China inaugurated the world’s highest bridge, the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge, towering 2,051 feet above a river in Guizhou province. Concurrently, Polish skier Andrzej Bargiel achieved a historic first by climbing and skiing down Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen, a remarkable feat given the extreme conditions at high altitude.
The world’s highest bridge opened to traffic in China on Sunday, state media said, capping an engineering feat three years in the making and snatching the record from another bridge in the same province. The Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge towers 2,051-feet above a river and vast gorge in the country’s rugged southern province of Guizhou, also home to the 565-metre Beipanjiang Bridge that is now the world’s second highest. Live drone footage broadcast by state media on Sunday showed vehicles traversing the immense structure, its support towers engulfed in clouds. State news agency Xinhua said Wednesday that nearly half of the world’s 100 highest bridges are located in province.Polish skier climbs Everest, skis down sans extra oxygenA Polish adventure skier has become the first person to climb Mount Everest and then ski down it without using supplemental oxygen, he and his sponsors announced. The skier, Andrzej Bargiel, 37, completed the feat last Monday, taking four days to ascend from base camp and then two days to ski back down. In videos taken at the top of the mountain, where oxygen is only one-third that of sea level, Bargiel breathes heavily, even before he straps on his skis, illustrating the difficulty of doing anything on Everest without an extra source of oxygen. While more than 7,000 people have ascended Everest, which reaches more than 29,000 above sea level, only about 200 have done so without bottled oxygen. Bargiel has also climbed and skied down K2, the world’s second-highest mountain, and many other prominent peaks.
