Flygirl and the world of Paragliding - 2007 XC-Open - Manilla

2007 XC-Open - Manilla - DAY 1 Ewa talks to Kari Castle

KARI CASTLE speaks to Ewa about her Cu Nim experience:

www.karicastle.com

This is Kari and Ewa's story

As the waves settle here in Manilla the feelings are still on edge as the reality of what took place last Wednesday…the Cu Nim day…

That day was going off early in the cloud dept. I did not enter the competition so I was free flying with the gang. Not long after we started on course it was obvious to me the clouds were developing fast. We were all on a course following the road north towards Baraba and Bingara. There were huge cells to the west that already had rain dropping and a huge cell way off to the east that looked threatening. What I saw was a path down the middle with nice clouds. As we were heading north my feelings were that we either needed to get way ahead of these two pinching storms or just go land. That’s when I decided to leave the strong lift before getting to the clouds and race ahead.

As I got to Baraba it still didn’t feel right and by then there was a bigger area to the west that was dropping rain and to the east the cell had caused a huge gust front lifting the dirt out of this mine up in the mountains. I knew then I could get to Baraba safely and land and that’s what I did. To my amazement I watched as all the pilots I was flying with stayed high at cloud base and continued to fly north as if nothing was wrong. I sat there on the ground as this storm to the west really starting to kick in, the winds picked up and the rain was close. I was very happy to be on the ground and wondered what they were all thinking??

Four people got sucked up into this huge Cu Nim. Two pilots while trying to descend ended up throwing their reserve and landing with some injuries. One pilot was found dead and the other pilot, one of the top female pilots in the world went up over 32,000’ and survived to tell her story. From what hear its media frenzy at the moment, as it should be. To think last week the frenzy was about Niki Mosses encounter with the wedgies…this story is up there with the most amazing survival stories I’ve ever read about!!

Two nights ago, the day after it happened I went for a visit to talk to Ewa directly. I was tired of hearing rumors bla bla bla…I wanted to see how she was and hear her side of it. I sat with amazement as she very thoughtfully answered all of my questions like…what happened? How did you get sucked up? What did it feel like being inside that monster? What if anything would you do different? How did the glider fly itself for over 30 mins while being up between 8 and almost 10,000 meters???

Her story was something like this….

They saw the huge cells on either side getting pretty big but were able to just get in front on them, now the huge cell was behind and pushing them nicely with a tail wind kind of like riding the wave. They were high while leaving the last climb and going to the next. The cloud out in front didn’t look that big but they were too high to go directly to it so Ewa decided to go around it…at first she encounter light lift which is typical stuff associated with being close to clouds…around 1meter per second she recalled.

Then it started getting stronger and stronger, she started to get nervous and just then she hit 20 meters per second lift!! She tried flying straight out, big ears etc….but obviously once a PG is in that kind of lift your not going anywhere but up!! That’s what happened she had no choice at that point she was stuck and out of control she said. It was really strong and before she new it she was in the cloud being pelted by rain and hail. Her last transmission on the radio to her teammates was around 4,000 meters, she reported being sucked into the cloud without being able to get out.

After that she said it was completely violent air, it took everything out of her to keep the glider flying somehow, there was lightning all around her, thunder and her harness was filling up with hail!!! Not long after that she must have passed out, her track long shows that she continued to climb up to 9,642 meters, over 32,000’!!! She was up there doing gentle circles, most likely because she was slumped over getting some Zzzz’s J for over 25 mins. At some point her track log shows that she dropped 30 meters per second and lost 3,000 meters rapidly….

Soon after is when she regained consciousness. She awoke to find herself flying, still in the cloud, not knowing where she was. Very disoriented she went to pull breaks to steer and realized she didn’t have the controls in her hands. That’s when she noticed her hands, body, harness, glider was completely encrusted in ice!! She managed to get her hands in the toggles and tried flying straight. She couldn’t see because of the ice on her glasses so she went to scrap them off and ended up busting them..now she was without eye protection. She wanted to know how high she was so she scratched the ice off her vario to find she was still up at 6,900 meters.

While flying straight she realized she was in sink and thought she should spiral down instead of flying straight looking for the edge of the cloud. So she did gentle spirals all the way down to around 1,800 meters when she popped out the bottom of the cloud!!! She said she was never so happy to see the EARTH!!!

She had no idea where she was and didn’t care. She saw a farm house and thought that was her best option for landing…perhaps someone would be there to help. She ended up having a perfect landing even with the glider being covered in ice, her harness being chuck full of ice etc. Right after landing she started to walk around but was shivering and shaking so bad that she couldn’t walk anymore. So she lay down and curled up into a ball to stay warm.

This saved her life at the end because the doctor said that if she continued to walk around that the cold blood out of her extremities would have gone to her heart and killed her instantly. LUCKY GIRL….As she laid there next to her gear she heard the phone ring..it was her team mates calling her….she was saved, she hadn’t even thought about calling at that point!!! The doctors also said that the other thing that saved her was the fact that she passed out, her body essentially shut down which it then was able to keep the most important thing alive..her heart. This girl is one lucky girl…how does a prototype comp wing fly by itself for over 30 mins in a CuNim between 8-10,000 meters??

How is it that her whole body didn’t get completely frost bitten? How did her mind and body survive being at altitude for so long? How did she live and the Chinese pilot didn’t?

She obviously has great things left on this earth to do!!! That’s all I can say….

Last Updated ( Friday, 01 February 2008 )

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