502km on a paraglider in the desert of South Africa. Incredible, courageous, awe-inspiring, or really, really stupid?
After reading the article in Cross Country magazine, I really couldn't decide what to think.
Incredible, courageous and awe-inspiring: I'm in awe. So much distance covered, and so quickly (7 hrs 30 mins), from an aircraft that you carry on your back and launch towed behind a jeep on a dusty country road in the middle of nowhere. That just blows my mind. And, doing it alone. Doubly mind blowing. Nevil Hulett's flight probably rates up in the world of adventure sports like a solo ascent of Everest. It's was an incredible, focused, calculated risk resulting in a by a complete master of this sport.
Really, really stupid: I'm horrified. Flying out of cell and radio phone range most of the time, in desert conditions where landing out could have meant dying of thirst before being found, launching in 40km/hr wind, 'going down at 5m/s with a ground speed of 115km/h', 'multiple cascades in roter going backwards at 50km/h'. Crabing across a hill on speedbar at 70km/h groundspeed to avoid going into rotor. The list of bad paragliding practice listed in the Cross Country article is like a 'how to kill yourself paragliding' manual.
So what? No one disputes we practice a dangerous sport. Well, I think our sport has crossed a threashold. When to create a new world record, you need to fly in conditions so bad you have a good chance of killing yourself, I think this is just as much a new low for paragliding, as well as a new record.
To need to deliberately pursue clearly dangerous flying conditions as the only way to pursue records contains great risk for the public perception of our sport. The risk here is that paragliding stops being perceived as a miraculous dream about the miracle of free flight, and starts being perceived as just another extreme sport whose focus centers of 'heros' who will probably end up dead. Like the basejumpers, sky surfers and mountain climbers whose obituraries we read all too often.
After reading the article in Cross Country magazine, I really couldn't decide what to think.
Incredible, courageous and awe-inspiring: I'm in awe. So much distance covered, and so quickly (7 hrs 30 mins), from an aircraft that you carry on your back and launch towed behind a jeep on a dusty country road in the middle of nowhere. That just blows my mind. And, doing it alone. Doubly mind blowing. Nevil Hulett's flight probably rates up in the world of adventure sports like a solo ascent of Everest. It's was an incredible, focused, calculated risk resulting in a by a complete master of this sport.
Really, really stupid: I'm horrified. Flying out of cell and radio phone range most of the time, in desert conditions where landing out could have meant dying of thirst before being found, launching in 40km/hr wind, 'going down at 5m/s with a ground speed of 115km/h', 'multiple cascades in roter going backwards at 50km/h'. Crabing across a hill on speedbar at 70km/h groundspeed to avoid going into rotor. The list of bad paragliding practice listed in the Cross Country article is like a 'how to kill yourself paragliding' manual.
So what? No one disputes we practice a dangerous sport. Well, I think our sport has crossed a threashold. When to create a new world record, you need to fly in conditions so bad you have a good chance of killing yourself, I think this is just as much a new low for paragliding, as well as a new record.
To need to deliberately pursue clearly dangerous flying conditions as the only way to pursue records contains great risk for the public perception of our sport. The risk here is that paragliding stops being perceived as a miraculous dream about the miracle of free flight, and starts being perceived as just another extreme sport whose focus centers of 'heros' who will probably end up dead. Like the basejumpers, sky surfers and mountain climbers whose obituraries we read all too often.