France

Time seems to be flying in France, as it always seems to when you’re having fun. On Saturday the three of us met up in Geneva airport, and spent a couple days in Annecy. Annecy was beautiful – wow. It’s like you have everything there – a beautiful lake, amazing mountains, delicious bakeries, and endless paragliding opportunities. What else do you want in life?

On our second “official” day of our trip we flew from one of the busiest launches I’ve ever been to. Even considering it was a weekend, but I have never seen so many people at the same launch in a non-competition environment at once. It was insane. The amount of tandem pilots out there flying was crazy too – at any given time it must have been something like 30% – 40%. Tandems are big business out in Annecy.

I had a really nice flight, despite other pilots choosing to ignore every single aviation rule there is. At times it was a bit gnarly, especially with so many pilots doing their own thing in the air, but when I felt uncomfortable I simply found a new spot to fly. I cruised around for over an hour, buzzing a couple restaurants sitting on the ridge, and then landed fine. It was fantastic.

Unfortunately since then, the weather has not been on our side as it has been raining or overcast for the last couple days. Yesterday we drove away from Annecy to St.Hiliare which is where Coupe Icare is. All of the vendors are setting up their tents and this morning we checked out main launch, as well as a south launch. The main launch is a paraglider’s dream – astro turf all the way to the edge with space for at least 15 gliders. Brilliant.


Launch at St. Hilaire on right where white tent is sitting.





It’s so exciting to be surrounded by paragliding – whether it’s the shop owners, other pilots, amazingly maintained launches – it’s so cool to be a part of this. Tomorrow the festivities begin, so the fun has just begun. Can’t wait!