This page contains Argentine Skies Part I, which was published in the March 2006 issue of Hang Gliding and Paragliding Magazine.
Argentine Skies Part I
During the 2003 US Nationals in Telluride Colorado, Luis Rosenkjer dropped by for a breakfast of kuchen and conversation. By the end of the meal I had a hand drawn map of Argentina showing more than a dozen paragliding sites stretching from Patagonia to the Bolivian border with notes about weather, wind, and time of day to fly. Luis also emailed friends and pilots in each city warning them that a gringo pilot and his Peruvian wife were headed their way.
In the Northern Hemisphere's Fall, my wife Ursula and I took advantage of Argentina's weak peso and the long list of flying sites and contacts supplied by our friend Luis. We traveled thousands of kilometers north across this part of South America for a month and a half visiting paragliding sites.
We flew into Buenos Aires and went out for a night at the Ballet in the famous Teatro Collon. The next day we boarded an overnight bus southwest across the endless expanse of the Pampa to Bariloche and beyond to El Bolson. After so many hours driving across the monotonous plains, at dawn finally seeing the snowy peaks of the Andes rising in the distance was inspiring.
The small mountain town of El Bolson sits at the northern extreme of Patagonia, but enjoys a mild climate and is less windy than the rest of the region. The valley shares a tradition of classic Patagonia gauchos, or cowboys, and a legacy left from discovery as a hippy tourist destination during the sixties and early seventies. The town is filled with restaurants and crafts from local artisans. A small paragliding outfit also sets up shop here in summer, moving from nearby Bariloche and the busy ski hills where the pilots live and work during winter. Martin Vallmitjanam is the friendly local instructor, rents a small house with extra rooms next to the landing zone, and for a small fee drives pilots to launch. The switchback, high clearance, two-wheel drive road to the take off is good enough for taxis as well. The carpeted launch is spacious with room for four or five wings to lay out at once. The scene was fun and relaxed with a couple French pilots and several locals. I asked why I saw so many Gradient paragliders, and found out Luis, who is from nearby Bariloche, is the Gradient distributor in Argentina.
The nationals were held up north at the Loma Bola site in Tucuman while we were in southern Argentina. Luis won, and Gradient Aspens took first, second, and forth places, while Gradient had seven gliders in the first ten slots. I fly a Gradient Aspen, and many pilots were clearly envious.
Launch is 1,800 feet over town with fairytale-like jagged peaks above. Though this is a thermal mountain site, pilots often topland, which says loads about how smooth and gentle the lift can be. My first day here, Martin radioed to launch from a thousand meters over that he had found strong, 8 plus meters per second lift, and suggested we avoid getting too high. Cloud base often doesn't clear the nearby peaks, but soaring conditions are normal.
Like many mountain sites, El Bolson only has good weather half the year. The best months are December, January and February. In winter most of the pilots stay busy doing tandems at ski areas above nearby Bariloche. After a week in El Bolson and several rain days, we tried Bariloche for a few days. With wind and rain we weren't even tempted to go see the Cerro Catedral launch.
We did make a weekend trip over the Andes to the Pacific coast for seafood with Luis and his son Marco. At the paragliding site in Niebla outside of Valdivia Chile, the wind was almost too strong for the stunt kite. Seven-year-old Marco spent hours getting dragged across the large wet cow pasture on his belly, scattering dried out cow pies, leaving the rest of us doubled over with laughter.
Giving up on flying more in Patagonia, we took a nineteen-hour overnight bus north along the Eastern side of the Andes, to Mendoza. We found a hostel on the busy Villanueva, where the serious bar scene starts at two am. Still groggy from the bus ride, mid morning I was picked up by local tandem pilot German Ortiz, and found myself two thousand feet over town on a great multidirectional launch.
Mendoza is in the desert, and the thermals are strong even in the morning. My first flight, I launched at eleven am, flew straight through a very big thermal and out the other side, taking a huge whack right above launch. I had been told it was strong mid-day here, but the thermals were more bumpy than I expected, even in the middle of strong cores. Local paraglider pilots say "Cachenge" to describe the active piloting the local thermals require. Cachenge means both to dance the Conga, where ones hands are swinging back and forth shoulder level, and asymmetric deflation.
It is usually flyable all day everyday here, so bag pilots fly mornings and evenings, with wonderful evening thermals becoming broad and smooth. The cross-country opportunities are fabulous. Long flights have been done to the northeast but the normal route goes southwest. This route flies over some dangerous neighborhoods on the outskirts of town right off so pilots don't go for it unless they are getting high and think they will make it past the slums.
For a week the low inversion halted any opportunity to fly cross-country. Still, I got many hours of pure desert thermal flying and met a great group of local pilots. As I found everywhere in Argentina, there is a strong local club with very experienced pilots and lots of help and support. Panchi Lebon, a local cross-country and tandem pilot was especially nice and knowledgable. On the weekend thirty paraglider pilots and a dozen hang-glider pilots showed up to fly.
Too soon our time in Mendoza was over. We were fried from the nightlife and the sticky heat that stayed through the night. The hostel we found was very happening, as were most places in that part of town, and even though the energy and pretty girls all called for more time in Mendoza, we had many more sites on our list to visit. Again late at night we left town, this time in a little rented Fiat. North of town we missed a turn and drove hundreds of kilometers out of our way. Late the next day we found our road and the mountains of the Central Sierras.
The Central Sierras, also known as the Sierra de Cordoba, lie halfway between the high Andes on the border with Chile and the Atlantic coast. The range is made up of many smaller ranges, each with its own paragliding sites. At the southern end of the range, Merlo and Carpenteria have some of the best topography for paragliding in the country. A paved road switchbacks out of Merlo and quickly gains a thousand meters above the flat desert below. The road passes the tandem launch above Merlo and arrives ten minutes later at El Mirador de los Condores, above Carpinteria, where local pilot Eduardo Huerta has a beautiful restaurant next to a groomed grassy launch.
Thermal soaring is possible as soon as light cycles start in the morning. Unfortunately the wind blows over the back every afternoon, but it is easy to already be away from the hill by then. By late morning the conditions get stronger and the possibility of flying either north or south along the range entices the circling pilot.
This site has top landing potential, easy access and beautiful views, but the best thing about flying the Sierra de Comechingones is the ease of flying cross-country. The flat expanse of desert below is at four thousand feet, launch is at seven thousand and cloud-base often rises to ten or eleven thousand feet msl. The cloud-street that forms over the range extends out into the flats, and there are lots of possible landing fields along the highway. When we first arrived, the wind was howling over the back night and day. While waiting for the wind to stop, we drove north to the site at Mina Clavero where we met Mickey and looked at the paragliding hostel he was building. ( parapente@translasierra.com ). This site is lower and so has less wind from the East that plagues this side of the range. I didn't fly, but got to see condors on the walk out to the launch.
Near the landing zone at Carpenteria, Luis and Gabby Saez have a couple rooms in their house for rent to pilots and are very helpful with transportation and information. (Vuelo Libre Hostal: alcarpinteria@merlo_sl.com.ar ). Our time in their home was painfully short, as they quickly became good friends. Luis had told us it was worth waiting for good weather to fly here, and this proved true.
Finally the windsock on launch blew the right direction, and in very light cycles three of us launched and climbed out. I top landed and relaunched, before heading off cross-country. There was the smallest amount of drift to the south, so I committed to that direction. After several small jumps and countless thermals I found myself reaching cloud-base out in front of the mountains. By mid-afternoon I was under a cloud-street that formed directly above the highway I was following. The thermals got stronger, occasionally twelve to fourteen hundred feet per minute, but mostly three to four hundred. I took lots of small collapses but never anything too scary. After almost four hours, needing to relieve myself reminded me that I had neglected to pee between my morning flights. Feeling tired and hungry, I stopped turning and eventually dropped out of the broad area of lift under the cloudstreet.. I landed in a field full of cows after a flight of over seventy kilometers. My flying partners that day, Luis and Mariano drove chase and showed up just after I packed. This was a high point on the trip, and I could have stayed and flown this site for weeks, but instead that evening we left, driving over the range in search of new sites and more airtime.
On the east side of the mountains, above Cordoba, is the most famous of the Central Sierra's sites. Local ex-pat pilot Andy Hediger put on a PWC in the late 1990's at the local site in Cuchi Corral. The area has light winds, with out and return, and triangle cross-country flights possible. Once again I was frustrated by wind blowing the streamers downhill on launch. After a couple days in the area, looking at other sites at La Falda and Capilla Del Monte, it was time to continue on, heading north six hours to La Rioja.
La Rioja, like Mendoza is serious desert flying. Midday conditions here are considered too strong for paragliding. And when I asked about morning flying, I was told it was too turbulent. This also means that if a pilot wants to fly big cross-country, any time they want, they can get it. Like many sites with exceptionally strong thermals, hang gliders have an advantage, though when I talked to two local hang glider pilots who had just landed they said they found eight plus meters per second (sixteen hundred feet per minute) and were scared. They laughed describing the French pilot who flew mid-day with them, plucked off launch and sucked straight up a thousand meters. From the landing zone we last saw him flying away, a small speck in the distance. He was leaving the next morning by bus, so we never heard his story, if he made it back, or how far he got. The local club, Vuelo Libre La Rioja, is well organized, owns the landing field and even prepared the launch with gravel. As with everywhere in Argentina, every pilot flew with a two-meter band radio on the local club's frequency. Felipe Nieto, a local instructor, and Alejandro Anrique, a tandem pilot as well, were especially helpful. Pilots meet at the landing zone on the edge of the city mid-afternoon and go up to launch late for the smoother evening conditions. My second day flying here I waited to launch, opting to take photos of other pilots getting off the hill. By the time I was clipped in the wind was over the back. I watched as other pilots tried to run off the cliff launch with a tail wind, and asked about the nearby north facing launch, but ended up packing it up. The next day, a little late again, we watched the wind die and then switch. Again this meant launching with a tail wind into the rotor. I took a small cycle, but just off launch dropped so fast I thought I'd never make it out of the deep dark canyon below. Skirting the mountain face I made it over the ridge to the windward side without incident, climbed out, then watched as a local pilot just seconds behind me sunk out and landed in bushy trees, just a few meters short of the first clearing out on the flats, after a ten minute glide.
The summer heat was less humid and more bearable here then in Mendoza, but still comparable. The town lacked so much that made Mendoza great, like the bar scene filled with the mulitude of beautifully dressed girls and hundreds of thousands of trees lining every street. The best flying months in La Rioja are October, November and March. The very pronounced rainy season is January and February when the high clearance two wheel drive road to launch sometimes becomes impassible. We did a short detour to the nearby site above Catamarca, and again were shut down with wind over the back. By this time I was wondering why all the sites in Argentina seemed to face the wrong direction, but the nature of the sport requires flyable conditions, and we were not doing very much hanging out waiting for things to improve. After a wonderful yoga session on the beautiful grassy launch, we headed back down the hill. A third of the way down, my wife Ursula saw a north-facing launch that we didn't find on the way up. We were without local guides and paid the price. The wind direction on this lower launch was fine, but by this time it was early afternoon and the dark development above meant I could only dream of flying from this huge thousand meter high range.
Soon we were on our way north again, catching a four am bus so I could get to Tucuman in time to fly...
Go to Forty Days Over Mongolia: A Paragliding Expedition to the Lands of Ghengis Khan.
Go to Dateline Kurai, Altay Republic: The Russian Paragliding Championships.
Go to A The Celelstial Tien Shan of Kyrgyzstan: Between Mountains and Sky.
Go to Paragliding In The Callejon De Huaylas.
Go to Paragliding Huaraz Peru.
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