Microlight Flies Over Everest

One of two European microlight enthusiasts has made it -- he's become the first person ever to fly a microlight over the top of Mt. Everest in Nepal.

In fact, the entire venture has been a risky one. But it appears to have been worth the effort and the risk. Richard Meredith-Hardy made it over the summit Monday.

The idea was to use to use a Pegasus Quantum 914 trike to tow an ICARO 2000 Atos 2 glider over the top of the world. Italian pilot Angelo D’Arrigo was in the hang-glider.

Here's Meredith-Hardy's account of Monday's record-breaking feat:

Called Angelo on the radio, he was ready, it was five to seven, rather later than usual. Looked ahead - cloud swirling over the end of the strip, were we too late after all?

We waited for 5 minutes, it didn't look like the same sort of really persistent stuff we are used to, just a temporary bit of cloud - probably....

It cleared, Angelo said he was ready, I revved up the engine against Barty's rock, made sure the cameras were running, signalled to Barty to pull his rope to remove the rock and we were off. A long roll over the newly roughened strip but I was off with about 100 meters to spare. Circled round to the right over Namche - seemed to be climbing well, better than the other day, not turbulent, and it was only a minute or two before we were high enough to be able to land back again - that first bit is really scary - there's simply nowhere to go in the event of an engine failure or propeller damage on takeoff...

Settled down to a nice climb of 450 ft/min or so, circling overhead Syangboche as planned to get a really good bit of safety height before heading off towards Everest. Water temperature looked really good, the duct our tailor made in Namche the other day was really doing a good job, it never got above 101 degrees even at full power.

Our plan was to circle a bit over Syangboche at 12,000 ft, and get a few thousand feet and then head off directly to Everest straight over the Nuptse-Lhotse ridge. We headed off to Everest at 16,500 ft and passed the striking mountain Amadablam at just over 19,000 ft. Syangboche to Everest is only 30 Km and by this time it became apparent that at this rate of climb we were never going to get over the great wall of the Nuptse - Lhotse face so we turned left towards Everest Base Camp to make an approach up the Western Cwm. We came round the corner of Nuptse at 21,000 ft, I could make out the yellow and blue specks of tents at Everest Base Camp below in the rubble of the Khumbu Glacier and my first sight up the Western Cwm was incredibly dramatic, probably the most striking sight of the whole flight.

It is really difficult to describe the sheer vastness of the South West face of Mt Everest, this is one BIG rock. An the same scale, the Western Cwm, the valley with the great Khumbu Icefall in it and surrounded by Nuptse, Lhotse and Everest looked rather a small space so I circled to gain height in front of it until we got to about 24,000 ft and then we started circling up and up, over Nuptse and then on up towards Lhotse (27,890 ft), the fourth highest mountain in the World. Occasionally there was some mild turbulence but generally it was blissfully calm, on one occasion I got a bit too far into the lee of the west ridge and it got a bit bumpy and I had to make rather a sharp left turn to get clear of it, I saw Angelo bouncing around a bit in my mirror and there was a jerk or two as the tow line snapped tight but he hung on in there. My oxygen gauge, which I can only see in reverse in my mirror was showing a good quantity and fuel was OK. Engine temperatures OK, by this time the water had dropped to below 90 deg, oil temperature was about the same, both well within limits, and I was at full throttle at 5600 rpm, just under one bar of turbo boost and what I thought was rather high fuel pressure at just under one bar, but it all seemed to be working OK.

All the time we had that massive South West Face of Everest in front of us. The colors 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. Visibility was perhaps 150 miles; Makalu (27,765 ft) the fifth highest mountain in the World clearly visible off to the East and the vastness of the Tibetan plateau to the North speckled with low puffy clouds far below. 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 meters 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.

In the meantime it was all happening at Syangboche. We are used to maybe one helicopter a day, the two that came yesterday was unusual, but after we left not two but three helicopters arrived, though one was a small one which didn't get in the way. One was our friends from Asian Airlines who had heard from Lukla on the radio we were airborne and know to keep off our narrow bit of strip, and the third one was driven by the bloke who dumped all his stuff all over our strip yesterday and obviously keeps his radio switched off. We thought he understood our request to please stay the other side but he did it again, and parked right where Angelo or I might land any minute and tons of plywood and angle iron was dumped on it too. Barty, bless his cotton socks, went berserk and gave him an earful and a half (though the Russian probably didn't understand most of it) bur didn't really care less, so much for the fellowship of aviators. The Sirdar in charge of the remains of the film crew's stuff came to the rescue and all his people moved all the stuff off the strip in very short order and got their stuff loaded. Barty says he never saw a helicopter unloaded and loaded so quickly - and they were off. Good riddance.

Of course as soon as Angelo was no longer attached I shot upwards. The summit of Everest was just there in front of me so I flew by, it was about 8:15, an hour and a quarter since takeoff. Incredibly there were half a dozen people standing on top and four or five more very close, all taking a step a minute on their long last painful grind up the hill. I flew past two or three times too busy taking photos to really take it all in. On one pass I waved at the climbers and they waved back! I don't know who they were though there is a rumor that the Irish Everest Expedition is one of the few remaining on the go. I hope one of them might have a photo of me!

After a few minutes I turned for home. I could see a bit of green through the clouds where Syangboche was supposed to be, it still seemed reasonably clear of cloud but it was a long long way down. I headed directly for it. Once over the Lhotse - Nuptse Ridge I throttled back - the inlet manifold temperature plummeted from +10c to -25c and my engine nearly died.... I shoved it back to full throttle but, as I discovered, any throttle position would only give 3100 RPM -- the throttle had probably iced up in the sudden change of temperature, I left it at full throttle just in case it decided to pick up again.... This was an acute reminder that getting to the top of Everest is only half the journey, in fact more climbers have died on the way down than on the way up.

Still, I had plenty of height and at least my engine was still running, I carefully conserved my height and sailed several thousand feet above the summit of Amadablam to arrive over Syangboche at about 20,000 ft, a nice safe 8,000 feet to spare. This wasn't quite the end of my troubles though; the cloud was definitely increasing by the minute over the airstrip, in fact sometimes I couldn't see it at all. I tipped my machine on its wing to get down as quickly as possible in a steep spiral, I was doing over 2000 ft min at one stage. About 1000 ft above the strip my engine suddenly unfroze and started working normally, I did a reasonable circuit, a lousy approach, my engine stopped, and I landed at about 100 miles an hour, but I came to a halt without damage.

Of course after the immediate elation of having actually made it back intact, my first concern was what had happened to Angelo. I had no idea, but we expected him to return here so there was no immediate panic. I rang my beautiful wife Nicky to say we had done it -- to say she sounded relieved -- even if it was 3:00 am (local) her time -- is a bit of an understatement.

Massimo, Angelo's assistant came over to me with Angelo's satellite phone - he'd forgotten to take it with him. This was a rather serious development as we had planned to use the "SMS and GPS position" feature of our phones in an emergency outlanding situation, and as time went by with no sign of him it became increasingly clear that Angelo might have had to outland.

We contacted Kathmandu to try to arrange a search helicopter but this seemed to be difficult for several hours at least. I thought the most likely place he would have landed was the old Hillary strip at Mingbo which we had planned for -- the only problem being that it is in the middle of nowhere and of uncertain condition, it was last used in 1961... Massimo organized a medical kit and oxygen for when the helicopter arrived.

After an increasingly tense couple of hours the lady who runs the Lodge here suddenly came out shouting something. She has a radio link to the Police station in Namche, and they have links up the valley and Angelo had been located, apparently a bit bruised from a rough landing but otherwise safe and well. He had landed - perhaps appropriately - near the "Italian Pyramid," a scientific research station at Lobuche, a long way up the valley not a million miles from Everest Base Camp.

FMI: www.flymicro.com/everest