Big Sur, California

Big Sur Gallery

The trip computer on our rented SUV is telling me that we are averaging about six miles per gallon while driving up the back road to the Big Sur launch. That’s not much, and it sounds even less impressive in metric terms, which I am calculating in my head in order to communicate this curious fact to Olivier Laugero, expert French pilot and our photographer for this trip.

In French, 6mpg is 40L per 100km.
{“Thees car have a problem!”} Olivier sneers in disbelief, “Eef every car is like thees sheet car, then no wonder the USA use so much oil!”
The rest of us, all Americans, erupt into peels of laughter and we continue to blunder up the steep hill, eight heavy cylinders of American steel propelling four pilots and nine gliders to our purely hedonistic and consumptive goal of flying into the very atmosphere that we are grossly polluting.

It is the first stretch of sunny weather here on the central California coast in more than three weeks, and some of the best conditions of the year so far. And on launch there is no one. Not a soul. There is one local pilot who flies here regularly when conditions are good, or at least that’s the rumor; a National Forest Service representative told us that “this guy” (he forgot his name) has “a couple thousand jumps” from the hill. But today it’s deserted save the four of us: Loren Cox and Gary Begley, two California pilots, our photographer Olivier, and myself, sometimes driver and sometimes up-tight photo shoot director, but always the main source of motivation for this three-week road trip across the western states of the good old USA.

It’s late morning, and thin wisps of marine fog are creeping down the coastline from the north, threatening to obscure all possible landings in a thick blanket of cloud cover. Loren pushes for an early launch, saying that we’ll be absolutely screwed if the fog comes in as it often does here, because there are no bailout landing zones. Olivier, in a textbook show of French nonchalance, exclaims that we should wait and hope that the fog does arrive, as it would be {”Fantasteek!”} for the photos. Him being our raison d’etre on this photo shoot, the Frenchman wins, and we pray to have our landing zones whited out in the cause of art.

We launch together, and glide out the south side of the ridge. After about 30 seconds, it becomes apparent that the north wind that had been thermal-blocked in front of launch was not being blocked on this ridge, and we realize that we’re in mild rotor and some rather uncomfortable sink, flying over a valley with no landings at all. I look up at Olivier, who rarely holds onto anything other than his camera while flying and see that he’s abandoned it in favor of his brakes, which usually means serious turbulence. I look at Loren and Gary, and they’re looking at me. Then I look at the last patch of grass in sight, which is now directly below us – if we go much farther then it has become obvious that we’ll all be hanging in evergreen trees in about three minutes. I make a sharp right turn and side-hill land about 200 meters from the top of the ridge. Gary, Loren, and Olivier follow suit, and soon we’re sweating in the heat as we carry our wings back up to the windward side of the ridge to try and find another take-off. “Look on the bright side, guys,” I say, “now we’re getting two flights instead of one!”

Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Jackson Gallery

Wyoming is the most sparsely populated state in the U.S. The terrain is comprised of an abundance of uninhabitable mountain terrain and vast areas of tough grazing land, which has shaped the people into an independent and hardy culture. Ironically, the image of rugged mountains and threatening terrain has attracted the wealthiest and most pampered of Americans to Jackson Hole. Massive private jets sit gleaming on the town’s airstrip, the personal travel devices of the mega-millionaire movie stars and politicians who own the majority of the ranches in the area, some of which are worth tens of millions of dollars.

The Jackson Hole Paragliding community is a proud bunch. They’re proud of their cable car, their XC terrain, their towing operation, and the skill of the local pilots. While daunting at first, this pride is justified. After a brilliant day of mountain flying along the Teton Range, the Jackson crew invited us out to the Palisades Lake to go towing. Conveniently, the downwind side of the lake has a two-mile road stretching across the middle of the dry section of the lakebed and is an ideal tow strip. In fact, with all sincerity, I have to say that this was the best tow operation I have ever seen.

Since one is never enough, Scott MacLowry and Matt Combs suggest that we splice on a line attachment and tow two pilots together in “Y-bridle style.” It’s hard to imagine if you haven’t seen it, but basically the end of the tow line splits into a Y, and one pilot hooks into each side. On tow, the two pilots have to consciously avoid each other as the tow force brings them together, and the line tends to tension on one pilot and then the other. This means that as the line tightens on the first pilot he/she gains altitude and climbs above the second pilot until the line tightens on the second pilot, at which time the second pilot climbs past the first pilot who is then gliding with a slack tow line. This repeats until both pilots have leap-frogged to altitude and they release. The Y bridle is the recommended cure for the normally solitary tow ascension, and the best solution I’ve seen for flying XC with your friends after towing up.

The next day, either the novelty of flying with us wore off, or the conditions weren’t worth skipping work for, because we found ourselves on our own in Jackson Hole. The local guys did give us enough info to find Snow King launch, however, and by three in the afternoon we were sweating our way up the trail to the snow-capped launch above town. At the top, views to the north and west were incredible, with the Grand Teton range spread out before us on the other side of a vast valley. Although obviously thermic, it looked like the day wasn’t brilliant for XC so we opted to stay local and shoot some photos above town. After climbing out and boating around above the town a little, I got bored and glided out to a promising cloud a little farther into the valley, which promptly died. Instead of turning around and finding a landing zone in town, we decided to keep shooting photos with the beautiful unpopulated valley in the background and land at the edge of the massive field next to town (this was an emergency landing). Apart from Olivier being totally frustrated at me for interrupting his flight (Olivier is the greediest pilot I know and is never happy unless he flies until there is absolutely no more lift), it was a decent day… until we looked up and saw a government truck with flashing lights pull up to us on the road.

A young man in work clothes and no uniform jumped out and showed us his badge, advancing fitfully over the roughly cut grass in the field.
“Good afternoon, my name is Officer Tytass and I’m here to inform you that you’ve landed in a National Wildlife Preserve!”
I looked at our surroundings. About 20 yards from us, a large wooden sign said, “National Elk Preserve.” We were 10 meters from the fence, and across the street from a city block of houses. The huge sign that we hadn’t yet seen made it plain that we’d made a mistake, but the fact that we were literally within spitting distance of houses in town made it seem improbable that this was actually a delicate “wildlife refuge.”

I looked at the officer, who was visibly irritated and demanded our identification. Olivier glared at me for forcing him to land here. Gary’s shoulders slumped, and we handed over our cards.
“Errm, it was an emergency landing, sir,” I proffered.
Officer Tytass was obviously a very dedicated man, as it was his day off but he’d nonetheless enthusiastically raced across town to arrest us when he saw us plummeting towards this crappy farm field that was supposed to be a Wildlife Area. After a stern lecture, we were awarded with some nice citations that were definitely the most expensive souvenir of the trip – two hundred dollars each! Stung, but happy to not be in jail, we hit the road for Utah.

Moab, Utah

Moab Gallery

For this leg of the trip, we are joined by Utah pilots Mike Steen and Jake Walker, our guide, Moab expert, and owner of a sturdy Toyota 4x4 which he was thankfully eager to get rowdy with as we navigated over and around the massive sandstone boulders that turn the horizon into a continuous row of dull teeth.

Moab is not really for paraglider pilots… actually, to put it bluntly, the flying here sucks. For starters, it’s {way} too hot, which means that it’s not only uncomfortable, but dangerous. On most days the wind howls in six different directions as gargantuan bubbles of heat compete with each other to suck as much air away from the ground as possible. There are no good launches, and even fewer landings. The terrain is a mess of sandstone cliffs and loaf-shaped bumps cluttering the landscape. And to top it off, the town is crowded with sweaty cheap-beer-drinking off-road-vehicle enthusiasts whose idea of fun is to roll their 4x4s end over end off the only real sandstone cliffs in the USA that are legal to drive on.

Yet, for all of this, I had one of the most beautiful afternoons of flying in my life – the beauty of it hit me just after I had landed.

It was one of those ultra-rare scalding-hot but windless days, with gentle breaths of air teasing us from all directions as we set up on top of a sandstone head in the desert. The launch area was steep – about as steep as you can comfortably stand on and much too steep to comfortably launch from, with flaky line-grabbing features and wind that seemed determined to blow our gliders in every direction except up. One at a time, we managed to get our wings up and launch to make a couple of turns before landing on the dirt trail at the bottom. It was a difficult launch, which sweetened the simple but gorgeous flight. After landing and while packing up my wing on the road, Jake flew directly over me, just a few feet above my head. In the middle of the desert evening, in dead calm, zero wind conditions, I heard better than I have ever heard before the sound that our lines make when cutting through the air. Totally unadulterated by the sound of wind in my ears (as I was standing on the ground) or any other background noise in the silence of the desert, the crystal-clear whistle of air molecules bouncing off of Kevlar was pure delight.

The end.