Description of all the awesome landscapes, waterfalls, fjords, volcanoes, hot springs, puffins, guillemots, bird cliffs, lambs and horses will be in a different place; here just a short account of our flying activities.
First flying stop was Vik where we met up with Grampa Dave, a Pemby (or rather: international) pilot. He and his Vik pilot friends welcomed us warmly with a party until 2:30 AM – rather hard to know when to go to bed when it doesn’t get dark - and introduced us to one of their local flying sites, the cliffs above a group of sea stacks called Reynisdrangar. There we enjoyed a long ridge soaring session above countless nesting fulmar birds and similarly countless tourists.
Iceland’s landscape looks like a dreamland for paragliding but many of the great-looking hills and ridges line up the wrong direction and the wind is 90 degrees cross to the take-off. Not a big surprise considering how winds should behave in a fjord and most of Iceland’s coastline is made up of fjords. In addition winds were often much too strong and gusty for flying and changed in a hurry.
We had another sweet ridge soaring session in the desert/moonscape along the northern ring road between Egilsstadir and Lake Myvatn and also got the wings out for a short hike & sledride, a low dune soaring session and some kiting. So one could almost call it a flying trip!
While Iceland wouldn’t be first on my list for a paragliding holiday; getting in the air above some of the amazing sights was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. There is a cool app/online site for wind directions and flying sites (http://hopp.la/ice/) but beware, the wind speeds are in m/s. For km/h multiply by 3.6 .
- East Fjords
- IMG_3552-web.jpg (536.11 KiB) Viewed 1967 times
- Along the northern ring road
- DSC03397-web.jpg (483.14 KiB) Viewed 1967 times
- Over sea stacks and fulmars
- DSC03218-web.jpg (439.24 KiB) Viewed 1967 times
Advance Iota (Purple, white and lime green)