The first Paragliding World Cup of the 2024 season just wrapped up in Grindelwald, Switzerland. I’ve never flown in a comp in Europe and while knowing there was a reasonable chance we’d all be sitting in the rain for a week, I wasn’t deterred from making the long trip from Idaho to get a chance. I went through this remarkable zone perched under the north face of the Eiger in the 2019 Red Bull X-Alps. A chance to return and fly tasks with the best in the world was an opportunity, however slim, I had to take.
It’s been an unseasonably wet spring in the Alps and there was quite a bit of chatter of the comp being cancelled altogether a few days before the start. Martin Scheel, the long-time Swiss League coach, weather guru and main organiser of the competition sent a message to all of the pilots that the Grindelwald launch was still under a metre of snow and the first few days of the comp looked next to impossible, but he saw some...
