Paragliding!

So I have begun a new sport.  I am learning how to paraglide nowadays.  It may be folly, to try to learn another sport that is going to take a bunch of time and energy when it never seems like there is enough time for the activities I am currently involved with.  However, I am going to try. 

I was up in Cashmere, which is just outside of Leavenworth at Aerial Paragliding taking some lessons over the last few days.  Denise and Doug are great instructors and have a top notch facility if anyone is interested in trying it out.  It was actually recommended to me by a ski buddy as a great place to learn.  They have these monster hills to go fly off of and little trucks to drive you back up, so you can really make use of the conditions when they are good.  

I started out just learning how to launch the wing and put it down.  Then we did some running downhill with the wing and getting a bit of float.  Before long I was launching off of "Don's" and getting flights of a few minutes.  It really is a great feeling to be flying along.  I am stoked to go do some more and really get some long flights in....

Denali 2008

Well, another season of guiding on Denali is done for me.  We had a great trip up there, really one of the most straight forward trips I have done on the good old West Buttress.  It was a small team, three climbers and one other guide, so it made for easy travel together.  That combined with everyone being strong and about as good of weather as we could hope for made for a smooth trip.   

Hugh and Liam with their Igloo

The only kinks occurred on the arrival to AK.  I had a bag go missing and hence arrive in Talkeetna a day late.  Let me tell you, that can make you pr

etty nervous when you know that you need everything in that bag in order to make the trip go, and it is completely out of your power to do anything about it.  Shortly after realizing that my bag was missing, I thought we had lost one of the climbers.  Through some sort of miscommunication, I thought that Hugh was meeting us in the airport, while he thought he was meeting us in Talkeetna.  Suffice it to say, I drove away from the airport feeling one bag and one climber too light.  It all worked out the next morning though, and the trip ended up getting onto the glacier without a hitch.  

Heading down the Autobahn to 17 Camp

This trip was also super fun for me because I was able to climb right next to some really great friends of mine.  My buddy Nate was guiding a trip on the same schedule as us for AMS.  There was another climb of Air Force people that was led by a great friend who I went to school and have been climbing with for years, Mark.  They were a riot as well, singing and playing cards and competing with out crew for who could build the best igloo at 14 camp.  They were also climbing for charity, raising money for the Warrior Fund.  Check out their site if you get the chance.  We also go to climb and summit next to Mike Haugen and Zach Price another couple friends of mine.  They are attempting to summit the 50 high points, one in each state, in 50 days.  Good luck to you guys!

Like I said, all in all, a great trip.  100% of our team summited and 100% got back to the real world safely.