Paragliding:
a visual journey
Follow along with us as adventurers take to the skies for the first time on a tandem, learn valuable paragliding skills or even catch a glimpse of pilots just goofing around!
I probably spend more time than is practical for my business going through GoPro footage, but finding little gems like this make me smile. Catching Deb's expression of excitement as she bumped into a thermal while "driving" is priceless, and made it even more rewarding to have gone "jet setting" back to Keremeos for the day to bring the joy of flying to more new friends.
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A picture snapped at the perfect moment (thanks George!). We are running hard, straight into the wind and our tandem paragliding wing is lifting us into the sky. A few more steps and we were flying! I donated a tandem paragliding flight as a prize for a friend's dry Grad last season, and when Grant came to redeem his prize he brought along his brother for some airtime too. We had a blast, with both of them taking the controls and learning how to turn in thermals. Mom and Dad came along to watch and take photos, and I'm pretty sure they'll be back to soar the skies themselves! We don't "jump" off the mountain - we run until the wing picks us up. I often tell my passengers that we are like Wile E Coyote from the old Road Runner cartoons, where he runs off the cliff and keeps running in mid-air until he realizes he has no ground under his feet. Instead of pulling out a miniature umbrella like in the cartoon, our wing has already started supporting us. Chantal did a wicked job of running as you can se in this photo. You can see her feet still underneath our harnesses as we take to the air. Moments later she was sitting comfortably in front of me as we soared over the tree tops. We have a great community of instructors and tandem pilots who - instead of competing with each other - hire each other and work together helping our students. Last week Andrei hired me to help him fly this great couple. I took Sandy who had tons of skydiving jumps so was cool as a cucumber the whole flight. I managed to get a giggle out of her though at the end of the flight when we did a quick spiral before landing... Who knows what girls will get up to when left unattended? Chantal and I shared a big laugh after coming out of our spiral while on a tandem paragliding flight on Tuesday. Not telling what was so funny though! Saturday was a super fun day, with my favourite repeat customers out for a paragliding tandem at Mount Woodside. I did get to kick back & relax, arms crossed behind my head as I let David fly the wing (see last photo). Always grateful for my drivers, so after our tandems I had a chance to thank Martin by driving him (and others) up Bridal Falls where pilots had wonderful late afternoon flights. Pictures from Bridal coming tomorrow... A little over 4 years ago (June 1, 2010 according to iPhoto), Alan came flying with me on my sign-off flight to be a tandem pilot. He was my 20th signed-off pilot passenger, and after that flight I was able to start taking people who had never come paragliding before…and the adventure began.
It's a question we hear a lot as paraglider pilots, and people are especially curious about tandem take-offs. Here is a video of a tandem launch from last week - as a passenger your job is simply to RUN! |
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