We spent the past three days paragliding in
Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Unknown to us, it’s a tandem paragliding hotspot.
There’s about 15 tandem pilots working each day and, on an average day, they’ll
each get three to five (or more) flights with clients. With the launch and
landing sites both within view of Teton Village and, in particular, the tram
that goes up Rendezvous Mountain, there’s definitely a captive audience. The
first couple rounds of the day fill up quickly and, once the rush is over, the
pilots wait at the top and try to round up business. Although it often seemed
like organized chaos as the office staff got clients to sign waivers and pair
them up with the tandem pilots, it was a well-run operation.
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| The tram used to get up to the launch site. |
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| The first tram of the day always has very large pile of gliders in the middle! |
As new (and relatively inexperienced)
pilots in the area, the first day we were assigned a guide, Stephan, to give us
a site briefing and make sure we got launched ok. Despite being nervous (as
always!), I did ok with both launches and landings. Andrew wasn’t quite so happy with his.
There isn’t much for thermals in this area
in the mornings so all of our flights were about 15-18 minute sled rides. Which
suited me just fine. Normally, the winds pick up after the first flight of the
day and are then too strong for pilots of our experience. Or the winds are
coming from the wrong direction for novice pilots (which happened this morning
on what we were hoping would be our fourth day of flying here). The locals told
us many times how lucky we were getting in as many flights as we did.
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| Launch area for the solo pilots. |
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| Amazing views. Can you spot the other paragliders? |
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The Grand Teton. Andrew and I climbed it many years ago!
Mostly what I remember is the very difficult route finding on the way down. |
On the second day, they didn’t have any
spare tandem pilots to be our “guide” so they let us go on our own. Stephan
still kept an eye on us for the first flight and had us launch before him as he
prepared to fly with his client.
After three flights going quite well and
thinking I had the landings cased, I totally screwed up!
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| So true!!!!! |
I’d come in a bit high each of the first
three times but still managed to hit the landing zone fairly well. The fourth
time I was trying to lose some altitude before coming in . . . and lost height
way too fast. I landed on a road in the middle of the construction area beside
the landing zone. Fortunately, the truck that I was sure I was going to collide
with stopped and let me land before he kept going. I thought he was going to
stop and say something but he passed by without even looking my way.
I meekly gathered up my wing and tromped
past construction workers (who also didn’t even glance my way) and found a
place to hop some rocks to cross the stream that separated the new condo
development from the landing area. One of the local solo pilots who was very
friendly and talkative assured me this was not an unusual occurrence for novice
pilots and told me about the various places he’d landed while learning. Hence,
no one really paying much attention to the odd place I’d ended up. Having said that, both Andrew and I got some stern advice on landings
from one of the tandem pilots.
On our third day it was very grey, cloudy
and rainy. But the rain showers came and went. . . and came and went. We all went to the top of the tram
and waited things out. A couple tandem pilots launched between each of the rain
showers until they were eventually all gone.
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| More rain coming! |
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| Tandem pilots launching and getting ready to launch between rain showers. |
Andrew and I and few other solo pilots waited until the weather was a bit more stable. Our first flights
went well. On the second round, I managed to get launched and had a good flight
but unfortunately the wind changed direction before Andrew could get launched.
He waited quite a while but ended up having to come down on the tram.
Despite not getting in a fourth day of
flying and only getting relatively short flights in, I quite enjoyed our time in
Jackson.
