Tapalpa: A Tale of Two Flights
Here’s some of my interesting moments while paragliding in Mexico.
On my fifth flight I ended up high above launch without a single other pilot in the sky. I radio and ask if I should just land so the van isn’t waiting and hear back “Absolutely not. Enjoy it.” After a while I started to lose the lift I was chillin’ in, slowly dropping further and further down the ridge. Someone who was late to launch because of a work call was setting up and I was thinking to myself “hurry up, I need another wind dummy out here!”
We end up flying together in a sort of scattered tricky thermal and I managed to cut him off several times, but he was forgiving about it and we both got back up eventually.
He went off and explored to the North, and I didn’t want to follow too far. So I just hung around awhile and chased birds around the sky to find lift. I joked on the radio that I wanted to contribute to the Mexican vulture preservation fund. After a long time I saw the other pilot making a long low approach and decided I’d flown long enough. So I just pointed my glider into the valley and glided out.
My altitude was 7,300 when I hit the flats, so I was gliding a full 3,000 feet in the air. There was a high inversion layer and the air was as smooth as butter. I leaned back in my seat and let go of the handles, hands behind my head in a flying recliner, just taking in the view.
My vario was just giving a slow steady sink warning, so I turned it off and reveled in the silence. The whole valley stretched around me and the LZ slid past me still 2,000 feet below. I continued out over a seasonal lake, watching ripples from waterfowl far below shimmering in the reflected sunlight. The colors were rich and warm and I began to turn long lazy circles just by leaning in my seat. I took out my camera and started snapping pictures, completely ignoring where I was going for minutes at a time, after all, there was nothing and no one to hit. I would turn the glider just to line up a nice shot.
Eventually it was time to land and I swung back to dry land and did some lazy wingovers to burn altitude. I scared a flock of birds on my final approach and for a moment I was gliding silently 20 feet above the field and surrounded by cranes and sparrows.
It was magical.
The second goal I had for this week other than XC was to do a top landing, and I eventually got my chance. The flight started normally, I went almost all the way down the ridge before catching the house thermal up above launch height. I then followed another pilot working their way back up the ridge.
At one point I saw them catch a thermal right next to launch and tried to join them but my glide was worse and I wasn’t going to clear the ridge. I got on the radio and said I would have to bail, but my instructor said I could make it. There were several tense seconds of flying directly at the terrain, but just when I was about to pull away I hit the edge of the thermal and was just able to ride it up enough to get clearance. After that I wasn’t taking chances and stuck close to a radio tower that was giving off a thin storng thermal that observers commented “Kicked your ass everytime you hit it”. My wing was well presurized though, and I had no trouble catching surges, so I don’t think I was as fearless as they made out.
Things mellowed out a hundred feet up and I was able to get on the radio and ask my instructor if I could attempt landing on the mesa and he gave the ok. I wasn’t about to land right on launch which necessitates a calibrated, cross-wind approach. Instead I wanted to land on a field a hundred yards back. I couldn’t go too far back though because wind was still coming upslope and there could potentially be a violent type of turbulence called a rotor.
I lined up on the field, but I couldn’t land! The pastureland was too hot and rising air kept popping me up before I could get close. I did some thin figure 8 turns searching for a way down. Eventually I decided to switch to a longer field to my left and was able to rock out of the rising air. I came in through a gap in the trees and had plenty of room for a solid landing.
After packing up my gear I hiked back, hoping to thumb a ride from the van coming up from the valley as a somewhat self-congragalatory joke. But I end up making it all the way back to the launch with my own two feet.
Check one goal off the list.
