Last updated at 21:12 16 February 2007

She has been described as the "world's luckiest woman".

And as Ewa Wisnierska began recovering from the most incredible ordeal, she probably thought that was an understatement.

VIDEO: Ewa recalls her ordeal

Caught in a raging storm, the 35-year-old paraglider had been sucked up to a height of 32,000ft - higher than Mount Everest.

She survived lightning, pounding hailstones as big as tennis balls, temperatures as low as minus 50c and oxygen deprivation. She came down to earth covered in ice and gasping for air - but alive.

Doctors feared she might have suffered brain damage - but apart from frostbite and bruising she was given a clean bill of health. During her 80-minute ordeal under the span of her paraglider, the German adventurer was taken so high that she passed out for nearly 40 minutes.

As she remained unconscious with the storm throwing her and her parachute about like a puppet on a string, her ground crew used state-of-the-art monitoring equipment to follow her progress across the angry skies.

"You can't imagine the power," Miss Wisnierska said as she recovered from the ordeal in a hotel in the small New South Wales town of Manilla, bandages covering her frostbitten ears and legs.

"You feel like nothing in that power, tossed around like a leaf from a tree."

In that same storm, a Chinese paraglider died from oxygen deprivation and the freezing temperatures.

Miss Wisnierska and 200 others had gathered at Manilla for training flights in readiness for next week's Paragliding World Championships.

Fitted out with specialised clothing to protect themselves at 5,000ft, they launched themselves from a 500ft cliff in the hope of picking up good 'thermals'.

But Miss Wisnierska and the Chinese flier soon found themselves being dragged upwards into storm clouds that had gathered. Her ground crew were alarmed to see her soaring from 2,500ft to more than 32,000ft in 15 minutes.

"Before I passed out I found myself being pulled up and up at a violent rate. I was trying to fly around the clouds, but I got sucked into them at a speed of 65ft a second and then I started to spiral. I was shaking all the time. It was dark, like the night.

"Lightning was flashing all around me, huge hailstones were battering me and there was nothing I could do about it. I knew then that the chances of my survival were almost zero.

"Ice was forming on my sunglasses and instruments and I couldn't get any air - and then I passed out.

"It was about 40 minutes later that I woke up. I thought I must have been unconscious for about a minute but then saw from my watch how long I had been out. From my instruments I saw I was as high as 6,900m (22,600ft)."

Miss Wisnierska said that passing out probably saved her life in those conditions - her heart rate slowed down and put her into a kind of hibernation. The previous altitude survival record for a paraglider without oxygen was 24,000ft.

She saw a farm and managed to steer down towards it: "I could see the earth coming, wow, like Apollo 13 - I can see the earth!"

She landed safely, 40 miles from her launch site. Somehow her parachute had survived without damage. Event organiser Godfrey Wenness said: "She was covered in ice. Her ears were nearly frozen off up there.

"It's like winning the lottery ten times in a row - the odds of her surviving were that long."

Miss Wisnierska added: "I don't believe in God. But I do believe in angels. I think they were the ones who brought me back safely."