Welcome to my Substack journey revolving around the pre-publication progress of my 10-volume series on freeflight: Ghosts of Wind and Cloud.
I started writing about my passion for hang gliding about 44 years ago, more as a personal journal rather than something I planned to publish. But as my flying ability progressed to the Owens Valley during the years of the early pioneering cross country competitions held by hang gliding legend Don Partridge, I realized I was closely following in the wake of giants of the new sport and that our micrometeorological adventures were epic, not just in hang gliding, but in all of aviation. I began filming and writing articles that were published worldwide.
But then my friends started dying in the prime of their lives. I lost a few to hang gliding, but most were killed trying to fly with motors fastened to their butterfly wings. It was a sobering experience. I started keeping track.
After a decade of hang gliding and a cross country flight of over 170 miles, I hung up my wings and returned to truck driving to support my family. But in 2002, a paragliding competition was held on Gunter, where I had filmed Aoli, Comet Clones & Pod People in 1981. Knowing little about the growing sport of paragliding, I thought it would be interesting to compare it to hang gliding, this time using the new medium of digital videography.
I was appalled by what I saw. Owens Valley clearly was no place for soaring parachutes. The turbulence was too great. One contestant died across the valley the day before the contest. Another was picked up by a thermal from the ground and dashed against the side of the mountain. He lingered in a coma for months until he died. Emergency deployments were common. The last resulted in a fire during a helicopter rescue that shut down the contest. When the event leaders, all former hang glider pilots, suggested I fly a paraglider off Gunter to see what it was like, it was easy for me to decline. This was not the joyous freeflight to which I was accustomed. This was gambling.
At the time, paragliding was being touted as safer than hang gliding, with less than 400 fatalities worldwide. But hang gliding had been practiced for over 100 years, leading to a renaissance 1972, while the first paragliding deaths began only in 1986 - so I could see where this was headed. By the summer of 2022, fewer than 1,000 pilots have died on hang gliders in the span of a century compared to around 2,200 dead gamblers on paragliders in 36 years. Most paragliding deaths are the result of sudden sail deformation, while most hang gliding deaths remain a consequence of pilot error.
