I got up early as I knew that I had a 3 ½ hour drive to Interlaken, Switzerland, my next destination, a well known paragliding center. The campsite office wasn’t open for another hour when I left so I felt slightly vindicated that I camped for free. Thankfully the roads were quite empty through Chamonix and I had a lovely drive into the Rhone Valley. I arrived in Interlaken, a small city on a gorgeous lake surrounded by mountains (the famous ones being Jungfrau (the virgin), Eiger (the ogre) and between them Monch (the monk...there must be a story there as Beat, a guy in the next paragraph brought up). I arrived at the LZ and had some lunch as I watched a few mini-buses of paragliders and hang gliders head up to a lower launch. I saw some PGers waiting at a bus stop so I asked them how much and would they accept Euros (as the main currency is still the Swiss franc)...they thought they would. I’ll have to do some research as to why Switzerland hasn’t fully adopted the Euro. I finished lunch as I saw a guy ride in on his motor scooter with a paraglider on his back. He ended up joining me at the bus stop and was obviously a local so I asked him a few questions. His name was Arno and he worked making prosthetic legs and arms four days a week. Paragliding was one of his many pursuits so he claimed he was by no means and expert.
Thankfully the bus did take Euros, but only bills, but after a couple of minutes of the bus driver figuring what I owed, we were on our way. We arrived at the railcar that would take us a good portion of the way up the mountain called Niederhorn followed by a gondola. I was a bit shocked that it cost me 33 Swiss francs to go up (about 33 Canadian dollars!)...but when in Rome, or at least a thousand miles from Rome... In the railcar there were two other paraglider pilots. Howie is an ex-Brit who lived in Australia for a number of years and now works as a tandem skydiver nearby and he reminded me a lot of my good friend Paul Macoun in looks and mannerisms. His friend was a funny Swiss guy Beat (pronounced Bee-At). Turns out that they met in Pokhara, Nepal this past year and therefore knew my paragliding instructor Claudio and his wife Elli who spent the winter there working with Scott Mason and his parahawking company...sometimes the world is so small! Walking up to launch the wind was unfortunately blowing over the back but there had to be some thermic cycles coming through once in a while. The view was gorgeous and Beat comically laid out the ultimate flight plans: “If we miraculously get up above launch and then miraculously up to cloudbase and then...miraculously cross the lake we should head along that ridge...and then miraculously...”. Arno was the first off and he didn’t find too many thermals but supposedly wasn’t really looking for them. Howie launched next and did find some lift and was soon followed by Beat.
On the railcar up:
The view behind launch:
I took another half an hour before I got off. Between a couple of botched launches, resetting up, waiting for cycles, having a cycle come through finally just as a helicopter flew by only a 100 meters above launch...I had my difficulties. Once finally in the air, I headed right towards the gondola and shot up quite quickly. I was a bit dismayed to hear a very loud jet somewhere in the sky, had to be, and was a jet fighter. I sire hoped not to have a close up view of him. As was the case in Laragne, it’s amazing how fast one can go from desiring lift to being frightened by it. I briefly saw an axcent rate of 7.3 meters oer second on my vario! I was wary of the clouds above me and kept towards the edge of them. I worked my way to the west to try and have a view down the steep little valley behind launch. I worked my way back and was having to fight at times to keep my wing open. I thought I was in the clear when suddenly my wing fell way back behind me, out of my sight. This is a good indicator that I was hitting an extreme thermal with a shear layer of air flying quickly down and other air flowing up. I braced for the surge of my glider and did some extreme braking to prevent it from flying in front and eventually down below me (read: that would be bad!). I was happy that I was flying with a wrap (I had the brake lines wrapped around my hands for extra leverage) thanks to Kester’s advice the week before. Even with my major braking, all hell suddenly broke loose. The next bit is a bit of a blur as the wing flung around as did I. A few times I recalled, “Hands up”, meaning to keep your brakes up and let the wing sort itself out as it will want to try and fly. Soon I found myself in technically an acrobatic manoeuvre called a helicopter which is a flat spin which requires you to stall the glider to enter into it, I guess I had stalled. I eventually recovered the wing and with an empty adrenal gland contemplated what had just happened. I lost at least a couple hundred meters of altitude and had a few hundred more before I would have crashed on the forested slope. I felt that I had done fairly well to get a hold of the situation apart from never looking down to assess how much altitude I had left and whether I should have thrown my reserve parachute. A big bummer was that I didn’t have my HD helmet camera videoing the whole affair as it would have been a great teaching tool to know what exactly happened.
In flight:
Looking down at Interlaken:
As I left the area I started to feel more lift and contemplated spiralling down a bit to escape this air rodeo but I wanted to make sure that I made it to the landing zone. I ridge soared an area where a lot of students hang out and then headed out to land. I started sneezing and sneezing...at least a dozen times...am I allergic to near death experiences? Whew...I have to say that a cold beer doesn’t taste much better than after an experience like that! My nose continued to run for the next hour and I consumed a large amount of my last box of three-ply, moisturized super awesome Kleenex’s from Canada...oh well, small price to pay.
I headed to a nearby campsite and relaxed for the evening. Another campsite that cost about 35 Canadian dollars for a flat piece of land with electricity, which sadly wouldn’t power my fridge. Oh, Switzerland, you’re beautiful but damn expensive!
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