{"id":796,"date":"2023-03-15T00:53:17","date_gmt":"2023-03-15T00:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.comeup.ch\/?p=796"},"modified":"2024-01-14T21:16:46","modified_gmt":"2024-01-14T21:16:46","slug":"getting-grounded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.comeup.ch\/getting-grounded\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting Grounded"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The ones of you who follow us on Polarsteps<\/a> can probably already guess what this post is about. After lots of fun paragliding, a small mistake during landing was enough to ground Katy for at least a few weeks. Before we get to that, though, let me introduce you to the lovely little mountain town of Jard\u00edn. It is located in the south of the busy metropolis of Medell\u00edn and is as picturesque as it gets. It is built around a central plaza with a church and many cafes, restaurants, and bars. In particular, during the weekend it is a very lively place with everyone sitting outside, Colombian music playing, and tap-dancing horses (which can be annoying at times^^).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s the perfect place to flee the big city. And that’s what many Colombians do, hence there are many local tourists. The town is obviously trying to entice visitors but hasn’t lost its charm along the way. And it’s a paragliding destination as well. There is a local tandem operator<\/a> that offers flights to tourists that want to marvel at the mountain landscape from up in the air. The takeoff is a bumpy 40-minute ride away and as solo pilots, we can just join the rides up for a small fee. It’s very easy going and, on our first day, one of the tandem pilots was more than happy to give us an intro (see our site guide<\/a> for more information).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Two<\/a>
Two of the tandem pilots at takeoff<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Even though the conditions were worse than usual, we could do great flying. Katy used the spacious takeoff for her first and perfectly smooth top-landing (achievement unlocked \ud83c\udf89) and I tried to fly as far down the valley to the north as I could. One day I managed to get all the way to Hispania and back, clocking in a flight<\/a> of 4\u00bd hours and 50 XC kilometers. We also had some rainy days during our week-long stay. One day I needed to fly away from Jard\u00edn again on my way back because a thunderstorm with dark clouds formed in the basin the town is located in (including a fun ride on a motorcycle that ran out of fuel mid-way back to town).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another mediocre flying day \u2014 it was very cloudy \u2014 Katy and I took off, climbed to the cloud base, and headed off<\/a> to a valley east of Jard\u00edn together. The terrain is rising in this direction and the wind blows up the valley. We had good altitude and while it was quite a distance, we felt comfortable that we would find some lift. The strong thermals close to takeoff boosted our confidence. The problem: we didn’t find any lift at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we realized this, we tried to fly out of the valley again but with the headwind, we had no chance of reaching back to Jard\u00edn. We still tried until the last moment to soar out of the valley. By doing this, though, we gave ourselves very little time to prepare for a proper landing. Those two mistakes \u2014 committing to fly into the valley in weak conditions and not accepting defeat earlier \u2014 unfortunately set up Katy for a rough landing. She got into a downdraft and didn’t manage to turn into the wind and onto flat terrain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Windsock<\/a>
We weren’t that lucky with the weather (again)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

She landed down a slope, managed to stay on her feet, and ran while the glider was lifting her up again. She touched down two times before coming to an abrupt stop. From my location further down the cow field, I couldn’t tell if she was alright, just that she wasn’t getting up. I ran to her with my paragliding equipment still on. To my relief, she looked alright and was only mentioning pain from twisting her right ankle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reading this paragraph now seems more dramatic than it felt, to be honest. On the other hand, things could have gone much worse very easily. Katy by instinct and lots of training still did a lot of things right to save the situation. It just tells how important good practice combined with proper risk management is for paragliding. That’s also the reason we afterward very deliberately analyzed the errors we made and why we share them here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Woman
Katy with her hurt ankle in front of our accommodation<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Back to the scene. While I was still packing up our equipment, an ambulance stopped down at the road. Apparently, someone saw us landing and called them. We weren’t quite sure if it is really necessary but we soon appreciated their help. The field was quite rough and we needed to get across two ditches with water and a barbwire fence to get out. One of the paramedics carried Katy on his back. It was quite an amusing picture, to be honest. After that was done, they drove us to the hospital where the doctor got to the conclusion that nothing is broken, and recommended crutches and rest. All in all, they charged us just 5 dollars for everything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Katy, unfortunately, it meant being grounded for the next few weeks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ones of you who follow us on Polarsteps can probably already guess what this post is about. After lots of fun paragliding, a small mistake during landing was enough to ground Katy for at least a few weeks. Before we get to that, though, let me introduce you to the lovely little mountain town […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":816,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[29,19,15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.comeup.ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.comeup.ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.comeup.ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.comeup.ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.comeup.ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blog.comeup.ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":853,"href":"https:\/\/blog.comeup.ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions\/853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.comeup.ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.comeup.ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.comeup.ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.comeup.ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}