Hang Gliding

Posted by Marci on Dec 2, 2010 in | 0 comments

As a child I would lie in the grass and stare at the birds soaring in the sky. I’d watch them float on the air currents without the need to flap their wings and I would long to be like them. My heart ached with the desire to feel that free.

From the moment I lifted off with Dave Llewellyn, the owner of Gravity Sports, my dream of having wings came true. We took off from 4200 feet by running down a steep hill, but with just a few short steps we were airborne, floating over the trees and across the valley in Pemberton, Canada, a city north of Whistler. The wind was a gentle breeze and I could see the snow-capped mountains all around me.

Dave said to me, “Did you ever want to be Peter Pan? Here’s your chance. Hold out your arms and fly.”

I lifted my arms out to my sides and I could feel every cell in my body smiling with the sensation. Humans might not have the physiology to fly, but somehow I think we all dream of it.

Dave definitely had the desire. He originally satisfied his need for flight by skydiving, but after years of jumping out of planes one day his parachute didn’t open. He pulled hard on the ripcord and it only opened one side sending him into a spin with such great g-forces he couldn’t reach the cutaway for the first shoot. When he finally broke away and opened his safety chute he was only hundreds of feet from the ground and broke his leg on landing. He didn’t let the fear stop him, but returned to the sport only to find he no longer enjoyed it. But his need to fly didn’t go away and he turned to paragliding. It was too boring for him and so he found his way to hang gliding. Now he’s a professional rated instructor and tandem instructor who flies in Ontario, Canada and their new location Pemberton, Canada. He also does hang gliding tours in Ecuador and Mexico living his life like a bird.

Dave’s love for the sport was apparent as he taught me to fly the glider, to turn by shifting my weight, to catch thermals that lifted us seven hundred feet higher than our launching point.

We soared above the mountains and as I looked down I saw a hawk circling on the same air current below, his wings outstretched without the need to work. “This is the best experience of my life,” I said to Dave after we’d been in the air for an hour. “It’s better than skydiving because you actually feel like your flying. Everyone should experience this at least once.”

I looked at the mountains and thought, how did my life get this fantastic? How did making a list bring me to the Whistler area, the most beautiful place I could imagine flying, to make this dream come true? But it had and instead of looking up at the birds I was one of them.