This last weekend, I got to fly off of the Chelan Butte in my paraglider for the first time….and it was AWESOME!!! I only flew once on Sat, and once again on Sun, but the flights lasted about 20min, and took a drop of about 3000ft (around 3900′ to 800′ from launch to LZ).

My first flight, I was a little nervous, but mostly excited. Both flights were from the “Ants” East launch, then landing at the Chelan Falls park. I took a tandem last year with one of my instructors Doug, and it was awesome (he gave me a little taste of “vitamin G” with his spirals) but I’ve never liked being a passenger. I was pleased to see how well I handled it, and wasn’t scared hardly at all while in the air. I handled pitch control well—site note: one of the people with us (name escapes me now) took a 60% asymmetric deflation because of poor pitch control—. The roll the glider kept taking in the bumpy (or Boody sp?) air wasn’t to much fun, but I got used to it quickly.

The next day, I wasn’t nervous at all, and enjoyed it more I think because of that. The conditions became more thermic than the previous day, and made for an exciting ride! At the Ranch (Aerial Paragliding) we have been flying in smooth adiabatic air, but this was my first taste of thermic conditions (although we did not use them for lift at our skill level yet). My other instructor, Denise, said I shot up way past anyone else when I hit what she guessed was a 800ft/min thermal off of one of the ridges I passed. It was pretty nuts, because I felt hammered into the harness, and then like an elevator I got used to it, but apparently I just kept on going (that’s why it’s nice to have a variometer to tell you these things).

I have a Suunto X6-HR, and meant to record the altimeter off of it’s barometer for my flights, but didn’t remember until over half way into my second flight. I started recording a little after I got shot into the air on that last thermal, but the graph below (taken from my watch) should be pretty close to my max altitude (I went down quite aways from the launch before I was shot back up to 3000ft).
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I was so high, I got to try some new things. At first I took about 5+ 360′s to try and loose altitude. Then the next descent technique: big ears. Big ears are used to decrease your glide ratio by folding in the wing tips with the leading risers. It was really fun! Because you can’t do that, and control your break toggles, you need to rely on weight shifting to turn. Doug had me weight shift back and fourth, and it made me rock a little which was super fun.

My Dad came the first day and took some pictures and a video (thanks Dad). You can see them in the album, and video links below.
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CLICK HERE FOR THE GALLERY

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What an incredible sport!