Meeting with Nicolas Plain, paragliding enthusiast

France has more than 28,000 licensed paragliders, also known as "free flight." It's a fairly recent discipline, having originated in the 1970s and 1980s in Haute-Savoie.

You, Nicolas, practice this sport, but also, more specifically, "hike & fly."

What is hike and fly?

The principle of "hike and fly" is simple: you go up on foot ("hike"), you descend by paraglider ("fly")!
It can be done over one or more days.

The "hike and fly for a day" can be done solo or in a tandem. We try to link the summits in one day, for example the 4 summits of Chartreuse with the Dent de Crolles, the Grand Som, the Charmant Som, Chamechaude. Each time, we land at the bottom of each summit, we reach the summit by hiking and we take off again from the summit.

There is also the bivouac flight where we will leave for several days to cross entire massifs like the Alps.

It is a discipline more and more practiced because we have seen a rather incredible evolution of equipment with canopies that are both very light and very efficient. Mine for example weighs 2.8 kg. If we add 1 to 2 kg for the harness, less than a kilo for the reserve wing, we arrive at equipment that weighs a little less than 6 kg.
We can climb hundreds of meters in a day (2000-3000 D+) because we have a bag that is not very heavy.

I find that walking and flying are really complementary: we touch the ground, the earth, then we want to fly... We really become one with nature and we have incredible sensations and we enjoy crazy landscapes!

What are the main qualities required?

Paragliding is a fantastic training course because it requires a lot of qualities:
- In acrobatics: you have to know how to control your emotions, act quickly, and make the right decisions quickly
- In cross-country/distance flying: you have to make the right decisions at the right time. These flights are exhausting because you are constantly making decisions while flying.

It is therefore a great training course in decision-making, in commitment and also in patience. You have to be one with nature, know how to slow down your pace and be persistent in your progress. Don't get carried away.

At what age did you take your first flight?

I took my first flight about ten years ago.
Over 12 years ago, I joined the Air Force to become a fighter pilot because it was my dream. I flew a Mirage 2000 and an Alpha Jet. It was a job I idealized but which ultimately didn't meet my real expectations.
I tried flying, gliding... and one day, I saw a paraglider fly over my village in Saint Paul de Varces and it made me want to. I tried it and it clicked! With a "handkerchief" in your backpack, you can really take off anywhere and fly up to 30 km/h while being close to nature. It's something you won't find anywhere else.

Do you have any specific training?

I've done a lot of paragliding acrobatics, which is very educational. I finished 8th in the French acrobatics championships. It allows you to learn how to manage your wing well.
I have also made long flights, covering more than 260 km in a triangle.

Example: Departure from St Hilaire du Touvet – Mont Aiguille – La Tournette – St Hilaire du Touvet.

We spend more than 10 hours in flight and we cross 4-5 massifs with strong, intense moments that make paragliding so beautiful. You never know if you will find suitable thermals, updrafts to complete your flight program or if you will have to land earlier than planned and have trouble getting back!

In paragliding, there are many disciplines or varieties:
- The pleasure flight
- The mountain flight where you take off from a summit
- The mountaineering flight going to Mont-Blanc, Mont-Blanc du Tacul, the Barre des Ecrins
- Acrobatics for the thrills
- The cross-country flight
- Ski flying…

It's an infinite world and you learn all the time.

What preparation does it require?

Paragliding requires physical preparation in order to have endurance for long-distance flights and be less tired upon arrival. It is also a preparation in terms of knowledge: micro aerology, weather models…

What equipment do you use?

It is specific equipment for each discipline:
- Acrobatics: small, very energetic wing.
- Cross: high-performance wing with a large, comfortable harness.
- Alpine: very small wing, very light, very small harness and without reserve parachute to lighten as much as possible.
- Bivouac flight: light, resistant equipment.

Since we have a fairly heavy bag (15-20 km), it's good to have very light and durable walking poles for the walking sections. There's no way we're going to break a pole in the middle of our adventure and be without poles at the start of a 3000 D+ climb!
The Guidetti Aéro Perf 3-section polesare perfect for this. They are both light, easy to use, you fold them up in a few seconds before takeoff and slide them into the harness.

What is your best flight?

It was definitely when I was at the summit of Mont Blanc. It was an incredible day like few others, with lots of friends. We started from Plan Pra at 2000 m and we managed to catch the good thermals, pass the Col de Miage, to reach an altitude of 5800 m and be able to land at the top of Mont-Blanc with 150 paragliders.
Reaching this summit without any effort, just carried by the ascending currents created by the sun, it is truly a moment that will remain etched in my memory.

I am also thinking of another 263 km flight from my home, in St Hilaire du Touvet => Mont Aiguille => Tournette => Grand Arc and all the faces of Belledonne to land 10 hours later at the starting point, in St Hilaire du Touvet.

And another flight in the Ecrins, leaving from Vallouise, flying over the Meije, the Grande Barre des Ecrins…

You practice itinerant hike & fly, where ultimately the paraglider becomes a means of locomotion to span the horizons and travel for several days. Can you tell us more?

I do sometimes do hiking flights or bivouac flights lasting several days.

In the summer of 2019, I took off near Monaco to reach Salzburg in Austria, over 1,000 km (the exact opposite direction of the Red Bull X-Alps). I managed to complete the route in about 8 days. I was lucky to have someone following me and who could give me a bike when the conditions weren't favorable.

I also did the Crossing the Alps, it was an incredible adventure. I took the opportunity to take on board pollution sensors to measure air quality, raise awareness of this issue, organize tandem flights with in-flight interviews... This was the subject of a series of documentaries broadcast on Ushuaia TV.

I also do two-day bivouac flights from my home: I cross the Chartreuse, the Bauges… with a night of bivouac and a return the next day. I like doing these hiking flights in a tandem flight with my partner. It's nice, we can share the "driving", we can talk during the flight and share our emotions.

And I'm planning a crossing of the Pyrenees soon.

What's great about bivouac flights is that, when you leave in the morning, you have no idea where you'll land in the evening. We can land 10 km or 300 km from the objective!

But be careful, these flights are very challenging in terms of conditions: lots of wind, turbulence, thunderstorms... You can end up almost hypothermic.

You also make your passion for paragliding your job since you are a scientist, explorer and you have transformed your paraglider into a flying laboratory. You take advantage of your flights to take measurements of air quality in the most remote places. Tell us about it!

The idea of ​​paragliding is also to make it possible to make documentaries, to combine paragliding, the discovery of beautiful landscapes and the provision of solutions to accelerate the ecological and social transition.

In paragliding, we are very close to nature. We see it live, we see it evolve, we see it undergo increasingly frequent heat waves, we see glaciers melt, we see landslides... We are directly in this changing environment and we really want to change things.

The idea of ​​these documentaries is to highlight people who are taking action and to provide concrete solutions. In the end, we want viewers to see the actions that are already being taken and to tell themselves that they can take action too. They are directed to the Ilfautsauver.org website http://ilfautsauver.org/ , the “Kitchen Chef of the Ecological Transition”, to give them recipes and easily applicable solutions.

http://nicolasplain.fr/
Documentaries “We must save” the Alps – Provence – the Volcanoes of Auvergne.

Interview by Aurélie Joubin on January 21, 2022