Two months of paragliding in British Columbia, Canada

Here is just a taste of the stories from our summer paragliding trip to British Columbia. We headed up there to do a lot of mountain flying and develop our thermaling skills. We certainly accomplished that while meeting a whole bunch of interesting folks and having plenty of whacky experiences along the way.

Sati’s Tales:

Lumby:
Lumby is a tiny town tucked away next to the Okanagan Valley in interior BC. From the outside its just a little rural place with a few bars and a lot of agriculture. But, to a paraglider pilot it is one sweet ass place to fly. A warm, generous and simply awesome guy named Randy Rauck, and old school hangie, owns a good size piece of property just outside the Lumby town limits. He’s turned the place into the Freedom Flight Park, complete with grass runways a hanger full of ultra-lights and hang gliders, and an area carved out for visiting pilots camp and hang out! Most importantly, overlooking the property are two very nice launches for para and hang gliders.

Just after we arrived in Lumby, for the first time, our Canadian friend Fred from Nelson showed up! He is a very experienced pilot. What a treat it was to hang out with him in the air and around the campfire.

We spent two separate week plus stints at Freedom Flight Park (yes, it is that good). Each time the drill was the same. Wake up at around 9am, have breakfast, get ready and then head up to Coopers (the morning launch site) by about 11pm. Most days it was ON by noon and more often then not it boomed! During our flights there I made a bunch of new personal bests; I had single climbs off launch for over 6000ft getting me to cloud base, man do you have options when you are way up there. I encountered my strongest thermals so far at over +1500 ft/minute. And flew the farthest I have yet with an out and return flight to Lavington (35km total). All of this came with experiencing the craziest turbulence I have yet as well. I now know what “bumpy” can really mean, wow!

After the morning flight we’d all chill out under a big shaded area at Randy’s, eat lunch and shoot the shit. Most days another old school hangie named Dave would be buzzing around in his hang glider long after everyone else had had enough. Dave would routinely stay up for 3 or 4 hours and we’d watch from under the shade.

Around 6pm most days we’d get ready again and head up to the evening launch on Saddle Mountain. This launch was a bit more sporting with a short area to layout and steep drop offs. But if you were lucky, you would be treated to fat thermals and often some ridge lift as you boated around into the sunset.

With the day done, everyone would pile round the campfire at night to share stories and sing and have a little to drink. We are often treated to amazing stories about the early days of hang gliding. Stories about wings that would fall out of the sky, stories about getting seven flights a day off of Saddle Mountain before anyone knew how to soar. Seven flights that were accompanied by at least twice as many beers! Randy would sing us songs about flying and everyone would smile into the night.

The BFAR (Bridal Falls Air Races):
Out in the Fraser Valley east of Vancouver there is a flying site called Bridal Falls. This is the home site for many Vancouver pilots. We spent about ten days flying Bridal that culminated in an annual fly-in and fundraiser called the BFAR.

There are a couple of notable things about Bridal the most significant of which is the LZ. The LZ is pretty tiny it is a little drained and mowed area in what is mostly a swamp beside the trans-Canada highway and across the street from a driving range. The actual mowed part of the LZ is probably 100ft long and 50ft wide. All sorts of pilots fly here, from students to the really experienced. Needless to say sometimes people don’t make it into the LZ. Fortunate it’s not so dangerous if you don’t make it. If you go short you’re in the swamp and a little soggy and if you go long you’re in the driving range and dodging golf balls. Also needless to say, the next best thing to actually flying Bridal is sitting in the LZ and watching the landings! We got to see it all and it was good!

On the first day of the BFAR we has quite and interesting ride up to launch. We had left our car up top after an earlier flight and need a retrieve. So, we met this guy form Washington who offered us a ride but told us he wasn’t sure if his truck would make it. We looked it over and it was one of those small SUV things, which we had seen get up to launch all the time. So, we decided o give it a try. Now the road to launch is definitely not for the faint of heart. It’s steep and rocky and it takes some doing to get up but it’s not THAT bad. About halfway up we found out why our driver had his doubts. Turns out his car is 2WD! Ahh, shit! But our new friend was persistent. When the truck stalled out on a steep section he had us all get out, he turned the car around and, with fire in his eyes, charged the hill full speed in reverse. This sent all of us diving off the road dodging flying rocks. After a lot of trying he finally gave up and we all started walking. Before long we had another ride and all was good.

The flying at Bridal was good but the valley was inverted most of the time we were there. This meant you could stay up for hours but it was really hard to get very high over launch or go anywhere. On Saturday, the main day for the BFAR we knew there were gonna be over 60 pilots launching and flying right around launch in a huge gaggle. The day be for we had met ??? and Joanne a couple that fly tandem together. They asked us if we’d like to join them on a hike to the Upper Launch. This sounded great because it would get us away from the main launch cluster f*ck that was sure to happen and maybe even get us above the inversion. Sweet!

So on Saturday afternoon, off we went. To get to the Upper Launch, we drove up nearly to the main launch then headed off on a really rough 4wd track that ended at big landslide. Apparently you used to be able to drive to the Upper Launch but when the forest service decommissioned the logging road they blasted the road to shut it down. So, from the landslide, we walked. It wasn’t too bad for Melody and I with our light kits. The trail wound up and around the mountain for about an hour. We stopped a couple of times to check out the view and cool off in a small stream. Finally we reached the Upper Launch, which was awesome! It is perched about 5000ft above valley and has an amazing view. The main launch is just in view to the east and the LZ is out of sight (but it’s easy to tell where it is). On this day the Upper Launch was also above the inversion. So awesome! We took in the view for a minute and then 1, 2, 3, we’re off ??? and Joanne on their tandem, Melody and I on our solo wings. It was so sweet, coring smooth thermals way above the main gaggle that was battling with the inversion. We cruised around for quite a while before finally descending into the masses and doing a bit of gaggle flying. Everyone was playing really nice and even though there were a LOT of gliders flying close together it all seemed pretty OK. As the afternoon turned to evening and the lift started to die we all came down and landed in that little LZ, perhaps a little surprisingly, without incident.

That night there was a dinner and a party at the driving range clubhouse and everyone when to bed happy from a weekend of fun flying.

Melody’s Tales:

“SIV” at Mara Lake:
By this point in the trip, Sati and I were getting pretty comfortable running off high mountains into turbulent mid-day mountain air and thermalling. If you’ve never flown a paraglider, it may be hard to know or imagine how this feels. But if flying coastal ridge lift is like drifting in a canoe with the current and a cooler of cold beers and not a care in the world but the bliss of a long summer day, flying mountain thermals is doing it blindfolded, standing up, balancing the cooler of beer on your head with the potential of getting very well laid by a god for a few hours if and when you make it to the middle of the river. You get “pretty comfortable” with it, but you can never really let your guard down because just when you do, you’ll get a major asymmetric collapse and whamo! your canoe is heading toward a serious cascade rather than toward the mid-river bliss-session. It’s called “active flying.” It’s like turbulence in an airplane, but without the plane.

So, we thought, maybe we should do an SIV, a maneuvers clinic where you just hurl yourself into dangerous situations and learn and practice to recover properly – yay!

There I was on launch with about ten guys, duct taping a Ziploc’ed radio onto my helmet and taking in the list of maneuvers we can try during the next three days. I signed up for this? I got so nervous that I blew my first launch and trundled down the hill slamming into the sawed off edge of a tree stump. I was fine and my ego was all deflated – I was ready to really do this.

That first flight was a bit terrifying. But the maneuvers started out so easy and manageable that I almost felt a teeny bit of disappointment wrapped in relief. Then it got big. We all started throwing down more serious maneuvers and the day was going fine…

•    ominous music … and clouds *

We got back up to launch for our third and last flight of the day. Over the radio, we heard a broadcast from Vernon, about 30 miles away, that said something like, “Holy shit! A gust front with 30mph winds is whipping through here and the hail is the size of marbles.” Our instructor at launch said, “Anyone who wants to get in the third flight, better launch soon. Otherwise pack up.” Charcoal thunderheads were building all around us. Sati and I started packing up our wings. Everyone else got ready to launch. Did I mention this was a sausage fest?

Two pilots had time to launch before the storm hit us. Gabe had completed all of his maneuvers and was, as far as we knew from radio transmissions, on his way to the LZ.  Fred, our friend we knew from Yelapa, was flying out toward the lake when the wind picked up. Within minutes Fred was flying backwards and up – a really bad sign in a paraglider. For the next ten minutes, we all watched him struggle to lose altitude, fly into the wind and manage to keep his wing above his head, as our instructor talked him through it on radio. He tried everything including turning with the wind and trying to outrun the front. His GPS read 100mph when he was running down wind!

Shuswap Lake is about 15 miles long. Fred was a tiny speck when he finally hit the water at the very opposite end of the lake. As soon as we were sure he was down and we could see boats headed toward him, we heard a broken transmission from our instructor in the boat that Gabe had to go to the hospital! What the?!

After pulling one tree off the road and building a ramp to climb the truck over the second, we were back at camp to regroup. We learned that the waves in the lake were four to five feet and that there were many boats overturned. Gabe had been setting up his landing approach when the gust front hit. It blew him back over the lake, where he landed in the water. When the instructor was plucking him out of the water and trying to manage the still inflated wing, a wave hit the boat. The wave sent our instructor into the throttle and the prop sliced up Gabe’s leg. Ech. He’s fine, after a bit of surgery and many stitches.

Sati and I were putting our gear away and getting ready to visit Gabe in the hospital when a pickup truck pulled up with a whole bunch of wet fabric and Fred in the bed, soggy and smiling ear to ear.

That was Day One. Two more days to go…

 

Revelstoke:

The Canadian Rockies are absolutely splendid with range after snowy range sawing up into the sky. We arrived in Revelstoke with Fred and Douglas on Douglas’s 18th birthday and were welcomed by locals who promised to take us to launch the next morning.  We camped on a logging road up outside of town.

In the morning, Douglas returned to camp after a little hike with a big purple grin. Huckleberries! We gorged on fresh huckleberries and drove into town to get in touch with the local pilots.

Revelstoke has been a small ski resort on a big mountain in the Selkirk Range for many years but is now being built into a Whistler-esque resort. One of the owners, fortunately for us, is a paraglider and has made it a mission to keep the mountain open to paraglider and hanglider pilots. So we drove through three locked gates to make our way all the way to the top of the mountain for the upper launch, 6000 vertical feet above the LZ. Even a sleddie is 45 minutes! The local guys were super awesome and friendly, as are most BCers, and they gave us a site intro to the most spectacular flying site I’d ever seen.

We launched and immediately climbed to cloud base around 10,000 feet! From up there, I could see at least five ranges in either direction. The mountains hold magnificent glaciers and we boated around with a 360 degree view of alpine ridiculousness. The valley is home to the headwaters of the Columbia River, so I flew out over the LZ with thousands of feet of altitude to check it out. I practiced a few maneuvers over the spongey valley and just floated around above dreamy blue glacial melt water and deep green marsh.

After that flight, we had to get the truck from launch, so we piled in and headed back up. Sati and Douglas took in one evening flight which had to have been the longest, silkiest, most heavenly sledride imaginable. That was Revelstoke, breathtaking!

People:

For me, a big highlight of the trip was the people. The cast of characters became a web of new and old friends. The flying community in BC is pretty tight-knit and also welcoming and warm. We saw the same pilots in many sites and got a chance to really know some of them. Flying is a sport where you can connect very quickly because it’s in everyone’s best interests to care to keep each other safe. I’ll never forget the encouragement and laughter at every launch and every landing zone.

 

To see all our pictures and video: Check this out!