Two years ago this month, having only the vaguest understanding of paragliding ("Is that the one where you jump off a cliff, or do they pull you behind a boat?"), I had a work project that brought me to a home in
Redwood City.  On the wall were aerial photos of paragliders soaring above a huge rock tower.  "It's a place in Mexico where we go flying in the winter", said my host.  Could that really be possible, were there really people who went to Mexico in the winter to fly over huge rock towers (people who
weren't superheroes)?

Evening glass-off at the Piņon: A completely different experience, flying in butter-smooth air with a good view of the rock. Photo - Tom Bair

By the end of that summer, I had my P2.  This past summer, I did what most P2s around here probably do for their first real season: a lot of extended sled rides at Ed Levin (catching the occasional burble),  a good bit of ridge soaring at Pacifica, and a scattered few days of "real" thermalling at Potato Hill and a few other places, adding up to a grand total of about 20 hours.

So it was with some trepidation that I boarded my red-eye flight the day after Christmas for a week in Valle de Bravo-- international flying mecca, playground of big-air world champions, and, as I realized the day before I left, site of a very scary video of a collapse and crash that I found on the web. (You've probably seen the one-- he lands in the top of a tree, and while fiddling with his lines crashes to the ground, but is fine.)

Valle is a quaint colonial town on a lake about three hours' drive west of Mexico City, well known as a weekend retreat for the rich and famous from the City.  It is equally well known to pilots around the world as a warm, cheap, scenic flying destination with good food, nice people, and incredibly consistent
conditions that enable world-class competitions and epic cross-country adventures.  Which all sounded great, but begged the question of what exactly I was doing there, with my little DHV 1 wing and my neatly-printed 20 hour logbook.

Naturally, the first morning at the "Piñon" launch reinforced all my fears. On the ride up in our house van, one pilot told the story of her horrific crash after a rotor-induced low collapse (wearing an open-face helmet), and the ensuing medevac and surgeries.  That pretty much got me in the mood.  Once we arrived, a steady stream of vans and pickup trucks rolled up to launch, crammed with grim-looking pilots and exotic wings painted with sponsor logos.  Everyone seemed to know each other ("Didn't we sky out together at the World Championships?"), and, standing on the steep launch with rocks and trees below, I swore I could hear a hundred feet tapping impatiently, waiting for me to get up the nerve to inflate and go.  If not for the calm voice of my former instructor (who organized the house, van, and driver, and generously invited me along) I would probably still be standing there, risers in hand, waiting for just the right cycle to come up.

Can it get any better?! - Photo by Tom Bair

Thermal flying in a gaggle, when there are always four or five wings within 25' of your altitude, all turning in synch around the same little core, was an eye-opener for me, but it's apparently a fact of life at popular sites like Valle. When a more experienced pilot in our group pointed out that if I turned tighter in the cores I wouldn't always be at the bottom of the stack, I had to explain to him the "Gaggle Beginner's Priorities" that I'd worked out for myself:

1. Don't have a mid-air.
2. *If*, while remembering #1, you can avoid cutting people off, pushing them out of the core, or generally getting in the way of pilots who actually know what they're doing, great.
3. If*, while remembering #1 and #2, you can avoid sinking out, fabulous.
4. *If*, after you've done all those things, you can actually *stay* in some lift and climb a little, wow, that'd really be nice.
   

Needless to say, "Get to the top of the stack" never made my list.

But as the week progressed, I found the gaggles less scary, and I was even able to strike out on my own once in a while rather than just chase the group.  I was still launching on the early side, but now trying to climb out and, possibly, make my inaugural XC jump over the back to the soccer field.  That meant flying until it was strong enough to get high enough over launch (about 3k, I was told), and as the mornings drifted into afternoons, the thermals became more and more "spirited", and I started hearing my vario make sounds I didn't know it had.

Fortunately "active piloting" (which was somewhere in the dim recesses of my "someday maybe I'll need that" memory) came back to me and started to make intuitive sense like it never had. (My big three: Holding significant brakes all the time, actively damping pitch oscillations, and rolling in the harness like a sack of potatoes when a wingtip dips.  It wasn't hard to get the sense that if I *didn't* do all that, unpleasant things might follow.)  I had one very small asym collapse the whole week-- more a testament to the stability of my Advance Alpha than my skills-- but it certainly got my attention.

No one there but Ross and me. - Photo by Tom Bair

At this point I was in a gaggle of two, and after much cooperative thermal hunting, we inched together up to about 10,500', where I belatedly realized that I was underdressed, had no real idea where I was, and even less of an idea of what I should do next.  Although my instructor's earlier advice that day on the radio had been a little short on specifics ("Don't be a bug on the windshield"), I figured I'd chance another request.  "Well, if that other wing takes off, follow him."  Even on full speed-bar, my pokey mini-van of a wing couldn't keep up, but it hardly mattered-- after several minutes of non-stop sink-alarm descent I had just enough time to realize I was going to land out, head towards what looked like the one road that runs through "the Mesa", and pick out a reasonable-looking farmer's field.

But one of the joys of Valle is that even when you wind up in the middle of nowhere, smiling kids come running up to greet you.  That's because every kid in a 50-mile radius has had a pilot land out in their back yard, and they all know that if they help fold the wing it's worth a ballpoint pen, a piece of candy, or a couple of pesos.  After some pidgin Spanish with the kids about where I was, and some back-and-forth on the radio with the van, I packed up and started hiking across the field, arriving off the main road just in time for the van to whiz by and for me to grab the radio and yell "stop!"  (I realize this may give me a dangerously rosy view of XC retrieves in Valle-- I know others have hiked for hours; your mileage may vary.)

The other flight that I remember best was very different, even though it was in the same place: A late-afternoon glass-off, where I made the same jump across to the Piñon , and then soared back and forth, in silky smooth air, above the little trees perched precariously on the face of this giant rock tower, as the sun set on the volcanoes in the distance.

So Valle was everything I'd hoped for and more -- great food, friendly people, challenging mountain thermals, beautiful lakeside soaring, zen-like evening glass-offs, 13 hours added to the logbook, and, staying in a shared house with a shared van and driver, the whole week cost less than I've spent on some long weekends snowboarding.
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My $.02 Valle beginner thoughts:

1) Go early and spend a few days in Mexico City-- great ruins, lots of nice people, pollution's not all that bad.

2) Seek out experienced pilots-- ask about gaggle etiquette, active flying, local triggers, and common XC routes.  I learned at least as much on the ground from the Masters as I did in the air.

3) Beginner wings have their place with beginners.  My Alpha 2 takes a lot of input to turn, it doesn't climb great, and it's the slowest wing on the hill.  But because it's so rock-stable I think I was more comfortable than some other P2s on more nimble DHV 1/2s, and that might have given me more confidence and less stress for more all-around fun.  I wouldn't be in a rush to fly a hotter wing at Valle.

4) Eat at Taco Alley!  The food's better, the atmosphere more fun, and a big dinner is about $3.  And the only person in our group who got sick was eating in a restaurant.

Not pictured: The nice sipping tequila that Randy contributed to the evenings on the patio. - Photo by Tom Bair