Fight or Flight

I am at almost 19,000 feet. My wing is unfurled on the snow in front of me catching drifts of Andean air flowing over the ridge. Behind it is a cliff heading to the bottom of the southeast face of Artesonraju (6,025m), the half of which we just climbed. Behind me is another cliff tumbling off to the southeast ridge, where Rowan and I stand on a slope just large enough to lay out a wing and launch, but certainly not large enough to mess up. 

Rowan has me on a makeshift belay while I gather my footing and ready to pull up my wing into the wind. A belay in the sense that there is a rope attached to me. Makeshift in the sense that we just made this system up. No one I know of or have heard of has launched a paraglider on belay before. It is untested, but the familiarity of a rope provides us with at least a feeling of added safety during the transition from ground to sky in case of a slip on launch. I tug on my risers to bring the wing up, letting my body control the glider in the way it knows how. My mind goes blank. Numb. 

Cordillera Blanca

The misnomer “adrenaline junkie” is often applied to those who do risky sports. Indeed that may be the...