Action Camera-Equipped Paraglider Accidentally Gets Sucked 28,000-Feet Into the Clouds, Survives

Peng Yujiang, a 55-year-old paraglider with five years of experience, set out to test a second-hand harness in China’s Qilian Mountains. He wasn’t planning to fly—just shake out the gear at 10,000 feet above sea level. But nature had other plans. A freak updraft, known as a “cloud suck,” grabbed him and hurled him skyward, launching an ordeal that would see him soar to 28,208 feet—higher than most commercial flights and just shy of Mount Everest’s 29,029-foot summit. Thanks to a camera strapped to his glider, the world got a front-row seat to his movie-like survival story.

Cloud suck isn’t a term you hear every day, but for paragliders, it’s a rare and terrifying phenomenon. It happens when powerful convective currents beneath a cumulonimbus cloud act like an invisible vacuum, pulling anything in their path upward with relentless force. For Peng, it was like being strapped to a rocket he didn’t sign up to ride. “I had just bought a second-hand paragliding harness and wanted to test it,” he told China Central Television. “After a while, the wind suddenly picked up and lifted me into the air. I tried to land as soon as possible, but I failed.” Within 20 minutes, he was 18,000 feet higher, enveloped in a freezing, disorienting whiteout.

Conditions at that altitude are brutal. Temperatures plummeted to -35°C (-31°F), turning Peng’s exposed face and hands into ice-crusted sculptures. Oxygen levels dropped to dangerously low levels, flirting with what mountaineers call the “death zone.” His gloves weren’t fully zipped, leaving his hands numb and nearly frozen. “It was terrifying… Everything was white. I couldn’t see any direction,” Peng recounted to China Media Group. “Without the compass, I wouldn’t have known which way I was going.” The footage, shared on Douyin (China’s TikTok), shows him gripping the glider’s controls, ice crystals glinting on his gear as he fights to stay conscious.

Navigating a paraglider in a cloud suck is like trying to steer a kite in a hurricane. Peng’s attempts to spiral downward—a standard maneuver to lose altitude—failed repeatedly as the updraft kept him pinned in the sky. His canopy collapsed multiple times, and he believes he may have briefly lost consciousness. “I thought I was flying straight, but in reality, I was spinning,” he told CCTV. Yet, somehow, he kept his wits, relying on a compass and radio contact with his friend Gu Zhimin on the ground. After over an hour airborne, Peng landed 19 miles from his starting point, shaken but alive, where Gu and another friend were waiting.

Survival at such heights is a medical marvel. Above 26,000 feet, the air is so thin that hypoxia—oxygen starvation—can set in fast, clouding the mind and sapping strength. Peng, without an oxygen mask, endured conditions that would incapacitate most. “A normal person cannot be exposed at 8,000 meters without oxygen [so] this is not something that can be done voluntarily,” a sports bureau official told Sixth Tone. Peng’s ability to stay conscious, or at least recover quickly if he blacked out, likely saved his life.

Chinese authorities weren’t as celebratory. Because Peng hadn’t filed a flight plan, his ascent was deemed unauthorized. The Gansu Provincial Aviation Sports Association slapped him with a six-month flying ban, a decision that also extended to Gu for posting the video without permission. “He barely made it out alive. It’s not like he wanted to fly that high,” one Weibo user argued, reflecting a wave of online support for Peng.

“As soon as I came out of the clouds, I was very excited because I had survived,” he told China Media Group. His flight, though unintentional, pushed the boundaries of what’s possible, coming within a whisker of Wiśnierska’s record. Yet, as he admitted to CCTV, the ordeal left him rattled: “It’s still frightening to think about. I’m not sure about the future, but for now, I definitely won’t fly for a while.”
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