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The afternoon sun is painting the stony Andulasian landscape around us ochre and red. We have just arrived in Valle del Abdelaj's, Spain. A ten-minutes climb with our rucksacks containing our paragliding chutes has brought us up to a rocky slope - "the starting ramp." I begin to have a fluttering feeling in my stomach, and my mouth is dry. Are we really going to take off from here?
Then someone shouts, "Look!" and points towards the azure sky. High above, a magnificent condor with a wingspan of two metres soars. And then, over the crest of the mountain, the bright purple wing of a paraglider, appears, circling higher and higher, to join the majestic bird in the playful ascent. My heart leaps with joy and wonder. This is what we have come here for. This is what I have dreamed of and longed for - to fly like a bird, with the birds!
Parapenting, the art of flying parachute as a glider, is a relatively new sport. It started in the late 1970s, when a couple of pioneers took off from a mountain in Chamonix, France, using parachutes. The chutes evolved over time into glider wings with better and better performance data. The current long distance record is 340 kilometres. My own love with flying started early. At two, I tried my technique jumping off the kitchen sink. At five, I tried running off the two-metre high stone staircase of our house, forming my body as a delta wing in the hope of getting the right profile for flying. After these rather unsatisfactory beginnings, I had to wait until my early twenties to take flying lessons and begin parachuting. After 20 years, 2500 freefalls and 200 hours of aerobatic flying, I still feel the same thrill every time I get up in the air. And I am still looking for new flying experiences. 
I roll out my chute, strap on the harness and make ready for take off. I do my checklist - helmet on, chest strap OK, cross straps OK, A-lines and braking toggles OK, leg straps and boots OK, canopy laid out in a neat half circle behind me with all lines untangled, where I stand facing the abyss and the wind.
I watch intently as the more experienced pilots take off, Per-Ake, Markus and Julio, one of the Spanish instructors, are soon airborne. Nice and easy, they pull up their gliders, the cells of their canopies inflate; they run a few steps, and then they lift off the rocks and up into the clear air. Lars is next. A gust of wind pulls at his glider chute, and then the chute pulls him free of the ground, swinging like a pendulum, and he is up I take a deep breath and swallow hard. "You can start now." It is Anders's voice in my helmet earphones. Eagerly, adrenaline pumping, I jerk up the canopy into the wind Immediately, I feel my feet leave the ground - I am airborne! The cool wind caresses my face, and the living canopy catches a thermal and lifts me. It is a giddy feeling - like a giant's hand playfully hoisting me into the air. I pass the promontory, and turn around the mountain. The whole wide world is at my feet! 
The sloping valley stretches towards the horizon. Far below, I see a patchwork of olive trees and grazing sheep. On my left is the mighty mountain chain, grey, imperturbable. I swoosh past little grottos and multicoloured cliffs, close enough to see each stone and scraggly bush clutching the narrow ledges. At the far end of the valley is a village, with its neat, whitewashed houses, huddled in neat clusters.
I feel like a bird. A bird soaring serenely, looking down on the poor earthbound creatures below. I look up and see other canopies above me and beside me - blue, purple, yellow and bright red, like exotic butterflies, playing effortlessly in the sky. This is fantastic, this is unbelievable! A feeling of bliss fills my heart. I want to sing and shout for all the world to hear: "I can fly !". As a paraglider, I'm a beginner. In late February 1997, I enrolled in a course. On a grey Saturday morning I met my instructor Anders Magnerfelt. I take a look at the equipment. Beginner gliders are elliptical and are built up of cells like an air mattress that inflates when the canopy catches the wind. They have an impressive flying surface of about 25 square metres. Anders pulled up the canopy, holding the two shoulder straps in one hand, and letting the 22 cells inflate in the wind. He balanced the canopy neatly over his head, like a purple mushroom. Then, suddenly, a guest of wind lifted him a metre clear off the ground! We started practising balancing the canopies on flat ground. As soon as we felt a bit confident, we moved up onto the slop to try hill sliding starts. "Run forcefully, look up at your canopy, make sure you are right under it," Anders said. "Use your steering toggles to head down the slope. If you take off, enjoy and use smooth, even movements to keep the canopy straight. When you are one or two metres above ground and about to land, pull down both toggles to brake your forward speed." The next step was to get higher up in the air, do whole 360 degree turns, steer with the help of your body weight, and learn how to do precision landings within 50 metres from an altitude of at least 100 metres. Attached to a rope, with the help of a motor-driven winch I was pulled up like a glider. Boy, was it fun - I felt like a living kite ! I then pulled at the quick release to free myself from the rope. My umbilical cord was cut, and I was flying free to practice steering and turning, and to do a neat landing. Soaring over Valle de Abdalaj's, I have the opportunity to use all I learnt in basic training. Here, conditions for parapenting are ideal, because the westerly winds that come in from the sea are steady and reliable. This is our third day of flying, and I am growing more and more confident. It is eight o'clock in the evening. I meet Markus at the same altitude and manoeuvre carefully to the right. I lean over in the harness, cross my left leg over my right and feel the canopy gracefully turning. We wave as we pass one another. For the first time since we have arrived, I have been able to stay up for more than an hour! I am in seventh heaven: this is a real treat for a beginner. Although I have a warm sweater and long johns under my parachuting overalls, and gloves, I begin to feel the cold up here. The sun is setting in the west, and I have to start thinking about landing soon. A couple of hundred metres above, high over the crest of the mountain, Johan, Anders and Per-Ake, are soaring together with a pair of condors. Then Johan's voce crackles over the radio: "Anders, I think Lene has top landed on the other side of the mountain crest!" A long silence ensures. Lene has been flying for just one year. Good God, she is not supposed to be anywhere near the crest! Has she got caught up in the turbulence and crashed? Johan speaks again: "She seems to be alright. She stands up and waves." But can she start from up there? She can't climb down the steep mountain when dusk is falling! Then Eduardo, who owns the parapenting school were visiting, says over the radio. "Anders, I think you have to land up there and help her take off. I doubt if she can make it on her won." More silence. Everybody knows what this means. Although Anders is a very experienced instructor, he is riding a temperamental competition chute. It has more than a hundred lines that can get entangled in the bushy undergrowth up there. Just one tiny branch that gets entangled in these fine lines, may cause a disastrous canopy collapse. Alright," Anders says shortly. Johan watches the drama unfold from above. Anders locates Lene, who is standing on a small patch of gravel just behind the steep crest of the mountain. She had been forced to land by a strong gust of wind, after getting too close to the mountain. The sun has now set, and Anders is trying to find an acceptable landing site in the gathering dusk. Finally, he decides upon a gravel slope no broader than his canopy. We all hold our breaths. Then Johan reports over the radio: "Anders has landed OK!" Anders gathers up his canopy and walks briskly up to Lene. This is no time for conversation. The wind is steady but strong. Anders instructs Lene how to stand, and helps her deploy her canopy to avoid all the sticky bushes. He holds on to her when the wind catches the chute and she lifts slightly off the ground. He checks her canopy which is now fully inflated, and gives her a push at the right moment in the right direction. "Lene is airborne!" Johan shouts over the radio. We all heave a sigh of relief. But Anders is still up there. He makes an attempt to pull the canopy up into the wind, but has to abort. A cluster of thorns has tangled some lines on the left hand side. He pulls down the canopy, removes the thorns and tries again. This time a steering line catches under a jagged stone. In the third attempt the canopy looks okay. He turns around quickly and takes one step out over the abyss from the small ledge where he is standing. "Anders is coming to for landing," Eduardo reports to us all. About time. It is now dark. Lene is already safe on the ground. Anders elegant light blue elliptical canopy comes swooshing in over the field silently, eerily, like a giant owl, barely visible against the dark blue sky. He touches down lightly and gathers up his canopy. The drama is over. It is the last day of flying. I am riding my canopy over a new, beautiful flying area where we have extended our flights. This is the end of our wonderful adventures and it is time for me to head for the landing field. Right under me, I see a flock of crows playfully chasing one another. But I took upwards to catch sight of the condors. I have much to learn, but I am patient and my longing is irresistible: I want to fly high, at the top of the sky, to make close contact with the big birds! |
| OTHER ARTICLES OF ASI JUNE'98 ISSUE | News In Brief | Letters To The Editor | World Records | | 1998 Free Flight World Cup | | Flying With The Birds | | Baltic Cup 1998 | | Some Rare Kind Of Guts | | Did He Actually Fly Before The Wright Brothers ? |  More articles on Paragliding
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