Friday, September 3, 2010

A Bad Day at the Office?

One of the striking things about paragliding is how unpredictable it is. You're standing at launch, the forecast is good, you feel confident, a line of little puffy clouds is encouraging. It looks like a great day and you have every chance to fly 100K - but… you might sink out after 10 minutes. 

But that's not the most striking thing about paragliding. There is obviously a big difference between (say) a good day's and a bad day's hiking; good views versus no views, being comfortable versus being wet. But that all pales in comparison with paragliding, where a seemingly small mistake can leave you in the hospital or worse. In paragliding, a bad day can be very bad. So keeping a sense of perspective is important - I wish sinking out early was the worst thing that could happen in paragliding!

There was a good forecast for today and a 83K task was called. It actually looked like the easiest task so far, because most of it was over relatively high terrain. For the first time, we had cumulus clouds. I started half-way through the order and flew onto the Antennae with a gaggle, not at all worried about sinking out - after all, I've flown there at least 30 times, and never sunk out. Up at 2000m, clouds were a problem.

Then the unthinkable happened; the gaggle as a whole started to malfunction. Things had overdeveloped horizontally and the whole area was in the shade. The gaggle kept circling, but it was going down. At this point, if I'd ignored the gaggle and stayed on the ridge, I'm sure I would have been fine; I might have been stuck there for 30 minutes but I'd have got away eventually.

But I kept following this dysfunctional gaggle (making it even more dysfunctional in the process). Oh, the gaggle is circling out front; I head out front even though it doesn't seem to be going up. I arrive, and it is slowing going down. I turn and see that the gaggle has gone back to the ridge. So I head back there, but now I'm 100m lower.

In the end I landed after a very short flight with around 25 others - almost all of them with a story similar to mine. In the end the day didn't match the forecasts; only about 40% of the field made goal.  

Going back to my earlier point (what's a bad day in paragliding), the first 'early-lander' I met had hit a powerline in landing and destroyed his wing. There was a deployment that ended in the trees (at this point, I don't know the state of the pilot). Me - I had a one hour flight, with two nice 500m climbs before a safe landing. 

Not that bad…

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