ewa Wiśnierska took off on a training cross-country competition flight with 200 other competitors to check out the local terrain and the flying conditions. Before long the calm weather vanished and Ewa found herself fighting to stay alive after being violently sucked higher and higher up into a massive storm system. Lightning flashed around her as she was tossed about inside the enormous, pitch-black cumulonimbus cloud that had swallowed her. She eventually passed out from the lack of oxygen and drifted helplessly some six miles above the earth for nearly 45 minutes — at an altitude commercial jets fly — clad in only a light jacket. At one point, she was higher than Mount Everest. Ewa finally regained consciousness — covered in ice and bruised — after her paraglider descended to 20,000 feet. Nearly 3½ hours into her hellish ordeal — which a veteran paraglider on another team didn't survive — she was finally able to escape the storm, landing on a patch of farmland 54 miles from where she started. Doctors said at the time that passing out may have been crucial in helping her endure the elements. Today, Ewa still teaches paragliding to others, but says competing no longer makes sense to her.
