Long an ardent fan of and an active participant in aviation and adventure, my husband and I have tried a number of pursuits, among them hot air ballooning, parasailing and indoor skydiving. We’ve flown around the world many times, in every sort of aircraft from sputtering single engines to sleek jets, and I’ve been on seaplanes and even experienced G-force on Fat Albert with the Blue Angels. But the one thing neither of us ever tried is hang gliding.
Ever since when years ago I first saw a trio of hang gliders floating high above Lookout Mountain, in Georgia’s far northwest corner, I told myself I would try it one day — that is, if I could work up the courage to climb aboard one of the contraptions.
On a cool, blustery fall day, the time had finally come to either try it or forget about it, so I decided to take the leap at Lookout Mountain Flight Park at Rising Fawn, a tiny community near Lookout Mountain and just south of Chattanooga. My husband and I had made the trip together, but because of recurring back issues, he decided it best to stay on the ground while I soared off into the wild blue yonder.
While hang gliding is an adventure sport, it also comes with the pure romance and excitement of the flight experience, and the ideal place for first-timers is Lookout Mountain Flight Park, the largest hang-gliding school in the U.S. Here, you can tandem hang glide with an instructor just for the fun of it, learn to fly or even become a certified hang glider pilot. Depending on the weather, you can foot launch off a concrete platform perched 1,340 feet above the valley or be towed behind an aerotow, a small lightweight tow plane. Because of the high winds that day, and much to my relief because I didn’t know if I had the bravado to actually jump off a mountain, my instructor and tandem pilot, Eric, and I would be taking off from the park via the tow-plane.
In all honesty, I can’t say that I wasn’t gosh-awfully scared and apprehensive as I watched the mandatory safety video, because I was. Even after watching the video, I still had questions before attempting to defy gravity and fly like a bird. Before climbing into the harness to be strapped in, I fired a barrage of questions at Eric.
“Do these things ever fall out of the sky?” I asked.
“Not in the eight thousand times we’ve done this,” Eric answered bemusedly.
“Is it cold up there?”
“You won’t even care about the temperature once you’re up there,” he stated. “With that view, nothing else matters.”
“Do you ever see birds?”
“All the time. They fly right along with us.”
“Does anyone ever throw up?”
“Maybe once in eight thousand times,” Eric deadpanned. “Are you going to be the first?”
With all my heart, I hoped not as he immediately began to fit me into the harness, helmet and goggles. All suited up, I began to change my mind about actually taking the trip, oh, say, 100 times or more in about a minute’s time.
But there I was moments later firmly strapped into the harness and swaying only a couple of inches from the soft, dew-wet grass airstrip. Shivering a little from fright and the cool fall weather, I closed my eyes, swallowed hard to make the big goose egg in my throat go away, and said a little prayer. OK, scratch that. A big prayer. To say that I was purely petrified is an understatement.
When the plane powered up, there was no turning back. As the one-seater tow plane roared down the airstrip, holding our hang glider with what to me looked like a flimsy rope, I finally snapped open my eyes as our kite-like machine reached liftoff. As the ground grew farther and farther away, Eric and I swept skyward, my arms wrapped around him in a death grip that I wouldn’t release for all the sweet tea in Georgia.
Breathe, I told myself when I realized I was holding my breath. Just breathe. We rose 100 ... 200 ... 300 ... 500 ... to 1,000 feet. The tow plane floated in front of us as gently as a butterfly. On the ground below I watched a herd of cattle munching on grass in a pasture grow smaller and smaller until they were reduced to minuscule specks on the ground.
“The tow plane is going to let go now,” Eric said after we had been aloft for a few minutes. “Then we’re going to drop. Are you ready?”
“(Expletive deleted) no!” I shouted above the wind, but ready or not, the rope snapped away. The hang glider did indeed drop a few tummy-churning feet as the tow plane turned and sped away out of sight. Next I heard a loud screeching and then thumpity-thumpity-thumpity, which turned out to be my screaming like a schoolgirl and my heart pounding wildly with both exhilaration and numbing fear.
Soaring into the wind underneath a canopy of gray clouds on that blustery day, I nervously peered down at the honeycomb of ancient mountains and forests at the intersection where Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama fuse together.
All at once, sort of like a veil lifting, my fear melted away at this incredible bird’s-eye view of Mother Earth.
Steering by lifting on the grip-bar and shifting our weight, we bumped and swirled along with the thermal drafts. Gazing at the gorgeous scenery laid out below us, I marveled at how peaceful and quiet it was up there. We had reached heights of about 2,000 feet, and through the haze of the cloudy day the view of Lookout Mountain looming in the distance was simply stunning. I learned later that some tandem flights go as high as 4,000 feet, and the more experienced daredevils can reach upward of more than two to three miles in altitude, although at those dizzying heights oxygen may be required.
Eric and I had been aloft for about 20 minutes when he announced it was time to wind our way back to the ground. “We’re going to speed up now,” he said. “Don’t be alarmed.”
True to his word, he somehow magically made the machine go faster without the use of gas pedals. We made a lurching sharp turn over the flight park, and then glided to an easy, almost anticlimactic landing on the airstrip. Quite honestly, I had expected more drama when we hit the ground, but the landing was exceptionally and unexpectedly smooth.
