Back in the years 88/89 my dad and some friends started paragliding. It was the beginning of the paragliding era. The canopies were small, there was no seat, only a harness, the gliding ratio was ridiculous. I was 11 or 12 years old and did my first « flights » then. There was no canopies for my weight so we used to put some weights in my backpack. One day I was flying and a big part of my canopy collapsed. My mum was watching us fly and saw the incident. It was more impressive than really dangerous but she decided – with good reasons – that is was too dangerous for a young girl.

I got back in touch with paragliding 13 years later when I could not climb anymore due to a finger injury. The gear, the teaching techniques and the knowledge had improved by a lot by that time. I bought my own wing and started to go flying, but the call for climbing and traveling was back and slowly I got to fly less and less. Every time I had to fly I was a bit anxious –because of not being current- so I decided to stop. In 2011 I moved to Chamonix and seeing all those paragliders in the sky and thinking of all the possibilities in the mountains (combining mountaineering and paragliding) I got back into flying. And I love it!

Flying in the Mountains. My favorite terrain ;) ©Alex Buisse