I Survived Getting Sucked Into Storm While Paragliding, Reaching Altitude of Over 30,000 Feet (Exclusive)

Ewa Wiśnierska was preparing for the World Paragliding Championships when a freak storm hit and she quickly found herself fighting to stay alive

In February 2007, days before the start of the World Paragliding Championships in Manilla, a small town in New South Wales, Australia, Ewa Wiśnierskatook 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 Wiśnierska 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 six miles above the earth for nearly 45 minutes — at an altitude commercial jets often fly — clad in only a light jacket.

She regained consciousness after her paraglider descended to 20,000 feet, covered in ice and bruised. Nearly three and a half hours into her hellish ordeal — which a veteran paraglider on another team did not survive — she was finally able to escape the storm, landing on a patch of farmland 54 miles from where she started. Here she tells her incredible story of survival in her own words, as told to PEOPLE's Johnny Dodd.

The winds were out of the south that afternoon. I remember the race organizer telling everyone, "We have nice weather today, but in the afternoon there’s a possibility of thunderstorms, so be careful." We weren’t racing that day, but the point of the competition was to fly as far as possible, so we could learn the area and the terrain, and get prepared for the world championships.

Our team let a lot of the other pilots take off first and as we were waiting, we could see that far away from us two clouds were starting to form. They looked big. We decided to fly to the north because that’s where the wind was pushing us, flying from one cloud to the next, looking for thermals to lift us up. After flying maybe 37 miles from our takeoff point, we could see that behind us the clouds were growing and growing, building into one huge cloud. But since I was flying away with the tailwind, I kept thinking, "OK, I can see the thunderstorm, but I’m escaping it."

But suddenly I got a very strong lift and that surprised me. I didn’t want to get higher, so I tried to descend (by pulling down on the lines on the ends of the paraglider), but that didn’t help — and I continued to climb. I decided to make a spiral (a maneuver used to descend), but this didn't help either.

"Oh, this is not good," I told myself. I tried another maneuver in order to descend, but it still didn’t help. The cloud was sucking me up inside of it.

Normally, we climb at a rate of about 4 yards per second. Suddenly I was being lifted up at 24 yards per second. "Oh my god," I said to myself. "What’s going on? This can’t be possible." I knew I was in serious danger and was trying to get myself out of the cloud, but I couldn’t. All around me the air was so turbulent, moving up and down violently, sometimes causing my paraglider to collapse while I fought to stay in control and the rain soaked me.

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I couldn’t see anything because I was surrounded by the dense fog in the cloud. At some point I managed to call out on our radio to our team leader (on the ground below) and told him, "I’m at 5,000 meters (about 16,404 feet). It’s raining and it just started to hail. I can’t do anything and I’m still climbing."

It just kept getting darker and darker. I was being pelted with hail, but I had so much adrenaline flowing and I was so focused on keeping the paraglider open (so it could continue to stay aloft) that I didn’t care. I started hearing thunder and seeing lightning flash in front of me and behind me. I was still hoping to escape from the cloud and land, but I realized that escape wasn’t possible. There was nothing I could do.

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I began thinking about my parents and telling myself, "I have to come back. I have to land safely. Dying is not an option." I knew I could not do that to my parents.

I kept telling myself not to panic. I’m not religious, but I’ve always believed in some higher power. So I started praying while the lightning flashed around me and I kept climbing higher. I told myself, "I’m in the hands of God now."

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I felt like I was on a carousel, being pushed and pulled upward, and there was nothing I could do.

At some point, I remember feeling really tired and that’s when I lost consciousness and passed out. When I came to, I soon realized that 45 minutes had passed. All my equipment was covered in ice. I had to scratch it over and over to get the ice off of my GPS and finally saw that my altitude was around 22,966 feet.

I later learned that I had reached over 32,986 feet while I was unconscious. It was so cold, probably around minus 55 degrees. You cannot imagine this cold. It was the most horrible thing I had ever felt. I had no idea where I was. I just kept my hands in front of my face, trying to stay warm because all I had on was a T-shirt and a light jacket.

I could not believe how high I was, but I quickly noticed that the air had become calmer and less turbulent. Finally, for just one short moment, I flew out of the cloud and all I could see below me were more clouds. Everything was covered in white and I couldn’t stop shaking.

As I was telling myself that I needed to calm down or I would freeze to death, I could tell my paraglider, which was filled with water and hail, was sinking. I decided to try and make a spiral again, knowing I had to be very careful because of how heavy the canopy had become. It seemed to work, so I just kept spiraling and spiraling downward, hoping that I could come out of the clouds.

I don’t know how long it took, but at some point the clouds started to open and I could finally see the ground. Seeing the earth again was such a beautiful moment. I felt like I was on the Apollo 13 coming back, coming home.

I was desperately looking for a road or a farm where I could land. Finally, I saw some cows and realized that where there were cows there would also probably be people. I landed softly and knew I was saved, but I was still so cold. I couldn’t feel my fingers. My ears were so frozen I was afraid that I would lose them. And my harness was so heavy — because it was filled with ice and hail — that I couldn’t lift it.

I managed to get out of my gear and tried to run around to warm up, but it didn’t work. I was so tired that I just curled on the ground, hoping to get warmer. My radio no longer worked, but all of a sudden I could hear my phone ringing. It was one of my team members. We spoke for a moment, then the connection went dead. So I texted him my GPS coordinates and 45 minutes later they found me and took me to the hospital. Other than some frostbite, which eventually went away, everything was fine.

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Today, I still fly — but just for pleasure and to give courses to the people who come to my paragliding school. Competing no longer makes any sense to me.

This definitely changed a lot of priorities and made me realize that there are much more important things in life than championship cups and medals. I often ask myself why was it that I survived and this other pilot did not? I still can’t believe it and I'm convinced that I still have important things to do in this life. And every time I fly somewhere in a plane, I always look out the window as we go in and out of the clouds and I tell myself, "We’re high, but not as high as I was."

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