SAFA Skysailor Magazine

11 WINTER 2026 | June-July-August SKY SAILOR but their own intuition and the energy of the sun to outclimb the mountain itself. Over the course of the weekend, the efficiency and skill of the participants led to a staggering 600 flights. That is 600 separate moments of a human being leaving the ground and finding their place among the clouds. While the pilots are experiencing spiritu- al awakenings at 5000-6000ft, the ground crew is a masterclass in organised logistics. The six retrieval vehicles and their volunteer drivers are the lifeblood of the event. Paragliding as we know is inherently a ‘one-way’ sport. Once a pilot leaves the mountain and travels across the valley, they are effectively stranded upon landing. The volunteer drivers spend their days navigating the dusty backroads, tracking the GPS pings of landed pilots like a moto- rised search-and-rescue team. There is a unique camaraderie in the retrieve cars – it’s where the raw emotion of the flight is processed. A pilot who has just reached their first personal best (PB)is often incoherent with joy, babbling about the height, the birds, and the sheer, terri- fying beauty of the sink they encountered over the river. The drivers, many of them seasoned pilots themselves, just nod and smile. They’ve seen that glow a thousand times, but it never gets old. The statistics of the weekend are impres- sive: over 90 pilots, over 600 flights – but the true success is measured in PBs. We saw pilots who had never flown in such powerful thermals manage to stay aloft for hours, their faces etched with the fatigue of concentration and the radiance of success. We saw the three Tasmanian pilots, used to the cooler, steadier air of the south, navigate the complex conver- gence lines of the Murray Valley with the grace of experts. The air crackled with the news of PBs. You would hear it over the radio or in the landing paddock: “I just stayed up for 40 minutes!” “I hit five grand (5000ft)!” “I finally made it across the valley.” These are the milestones that define a pilot’s life. They are the moments where the ‘scary thing’ becomes the sublime. Photos: Bruce Agnew