A North Hills pipefitter jumped out of an airplane with his dad at the top of the world last week, skydiving above Mount Everest while the sun rose as part of the highest-altitude dive in history.

Even for a daredevil like Scott Diesel, 40, a veteran BASE jumper and scuba diver from West Deer, this extreme Himalayan plunge from 29,500 feet through air so thin he needed his own oxygen supply is not the kind of thing a person is likely to forget.

"It was awesome," he said this week. "It wasn't like BASE jumping at all. It was the area that made it so special. The sun was just up high enough to give the mountain peaks a glow. It was pretty fantastic."

Scott and his father, Lou Diesel, made the jump Oct. 5 as part of Everest Skydive 2008, a group dive organized by three adventure travel companies for 32 people willing to spend serious money for maximum thrills.

The Diesels shelled out nearly $50,000, paid for by Lou Diesel, a personal-injury lawyer in Flagstaff, Ariz., where Scott grew up.

Father and son, both longtime scuba divers and adventurers who have traveled together to such exotic locations as the Galapagos Islands, wanted to do something special for their birthdays.

This summer, Lou turned 60 and Scott turned 40.

"We started planning this last year. I was watching the Discovery Channel and I called him and said, 'We got an important birthday coming up. We ought to do something cool.' He said, 'What you got in mind?' I said, 'Climb Everest.' He said, 'You know I'm 60, right?'"

They chose extreme skydiving instead. Skydive 2008, arranged by Incredible Adventures, Explore Himalaya Travel & Adventure and a British company, High & Wild, fit the bill.

Lou has enjoyed his share of wild rides in his time, including an Incredible Adventures trip four years ago on a Russian MiG that touched the edge of space at Mach 2.3.

This was better.

"Magical, just purely magical," he said of the jump, especially the sunrise. "Few things impress me. This impressed me."

Scott, whose wife, Roseann, and 6-year-old daughter, Dillan, stayed at home and worried, is equally tough to impress. He's been skydiving since his days in California in the 1980s, and he's leapt from such peaks as El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

But El Capitan is 3,000 feet. Everest towers 29,035 feet and stands in an icy mountain range dominated by unpredictable winds and fog that can envelop the region in minutes.

The skydivers needed oxygen tanks and special Nepalese-made jumpsuits to protect themselves from the 20-below temperatures. Scott had a little extra insulation -- a Hines Ward Steelers jersey under his jumpsuit.

The father-and-son team both did tandem jumps, in which they were each strapped to a jumpmaster, and fell for 65 seconds until their chutes opened at about 16,000 feet.

From there, they descended to their base camp at 12,500 feet.

The possibility of being killed or hurt was hard to ignore. One diver who jumped into fog shattered her ankle when she landed. She's still in a hospital in Kathmandu.

And after their jump, a Yeti Airlines Twin Otter plane like the one that had earlier taken them on a white-knuckle flight through mountain passes to Lukla, altitude 9,000 feet, crashed Oct. 8, killing 18 people.

Officials blamed the accident on poor visibility, a constant threat in the Everest region.

Scott and Lou, who had seen some of those same tourists at a local inn before the crash, said the tragedy wouldn't stop them from jumping again. Nor would any other dangers, especially considering that skydiving is relatively safe.

But what would give them pause, they said, is the price tag and the logistical difficulty of getting to and from the jump zone.

The Diesels flew from Los Angeles to Bangkok, then to Kathmandu and finally to Lukla. From there, they hiked for two days to the landing zone, then spent another two days climbing up to 15,000 feet to get acclimated to the thin air. From there, they spent two more days returning to camp, where they boarded a Swiss plane for the 45-minute ascent to altitude 500 feet above Everest.

The window for making the jump was narrow because of the wind and fog. The Diesels said they're not even sure if all the jumpers got a chance to make their dives.

But this duo did, and now they've got a story to tell about another grand journey they've made together.

"It's the damndest view I ever saw," said Lou. "I cannot describe that view. To be surrounded by the peace -- you're looking down at the top of the world, the sun was coming up. That was truly incredible."

The problem now is coming up with something even bigger next time.

"That might take some doing," said Scott. "I don't know about topping it, but we'll continue to do other stuff."

Next up for Scott: parachuting from Angel Falls in Venezuela, the highest waterfall in the world at 3,212 feet.

"I got an issue with excitement," he said. "I like to be scared."