overdue report on the status of trees near Hoover ridge (aka incident report) in honor of Ancil's focus on safety
Luke
So after reading the latest threads on safety I figured I should provide a description of a tree encounter that I had at Detroit a couple months ago. I had intentionally not posted earlier for personal reasons that were a little petty with hindsight. I appreciate the effort that so many people here put into keeping our sport as safe and injury free as possible so I should probably put some effort in myself (swallowed pride and all). I should also make a public thanx to those who lent me gear and advice on retrieving my wing.
July 14th was a big day for me and I had many plans that morning (none of which involved paragliding). After seeing some reports that people were planning to fly at Detroit my impulsive side took over. I decided that flying Detroit would make for the perfect day. I’ll have a nice flight in a beautiful area as long as I land by 3:30 or 4 at the latest when I need to drive to Portland for a Timbers game, for which a friend had bought me birthday tickets, then pick my fiancé up at the airport. The whole story of the day is a bit bigger but I’ll keep it short. We got to launch around 2pm if I remember right and there were people already set to launch in conditions that were not terrible but also not ideal (yes I know ideal doesn’t exist at Hoover). As Doug Jackson said in a post about that day … one needs to have there A game at that site any time you launch (I had my D- game). There really isn't much room for error at the launch (much like a few other launches in our neck of the woods). At some point it was my turn to launch and I was in a hurry to get in the air! I pulled my wing up and it seemed stable but possibly could have been more pressurized. I took a tuck on my right side and lost enough elevation that I needed to steer over the lowest trees weaving ever so briefly and just and just as I thought I would be in the clear my lines caught a fir tree and swung me around until I was hugging a skinny fir about 30 feet up and maybe 100 feet down the hill. I was able to unhook and climb down fairly easily on my own.
My wing was draped across a couple of 50 foot trees and I could not find my own sierra saw, so Mark Sanzone was able to drop one from the air, but it got lost amongst the vegetation. Of course after that I found my own sierra saw when the adrenaline started to wear off and thinking skills improved: A good lesson here is to always keep emergency items were you can reach them without putting any thought into the process. Reed lent a rope and some tree spikes, and Sarge made a loop for me to use in order to help climb back up the trees. Dave Blizzard and George Mcphearson stuck with me and offered advice and insights into getting my glider down with minimal damage. Also thanx to Jay for driving my car back up. After about 2 hours of cutting away on two different trees I got my glider down. The bad news is that it was a new glider but the good news is that I had no injuries save for a small scratch and my glider revealed no tears or line damage after inspection on top and later on at home.
Lessons learned: Strongly reconsider flying if you have major events or circumstances on your mind (good or bad). Not everyone is the same and we all act differently to unique mental stimuli so be in tune as to your mental state and how you react under these various stimuli. Also be proactive about not flying, at least in my case if I am without a fully focused mind. As far as the flight goes I think the first sentence explains it all. My other decisions would have been much different as far as whether to fly or having more patience and focus in launching. I was also on a pretty new wing and had some extra accompanying confidence possibly falling under the “intermediate syndrome” category.