Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Wednesday, February the 14th, 2007. New South Wales, Australia. German paraglider, 36-year-old Eva Wisniewska is sweeping through the air high above Mount Bora. She slips, turns and glides effortlessly, bird-like, riding the eddies and updrafts of warm summer air. This is where Eva feels at her absolute peak. She tightens her grip on the control lights, then grits her teeth and dives to gain some speed, dancing deftly from one thermal current to another.
Using her radio, she checks in with the ground support team. She is waiting to hear the updated weather forecast. Up ahead, black clouds are gathering. But it'll take more than a chance of rain to stop Eva. She's soaring. After a few minutes, Eva glances around. She's surprised to find herself more or less alone. When she last looked, there were over 100 fellow paragliders in the air. Now she can only see a handful. Where did everyone go? The answer comes in the form of the swiftly darkening sky.
Her glider jolts and judders as she hits pockets of unstable air. She also notices the temperature dropping. She shivers, suddenly aware of how few layers she's wearing. Whenever she starts feeling the patter of rain against her face, she knows something is wrong. These small clouds shouldn't be big enough to produce significant rainfall. She's missed something. She scans the skies to see what the others are doing. She spots a few gliders tumbling and circling in the crosswinds, trying to descend. This is getting challenging.
though it still feels like she has things under control. But then the rain turns to hail. It pelts her face, stinging her skin, and then the winds begin to batter her. Gripping tight to the lines which control the parachute, Eva uses all her strength to keep command of her wings. It's time to take evasive action. She tries to deploy an emergency descent maneuver, turning sharply earthwards. It's got her out of trouble before, but try as she might, she can't fight the elements.
Suddenly, she's caught in a violent updraft. Sucked ever further away from the Earth, the sky gets even darker, the weather still worsening. The wind carries her higher and higher.
The climb ratio was still increasing like 10 meters, 15 meters, 20 meters and more. And I was really surprised and I couldn't understand why do I have such strong lift? My climbing didn't stop and I got higher and higher and I watched on my vario and I could see I'm 5,000 meters high.
Then I realized something is going wrong. And then I just said on the radio to my team leader, Stefan, I am 5,000 meters high and I cannot do anything. I'm still climbing. The glider was collapsing and turning around and I just tried to keep it open.
And I thought, what's going on? Within mere minutes, Eva's dreamlike glide over Australia has turned into a nightmare. And now there's no doubt that she is fighting for her life. Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice?
I was thinking about my parents and I knew I have to come down.
And I started to pray if there is a God. I just said, "Please help me." I knew I'm in trouble and I knew I don't give up. I'm John Hopkins from Noisa. This is Real Survival Stories. It's February 2007 and Eva is excited to be in New South Wales for the World Paragliding Championships.
It's the culmination of a dream that began 16 years earlier. Ewa was 20 when she first saw a group of paragliders launching into the air. She was fascinated by the ease with which they soared upwards, using only the lightest touch of the controls of their parachutes. Ewa wanted to have a go herself, but it was another nine years until she got the chance. That day came when she took a trip to visit her family in Poland. Her brother suggested they take a paragliding course together. Why not? She agreed and was soon hooked.
When I first time
make like an exercise just pulling the glider above the head and then making few steps and I could feel like something is lifting me and I lost the ground I was like maybe one meter above the ground but it was incredible like wow I got some wings and this was really a feeling I knew I will love it
Athletic and authoritative, Eva not only looks the part. It's clear to everyone that paragliding is her life passion. She's extremely good at it too. In fact, within four years of starting, she becomes one of the world's top-ranked professionals. She has a win at the German paragliding championship and numerous World Cups under her belt. For Eva, the lure of the sport is about pushing boundaries, taking calculated risks and forcing herself to stay at the top of her game.
That means winning more and more competitions. Now, aged 36, she has her sights set on victory in the World Championships in Australia.
When I first began to compete, I have won almost each competition I started. So it was very surprising me. And of course, my expectations were very high because if you are always the first one, of course, you want to keep the level. So when I went to Australia, of course, I wanted to win and well,
This was the point when I went there. And so, on a hot February morning in 2007, Eva finds herself standing on the hilly ridge of Mount Bora. Below her, stretching away far into the distance, is a yellow-orange landscape peppered with green scrub. Mount Bora is six hours north and inland of Sydney, in the New South Wales interior. It's beautiful here and sparsely populated. But the nearest town, Manila, has been a hive of activity for the last few days.
And now, gathered on this ridge with Eva, are 149 of the best paragliding pilots in the world. Today's event should be taxing, but it is actually something of a warm-up. This is an open competition, in which the pilots will compete to cover the greatest distance and stay in the air as long as possible. It's an opportunity to train for the World Championships proper in a few days' time, to learn the terrain and assess the opposition.
It's up to the pilot to decide which route to take. This is where Ewa's judgment will be crucial.
They've been warned of a possible storm gathering in the distance, but given the season, thermal turbulence over these sun-scorched hills is to be expected. In fact, it's why they race here. All part of the challenge. Eva breathes in deep to steady her nerves. It's only six months since she fractured her pelvis in a freak crash landing in the Swiss Alps. Naturally, she's a little apprehensive. Paragliding is an extreme sport, and not without dangers.
the pilot is always just a technical failure away from disaster. If it collapses mid-flight, their majestic parachute will become nothing more than a useless piece of canvas. But it's still considered to be pretty safe. It has an accident rate of between 120 and 360 for every 100,000 jumps. Ever was unlucky to experience such a significant injury. Ever stays focused on the task at hand,
She doesn't allow herself to think about the crash, the loss of control. She tries not to fixate on the memory of the mountain peaks rushing up to meet her. She'd be desperately unlucky, statistically speaking, to have another accident so soon. At 11:30 AM, the pilots start taking to the air. The territory around Mount Bora is perfect for the sport. The excellent updrafts here are produced by the small hills and ridges dotted around the flatlands below.
Though only 800 meters tall, Mount Bora is one of the highest points in the area. It houses four different launch sites. This allows paragliders to take to the air whatever the wind direction. Today, the pilots are all focused, but the atmosphere is jovial. Paragliding is very individual because we have a team, we have some friends, but actually everybody's alone with his glider and we're
We have the team results, but anyway, everybody's flying like for himself. So we have very nice community. We are all friends and even we are competing against each other. After the flight, everybody's really in good mood. We have many parties and everything. So it's really nice.
Stood on the ridge, despite the miles of outback stretching all around her, Eva's eyes are fixed on the sky. Unlike, say, skydivers, paragliders don't need the use of a plane to get into the air. Instead, to begin liftoff, they look for rising columns of hot air, also known as thermals. Paragliders can ascend one of these updrafts and then, once airborne, they can use prevailing winds to move from one thermal to another.
The German team has decided to hold back while they watch the other competitors climb on these bubbles of rising air. It's an excellent tactic as it allows them to interpret the weather more fully, learning from their rivals' mistakes and informing their choice of which route to take.
Our task is to find the thermals, so then we can climb, make altitude and then we can fly a distance. And of course flying, we lose the altitude, so we have to find the next thermal to climb again. And if there are some pilots, you can see already, okay, this one is climbing faster, so I go to this thermal.
This decision of the German team to delay isn't without consequences, however. Word comes through on the radios that the storm warnings have become more serious. But at this point, the bad weather is still 20 kilometers in the distance and not due to break until later that afternoon. It's a judgment call. Poor weather is unpredictable. But on the other hand, the incoming rain clouds will also provide stronger thermals, allowing the paragliders to potentially fly greater distances.
Finally, at 12:30 PM, with over a hundred gliders already in the air, the German team decide to launch. Eva makes a final check of her electronic equipment. Her GPS system will allow her to verify that she's passed target waypoints. Her variometer will track her altitude. She also has a two-way radio to keep in touch with the ground crew. She'll be relying on team leader Stefan Mast to give updates on the weather and course conditions.
Heart pounding. From the back of the group, Eva watches her teammates rush towards the edge of the ridge. It's her turn next. Her parachute is lying flat on the ground. A quick pull on the controls, and it's in the air above her. Everything's looking good. She can hear cries of encouragement from the ground crew. Focused, she turns and jogs towards the ridge. One, two, three. She's at the edge, and... Eva leaps into the void. She's airborne.
It's a glorious day in the air over Manila. Surrounded by her fellow competitors, Eva sees a riot of multicolored parachutes bobbing and bouncing against the bright blue sky. The unfamiliar but stunning landscape opens out beneath her. The dark green meadows, rugged outcrops, snake-like watercourses. It was like a perfect day. So we were flying, jumping from one thermal to the other, and it was really nice to fly.
We have speed like 35, 40 kilometers per hour. So the wind noise is like when you're on a bicycle driving quite fast. So you can feel the wind. So it was just nice, warm and great air.
But around 3pm, after two hours of flying, those crystal clear skies are beginning to darken. Soon, slate-grey clouds start to block Eva's way, reducing visibility. Eva isn't too concerned. She's confident she has the skills to cope with the weather, whatever it might throw up. There was really no worry about the weather. And when we were just flying to the north,
the clouds were growing bigger and bigger so we could see there is movement in the air, so the clouds were growing and we know we have to look also behind us and just observe what's going on. And at some point the clouds seem to grow together
And my thoughts were like, okay, it's far away and we are flying away from this big cloud. So of course I could see the danger, but I was thinking, okay, it's far enough. So I didn't think to go to land. Not everyone shares Eva's confidence.
While the early pilots have been able to pass through the clouds unharmed, dozens of competitors around her decide to cut their losses and return to Earth. Eva's teammate and friend, Andreas Malecki, is about a kilometer behind her. He decides that the conditions are becoming too risky. He radios through that he's abandoning the flight. But Eva is still relaxed. She resolves to fly around the growing cloud system.
She can see ten or so pilots nearby being buffeted by the wind, but she's confident that, if needs be, she can either push through the bank of clouds or fly above them. She's not alone. As she takes this course, two other pilots go with her, aiming straight for the mass of dark clouds ahead. Geralt Armstetter, an Austrian friend of hers, and Heer Jong Pyn, a member of the Chinese team. This is where the race could be won or lost.
I was preparing to fly around the cloud because I knew when I fly below the next cloud, it's going to suck me into the cloud. So I just turned a little bit to the left and wanted to pass by the cloud. But suddenly I got a strong lift.
I was a little bit surprised because I was not exactly below the clouds and it started to take me up like with three, three and a half and even then more like four meters per second and I was really surprised. My climb ratio started to grow and it was like five meters per second and it was faster and faster and I knew wow
I have to do something. Storms in New South Wales can take shape with little warning and at any time, whatever the season. But the southern hemisphere's summer months of December through February see increased occurrences of strong winds, hail and heavy rain. These turbulent weather systems usually develop slowly over a few hours. But on this February afternoon, the rain clouds are forming much faster than usual. Within minutes, they grow seemingly out of nowhere.
then merge into huge, dark configurations. From her position in the sky, Eva cannot see it, but a new cloud formation is taking shape around her. A larger cumulonimbus, a towering, anvil-shaped cloud. This is the beginning of a storm cell, an air mass in which updrafts and downdrafts swirl in consecutive loops. The narrow path that Eva is trying to navigate between two separate cloud systems is fast disappearing in front of her.
As they merge, the cold air from both systems is mixing with hot air coming up from the ground and causing a massive thermal uplift. Suddenly, Eva is sent hurtling upwards. Despite her years of experience, Eva can't control the parachute. And then, the utterly horrifying realization. Clear and unavoidable, she's being sucked right into the clouds.
The point when I started really to think I'm losing the control, it was when it started to rain. Because I could see the cloud before I came closer and it was not big, it was around 500 meters high and usually it's impossible that from clouds like this there is coming rain. And I knew
When it started to rain, that something is wrong and it was horrible, turbulent in the air. And when it even started to hail, then I knew I'm in trouble. Cloudsuck is a phenomenon that paragliders know to expect from time to time. The taller the cloud, the higher the pilot can be dragged. But this goes beyond standard cloudsuck. Gigantic hailstones begin to smack into Eva's face.
Trying not to panic, she initiates an emergency descent maneuver spiraling. It's the safest way to lose height quickly. She brakes sharply on one side and shifts her weight in the same direction, pointing the glider to the ground. This should allow her parachute to lock into a tight rotation. It should deliver her downwards at speeds of 20 meters per second. The g-force exerted on a pilot during a spiral puts them under incredible stress. It's a last resort.
ever pulls desperately at the courts so i started spiraling which helps to calm down faster but the climb ratio was even higher than my spiral ratio so after i don't know maybe two three minutes
I just gave up because I was turning so fast, trying really with all my possibilities to go down, but I quit. I knew I cannot. So I decided to try to fly away, to lose this lift. But after seconds, I got sucked into the clouds. I couldn't see anything. It was like
very dark fog and the glider was just turning and collapsing and I was going up and up and up. The storm is pulling ever upwards at over 30 meters per second, still spinning wildly, she is hoovered up into the darkness above. She can't see anything, but assumes the two pilots who were with her must be nearby and must also be in trouble.
Sudden flashes of lightning, blinding and deafening, rupture the darkness. Electric bolts of 30,000 degree white heat leap from cloud to cloud, briefly illuminating the maelstrom around her, revealing a blizzard of driving rain and hail. Aside from the prospect of being struck by lightning, Eva's thin clothes are only suited to the Australian summer on the ground. She's wearing three-quarter length trousers and a thin jacket.
Up here, pounded by the elements, her lack of protective clothing alone could mean death.
After a very short time, I was completely wet. It was horrible cold and the hail was hitting me everywhere. And I just tried to hide a little bit with my hands, but I had to keep the glider open and to fly very active. So I couldn't. So I was really like,
I jumped into the water. Everywhere was the rain and hail. So I was just freezing and it was horrible. Eva shivers violently. Only her years of training help her keep calm. She knows that if she's very lucky, if she can only hang on, she might just be flung out the other side. I knew...
I'm in trouble. And I knew I don't give up. I was thinking about my parents and I knew I have to come down. And I started to pray. If there is a God, I just said, please help me. I have to come down safe. But glancing at her variometer, Eva sees that she is still climbing.
and with every meter gained, the temperature continues to plummet. She has no choice but to keep her wings open. The worst thing that could happen would be for her parachute to collapse or be torn apart in the storm. That would see her hurtle to the ground. Then, out of nowhere, an unexpected moment of comfort amidst the chaos. She overhears the faint crackle of her radio. It's her ground support crew calling her. She doesn't know what to tell them. All she can say is that she can see nothing and do nothing.
The last time I used the radio it was to say to our team leader that I'm 5,500 meters high and after that I couldn't. I mean I was too busy to say anything and shortly after that around 7,000 meters I could feel a very
strong force like pulling me up. It was feeling like pushing me in my harness. My head was going to the back and I felt like pushed in my harness and the light just went off. I just lost consciousness. Eva's body goes limp. Her hands lose their grip on the command lines and drop away, flailing helplessly behind her.
7,000, 8,000 meters, still, Eva rises. At this altitude, the air is thin and hard to breathe. Her temperature gauge reads minus 40 degrees Celsius. Eva is living on borrowed time. It's around 3:15 PM that same day. Back on the ground, Eva's support team are on board their retrieval truck. Their job is to pick up the paragliders who have safely descended.
But when they lose contact with Eva, the German team leader Stefan fears the worst. Again and again they desperately call her on the radio but there's no reply. Eva's Austrian friend Andreas has landed safely. He now passes the news along. This is the worst storm he has ever seen. The German team scour the surrounding flatlands, examining any spot where Eva might have come down. It's a huge area to cover. They can find no sign of her. She couldn't still be in the sky. Surely
They look up at the storm, an impenetrable bank of black clouds. It's been ten minutes since they lost Eva on the radio. Then twenty minutes, thirty, forty, time ticks by. Back up in the sky, still unconscious, Eva continues to soar upwards. Her body is limp, like a ragdoll tossed about in the storm, but somehow her glider is still in one piece.
Eva is now at 9,000 meters. She's higher than the summit of Mount Everest and well beyond what climbers call the "death zone." She's approaching the cruising altitude of a jumbo jet, where cabins are pressurized and pumped with oxygen to keep humans alive. Hypoxia has set in. The oxygen levels present in Eva's tissues are too low for her body to sustain life. In order to protect her vital organs, her brain is in survival mode, keeping her blacked out.
So Eva is mercifully unaware that she's still rising at 40 meters per second. She's reaching the limit of the troposphere, the boundary of the breathable atmosphere. Needless to say, no paraglider has ever flown to this altitude and survived. It's an unofficial world record. At an astonishing 10,000 meters, Eva is literally suspended in thin air.
Her paraglider, now weighed down by a thick coating of ice, starts to turn slowly. Now she's no longer rising. For a few moments, Eva hovers like a feather, defying gravity. Then, a rustle of material and a rush of cold air. Eva's parachute collapses, and she plunges downwards towards the Earth at a speed of over 200 kilometers per hour.
Eva plummets, still unconscious, her body slumped in the seat of her glider. As death rushes up to meet her, she drops 3,000 meters. But then, miraculously, the parachute reopens. The glider starts to effectively fly by itself. Eva's in an atmosphere with more oxygen now. Jerked awake by the force of her wings reopening, she takes in a huge breath.
When I woke up, there were ice pickles on my handles, on the lines, everything was covered with ice. And I was just shaking. It was really so horrible. I didn't realize what happened. So I just tried to fly again, just to feel the glider, because...
In the cloud, I don't really see the canopy of the glider, so I just felt it through the handles of the brakes. But I tried to feel it and I couldn't. There was no pressure, so I realized that I don't have them in my hands. Then I looked up and I saw the handles hanging there with ice pickles and water.
I really thought what happened. I didn't know what happened. I felt really tired and freezing and
I was still in the cloud, I couldn't see anything and I was just shaking from the cold, from the horrible cold, trying to keep my hands in front of my face because the wind was blowing, everything was wet and covered with ice. Eva gazes around her in confusion. How long has she been unconscious? Seconds? Minutes?
She wipes her eyes with a shaking hand. She tries to focus on the fogged up dial of her watch. She can't believe it. She's been out cold for 45 minutes. Eva struggles to regain control of her wings. Only by doing that will she have any chance of navigating her way toward the ground. There's no way she should be alive. But even now, her ordeal isn't over. Eva is still at risk of being sucked back into the storm system.
She harnesses all her skills, all her resolve to circle downwards whilst avoiding updrafts. She can't yet see the ground, which means she can't get her bearings. She has no idea what's below her or how far she's traveled. Despite everything, her training kicks in. I didn't know how high I am, so I had to scratch my GPS to see the altitude and I was still at 6,900 meters.
So I knew I'm still in the cloud, still very high and still everything can happen. But I knew I'm alive. So I have to keep all my energy and concentrate and just don't make any mistake. And first I tried to fly straight to fly out of the cloud. And for a short moment,
I went out, but the sun was there, but below me I could see still only clouds, so I couldn't see the ground. And after a few seconds, I sunk again into the clouds and I couldn't see anything. I cannot just wait because I'm too high and if I just fly straight, it will take too long. I will die from the cold.
Every minute spent in the air brings her closer to hypothermia and shock. So Eva makes a desperate decision. She must force a rapid descent. This is a risky maneuver at the best of times, but she has no choice. It's her only chance of survival. Then I decided to try to spiral again.
just to come faster down. And I knew I have to do it very careful because the glider was full of water and ice. So I started very soft and I knew I have to stay very long time in the spiral on
Fortunately, the air was no more so turbulent, so I could really make the moderate and nice spiral until the clouds opened and I felt really like Apollo 13 coming to the Earth. For the next 45 minutes, Eva spirals towards the ground. Finally, through her frozen eyelashes, she sees land.
fields and trees. She spots cows, a farm. She can hardly feel her hands through her gloves, but she digs deep for a final burst of courage, focusing on a paddock as a potential landing spot. Eva's surprised at her own calmness. The horror of her ordeal hasn't yet sunk in. When I came out of the clouds, I stopped.
circling, stop the spiral and I knew now I have to concentrate to land safely. I just had to make one turn against the wind and could really land safely. When I was in the final glide, I just let the wind fly and in the last seconds I
Incredibly, Eva makes a perfect landing. She's elated, but utterly exhausted. She knows how important it is to stay awake until help arrives. Passing out here, in the middle of nowhere, could still be fatal.
She tries to extract herself from her harness, to move about and get the blood flowing, but it's futile. She's too weak to even stand up. The only horrible thing was still the cold. I was so freezing. I tried to walk around, to run, just to warm up a little bit, but I was so tired. I just couldn't. So I...
just lie down on my harness and curl like a baby in the belly and shaking. I was just waiting for, I don't know, just to warm up. I forgot completely about my team and I was not caring because I knew I survived and I didn't know if somebody's finding me or not.
Eva doesn't know it, but her team are still searching frantically for her. Her radio is out of action, but they keep calling her phone. Eva hears it ring. She fumbles to answer the call, but the connection keeps cutting out. With extraordinary presence of mind, she finds her coordinates on her GPS system. Fingers still frozen, she manages to text them to her colleagues.
Back in the truck, as the message comes through, it's pedal to the metal. They hurtle through the New South Wales countryside, eating up the 60 kilometres between them and Eva. When they find her, the team can't believe their eyes. Eva, alive if battered and bruised, with her parachute still frozen almost solid. Wrapping her in blankets, they put her in the back of the vehicle and rush her to hospital. The doctors are totally astonished that she's still alive. Some call it a medical miracle.
I had some frostbites on my face and I couldn't feel anything in my fingers. It was very cold and I had also on my leg, I had like, yeah, also frostbite from the hail. It seems that Eva has her comatose state in the sky to thank for the fact that she came through the storm in one piece.
The hypoxia slowed down her heart rate and put her body into a kind of stasis or hibernation, protecting her brain function and essential organs. Needless to say, her friends in the paragliding community are equally astounded by her story. When I came back to Germany, I went
the producer of the instrument invited me to come because he couldn't believe, couldn't imagine that the instrument was still correctly recording the flight in such altitude and in these conditions with minus 50 degrees. So he asked me to bring the GPS and
He downloaded the flight and he said, it's incredible. You are even higher than 10,000 meters. Eva already knows how incredibly lucky she is to be alive. This is only reinforced when she learns the fate of a fellow paraglider. Herr Jean-Pin, one of the other pilots sucked up into the same system, has been tragically killed. It's unclear how exactly he met his end. It's possible he was struck by lightning. His body is discovered the following day.
Despite everything she's been through, Eva is given a clean bill of health. It's hard to believe, but her experience hasn't put Eva off paragliding at all. She knows she can no longer win the world championships, the reason she came here to Australia in the first place. But she is determined to take to the air one more time, just to prove she won't be defeated by fear. Just one week later, Eva returns to Mount Bora. Unsurprisingly, the media are out in force.
And of course, it was one day before the Worlds started and I wanted to participate in the competition. And well, when I took off again, it was wow, beautiful, almost like the first flight. I could really, wow, feel, yeah, fantastic. Eva may be unscathed physically, but the memory of her colleague Herr Zhang Pin will remain with her.
It'll give her a new perspective on life and on competition. She resolves not to take unnecessary risks in the future. So I just gave like a promise to myself and to my parents that I will never risk again.
And this was the most difficult point because I was very ambitious. And of course, if I'm going to a competition, I want to win. And I had to learn really a lot and learn to say no, even if some other people are still flying, because it was for me like giving up.
But I had to learn that it's not about giving up, but about caring about myself and about my life. We hope you enjoyed this first ever episode of Real Survival Stories. Hit follow for weekly episodes. Next time, we meet Matt Lewis, a young Briton who goes looking for adventure in the remote waters of the sub-Antarctic and finds it. A rookie sailor, Matt joins the crew of a fishing trawler
His maiden voyage begins as the vessel sails out of Cape Town. But far out in the Southern Ocean, a polar storm will catch them all unawares. Stranded on the high seas, the lives of the crew will hang in the balance. And as the captain and first mate fail to act, it will fall to Matt to coordinate a last-ditch effort to abandon ship. That's next time on Real Survival Stories.