Annals Of Adventure–Hang-Gliding Over Everest: Here’s an inspired idea. Hire a zillion porters. Hump both a microlight airplane and a hang glider to the Himalayan foothills around Everest. Wait for good weather (very important). Use microlight to tow hang-glider to 25,000-plus feet. Release. Hang glide over Everest. Land. Somewhere. Hopefully. Hmmm. I don’t know what they were drinking when they came up with this one, but British Microlight pilot Richard Meredith-Hardy and Italian hang-glider pilot Angelo D’Arrigo not only cooked it up, they actually set out to do it. Click here to read the full, hairy report. Here’s Meredith-Hardy, who flew the microlight, on what happened as he towed D’Arrigo toward Everest:

“All the time we had that massive South West Face of Everest in front of us. The colours were striking; grey rock with streaks of white snow and the famous ‘yellow band’ glowing in the early morning light. Up we circled, higher than Lhotse, a formidable spiky peak unlike the great hump of Everest just above us…At about this time in no turbulence there was a slight jerk and I realized we had a line break, and by the way my machine leapt forward I could immediately tell it was my end, whether it was the safety ‘weak link’ fuse which had broken or something else I had no way of knowing. Angelo suddenly would have been landed with 65 metres of rope. With all my high altitude kit on I don’t have much neck mobility so I couldn’t look round to see him and I didn’t see anything in the mirror; by the time I had circled round, Angelo, in a white glider against the vast white background of the upper Khumbu Glacier was nowhere to be seen. Vanished into thin air.”

What happened to Angelo? You’ll have to go read about it yourself…



Angelo At Altitude: “Damn, we need maximum lift and I forgot to put the other bird shoe on my left foot…”

(Photo: Over Everest Expedition)