Selected Logs from Roldanillo, Colombia 2025-02
2025-02-21
Hiking to launch
Barry, Barry’s wife Tess, Kirby and I decided to hike up to launch. We met up at Barry and Tess’s place in the north of Rolda. I was begrudgingly carrying my full weight kit. We had identified a trail on caltopo that diverged from the main road near town and wound its way through a canyon and then up a secondary road straight to launch.
We started the hike on the road. Around two miles in, where the trail diverge from the road on the map, we found nothing but a cow feeding stall behind a barbed wire fence. After some searching, we spotted what appeared to be a cow path leading away from the stall. This was where the trail was marked on the map. In the spirit of adventure, we decided to try following it.
The trail meandered its way around the hillside, intersecting and diverging from other, less trod cow paths. A gate on the far side of the pasture put us in deep brush between two more barbed wire fences, seeming to indicate that the trail continued despite the defined path slowly petering out. Barry was gung-ho to continue, and we followed him through bushes, streams, and underbrush that caused a couple of us to get itchy scratches on our bare legs.
We arrived at another gate, this time with clear evidence of lots of cow traffic on the other side. Up ahead on the hillside above the trail we spotted a bull and a cow mating. I picked up a large stick for some sort of self defense, in-case we interrupted the two and the bull didn’t take it kindly.
The trail had been slowly climbing the canyon. Before the ridge to launch, it dove quickly downslope in a canyon with a stream at the bottom. We found a rickety covered bridge at the bottom of the canyon, crossing 15’ over the running stream bed. There was what appeared to be a single track from a motorcycle imprinted on the dust, giving me confidence that the whole thing wouldn’t collapse with the weight of me and my heavy bag. I crossed quickly nonetheless.
After the river crossing, the trail maintained its elevation on the ridgeline, contrary to the map. What we needed to do, and what the map showed, was a climb up the ridgeline. On our right, up the ridge, was a well trodden cow pasture. We decided to try our luck hiking up through the pasture.
At a crest on the ridge pasture, we were met with two cows and an electric fence gate leading to a cow feeding area. Unfortunately for us, the map showed the road up to launch on the other side of the feed stall. We crossed the gate, being sure not to let the cows through behind us, and found that the feed stall between us and the road was around 6” of cow shit mud. We all did our best to try to find the least bad path through, but all of our shoes were casualties to the cause.
Finally on the road, we spotted a few men working. I presume they were stifling laughter at the gringos who they had just watched walk through the feed stall in shorts and trail running shoes. We yelled hellos (I added a “we’re lost” for effect), and they yelled back directions to get to launch.
Despite the adventure, we had only climbed roughly 600’ out of the 1600’ to launch. The map had obscured the fact that the last mile of road was that last 1000’. With gross shoes and high spirits, we climbed what seemed like a ladder straight up the ridge.
On the way up, Tess asked me if I would ever think about stepping back from flying so much to try to mitigate the risk of the sport of paragliding. The question gave me a good opportunity to consider my posture on risk in the sport, and I’ll write here what I told her. I believe that paragliding is a very dangerous sport, and is subject a large degree of randomness of risk; at any point something can always go wrong, due to no fault of the pilot. The air is invisible and inherently unknowable. Incidents are more likely in rough conditions, but even on a calm evening sled ride there’s no way to bring the risk of an event that could cause serious injury (or worse) to zero. To be able to deal with these events, I believe that one needs to do a lot of ground handling, do SIV training, and keep large safety margins when flying. However, I also believe that experience in the air, especially recent experience, plays a very large part in being able to safely handle unexpected random events. Those who have spent time in the sport know the ~40 hour-a-year pilot, whose launches and landing are shaky and seems more a passenger than pilot in the air. Contrast them with the ~200 hour a year pilot, who has their skills dialed. Despite the 200hr pilot’s higher volume of exposure to risk, I believe that their overall risk posture is lower.
This is all to say that I believe that as long as I chose to paraglide, I need to be all in. I believe that to step away from flying a lot to try to mitigate risk would instead do the opposite. It’s a binary thing for me- I’m either fully committed, or I need to step away. I’ve decided that right now, the inherent risk is worth it to me, and I will chase paragliding as best as I can. If I decide the risk isn’t worth it anymore, I can and would quit completely.
By the time we reached launch, I was drenched in sweat. The sun had peeked out from the clouds, shining a beam of heat directly on the road we walked up. One by one, we setup and launched into the sky.