Paragliding in the Rocky Mountains

[Marcel Dettling]

Hi Pilots,

Corinne and I went traveling in the Rocky Mountains for two weeks from
August 20 until September 4. Although paragliding was not the main focus
of our trip, we still had some good flights. Our trip started in Salt
Lake City and yes of course, we went to the Point of the Mountain. The
soaring there is really very reliable and often starts at sunrise.
During the first morning session, we soared the south side for about two
hours. After about 10am, the air starts to get more and more bumpy and
the flying usually stops. Well, the flying doesn't actually stop, it's
just the sign that it's about time to go to the mountains.

So did we and went to Inspiration Point, the site of the US Nationals in
2004. Together with some locals we went there. Corinne decided not to
fly because she was very tired and the other guys who where with us got
flushed, so I was alone in the air. For me, the conditions seemed just
perfect. Launch is at about 6600ft and I fairly quickly climbed to
10000ft. An inversion stopped me there for a while and I even lost some
altitude with searching for better lift, but finally I managed to hook
into a strong thermal with steady 1000fpm lift. It took me from about
8000ft to cloudbase at over 13000ft, and I just passed the (for me)
magical 4000m mark for the first time in my life with my paraglider.
What to do with such a lot of altitude? Since I had the obligation to
come back, I couldn't engage in any over-the-back downwind cross
country, but instead followed the ridge as far as I was confident to
make it back, which yielded about a 20km flight. A totally awesome
flight for me, although I was told that a good day has a cloudbase of
15000ft, with 17000ft not uncommon.

We then drove back north to Salt Lake City, again passing the Point of
the Mountain. We saw some gliders soaring the north side, and it looked
so nice that we couldn't resist to go flying there. It's a very
interesting site. You launch at the lower tier which is only about 100ft
tall. Then, there is a flat plateau, about 1000ft wide, before the big,
1000ft high ridge. So we launched and soared, but didn't get higher than
70ft off the deck. Some gliders were at the ridge behind, but how the
heck did they get there? The answer came with the first thermal bubble.
We grabbed it, got up to approximately 200ft over and drifted back to
the higher ridge. In totally smooth lift, we finally got 2000ft over
launch and had the possibility to go a few kilometers towards the north.
It was a pretty good day for me airtime-wise: almost 7 hours in a day!

We then traveled on, climbed in the Wind River Range and finally made it
to Jackson, Wyoming. The flying there has a very good reputation, but we
were a bit unlucky with the weather. It was perfectly fine to hike and
climb in Grand Teton NP, but just a bit too windy to fly. Most of the
flying happens on the east facing slopes of the Teton ski resort, where
an aerial tram leads to launch. The fact that it's east facing also
means that the flying happens on what is usually the lee side, so you
better leave it in strong, westerly winds. Well, the last day before we
traveled on to Yellowstone, we still got a very good flight at a west
facing evening site called Beaver Mountain. It was Friday and we went
there with about 10 local pilots. It's a hike up site, but not too far,
about 650ft and 30 minutes. There, you launch on an extremly steep slope
with loose gravel. It looks more intimidating than it actually is, but
it's good to have some help to lay out the glider - just make sure
you're not the last one to launch. Beaver Mountain is a lot of fun:
launch is just below 7000ft and then you can soar the big mountain which
is next to it - again in perfectly smooth lift we got up to 11000ft. The
magic air lasted until after sunset, which we could still see from high
in the air. It was clearly one of my most beautiful flights ever, a real
bummer that we had to land because it got dark!

We then traveled a bit away from the good flying in Yellowstone and
Idaho. Finally, we headed towards famous King Mountain. We planned to
fly there, the conditions looked perfect with light winds and an awesome
sky. But it was midweek, nobody showed up and with neither having a ride
to launch, nor having any information about the site, we decided to
bail. Similar story in Sun Valley. As a visiting pilot, they won't let
you on the chairlift if not a local pilot accompanies you. It was still
midweek and the locals didn't fly, so we couldn't either. Well, the
mountain biking there is really excellent, it was my favorite hobby for
years, so I also enjoyed that very much.

Our trip ended again in Salt Lake City. We arrived Friday late
afternoon, and made sure to be just in time for the evening session at
the Point of the Mountain. Since another front was rolling through, the
winds were from the south, meaning that we flew the south side also in
the evening. This yielded another 2 hours of airtime. I think you are
not surprised that we chose a motel in a strategically good place, so
that we could fly again on Saturday morning. Our plane only left at
noon: no problem to get 2 further hours of airtime in Salt Lake City by
soaring the south side of the Point!

Some pictures of our trip, with some further comments about the
paragliding sites we flew is available from my webpage at
http://stat.ethz.ch/~dettling/rockymt.html The PG pics are then just one
click away and if you would like to see the whole story of our trip, you
are of course very welcome to click the appropriate links.

Cheers,

Marcel

[silverwings]

Thanks for sharing your trip and your pictures are great! Too bad you didn't get to fly Sun Valley. I have been there a few times and had some nice PG flights. Also, every time I see Point of the Mountain south site, I am so envious of such a wonder training and flying hill.