Day Three

Today began again at 5:30 AM with a plan to travel south to another training site with a bit more hill for low level rolling launches. Unfortunately, as we neared the site, a storm was lying right over the hill we had planned to use. We turned around and drove back to Mt Baldy with the plan to get Brent, Anthony, and Darrel an early morning flight off Baldy.

We’d also use the time for more ground school training for Eric and me at the DZ doing towed launches to allow us to “kite’ the canopies (bring them up and control them while being towed on along the ground.)  This would give us more valuable toggle time and feel a “loaded wing”.  We got two of the guys, Darrel and Anthony, beautiful morning flights, but unfortunately high winds closed out before we could get Brent up for his flight.  We shut down and went for lunch in Ketchum.

Back to the hotel for some rest. We planned to meet at 3:30 for another classroom session, then back out to get more evening flights. I found out that paragliding has some other things in common with skydiving, namely weather dependency, which still was cooperating enough to allow more high altitude flights.  Bad for Brent, who by now was chomping at the bit to get up and fly.

Still, we put the evening to good use while waiting to see if conditions would improve enough for one more flight off the top. We all got to make several towed runs in the buggies, getting to bring the canopy up and control it over a longer period. Several times the wind freshened enough to actually let me get wheels up momentarily. And these kiting pulls gave us some real feel for the canopy under pressure and to learn even more about controlled toggle inputs.

Another similarity I noted between these two canopy communities was if I had not known I was here to paraglide, I would have sworn I was back on my old home Drop Zone. The camaraderie between paragliders and skydivers is identical and the bonds every bit as strong. Better still, we five were welcomed into this camaraderie fully. All these people were here to help show us their sport and open this unique world not only to us, but also to the entire disabled community. Can’t wait for tomorrow.