If you ever have to spash down, you'd better know how.
Landing in water is not an exact science. For chrissakes, don't listen to those who pretend it is.

Without a quick-release system, landing in a tree is generally preferable to landing in water. If you have no other landing option but the water, here's your plan [...]

The best advice? Think before you launch.
Crazy springtime weather patterns, poor planning or just plain bad luck: if you're in the air, rain sucks. Do you know what to do if you're flying your paraglider and a raincloud suddenly pops up and soaks you? The following are, of course, totally dependent on how intensely the [...]

The springtime sees more accidents than any other season -- generally, because pilots are rusty from a winter on the ground. If you've had a long season of sporadic flying (or none at all), there are plenty of factors you can address to put luck on your side.

Prepare Yourself

One of the reasons we see a [...]

This is *not* parasailing. Sheesh.
When you spend as much time in the sport of paragliding as we do, you hear a lot of nonsense. Today, we at Cloud 9 were inspired to set a few things straight.

1. Paragliding does not occur behind a boat in Jamaica.

That's parasailing (and you would not believe how often we [...]

Spring. Finally.
Let's face it -- this was pretty much the crappiest snow kiting season on record (at least for us, in Utah). Between the complete lack of coverage and the super-short season, we were entirely out of luck.

Happily, the short winter means that the traction-and-water-kiting season is coming up quickly. (A couple of athletes have [...]

Check out Steve, Kevin and Steve at Snowbird Utah.  The guys at the World Freeride Tour sent over this clip they put together.  I think we were all on Ozone Bullets for this outing.http://www.paragliders.com/speed-flying/ozone-bullet-gt-wing-only.html
We have to get special permits through the USHPA and get clearance from Snowbird to fly here so please know Snowbird is [...]

Today we received the first shipment of the new Sup’Air reversible harness: the Quo Vadis. They look really nice!The designers have really done a great job; this harness has all the features you want and none that you don’t. If you’re looking for a full-featured, lightweight harness that comes complete with a seatboard, integrated reserve [...]

The repair shop is swamped with a fresh batch of repairs. It seems like everyone tried to:

land in trees
match their glider against a 4-wheeler
melt a nice set of holes in their wing with a hot exhaust pipe

…all in the same week.  Yeah.
It looks like our repair ninjas will be working around the clock to get [...]

An epic day for Cloud 9 Toys. It started with 15 tandems this morning on the south side of the Point of the Mountain, and one of my customers decided to put on a cape and carry a snake with him during the flight. (?!) Today’s four students all were from out of town, and [...]

We saved a life today! OK, we didn’t throw ourselves in front of a train to save a puppy, but close enough. This story used to play out as commonly as three or four times a year, but now this stuff only happens once in a while. It goes like this:
We had a customer come [...]