Paragliders launch selves into national competition

Aug. 24, 2000 - Where have all the dreamers gone?

They are launching themselves off Lookout Mountain in Golden this week.

"As a child, I always dreamed of leaping into the air and flying like Superman," said Mike Reeder of Genesee.

At 52, Reeder has long since graduated from childish antics of tying a cape around his neck. But he does strap himself into a sophisticated paraglider, those beautiful parachutelike devices that grace the sky above Lookout Mountain on calm sunny days.

Reeder, along with some 20 or so competitors, is paragliding from Lookout in the first national competition on the mountain.

Although a favorite of metro-area para- and hang gliders for more than a decade, Lookout has never been the site of a national competition. It is hosting one of only three meets nationally this year that allow paragliders to qualify for the world meet next year. All three national competitions are in Colorado - Telluride earlier this summer, Lookout Mountain this week and the U.S. Hang Gliding Association National Championships of Paragliding next week in Aspen.

But paragliding is more a sport for dreamers than for spectators. Competitors universally said they got into the sport because they grew up dreaming of flying - and not in an airplane.

"I used to jump off the roof with a towel around my belt, into a pile of leaves," said 39-year-old Chris Peters of Denver.

It's the stuff paragliding pilots - as they are known - are made of.

"Flying in an airplane is like swimming in a boat," said Reeder, a veteran of the sport he helped create 10 years ago.

Reeder's first paragliding flight left him feeling as if he'd touched God.

"You kind of hang from the clouds," he said.

But it's their mishaps that leave a mark. Peters is better known as "Road Kill," for landing on a highway during rush hour. Then there's "George of the Jungle," who landed in a tree, and "Captain Blown Back," who was swept back into the mountain by winds.

"You usually get these nicknames on your third or fourth flight. But they stick," Peters said.

The paragliding competition comes after Golden's new whitewater course on Clear Creek hosted the national canoe championships and the Junior Olympics for kayaking last year in just the first full year the course was open.

While city officials like to cultivate the image of Golden as a recreational mecca, the national paragliding competition arrived on Lookout mostly because of happenstance. The national association eased some of the requirements for a world-qualifying meet, and Broomfield paraglider Mark Ferguson decided to organize a competition.

"When you look at the Front Range, it is the only site" for paragliding, Ferguson said.

Pilots were able to launch Tuesday after three frustrating days of no flying. Westerly winds and the annual painting of the "M" by Colorado School of Mines students kept the paragliders on the ground, but the competition will continue through Saturday - weather permitting.

The paragliders are required to fly a designated course - say, to Coal Creek Peak, 20 miles away and back, as they did on Tuesday - in the fastest time, demonstrating their skill in using the thermals to get where they want to go. Global positioning equipment tells pilots where they are, and another device tells them their elevation.

Paragliders, shaped like the wing of an airplane, can soar to more than 15,000 feet above the Earth and glide for more than 200 miles, which is the world record. A new national record was set recently by a Telluride pilot who flew 120 miles from the Colorado mountain town to the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico, Ferguson said.

While the Golden mountain - paragliders actually launch from adjacent Mount Zion - has been associated with free flight for years, it provides inconsistent thermals. Pilots say that is getting worse as development closes in along the Front Range.

While asphalt is a good heat producer for thermals, houses trap the heat, keeping hot air from rising. Denver's brown cloud also is becoming a hindrance because it also traps the thermals, Reeder said.

"It sits lower and lower and stays longer," Reeder said. "Ten years ago, you could almost always catch a thermal."