This page contains links to paragliding articles Jeff Cristol published in 2006. They include Argentine Skies Part 1 and Part 2, published in the March and April 2006 issues of Hang Gliding and Paragliding Magazine, and republished in the UK magazine Skywings. Several articles from a summer traveling and flying throughout Central Asia: Forty Days Over Mongolia: A Paragliding Expedition to the Lands of Ghengis Khan. Dateline Kurai, Altay Republic: The Russian Paragliding Championships. The Celelstial Tien Shan of Kyrgyzstan: Between Mountains and Sky, were all published during the summer of 2006 in Hang Gliding and Paragliding Magazine. Central Asia On a Wing and a Lark, Paragliding High Over Telluride, The Black Canyon: A Climber's Dream, and Boating The Gunnison Gorge of the Black Canyon, all published by Bush Publishing in their various magazines and guides. Paragliding In The Callejon De Huaylas was published in the Huaraz Peru Map-Guide. Finally, Ann Sasaki interviews Dan Foust about joining Jeff Cristol and Adventure Tour Productions on a paragliding tour in Peru, which was published in the Bay Area Paragliding Association's periodical Ridge Dancer: Flying in the Huaraz Valley in Peru.
Jeff also had several articles published by Bush Publishing in their various magazines including Telluride Style, Montrose Style and the San Juan Outdoor Guide:
Central Asia On a Wing and a Lark.
Paragliding High Over Telluride.
The Black Canyon: A Climber's Dream.
Boating The Gunnison Gorge of the Black Canyon.
The 2006 Huaraz Peru Map-Guide included a short piece by Jeff:
Paragliding In The Callejon De Huaylas.Flying in the Huaraz Valley in Peru
Finally, Ann Sasaki interviews Dan Foust about joining Jeff Cristol and Adventure Tour Productions on a paragliding tour in Peru, which was published in the Bay Area Paragldiing Association's periodical Ridge Dancer:
Flying in the Huaraz Valley in Peru
Central Asia Series
I stand alone on a barren windswept summit clipped to my paraglider. The view is the open vastness of Central Mongolia. Another gust pulls at my glider which twists and jerks like an animal struggling to free itself. Overhead, cumulous clouds expand into tall dark masses. Even at one in the afternoon the cycles have significant lulls, but the peaks are too strong to launch into.
It is a serious moment of reflection, a time to look deep within, to question my heart, my motivation. I ask if this type of adventure, this level of commitment is really what I want. Every launch is so significant, the step leaving the earth so grand.
I wait for a lull, then with no one to hear, call out "clear" and pull my glider above me. Immediately I'm plucked from the ground, untwisting in the air I fly away from the mountain. As I slide back into my harness my vario squawks out the lift. Soon over the rocky peak I begin circling up towards the clouds. Looking down past the tiny jeep parked at the bottom of the hill, a dozen horses gallop across the steppes. Wild and free, I feel a common connection with them, to their lives and feelings, as they kick dust into the sky.
Several thousand over now, my drift is southeast away from the small town of Karakoram. We already planned to drive south, to hot springs, waterfalls and hopefully more launch sites. I radio my wife Ursula that I'm away, following the river south. She is already driving, at the ford in the river below launch.
Unfortunately dark clouds have merged into an ominous sky. In the distance rain begins to fall in diagonal sheets. The thermals drift too far east and I leave long before reaching base. Under a threatening sky, flying down wind I'm out running Ursula and the retrieve jeep. After several climbs the wind picks up even more. It's time to land before the gust front hits. I stop turning in lift, then begin spiraling toward the rolling grassy hills below. I land with almost no forward speed. Several young boys run down from a nearby ger, or summer home, and watch as I struggle to pack up in the wind. They stand back, afraid of the foreigner and his strange flying machine. When I call to them to help they run still further away.
Once the gear is away, I walk down to the dirt road that runs along the river. Just beyond where I land I find one of the huge granite carved turtles that Ghangis Khan placed at the four corners of his capitol city nine hundred years before. Ursula and I have clear radio contact, but she's surprised at how far I flew so quickly. It was a grand day until it overdeveloped, and our trip across Western Mongolia has just begun.
As soon as we arrived in the land of Ghengis Khan, Ursula pointed out: "You will not suffer for a place to land." There are almost no trees, no power lines, and no fences. There are occasional streams, fewer roads and dotting the open countryside, small round gers.
It was a voyage of thousands of miles on rough dirt roads in stiff Russian jeeps. So many hills hiked up and flown off, after forty days it's a blur of dust and dirt. The whole experience was shaken and jostled by bumpy roads and the dramatic swerves as our drivers tried fruitlessly to avoid the rocks and holes.
I expected to discover a paragliding paradise, my hopes raised by an email I received from Louise Crandal just before we left: "Have a good trip. In my opinion you are going to the most fantastic region I've been to." I realize now that while there is huge potential, it's extremely hard to realize. Perhaps, because Louise is such a superb pilot, she can thermal to cloud-base from the smallest hills; I need more vertical, more time in the air to find lift, lose it and find it again. I felt more than once, if I'd turned the other direction, or more quickly, I might have caught it, the one chance I was given that day. Maybe I needed more motivation, to hike the bigger mountains we finally found in Western Mongolia.
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Dateline Kurai, Altay Republic: The Russian Paragliding Championships
After a forty-day journey across Western Mongolia, my wife Ursula and I hitch hiked north from the small town of Tsaganuur into the Altay Republic, our packs filled with camping and paragliding gear. This border crossing, closed to foreigners for over three hundred years, opened just last year. The nine-hour, three-checkpoint ordeal seemed simple compared to the confusion, pushing and shoving that began the multi-day task of registering our visas.
Told we couldn't register in the town of Kosh-Agach and facing a six hour drive north to the republic's capitol of Gorno Altaysk, we did our best to not understand. At this point we learned to confidently recite "Ya ni ga va ryu pa Ruski" which helpfully means "I don't speak Russian". We eventually arranged a meeting with the head inspector in the back office of the visa registration office. Not able read the Cyrillic forms, we felt helpless. A secretary in the office aided with translations and after three days they agreed to register us for the next two weeks.
Relieved, we hired a taxi to the ideal camping area above the small village of Kurai in the Chuysky Valley. Ready for a break from our endless traveling, I was psyched to meet and fly with the Russian pilots.
We arrived in Kurai the day before the Russian Open Paragliding Championships. A large group of British pilots camped in a nearby field finished a paragliding tour to the area the next day. The trip organizer explained their policy of refusing pilots not in the group a ride to launch. I faced a very long hike, but their doctor with his own jeep kindly made room for me.
Ecstatic to have finally arrived, my journal entry from July 21st captured the spirit: "Finally flying in Russia- all of what I expected- the huge Kamaz trucks- the hills blanketed in wildflowers- edelweiss thick like weeds! A perfect launch site- with drive to access and puffy clouds extending down the valley. First flight thirty-three kilometers. Not too big or too bumpy-"
Launch, a huge grassy ridge that sits at 8300', looks across the valley at the beautiful glaciated Altay Mountains dominated by Mount Belukha at 14,784' or 4506 meters. The normal flight plan goes south down the valley towards the border with Mongolia.
The Kurai is considered the best flying site in the former Soviet Union often called "The Owens Valley of Russia". Once a Soviet tank bombing range, near launch lie unexploded ordinance. Most pilots came from Moscow and Northern Russia. Pilots from flatland towing areas especially respect Kurai for advanced big mountain conditions. Only experienced or sponsored and supervised intermediate pilots are allowed to fly here. When I registered for the competition, I qualified as a "Master of Sport" on the entry form. I knew the significance in the former Soviet Union and felt humbled by the rating.
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The Celelstial Tien Shan of Kyrgyzstan: Between Mountains and Sky
Sometimes all the expletives: super, beautiful, spectacular, amazing... just fall short. A whirlwind month of making friends, finding roads up to launches, driving thousands of kilometers and gazing endlessly at snowy summits left us finally fulfilled. At the end of a four-month trip through China, Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, we felt we had found what we were searching for, deep in the central ranges of the Tian Shan Mountains.
At the beginning of August 2005 my wife Ursula and I picked up our passports in neighboring Almaty Kazakhstan, with new Kyrgyz visas stamped inside. We left the US three months earlier without paperwork because the consulate in Washington wouldn't issue visas during a small revolution back in March. (With clear suggestions of classic US involvement in other countries affairs, when the previous Kyrgyz president suggested closing the local US military base he was soon deposed in a revolution that included rioting and looting, leaving the country years behind economically).
Just a few hours north of Almaty, I flew the local Kazakh hill, Ush Kumur during a hang gliding competition. The stories proved true as I struggled through the infamous inversion with painfully slow climbs to cloud base. South toward Kyrgyzstan, icy mountain faces shimmed in the summer heat and called us into the hills and further adventures. We rented a tiny Russian 4x4 Niva and drove the few hours into the Chuay Valley, home to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan's capitol.
Stringing together connections and contacts, in Kazakhstan we hung out with Delta pilots we met at a Russian competition the month before. These hang pilots introduced us to two Bishkek paraglider pilots. Oleg spoke no English, so our first phone conversation was in Russian and short: "flying tomorrow?" "Yes". When and where were beyond my limited vocabulary so we found a helpful local to act as interpreter. After getting our directions he joined us in the taxi ride across town to make sure we found our way. We already felt welcome our first day in Bishkek, but were soon completely taken in by the small tight flying community. Local pilot, Vitaly, and his wife Irina wouldn't let us rent a hotel or camp outside the city, and instead put up with us as house guests whenever we came through town. Vitaly even lent us a mobile phone for retrieves and communication while we were in the country.
The first Kyrgyz site we visited was the local "training" hill, called two Hundred Meters where climbs to cloud base are normal on good days. Thousand Meters is a higher launch in the hills behind this, where of course there is less chance of sinking out. As the locals explained, "With sites this good at home, you see why we haven't traveled very much to fly." Indeed, most of the country consists of high mountains, with ninety-four percent mountainous and forty percent over three thousand meters, (almost ten thousand feet), the potential for soaring the fascinating topography is endless.
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