Adventures in Paragliding

One of the things my nephews love doing when they visit France is paragliding.  The Haute-Savoie region is beautiful and perfectly suited for paragliding.  On this particular day, Ben was going to fly and Jon stayed behind with the rest of us to watch.

We drove up the narrow mountain road to the trail head.  From there we started our hike up to the top.  It was a bit chilly at altitude, and there was still snow in places.

At the top we had some beautiful views looking out over Annecy.  We were waiting for one more person to meet us to fly with Ben, so the cousins had some time to kill with snowball fights.

While we were waiting, Ben decided to go up for a test flight.  When the winds were right, he took to the skies.

Ben has been paragliding since he was 14 years old.  He really enjoys the freedom of quietly gliding through the sky with the birds.  A hawk decided to join him for a while on his flight, climbing the same updrafts together.

I have to admit, it looked like a lot of fun.  I would have a bit of hesitation to take a running leap off the mountaintop like he did.  I can only imagine the views he must have had.  You can see Lake Annecy in the background of one of the photos below.

As he sailed off over the mountains, we started our hike back to the cars.  We followed the slow winding roads back to the homestead.  Just as we were driving up the final road, we spotted Ben dropping into a field.  He had beat us back, and traveled quite some distance in the process.

I was able to capture some video of his flight, and put together a video for him.  You can see the beauty of the region in the video, and view some of his flight.