Filed under: Uncategorized
Having watched them through the bedroom window for most of the day yesterday, I must say that there is something completely unnatural about the whole idea of paragliding. The participant straps himself to the jumpmaster who is wearing a parachute that is opened up behind him and they run for a few meters across an open area on the top of the hill and then lift their collective feet and off they go. It’s not exactly as if they are jumping off the side of the mountain, which must make it less scary initially, but their feet just slowly get higher and higher off the grass until the next thing anyone is aware of they are floating 1000 meters above Queenstown. Calling it a fall would be too simple as they spend the first minute or so actually going higher than the mountain off of which they have just come. The red, white and yellow parachutes fill the sky and come down tumbling and twirling in a variety of different fashions. Occasionally you can hear one of the passengers scream as they start to come in quickly to the rugby pitch next to the primary school where they land. The whole thing just seems insane.
Now some of you might say, but Steph you jumped out of a perfectly good airplane in September so who are you to talk. To that, I have several answers. First of all, I jumped from 15,000ft not 700 meters and while that sound even more insane to some, think of it like this. The higher that you start your jump, the more time that you have to deal with any problems or situations that might arise during the fall. Second, on a skydive there are up to three parachutes attached to you when you fall, the main chute, a backup chute and another chute that opens at a pre-set altitude if the other chutes have failed. Paragliders just have the one and I don’t know about you but I think that three chutes are better than one. Finally, there is the whole safety record thing to consider. The skydive company that I jumped with has a 100% safety record. Their jumpmasters have had to make over 4,000 solo jumps before they are allowed to take participants. Even their camera guys have to have made several hundred jumps and all they do is take the pictures of the participants. I take comfort in all of that experience. What I don’t take comfort in, are all of the horror stories that I have heard about the paragliders and hangliders in this area. Rest assured that these stories are very likely completely trumped up and more likely than not being retold from person to person as first hand accounts of something that they only heard through the grapevine to begin with, but here it goes with the preface for both being allegedly (I didn’t go to law school for nothing. So I will pass on any possibility of getting in trouble for libel or slander thank you). As for the hangliders, rumor has it that last July, the bar that they hold onto broke mid-flight and the hangliding instructor and the participant both died. Uh scary! The paragliding rumor is that last year, one of the jumpmaters misjudged his landing and he and his participant ended up getting caught in the power line next to the rugby pitch where they were supposed to land. Again, scary! Now, to be fair, I have no idea if either of these stories are true but rumors often have at least some basis in reality, so you be the judge.
However, if I am completely honest, I would not turn down an opportunity to paraglide if it was put in front of me. What I am saying is that given the fact that paragliding and skydiving are about the same price, I am not rushing over to take the gondola up to paraglide when I could go skydiving again instead.