For the third year in a row, the Outdoor Adventure Center is hosting a day trip to Oklahoma for a group of SMU students to enjoy a day of hang gliding. This year the trip will be on Oct. 4.
The trip is booked up, according to the OAC. The deadline for sign-up was Friday.
Partnered with Wide Open Sky Hang Gliding and members of the US Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association, the OAC has found success with the program in the last few years.
According to Director David Chambers, “It has always drawn a good crowd. We always offer it in October and it usually fills up a good week in advance of the deadline.”
Chambers also offered a walkthrough of exactly what the program involves and how it works.
“You’ll do about an hour to an hour and a half of ground school where they teach you about the rigging, the saddle, working in tandem, the directions, steering, then we go out to a location somewhere in the Oklahoma farmlands with a long straight road,” Chambers explained. “They will then connect the glider with the participant and the instructor into the harness and start driving down the road picking up speed. It’s like parasailing, as the truck picks up speed you go higher and higher,” he said. “The end of the rope is about 2,400 feet, when you hit they release it and with the help of the instructor, the participant guides the glider back down to the ground and the instructor will land it.”
The program comes with added benefits for hang gliding enthusiasts, Chambers was pleased to learn.
“One of the things about this that we didn’t know is kind of like skydiving and other flight oriented pursuits is that each time you do it counts toward a level or status change. How many instructional classes you take, all are working to get you to a solo status,” he said. “Depending on how many hours, flights, trainings, you have you can pursue instructor status. It’s pretty well regulated.”
Over the years the program has gone through a few changes, but it is a staple of what the OAC likes to focus on: students getting out into the real world and experiencing adventures they might not have otherwise.
“We tried offering it twice a semester but the weather in spring is so volatile. We only have so many weekends of what should be good weather,” Chamers said. “We would just as soon program something we know we can do rain or shine versus something that might cancel on the morning of. Our goal is to try to get every trip into the field, sometimes regardless of participation.”
Abby Seibel, a senior majoring in International Studies and Spanish participated two years ago. “It was not what I expected it to be. I expected it to be ‘extreme’ like bungee jumping would be, but it was very serene and freeing,” she said. “I went higher than I thought I would, we were thousands of feet up in the air and it was scary being so unattached. It was cool.”
“You can see for miles,” Seibel said. “You’re less concerned with how far you can see and more with how high off the ground you are. If the air pressure is right you can glide for hours. Everyone should try it at least once.”
