“It’s a knife fight”

“Every flight is a knife fight” says veteran pilot and adventure athlete Will Gadd. A competition pilot, former world record holder and one of the original Red Bull mountain athletes, Will has been at the forefront of adventure sports for thirty years. He shares the “paragliding survival principles” he has learnt along the way.

These are like, “just my opinions, man” (The Big Lebowski), but they are based on a lot of flying for more than 30 years, teaching multiple high-risk sports, and watching others fly for the same. This is just my opinion, but I hope it helps people thinking about safe flying to better develop their own survival principles. 

If I could sum my entire paragliding “safety” approach up into two words it would be these: Fly well. This might sound like BS, but here’s the thing: If we fly well then we avoid most if not all of the hazards that commonly injure and kill people. We don’t need extreme skills to escape “cloud suck,” which doesn’t generally exist, we just don’t fly into clouds in the first place. We don’t need to land in horrible places because we are aware of where we are and have a good LZ on glide. It’s not solving serious problems with extreme skill that keeps people “safe.” Flying well keeps people safer. So:

Q: How do we stay “safe” while paragliding? 

A:...