Blog Posts in Category: Paragliding

With a perfect forecast for paragliding I set off with high expectations, my primary plan was to fly over the Stubai glaciers and get back to Neustift, however my secondary goal was a self planned 60km closed FAI triangle. This was my first real attempt at a decent length FAI triangle which actually had a reasonable chance of success, and certainly my first which wasn’t a route copied from others. This was actually my third attempt in a week to fly to the glacier, but it was the first with a good chance of success. I was really pleased to complete the triangle, as it made it my first route over 50km (64km) and my first closed FAI triangle, which combined with the views, made it a very memorable flight and certainly my most enjoyable to date. The flight can be viewed on XContest and Ayvri. On the first attempt we took off with a very low base, and at the point of the first valley crossing we knew that the probability of making the glacier was vanishingly small. However this still provided useful knowledge to help with future flights.. Read the full article…

After a break from flying due to Christmas, we were both keen to get out flying again as soon as the weather allowed. On our first weekend where we were both back in Germany the weather aligned and we headed back to Choralpe, with a friend from our paragliding course. It was a wonderful day of flying with 10 degrees on the summits, zero wind and blue skies, it did feel more like spring than winter! The only downside of the warm weather was how wet out gliders were when we got them home.

As a child on a family holiday about 20 years ago I did a tandem flight above Morzine and since then I have expected to learn to paraglide at some point in my life, but had always assumed it would be much later in life and I certainly had not considered learning in 2021. However, due to a knee injury our mountaineering options were limited for our September holiday, so Becky suggested that we learn to paraglide as one of our friends had recently learnt in France and was raving about how fun it was. I am sure that people normally decide to paraglide and choose a flight school with more than 3 days notice, which resulted in us drawing a circle around Munich and looking for any flight schools within an appropriate distance which were also doing ground courses on the first Saturday of our holiday. We found a couple of schools within an appropriate distance of Munich and ended up selecting Cloudbase in the Zillertal. Given our experience on the course, this seemed to turn out as an excellent decision as it was a great valley to learn. Read the full article…

After discovering how nice the take off and landing was last week, we decided to head back to the Vorderunnütz for Becky’s first hike&fly today. After three attempts, I finally also had a day with clear skies and wonderful views from this mountain. It is amazing how different it was compared to last week, sunny, warm, thermals, lots of paragliders. The walk up was fairly similar to last week, but it was much warmer, especially on the top section. There was a nice gentle breeze at the take off, which made the take off nice and easy, but did make laying Becky’s semi-lightweight paraglider out for a forward launch a bit more challenging. When we arrived there were loads of people taking off, so we chilled out in the sun while waiting to launch. After setting up Becky made a perfect launch and set off on her first hike&fly flight. I quickly followed, although my first attempt at a reverse launch didn’t go particularly well today, however after sorting my glider back out I was soon in the air. I had a fairly short flight as I wanted to land. Read the full article…