Blindly Trusting

It really is nothing short of amazing how blindly trusting people can be.  That, allied with the fact that people seem to be searching for new adventures that create a sense of excitement and danger seems to have captivated a certain audience seemingly devoted to what some call 'extreme' sports.  And certainly sky diving and hang gliding and paragliding would fall under that category.

One can only suppose that the young Vancouver woman had an excited urge to try out something as spectacular as tandem hang gliding.  Presumably bungee-jumping is passe.  So her boyfriend decided to pay for this opportunity as a gift to her, to celebrate an anniversary.  And he undertook to film the action as a keepsake.  Little would he have imagined he would be filming the final moments of a loved one's life.

But this is precisely what occurred when everything went dreadfully awry and that young woman's adventure turned into the most dreadful of misadventures.  The horror she must have experienced realizing that she was not, as anticipated, safely anchored to her guide, that the pilot had somehow failed to secure her properly, and she was desperately attempting to hang on, would have been dreadful.

Mirrored no doubt, in large part, by her boyfriend, who witnessed the horrible event.  According to a spokesman for the Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association of Canada, "The pilot tried everything".  Where in fact, what the pilot should have done would have been to scrupulously, methodically, ensured before the fatal adventure took place, that all safety harnesses were securely in place.

Obviously, there is little room for error in such an undertaking.  

The haunting memory of a young woman who swiftly realized that something dreadful was happening and she was helpless to save herself, while still desperately attempting a handgrip to secure her life, will produce nightmares and guilt and a lifetime of grieving for those who witnessed the event.  The pilot, described as "completely distraught", was able to land safely.

While his passenger, so briefly with him, hurtled to her death, among trees and rocks.  An investigation will ultimately reveal whether this accident was caused by equipment failure.  On the other hand, the completely distraught pilot appears to have decided to shelter visual evidence of the occurrence from that investigation; swallowing, it has been charged, the video card clues to what had happened.

It seems that this man whose own family witnessed the catastrophe, was celebrating his birthday.  It would appear also that he was fairly recently licensed by the Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association of Canada.  Which group is now undertaking a review of its safety standards and licensing.