NZ Hike Day 11: Wheeeee!

Yes - the guy in the background had some issues later on...

One of the many things I learned on this trip, thanks to a good friend, is that no matter how little time you think you have, you can always squeeze in another experience. Queenstown bills itself (and probably is) the Adventure Capital of the World. So I had 4 hours to eat lunch, purchase some gifts, buy some Milo and Whitaker's dark chocolate (which I have become addicted to) and to find something interesting to do...

After some hemming and hawing on what exactly to do, I decided to go with paragliding. I had skydived back home in Austin and although the initial rush is pretty cool - it felt like an abstract experience: 30 seconds of freefall followed by 2 minutes of parachuting down. I had really enjoyed the slower portion of it - being able to take in landscape from a perspective that I would normally not to see.

I chose to go with Tandem Paragliding - they would handle pickup and dropoff in QT and Angus Tapper, the chief pilot I would be flying with, is the 3 time NZ paragliding champion and is ranked 8th in the world. Very reassuring to say the least.

We drove up a winding, pebble-strewn road up to Coronet Peak at an altitude of 3,800 feet. Apparently in the winter, one can go up to 5,400 feet and jump from a snowy peak - which sounds breathtaking. There was not much prep for the jump - except for a brief demonstration of what it would feel like as I ran off the cliff. Angus told me run as fast as I could while he held me back - this simulated what the chute was going to do. As we were going through this exercise I observed 1 crash and 1 near crash on takeoff - what was that about being reassured?

Look Mom - no hands!

I think the funniest part of takeoff in paragliding is how slowly it happens. You start running as hard as you can but there is so much resistance from the chute that as you near the peak that you are to jump off from - you feel like you're stuck in some crazy editor's hands and he's slowed the film speed to one tenth what it should be and that you really hope the guy strapped to you really knows what he's doing...and time is going so slowly that you get to think that over three to four times before you get to the edge.

As we jumped, we immediately started to get lift and I was on a high, literally and figuratively. It was truly awesome. In a mountainous area such as the one we were flying in, the lift for the chute comes from thermals - pockets or columns of hot air, heated by the sun and rising. A pilot, especially one as experienced as Angus, hones in on these thermals. Once we found thermals, we started doing circles around the thermals and spent a wonderful 30 minutes up in the air taking in the area around Coronet Peak - what a rush.