Quite the record

32,500 feet in an open-basket hot air balloon. From the Telegraph:

The 'mad Englishman' sets a new record
The British explorer David Hempleman-Adams has broken the world altitude record in a hot air balloon.

Mr Hempleman-Adams endured temperatures of minus 60C to fly his balloon to 32,500ft (6 .1 miles) � just above the cruising height of a jumbo jet � and smash a record that had stood for more than 27 years.

An airline pilot flying below the 50-year-old adventurer radioed him to say: "Only a mad Englishman would do that in an open basket."

It was his fourth attempt to break the record set by Carol Davis, an American, who flew at 31,299ft in 1979.

Under aviation rules, altitude records have to exceeded by three per cent. The sealed black box was taken away for ratification by an official observer. The result is expected to be confirmed in the next four weeks.

The balloon, with the explorer in a 3ft by 4ft basket and wearing a parachute, was launched from a sheltered site near Red Deer, Alberta, at 5.20pm British time on Friday. He landed just under two hours later at 7.17pm.

At one point in the flight, his equipment started to freeze and the burner went out. Despite wearing an oxygen mask, the explorer also suffered slight hypoxia (dizziness through lack of oxygen).

The descent provided the greatest challenge. When Mr Hempleman-Adams reached 32,500ft, he discovered that he only had five per cent of his fuel left, forcing him to descend at 1,500ft a minute.

"It was pretty hairy," he said yesterday. "Doing it at that speed made the balloon very unstable and it was rotating and shaking the whole way down. It was such a hard landing, I think I must be two inches shorter." It could, however, have been far worse � he landed near the only lake and power cables in the area but managed to miss both.

And just one of Mr. Hempleman-Adams other adventures:

In 1998, he became the first man to do "the adventurers' grand slam" � the highest mountain on each of seven continents plus the four geographic and magnetic poles.