Selected Logs from Roldanillo, Colombia, Feb 2025

2025-02-17

I woke up in the AirBnB I was sharing with Tom and Kirby with a bunch of pain in my back. I had spend the day before doing almost nothing but trying to recover from my travel misadventures. These had included schlepping my 100lbs of equipment up and down 4 flights of stairs 4 separate times at 2am. I blamed this for my neck pain. Tom, Kirby and I met up with Barry and Alex in town, and we grabbed breakfast before taking a cab up to launch.

I had run into an aquaintence from Vermont and his group of New England paragliders the night before. Their group was headed up to Bella Vista, so I talked my friends into following them up there. Most folks fly from the Aguapanella launch, and Bella Vista was another couple kms up the hill. The skies were open when we left town, with a layer of high clouds above.

We arrived at the top to finds that Bella Vista is actually a hotel, with a small attached launch. By the time we arrived, cumulus clouds had moved in, engulfing us completely. When the clouds broke, instead of the underside of the clouds, we saw the top side of them. I chatted with Brent for a while on launch, and Kirby, Tom, Barry and Honda sat over in chairs at the hotel. At first it seemed like we might get a break in the clouds, but then it started to drizzle, and didn’t stop.

After deciding the rail wouldn’t let up, we took a truck down the hill to El Torre. There were probably 50 pilots waiting there. As we waited, the cloud base slowly rose, but it was intermittently drizzling. As soon as we saw birds climbing out front and the rain let up, we all took off.

Barry went first, followed by Kirby and I. Tom and Honda followed shortly thereafter. We went north a couple ridges before punting into the valley as the clouds were dumping rain over the western range. As we all flew out out into the valley, I made a course diversion to a cloud and found a climb. The others continued on glide to a gaggle of pilots far out. After I topped out the climb, I headed over to the gaggle, where I arrived on top. Honda and Tom didn’t connect with the climb and bombed out on the way. I continued north, following Barry, but lost Kirby. A few climbs north, we got a radio call from Kirby who had a low save and was back up high, but a ways behind us.

I kept heading north, and joined Barry in a climb. The two of us worked together and pushed north to the ridge on the northeast side of valley. We topped out a climb above antennas on the ridge, and Barry said he was going to continue north. The clouds looked crummy and there weren’t good landing options that way, so I told him I was going to head back.

I pushed back south with a bit of a headwind. Base was higher, but the headwind made progress hard. I flew exclusively the top 2/3rds of the sky under clouds. The west side of the valley looked terrifying- there were massive clouds and they were almost all dropping out over the front range. There was a section where the worst of the clouds and rain were encroaching out on the valley, and I did my best to make fast progress past there.

As I continued south, the valley turned into a blue hole, and the only viable option was to fly under or around a massive cumulous. I got as much altitude as I could from scratching in climbs before I arrived, and cautiously made my way around it. As I got to the south eastern side and found a good climb, the cloud started dropping out. I was climbing, but I felt that my wingtip was grazing the rain as I circled. I took only the altitude I really needed, and got out of there.

I kept going south a bit more, before I turned back west and followed a set of clouds lined up between where I was and Roldanillo. The clouds to the south and the clouds to the east all looked nasty, so I decided it was a good time to head home, and I wouldn’t get a better opportunity.

After making my way back, Roldanillo had rain showers on the far side of the city and I was unsure of the strength of El Pacifico. I skirted to the south of the town, and put myself over the largest field I could find. I had a really scary landing- the wind down low was gusting 35 to 45 kmh, so I came down on full speed bar. As I tried to descend, the air around me was going up, so getting down was difficult. I pushed my way to the upwind side of the field, then spiraled down as low as I dared before getting back on bar to come in to land. Right as I was within a few hundred feet of the ground, a huge flock of birds collected in a climb at the upwind side of the field. I was sitting in the lee turbulence of the climb with lots of wind. I battled my way down to the surface, keeping the glider open and eventually touching down gently.

10 minutes after I landed, it started absolutely pouring. I walked back in the rain.

Click and drag to pan. Scroll to zoom. Control + click and drag to rotate