Search this site

Nicole's Biography

I started flying in 1999, with Pegasus Paragliding in Nova Scotia. Originally a skydiver, I found I enjoyed the canopy ride aspect over the freefall aspect, so looked for a sport that was “just that”. I didn’t know about paragliding at that point, but knew about hang gliding, so looked into it and discovered it didn’t really exist in Nova Scotia. My brother had found a sport called “paragliding”, which he told me about, so I decided to try it out instead. After my “first day taster” course with Michael Fuller (at Pegasus PG), I was fully hooked, and signed up the very next day for the Novice course.

Given the vagaries of the Nova Scotia weather, the distance I had to travel to get to the flying sites, the fact I was so light-weight on the school gear Michael had, and the fact that most Nova Scotia flying is ridge soaring (ie. you have to be fairly heavy on your gear in order to penetrate!), it took me about 1 year to get my requisite 2 hours of airtime and my Novice rating. At this point I was moving to British Columbia for school (Master’s degree at UBC) and only then realized I would be moving to a place that had more paragliding opportunities.

Given that I had virtually zero thermalling experience from my Novice course (only ridge soaring), I had to learn all over again how to fly once I moved to BC! It took me a while, but with the help of my new friends and some properly sized gear, I was able to finally progress to my Intermediate and then Advanced ratings.

As a graduate student, I found I had lots of flexible time, and used it religiously for flying purposes. As I became a better thermal pilot, I found I wanted to fly some other places, and started attending fly-ins around BC and Washington State. As a very competitive person (a trait I inherited from my Dad) I found the fly-ins very fun and challenging, and started attending more and more of them. I found I was enjoying them so much (perhaps because they were structured events with rides up, retrieves, parties, etc. all included) I started to think about competitions.

My first competition (I think) was the Canadian Paragliding Nationals in 2002. I don’t remember exactly how I did, but that was unimportant as I was just there to soak in the atmosphere, fly a new site, and spend time with my friends. I started attending more and more competitions, until I was proficient enough to actually get quite good standings in both the overall and female category. I remember the first time I actually won a day at a competition; it was during one of the Canadian Paragliding Nationals (2003 I think), and a big rain cell with hail was on the course line. I was approaching goal, and lots of people were dropping out all over the place. I was still new enough at flying to not realize the danger I was potentially in, and blithely continued on until my GPS said I had made goal. It was only afterwards, after the scoring had been done, that we realized that I was the only one to actually make goal, and got something like 900+ points for the feat! Of course that meant I had nowhere to go but down in the standings (it was day 1), which is exactly what happened the very next day!

Since then I’ve become more aware of the hazards of flying during competitions, and don’t make many safety-mistakes anymore, but I still make technical or strategy mistakes every so often. I’ve also done a lot more international competition flying, and place respectably at those meets as well. The main difference between the Canadian/US meets and the international meets is the presence of Europeans at the international meets…they pretty much clean up and push me out of the standings since they are such better pilots that I am right now. Which is mostly due to the fact they get to fly those awesome Euro sites year-round, with all the Euro infrastructure that goes with the territory. I need to get to Europe to see what I can learn on their home turf!

When I’m not competing, I’m also pioneering and flying new sites in our local area. Recently a group of us have pioneered several sites in Hope (Skagit Valley), Mission (Mt. St. Benedict), and Pemberton (Pizzle). Who knows, maybe some of those may become world-class sites! I enjoy doing this every now and then since it’s a change from my usual competition routine, allows me to see some incredible new scenery, and I get to test my flying skills at untested sites (with all the hazards that go with that). Sometimes a new site works out and sometimes it doesn’t, but that’s the nature of the game!

My near-future goal is to fly in the PWC, maybe an entire year’s worth, to see how I stack up in those competitions and gain some more experience by flying with that caliber of pilot.