Local Flight Records

Official paragliding flight distance record for the state of Alaska is 38 miles flying out and back from Eagle River/Mount Baldy.

Juneau's distance record is held by Gerry Donohoe who flew from Mt. Roberts to Lena Loop off the Glacier Highway. I believe the distance as the crow flies is about 17 miles. He has also made a flight from Mt. Roberts to the Mendenhall Glacier visitor's parking lot, but that distance is ONLY (ha!) 11 miles. Ask Gerry; he has it recorded via GPS and is also on a website.

Brett Neyhart holds altitude and duration records for Mt. Roberts. He had a flight in May of 2004 that took him to cloudbase at 8,200 feet. He also claims the IRON BLADDER award for the longest duration Juneau flight of 4 hours and 20 minutes. Brett has amassed more airtime than any pilot in Juneau. As of this writing, he has flown over 30 times this year, whereas the rest of us have less than ten flights so far.

Thanks to Jason Sosa for relaying a few pictures actually of me! Here's the one I think is best. I call it "Looking for God".

Brett, thanks to Gerry's camera

call for photos

Juneau Paragliding started way back around 1990. Jack Kreinheder and Bruce Griggs had learned to fly paragliders in 1988 in Salt Lake City. Jack held an open invitation to a public meeting at the downtown library for fools interested in the "least expensive way to fly". Of course, I attended and was intrigued, but not sold. A couple of months later from a distance I saw two colorful chutes floating down from Mt. Roberts. I high-tailed it over to the rock dump to find my softball buddy, Gary Guzio, and a (later to become notorious for landing in the ring DURING THE 8TH ROUND of a heavyweight championship, open-air boxing match in Las Vegas!)  young pilot named James Miller, who had just landed. As it always is after a good flight and landing, both pilots were ecstatic to say the least and full of encouragement for me to give it a try. In fact, someone had arranged for an instructor from Fairbanks, Alan Chuculate, to come down to teach a class. So, I wasn't the only fool after all.
Within a year or so, Juneau had 30 pilots! That's one for every thousand residents!
And at that time, we were still hiking from sea level and hoping the wind was good when we got above tree line.
There are many photos from these days but none that are digital. If Juneau pilots reading this blog could email me at gene.randall2014@gmail.com with some of their classic best shots, I'll get them online.

Another Top Ten Day of Flying

June 6th, 2010 turned out to be another epic day for paragliding in Juneau. Big cummies floated stationary in space with flat bottoms at a 10, 000 foot cloudbase. Hot pilots Gerry Donohoe and Brett Neyhart launched from Mt Roberts around 1pm and took smooth consistent thermals to over 5000 ft above sea level-that's three grand over launch altitude! Both sky-gods took the high road north as far as Blackerby Ridge where they encountered severe enough turbulence to cause them to turn around. Both these guys have high 'bump tolerance' and experience at maneuvers (safety) clinics that give them confidence in rough air. So, if Gerry and Brett said it was scary-I believe it!
Brett stayed high and actually flew all the way back to Roberts. I'm not aware that has been done before. Gerry decided to get down and landed near DIPAC.
I didn't know these guys had flown earlier and headed up around 3pm. I saw Tom, from Haines, flying a teal colored Sol glider and Brett on his green machine, soaring beautifully above the Roberts spine. I cooled off from the hike and began setting up for launch. My wing was spread when I heard loud, violent fabric flapping. My thought was Brett was top-landing near me and looked up to see Tom in an extreme spiraling spin-VERY LOW! Just above the ridge his wing straightened out and he hit the snow feet first but stumbled with the down wind forced landing.
To make a long story short, he was fine but the conditions were not. We were getting gusts to 15 knots. Two hours of 'parawaiting' yeilded much sweeter air and five of us took off to reach about 4800 feet! I haven't been there, where you can see Canada- in several years. Yee- haw!! At one point, Donohoe and I were coring the same thermal at 4500. Neither of us had a camera! What a shame! My flight was over an hour, perhaps pushing two hours. I enjoy being the last one to the LZ (landing zone), as long as there's one more Alaskan beer left.