U.S. millionnaire adventurer Steve Fossett who tried to travel solo around the world in his balloon the Solo Spirit, flies over the East coast of Australia, midway between Sydney and Brisbane. He decided on Friday, August 17, to abort the bid due to bad weather someplace near the Argentine and Brazil border. PHOTO - REUTERS
ANTOFAGASTA, Chile – U.S. adventurist Steve Fossett survived a rough ride over the Andes mountains on Thursday and was approaching the half-way mark in his around-the-world solo ballon bid. Twelve days after lifting off from Australia, the 57-year-old millionaire has overcome two daunting hurdles – crossing the vast Pacific Ocean and clearing the 20,000-foot (6,100 metre) Andean peaks that straddle the border between Chile and Argentina. „He passed over the Andes without any problems,“ an operations manager at the northern Chilean airport of Antofagasta told Reuters. Fossett‘s mission controllers in St. Louis, Missouri, said fierce crosswinds over the mountains gave Fossett a good scare, prompting him to don his emergency parachute as he recalled a near-fatal accident in his previous solo balloon challenge in 1998. „He had a pretty good shaking,“ said Jim Mitchell, a member of Fossett‘s mission control team in St. Louis, Missouri. „The wind was shifting around and bouncing him up and down, and he said he put on his parachute as a precaution.“
Fossett has traveled almost 12,000 miles (19,300 km) but is still short of matching his own 1998 solo ballon distance record of 14,200 miles (22,850 km).
Reuters
