“How did you get in to that?”: Paragliding

“Give me a little left… A little bit of speed bar. Much better. You’re in the thermal. Ride that one up until you stop gaining altitude”. The chilly air passed through my helmet, making my eyes water so I flipped down my visor. I looked around for the birds that seem to always know where the thermals are. I was now 2,000’ above the ground looking out over the flatirons in Boulder, CO. I chased the other pilots as they started to ascend to cloud-base. All you can really hear are the instruments beeping. A variometer (or “vario”) tells you when you are in a thermal, gaining altitude, or if you have lost the rising warm column of air that allows you to ascend without a motor. The frequency of the audible will change depending on the gain or loss of your altitude.

Paragliding is flying lightweight, free-flying, foot-launched glider aircraft with no rigid primary structure. I sit in a harness that attaches at one point on each side to a nylon wing. There are 4 sets of lines that suspend me; each of which attaches to different points on the glider. The A-lines attach to the front, the D-lines attach to the back. Part of the training to earn your certification (P1-4 regulated by USHPA) is learning to manipulate the glider on flat ground before learning to fly it off of a hillside. There are 3-4 main parts to any glider: the wing, the harness, the reserve and an airbag (some harnesses have it built in). Learning the functionality of each piece before you fly is essential, especially the reserve. Learn where it is, how it deploys and when you need to deploy it.

This sport is most popular in Europe due to the jagged, sawtooth mountains, geothermic activity and the valleys. You hike a few miles to the launch point with your gear, set up, inflate your wing, take a few well balanced steps before the wind takes you up and away. Like many, I watched the videos on social media of veteran pilots making it look easy when I developed the thought, “I want to do that”. When COVID hit, it was the perfect time to try it. What better way to start a new sport and separate yourself and others with thousands of feet in the open air with the only contact being a radio? It turns out, it’s way harder than it looks. So naturally, I bought the gear, class, instruction time and flew every spare day that I had.

While this sport looks exhilarating, it is more analogous to a Sunday on the golf course. My dad being a huge golfer most of my life, everything had a relation to golf, and this sport is no different. When you inflate the wing, you must run to get the wing above your head when the wind speed is low. The first few times I flew, I acted like I was pulling a pickup truck behind me. Putting every muscle fiber I had in to each step, sprinting with all my might. After all, I was battling a 25m long piece of nylon with a head wind. How is this like golf? It’s like golf because the right way to do it is with finesse. Gently pull, wait for the wing to get where it needs to, control it, feel it, run in to the wind gently until your feet get lifted off the ground. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast as my dad would always say.

Feel the wind direction, wait for a direct headwind, watch the ripples on the lake and the grass on the ridge to see if you can score a 30 second window when you can take off with ideal conditions. Paragliding may not give you an adrenaline rush, but it will test your patience. This sport will scratch your itch for adventure, give you plenty of outside time and make you a very strong hiker. I decided to try it because I enjoyed the feeling of flight, I loved the silence and how it pushed me to be adaptive. Things in paragliding don’t usually go wrong, but when they do, they go very wrong, very fast and you need to react. It pushes you, forces you to practice and flying with the birds is a feeling you will not soon forget.

I encourage everyone to try paragliding, at least as a tandem so they can experience the high altitude serenity (plus the views are great). Doing it in the rockies is an incredible experience that will make you feel much closer to nature and melts away anxiety. Give the sport a shot by finding a tandem coach near you. The school I learned from in Boulder, CO is Boulder FreeFlight. Contact Johannes for classes and tandem flights over the gorgeous Boulder Flatirons. For those in the midwestern states, you can still fly. Companies will tow you up with a truck and a wench during fair weather days. Your instructor will cut the cable and you are free to fly.