The Technical Skills Every Big-Mountain Pilot Needs Climbing a big mountain is one thing. Flying off it safely? That’s something else entirely. It’s that strange moment on a summit when the lungs are working overtime, the fingers are numb, and your legs are heavy, where you unzip your pack, pull out a glider, and switch from mountaineer to pilot. For Pierre Carter, this moment has played out across all seven continents. From the thin air of Everest to the icy silence of Antar

A Tale of Altitude, Adrenaline, and Airborne Ambitions Come True Two years ago, I called Mount Everest Base Camp home. I traversed the ice falls, snail-trailed the snowy inclines, and huddled alongside my Sherpa in our ice-cloaked tent just below the summit. This month-and-a-half adventure resulted in my takeoff just below the summit, making me the first person to legally paraglide off Mount Everest. To commemorate my experience and encourage other athletes to do the same, I

There are mountains… and then there’s Mount Vinson . There’s no such thing as easing in gently when it comes to Antarctica. It drops you into a white-on-white world where distance lies in plain sight, the silence roars, and your own heartbeat sounds like a bongo drum, and everything feels slightly surreal, including the fact that you’re about to attempt the final summit of the Seven Summits. Pierre’s journey began in Punta Arenas, a rugged town at the edge of the world that t

It was early December, and Pierre ventured from sunny South Africa to the snowscape of the South American Andes mountains for Paraglide Aconcagua's first-ever expedition. Touching down in Mendoza after nearly 15 years felt a little surreal for Pierre. The town had clearly had a facelift, but thankfully, the good meat and warm Argentine hospitality hadn’t changed a bit. There was also a silent sense of nerves in the air. Pierre was returning to Aconcagua older, wiser, and ca

7 January 2026. Antarctica. This morning, under a sky so clear it felt almost unreal, Pierre Carter stood on the summit of Mount Vinson, the highest point on the frozen continent and the final mountain of the Seven Summits . With that single step onto Vinson’s summit ridge, Pierre officially completed all Seven Summits on every continent on Earth . This is a feat achieved by only a handful of people worldwide. And for Pierre, it marks the culmination of a journey that began d