Adventure sports and paragliding

Adventure sports are activities for excitement and exploring nature: water (rafting, surfing), land (mountaineering, trekking) and air (paragliding).

Paragliding is engine-free flying under a fabric wing of many cells, the pilot sitting in a harness. It grew from Domina Jalbert's gliding parachute (1954) and parafoil (1963) and David Barish's sail wing (1965); the word came from Gilligan and Dubois's manual (1985). The first World Championship was in Austria in 1989.

Wings are 20-35 square metres, 8-12 m across and weigh 3-7 kg; very thin lines can hold 56 kg; speed is 20-75 km/h; the kit packs into a rucksack. Using rising air, flights can last hours and climb thousands of metres.

Instruments: the variometer (climb or sink, finding thermals), radio (talking to other pilots and reporting landings) and GPS (track, drift, airspace, retrieval).

Launch into the wind: forward launch in low wind, reverse launch in higher wind. To land, lose height in figure-of-eight turns, line up into the wind, and slow the wing about a metre above the ground. Competitions: cross-country, aerobatics and bivouac (multi-day) flying.