The next in our series looks at the community of those who crave adventure, several hundred feet in the air at the Torrey Pines Gliderport.
Welcome to the second installment of “This is La Jolla,” a lajolla.ca series highlighting the various micro communities within La Jolla and celebrating the diverse industries and lifestyles within this coastal jewel.
As you gaze above Scripps Pier or stand along La Jolla Shores and look north, you’ve surely noticed a swoop of brightly-colored nylon crescents sailing over Black’s Beach, Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve, or the Torrey Pines Golf Course.
Those are the paragliders, who fly solo and/or tandem with tourists, throwing themselves off the 300-foot cliffs at the Torrey Pines Gliderport and chasing the highs that come with height.
Within the tight community of pilots who come together to glide, there are those who engage in adaptive gliding, enabling themselves or others with limited mobility to experience the joy of soaring over La Jolla, seeing trails and coast and dolphins from above.
Below, we caught up to three such pilots to ask them the same questions about the magic of flight and their airborne obsessions.
JC Perren (@jcperren) has been skydiving for 30 years and gliding since 2004, arriving in the US as a tourist from South American and transitioning to a career as a glider pilot, mostly at Torrey (the nickname for the Gliderport).
Dana Hunt (@imkickingthebucketlist) has been flying for three years, a self-proclaimed “adrenaline junkie” who became a pilot within a quick two months. Nearly concurrently, Hunt was diagnosed with Primary Lateral Sclerosis (PLS), a rare variation of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and cofounded the nonprofit Adaptive Impact (@adaptiveimpact), designed to help people with mobility challenges take on various adventures.
Brandon Hankins (@bhanks_) has been flying for the last six years, starting when he was 20. In that time, he’s become adept at cross-country paragliding, aerobatics and racing, representing the US in Slovenia for the Junior Cross Country World Championships in 2024.
Read on for their thoughts about La Jolla’s gilder community, why flying is superb and more.
Why do you fly?
Perren has been determined to fly since watching a skydiving stunt on TV during the 1981 Olympics when he was 12, he said. Flying is “the coolest thing ever.”
Torrey is “one of the most iconic, beautiful places to watch the sunset,” Hunt said. “You can basically sit 500 feet above the water, with the best seat in the house, and just have your feet dangling over the ocean. … It’s amazing.”
“The feeling of soaring itself is very unique,” Hankins said. “There’s nothing quite like it.”
Paragliding is “the ultimate adventure sport” and has taken Hankins “all over the world in a very short amount of time,” he said.
Tell us about one of your most memorable flights.
Perren named one of his best flights as one of his first, during which he flew 30 miles in Florida.
Hankins said his best flight was last summer in Slovenia, when he raced in the championships during an event with thunder and lightning over the mountains. Of 130 international pilots, Hankins placed eighth, and was first place among non-Europeans, “which is interesting to note, because Europe is the mecca for paragliding,” he said.
Hunt’s best flight was her first after her PLS diagnosis. “It isn’t lost on me that about the time I was learning to fly, I was losing my ability to walk,” she said, adding it was her gliding instructor who noticed “there was something off with my leg.”
Believing her nascent flying skills grounded for good, a pilot friend figured out a way to adapt Hunt’s launch, to Hunt’s delight. “When I’m flying, I’m fine, because I don’t need my legs.”
Recalling that first flight after thinking she’d never glide again, Hunt said “I felt like me again. I felt free from my disease. And that was so empowering and so impactful for me.”
How did you get into adaptive paragliding?
Hunt’s turn into adaptive paragliding, necessitated by her own diagnosis and mobility loss, prompted Perren and Hankins to help.
With previous experience in Utah and 30 years as an expert rigger, Perren started flying the trike – like a wheelchair for the glider – at Torrey “because nobody had experience. It can be intimidating, because it’s a lot of responsibility.”
Perren finds it rewarding to “make it easy for people that are having a hard time,” he said. “I am really aware of my surroundings and really aware of safety.”
Adaptive gliding is “awesome,” Hankins said. “For a moment people get the same experience that everyone else gets, which is super cool.”
What do you value about the La Jolla gliding community?
“You don’t only fall in love with paragliding, … you fall in love with the community,” Hunt said.
When she launches now without the use of her legs, “it is a full collaboration of pilots that at any point, drop whatever they’re doing and rally around me. Unasked. … They just come and offer and get done what needs to be done.”
Torrey “is a special place,” Perren said. Those who “fly with nylon above their heads are different people.”
It’s special to have a community of pilots who encourage and learn from each other, Hankins said. “If it’s just one, … it’s a bit lonely, and it’s very easy to not progress as fast, because you don’t have other people to watch.”
“It’s more than camaraderie,” Hunt said. “It’s a family.”
What is the most difficult aspect of being a pilot?
“Sometimes it’s hard to slow down and make sure you’re taking the time to master every step,” Hunt said. “The best pilots, the safest pilots, will slowly work on their skill sets, or they’ll work on them in a very safe environment.”
Torrey pilots “are some of the best in the world,” she said.
For Hankins, the most difficult aspect is self-analysis, he said, and being able “to honestly look at your skills to figure out what gliders are appropriate for you.”
The hardest part of piloting is making a living, Perren said, as it’s not only a weather-dependent industry but a tourist-dependent one. “You can have the most perfect conditions, but if you don’t have the people that want to come by, it becomes really difficult.”
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