Close Encounter with a Fence

On Friday the sky was blue, the sun was warm, and the air was clear, cool and alive. I was at our local flying site, 100 feet below the top of the hill, lying on my back beside a fence, my torn harness beneath me. A few seconds earlier I was flying my paraglider close to the hill, enjoying the bumpy air, looking for gusts of lift and finding them. Now my glider was draped over the barbed wire fence in front of me, my reserve, ripped and destroyed, was hanging over the fence behind, and the backs of my bare legs were rapidly covering with blood.

I knew the conditions were gnarly. When I first raised my wing at the top of the hill, it flew backwards and I had to bring it down in the rocks. I went lower down the hill and raised the wing several times only to have a shifty gust collapse it before I could take off. At the top of the hill the wind was varying from 4 mph to over 20 mph. It was coming mostly from the northwest over one face of the hill and mostly from the west over another face, presumably creating a convergence at the spine. On my first flight over the northwest-facing slope I sank like a stone, skimming over the steeply descending hill before landing across the valley. Another pilot later took off in the same direction and experienced the same sink, followed by a hard landing. Later, yet another pilot told me he also suffered a hard landing due to turbulence lower on the hill.

When the wind is from the northwest there often is lift on the southwest-facing slope, even though the wind is parallel to it. Yesterday was no exception. I was cruising downwind along that face, a comfortable distance from the hill perhaps ten to twenty feet. A nasty gust threw me towards the hill and down. Suddenly the barbed wire fence was a threat. I momentarily wondered if I should push out upwind over it, or fall back and land behind it. Then I was dumped right on top of it, the back of my harness taking the brunt of the fall. My wing was unloaded and it dropped, caught the wind and dragged me along and across the fence. The fence barbs caught my reserve parachute handle, and deployed it. Then my harness twisted so I was facing backwards and the calves of my legs raked diagonally over the fence. Sixteen barbs caught my right leg and thirteen the left.

Soon, two other pilots were on hand to help me assess the damage and gather my wing off the fence before the wind ripped it like the reserve. I went to a doc-in-a-box at a nearby plaza where they cleaned the wounds and gave me some antibiotics. I took my harness to be repaired and set about ordering a new reserve.

I made two mistakes. I probably should not have flown in the twitchy conditions. The greater mistake was to not give more clearance to the fence, knowing that the air was turbulent. In the absence of the fence, the gust of wind that blew me back and down would at most have caused an awkward landing. Now I have a couple of non-flying weeks to ponder the errors of my ways.