OK, forget paragliding. I’m sticking with bungee jumping.
She survived? :eek:
I like the first sentence.
Encased in ice? daaaaaamn.
Holy Cr–! I can’t begin to fathom being whooshed up to the height of airplanes, merely strapped to one of these. And under those conditions, no less. If the storm, lightning, hail, lack of oxygen and below-freezing temperatures didn’t get me, I’d die from sheer fright. :eek:
How does a paraglider encounter “orange-sized” hail and not suffer enough damage to the glider to render it useless? How does someone black out due to lack of oxygen for a period of an hour and then wake up without stimulation at minus 58 degrees F, and just happen to be in a position to control her craft to safety? If she has ice all over her, isn’t it safe to assume that the glider would also be covered in ice? Am I missing a whole hell of a lot of detail here?
I’ve always known that paragliding was dangerous as hell, but that article shines some new light on just how! Encased in ice? Unconscious for an hour? Attacked by eagles?!?
Ye gods and little fishes.
This is an extreme example of something that happens to hang glider pilots frequently. A guy I used to fly with got sucked into a cumulus cloud in the Owens Valley in California, and was flipped upside down as his glider was hurled up through the cloud. He said he was jumping on the crossbar to try to break it to decrease the lifting surface. He was finally spit out the side of the cloud and deployed his parachute. Pilots who are not so lucky are termed “ice tacos” when their bodies are discovered inside their collapsed wing, encased in ice.
She was unconscious for an hour? Holy Magoly!
Ha. Ice taco.
Totally incredible.
Great, now I have anecdotal evidence for my fear of heights. Not that I’d have gotten on one of those in the first place…
At the bottom of the article, there’s a link to another story: Drunk Fisherman Wrestles with Shark, Dateline: Canberra.
Holy Hell, paragliding at the edge of storm systems, shark wrestling under the influence… what is it about Australia that affects one’s sanity?
How long ago would you say that you were told the term “ice taco?”
Man, Aussies are some tough bastards.
1989
I am not a paraglider, and though I know one, I don’t expect to be speaking to him for a couple months so I’ll just wing it and if I’m wrong, please correct me gently.
(thank you)
A paraglider is a parachute wing. It’s a cleverly shaped cloth contrivance, and it survives due to the “mighty oaks break where grasses bend” property of objects. Not being ridgid, it gives under impact rather than being punctured (mostly). No doubt it did suffer some damage, but wings can take some hits before being rendered nonfunctional. A ridgid metal, wood, or composite wing may not have fared as well, being made of more brittle materials.
Based on other situations where people have been lofted to great heights by storms and survived (and there are other instances) she probably “woke up” during a descent to a lower, more oxygen-rich altitude. The stimulation was having enough oxygen to remain concious.
As for “just happen to be in a position…” - flying things, contrary to public fears, are not entirely prone to falling helplessly out of the sky. Indeed, learning to fly anything (including skydiving) incorporates recovering from “out of control” postures and attitudes. During such instruction, one learns that the key to recovering control is having sufficient altitude and time to take the necessary steps to reassert mastery over the machine. In other words, she might well have been out of control in some weird position, but being so high she had ample time to sort everything out prior to smacking into the ground.
Probably. But, being flexible, manipulation of the fabric - either by the pilot or by the motion induced by the wind/flight - will tend to crack and break the ice, enabling it to fall off the paraglider.
In fact, using a flexible surface to break up and remove ice is used in “de-icing boots” in many airplane wings
Of course, I don’t know that that is, in fact, what happened. It’s just an off-the-cuff guess.
Yeah.
It’s a mainstream media report, so it’s absent a lot of details that might shed more light on the situation.
At least one other pilot caught in the same storm died. From the sound of it, he might have been “ice taco’ed”
There are historical reports from WWII of men parachuting from destroyed aircraft and falling to earth entirely encased in up to two inches of ice. They were described as “human hailstones”. What happened to her isn’t unprecedented, what’s unusual is that she survived.
This lady is German.
Here is a more detailed article
Ah, I she she was flying in Australia but not from there. Missed that bit. Well, she’s a tough bastard too.
Um… did everyone notice the paragraph at the bottom of the article mentioning that earlier this month, another paraglider was attacked by a pair of WILD EAGLES!?!?
Dammit TLD, we had them going for a minute there, and you had to 'fess up. Why, I ask you?