[imagesource: YouTube / Africa News]

Pierre Carter, the 56-year-old South African who has made it his life’s mission to climb to the summits of the highest mountain on each of the seven continents and paraglide off them, recently ticked off Mount Everest.

Look, he’s not the first adventurer to take flight from near the peak of the tallest mountain in the world, but he is the first one to do it legally, with the express permission from the Nepali government.

French alpinist and pilot Jean-Marc Boivin was the first person to fly a paraglider from Everest in 1988, but he did so unofficially.

Carter, as a part of his Seven Summits Seven Flights dream, flew into the cold ether from a spot close to the summit at an altitude of nearly 8 000 metres, PetaPixel reported.

From there, attached to his trusty paraglider, he cruised around the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas and experienced the ultimate freedom.

You can hear how the great expanse of things has touched him:

Even though Everest has become increasingly commercialised, plagued with boomboxes and disco tents and become more of “an ego trip just to get a selfie”, getting to the top still takes some doing.

For an experienced climber like Carter, the trek didn’t come without a few challenges. In a blog post on his website, he describes how after arriving at Camp Two, he “caught a horrible virus”:

“Trying to overcome an illness at 7,000 meters is near impossible, and Pierre’s fever had him sleeping outside of his sleeping bag despite the temperature closing in at -15 degrees.”

After the Sherpas gave Carter a puff of rich oxygen, his spirits lifted and he reached Camp 4 on Friday, May 13. There he waited for the clouds to disperse and the winds to die down and then he set up his Nova Double Skin gliders and jumped off the South Col.

The explorer completed the feat on May 15 after successfully obtaining a permit from the Nepalese Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Civil Aviation.

While the rest of his mountaineer company descended on foot, Carter reached speeds of 50 miles per hour, taking only 20 minutes to reach his destination — the small settlement of Gorakshep, which is at an altitude of 5 164 meters.

Carter also documented the flight on social media:

 

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A post shared by Pierre Carter (@7summits7flights)

Next up for Carter is flying off the top of Mount Vinson in Antarctica and then Mount Cook in New Zealand.

[source:petapixel]