Paragliding with the top high-flyers

LAUREN TAYLOR discovers late season skiing in Les 3 Vallees in the French Alps - and takes flight

- LAUREN TAYLOR

“What can go wrong?” I ask my instructor, Luca, as he straps me to a harness attached to a huge parachute, looking over a mountain edge. “A lot of things in life can go wrong,” he smiles, which does little to calm my nerves.

I'm about to paraglide in the French Alps with skis (which is also known as ski-gliding, and not to be confused with the more extreme “para skiing”) and then fly over the valley towards the Alpine town of Meribel - dropping a total of 1,400 metres.

Luca reassures me he's been a paragliding instructor for 10 years, doing 500 rides a year and that hiking is more dangerous (probably not my English countryside hikes), as he straps himself in behind me near the summit of Saulire, a mountain in the Savoie region of some 2,740 metres.

“The most important thing you have to do is keep your skis straight for take off,” he explains, before I question the big rock jutting out of the mountain face directly below us. “Don't worry, we'll be in the sky before we hit that”.

I'm an experienced skier, but hurtling vertically off-piste at high speed - with a 42-square metre parachute, and thankfully Luca in tandem - gives way to a different kind of adrenaline. But he's right, we're quickly airborne, the parachute catching the air and curving above us.

I breathe a sigh of relief; it's slower than I expected, there's a calmness and serenity up here. As we move further away from the mountain face and into the valley, I realise just how far we are from the ground - where skiers look like dots zigzagging down pistes lined with tiny trees.

Luca shows me how he's gently steering, by pulling a lever at each side. “Shall we do some turns?” he asks - my answer is a flat no. My heart is racing fast enough.