Flight from Yayamari

At the Paragliding World Cup in Aksaray, Turkey in summer 2023 my husband Ulric Jessop and I both knew we were going to resign from our roles with the PWC. We were sad to give up a job that we both loved, but saddest of all was the thought of leaving behind all our friends on the competition circuit. On our last night in Aksaray we promised we would visit as many of those friends as possible. 

So, that in a nutshell is how we came to be sitting in a dented hire car outside our good friend Franz Schilter’s house, in Urubamba, Peru. Originally from Switzerland, Franz went to South America backpacking in his twenties. There, he hitched a lift with a lorry driver in Chile, but whilst Franz was in the restroom the lorry driver drove off with all of Franz’s belongings. The Chilean embassy helped Franz get back to Lima, where he had left some gliders in storage, and with those he started to teach paragliding. His future wife, Petit, was learning with a rival school. Her first flight was on an old glider, her radio wasn’t working and her helmet was too big so she couldn’t see anything. Franz was in the landing field and suggested that if she wanted to fly seriously, he could help – now there was no question of leaving Peru!

Petit wanted to live in the Sacred Valley, even though she had never been there. If Franz wanted to come too, that would be fine, so Franz said, “Yes, OK, let’s try it.” It was time to settle down and Urubamba was the place. Over the following three decades Franz and Petit established a hotel in the Sacred Valley, an adventure tourism agency and, most importantly, started a family.

So, on to the present day. Over pisco sours Franz happened to mention that his son Tommy was planning an expedition to Yayamari, a 6,049m glaciated mountain in the Vilcanota mountain range in the Peruvian Andes, between the town of Cusco and Lake Titicaca. Tommy...