Just like WNE, I'm also a glider-bothering pax, but I have a tale to tell.
A couple of years ago, a Croatian Paraglider pilot (who shall remain nameless) turned up on his local mountain with a couple of mates, looking for an afternoons soaring fun. It was a nice hot, prefrontal day, lots of Cb's around & due to the temperature, they all lobbed off only in t-shirts and shorts.
before too long, the Croatian started to get a good strong climb. This developed into a really strong climb & before much longer, the vario was screaming as he found himself blasting up through the atmosphere at something like 40 feet per second, 2,400 ft/min if you will.
Realising he was being hoovered into a cunim, and hardly dressed for the occassion, he knew that he risked (among other things) being frozen to death, so with great presence of mind (finally), he deployed his reserve parachute, collapsed his glider & wrapped it around himself for insulation.
Eventually he passed out from Hypoxia & finally came to, under his reserve, drenched and frozen.
The barograph print out from his vario confirmed that he had climbed to 23,000 ft ato & travelled 50km downwind from launch, as a result of one Cb. He was also incredibly lucky not to have died from lightning, hailstones, oxygen starvation etc.
This is a true story and can be checked out at
www.xcmag.com (The croation survivor).
I've always had the utmost respect for Wx, you feel it a lot more on an oversized kite bobbing along at 20 kmh.