Mission Peak 2024-03-31
Flying on the 31st of March at Mission Peak, I threw my reserve on a paragliding flight. I wrote a incident report to share with other pilots to share my experience and help the community learn from the event. Here is the report:
Pilot Experience
- Years flying: ~2
- Flight hours: 95
- Thermal flight hours: 80
- Rating: P3
Gear
- Wing (include cert.): Phi Beat Light (EN-B)
- Harness: WV GTO Light 2
Conditions
- Location: Mission Peak, CA
- Date: 2024-03-31
- Time of day: 1pm
- Winds/Weather: ~6mph from west. Post frontal and very unstable. Lots of cumulus development in the surrounding areas, but none above the peak. Lots of sun.
- Altitude of incident: 300’ above terrain
Incident Description:
I launched from Mission Peak at 12:30. My plan for the flight was to spend an hour tuning up my thermalling and evaluating conditions, then potentially go XC.
Around 12:55, I was in a thermal out in front (to the west) of Mission Peak. The thermal drifted me back towards the ridge, where I was joined by two other pilots around the same altitude. We were all turning to the left (counterclockwise). The two other pilots showed a stronger section of the climb to the northwest, and as we moved in that direction I observed the other pilots in that direction move through discrete very strong sections of the thermal.
I opened my left turning circle up to move towards the northwest and flew through a very strong section of the climb. As I started to bring the circle back in, I took a very large asymmetrical collapse on my right side (80%+ from a pilot’s view above).
I was violently thrown to the right, and the situation rapidly evolved into what I believe to be a right (clockwise) autorotation. I briefly looked up at my wing and saw a cravat on the right side. With my lack of altitude I knew that I did not have time to try to address the situation, and so I threw my reserve hard to the horizon opposite my wing. After I visually confirmed my reserve had inflated, I de-powered my main wing, which had begun to downplane. I shortly thereafter landed gently on the back side of the ridge.
Estimated Timestamps: ~12:59:34 Collapse ~12:59:42 Throw
Notes: Unfortunately, I don’t have video of the event- I pulled this together from memory and from talking with the two pilots who were with me in the thermal and one who was above us. From reviewing my track log, the whole event was ~8 seconds (though it felt like eons in my head).
Thoughts: I would like to think that with more experience, I might have been able to stop the situation from evolving after taking the collapse. I’m aware of the gap that sometimes exists for newer pilots between what they believe to have happened in an incident and what actually happened. As such, I’m wary of relaying or analyzing my memory of my control inputs (outside weight shift, outside brake) without corroboration of what I actually did. I look forward to building out my skillset for these sorts of situations in SIV.