Outdoor Recreation

By Julie DeLong "Run! Lean into it! Run! Run! Run!" Mark's voice crackled through our helmet radio receivers as Louisa Roberts charged down the cinder-strewn slope of Sheba Crater. Behind her she pulled a fabric canopy, lashed to her body with a complex-looking yet surprisingly simple set of lines and risers.

PARAGLIDING: IT'S THE BEST OF HANG GLIDING AND PARASAILING WITH FAR LESS RISK

As she loped down the hill, the canopy popped open to form a broad multicolored wing. It rose above her head.

"Look up!" called Mark. She glanced skyward to see that the red-white-and-blue sail stayed in place even as she kept striding against the wing's resistance and lift.

"Now open your hands," came the instructor's command. Louisa released the front risers that, grasped firmly at the start of the run, helped pull the wing into the air. But she hung onto the loops attached to the wing's brake. By pulling the brake lines, connected to the trailing edge, she could control the sail's speed and direction. As she ran down the slope, the sail could accelerate to 12 miles an hour, moving it past the desired straight-overhead position. Braking would slow the sail and improve its glide ratio.

Louisa's feet were barely touching the ground. Still she kept running steadily.

"Good!" cried Mark. "Make nice long strides, like a kid racing down a hill. Brake to your shoulders!"

She gently pulled the brake lines, and, like Peter Pan floating into the sky, she ran right up into the air.

Louisa was flying.

Like some latter-day realization of a Leonardo da Vinci sketch, the brilliant fabric wing, its row of cells filled with flowing air, lifted her into the sky above the sensuous ebony curves of Sheba and Merriam's craters for a raven's-eye view of northern Arizona that spread from the Painted Desert to the San Francisco Peaks.

"Wow!" came an undemure voice from on high. "Ya-HOOO!"

Mark Chirico, a compact man with Paul Newman looks, is director of Parapente USA, a Seattle-based school of paragliding. Since paragliders like sunny weather, too, Mark and his business manager, Dana MacMillin, bring their operation to Arizona in the wintertime. This day, they met a half-dozen students eager to slip the surly bonds in Flagstaff, where they put the beginners through a weekend course which, by Sunday afternoon, Parapente USA makes its winter home in Arizona. For further information, contact Mark Chirico or Dana MacMillin, P.O. Box 30773, Tucson, AZ 85751; (602) 292-1136. In summer, they move to 2442 N.W. Market Street, Box 31, Seattle, WA 98107; (206) 467-5944.

WHEN YOU GO

Another source of information is the American Paragliding Association, 25 Goller Place, Staten Island, NY 10314; (718) 698-5738.

had them sailing off the 1,000-foot-high summit of Sheba Crater.

And what, you ask, is paragliding? It's a hybrid sport, popular in Europe, that combines the best of parasailing (in which a rider suspended from a parachute is towed behind a vehicle) and hang gliding (whose enthusiasts strap on a 70-pound wing and hurl themselves from cliffs).

Paragliding employs a parachutelike ellipse of fabric, four times longer than wide, sewn into wind-catching cells. Because of its shape and design, this canopy forms a high-performance wing, able to glide forward seven times as far as it drops.

Mark says the sport, which he developed in France in 1986, is safer than hang gliding, although not without risk. To start with, it entails no cliff jumping. He chose the name "Parapente" for his company because, he says, "pente means 'slope' in French. And paragliding is something you do from a gentle in-cline."

Racing up and down the volcanic slopes, Mark chases, harangues, and demonstrates until by nightfall he is sure the fledgling fliers will dream the takeoff command sequence: run! look! open! brake! and the landing sequence: hands up! brake to neck! brake to knees! run!

By the end of the first day, he's tired. But the look on his face says it all when Dave Knox, a young biologist with the University of Arizona, slides into a smooth landing from his first ascent and approaches him to make a report: "This is great."