Yosemite Hang Gliding

The Three Stooges U.S. hang gliding tour stopped at Yosemite National Park on August 13 & 14, 2005.  Last year's tour had the Stooges flying at Sandia in New Mexico, starring Shawn MacDuff as Moe,  John Wiseman as Larry, and  Jim Carroll as Curly.  For this year's trip, Curly was not available, so we signed up John Bilsky to star as Shemp.  And a worthy partner he was indeed - he fit right in.

All on-glider photos were taken with a Nikon N6006 camera fitted with a 16mm fisheye lens.  This lens is necessary to get the desired perspective, but unfortunately does not do justice to the sheer magnitude of the Yosemite site.  Everything is massive, and it is difficult to judge your distance to the granite walls.  When you see your shadow on the sides of them, you know it is time to back away.

Moe flew with a video camera, so I will try to digitize some of that and put it on this site in the near future.  Enjoy the photos - We certainly enjoyed taking them.  Yosemite National Park gets about 3.5 million visitor per year, and last year there were 98 hang gliding flights in the park.  On this day, 5 of us flew our gliders from Glacier Point to the valley below.  It was indeed an honor and a privilege to fly here...

Yosemite landscape photos from this trip can be found here.

Private plane tour of San Francisco photos from this trip can be found here.

 

While waiting for Shawn and John to arrive on Friday, I did some hiking around Glacier Point. I'm standing on the hang gliding launch rock, sort of a natural ramp off the edge.

Here is the view from the launch ramp. Right past the tree in the center is where the edge gets pretty dramatic - about 3000 feet straight down! Half Dome is to the left, and Nevada and Vernal Falls are to the right. You can hear the falls quite clearly from Glacier Point.

Being a tad slow during the set-up process, I was last in line for launch. Shawn is on launch (not visible behind the rocks) and John is just ahead of me.

After the somewhat tricky process of carrying the glider over various rocks and bolders, I am getting ready to hook in and get set to go. Notice the lack of wheels. This launch rock is MUCH steeper than it looks in this photo, and the meadow grass in the LZ is much too tall to use them anyway. Notice also the droop of the wing when it is unloaded compared to the next photos.

Just after launch I'm heading toward Half Dome, starting my turn around Glacier Point. One of the most amazing sights of my life!

A spectacular view down Yosemite Valley with Glacier Point off to the left and El Capitan far down on the right. The LZ is the last meadow next to the river before El Capitan. I'm about 3000 above the river here.

Here I'm making my way over to check out Yosemite Falls. Luckily for us the falls all had water this late in the year due to heavy snows in the mountains.

Starting to get closer to Yosemite Falls. At this point I could start to hear the water if I flew slowly and turned my head just right in the wind stream.

Here's a full-length view of Yosemite Falls. The lens makes it look far away - believe me, the solid wall of granite was starting to look VERY intimidating! I could easily hear the water at this distance.

Heading away from the falls and turning back down the valley, the LZ is clearly visible as the last green meadow by the river.

Airplane ticket to San Francisco - $400.

Aeros Discus hang glider - $4000.

Being a part of this picture - Priceless...

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