A paraglider in China who had intended to simply test some equipment instead ended up unwittingly reaching barely survivable heights last week.

       Peng Yujiang, a 55-year-old paraglider in Gansu province, on Saturday morning flew nearly 8,600 meters above sea level — more than 28,200 feet, or about 5.3 miles — in the Qilian mountain range of northwest China’s Qinghai and Gansu provinces, according to state media.

       The episode was captured on a camera attached to his equipment and showed the harrowing conditions he experienced. Mr. Peng rose to a level almost on par with Mount Everest’s summit and aviation flight paths. His face and body are covered in frost and ice in the video, which was originally posted to social media and later shared by Chinese state media.

       “I felt the lack of oxygen. My hands were frozen outside. I kept trying to talk on the radio,” Mr. Peng said in a video recorded after the incident, according to Sixth Tone, an English-language, Chinese state-owned outlet.

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       According to local news media, Mr. Peng was testing equipment as part of “ground handling training” — a step that paragliders say is critical to managing safe launches — at an altitude of 3,000 meters above sea level, or about 10,000 feet. But a strong wind suddenly lifted him into the sky. He could not control the glider or land as the draft grew stronger and he was pulled up above the clouds.

       Mr. Peng was apparently the victim of a potentially dangerous phenomenon that paragliders call “cloud suck,” in which a pilot is rapidly drawn upward into a cloud. At extreme altitudes, people risk hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation, because of the thin air. Severe hypoxia can cause organ damage or death.

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