Learning to Fly

The Accident

Daniel, Guto, and I got up the ramp a bit before 11am. It had been a long week at work and I was telling the lads on the way up I was needing to clear my head. We hadn’t seen anybody flying as we drove up so our hopes weren’t that high.

It was blowing an easterly cross wind across the ramp but there were patches when it would swing round to the northeast and look flyable. Every time it swung round we would get our hopes up it would fix and I even prepped my glider in anticipation. There were about 30 pilots on the ramp waiting for the conditions to improve. Two of the guys who had been going well lately in the competitions decided to test the water and took off. They weren’t getting any real height but had managed to stay up for a half hour or so, which gave a few more some courage. I decided to follow suit and tried to inflate my wing. The first 2 attempts I botched completely as I was expecting the wind to be much stronger bu due to the gusting was caught off guard. I felt for a minute that maybe I should abort as I obviously wasn’t at full potential, but decided to press on.

Although I had been prepped for a while and was still at the front of the ramp, I let Cruz take off first, as there were already a half dozen pilots flying and nobody was having much luck, and I thought I could follow his lead if necessary.

I took off went to the right and then swung round to the left along the ridge. I had been losing height the whole way as the lift had dropped away almost completely. I saw some other pilots struggling too, and decided to head over to the left side of the ramp near the northwestern landing spot. As I got there I found a weak thermal.

I had already lost a lot of height and was pretty low. The landing looked very rough with the wind blowing across it and it looked like I would have to land in the wake which I knew would be rough. I could see Cruz a little higher than I was, and circling over the alternative landing spot slightly higher up the access road. It looked like he was in the same thermal, so I decided it must be stronger higher up and I should give it a shot. At least if it didn’t work out, I could land at the alternative landing spot which was a little higher and better lined up with the easterly wind.

I circled twice as I worked my way over the line of trees, neither gaining nor losing much height. As I got halfway through the second circle I dropped out of the thermal and caught the downdraft. I had been moving toward higher ground, and as such was already only about 30m above the ground and when I started to drop quickly. I realised I wasn’t going to make the alternative landing site and had to prep for a rough landing. I tried to turn around left into the wind but I just started dropping faster and decided it would be better to take the hit and land downwind. I was expecting to tumble and roll a bit but I braked as hard as I could and only manged to get one foot under me and stopped dead with a thump.

I knew it was serious as I couldn’t feel anything below my waist, but I managed to quickly unhook my harness to avoid being dragged, put my legs in the recovery position, and radio Daniel for help before I passed out.

Total flight time: Less than 10 minutes