'This has been a long time coming': Paragliding, hang-gliding now permitted in Banff

BANFF NATIONAL PARK – It’s been a long road to get wings in the air over Banff National Park for Canmore paraglider Will Gadd.

As of May 23, a three-year pilot program has finally taken off in the famed national park, allowing non-motorized paragliding and hang-gliding pilots to launch and land, under certain guidelines.

After 17 years of meetings, environmental assessments and collaboration with Parks Canada, a hike-and-fly off of Castle Mountain is looking like more of a reality for Gadd and many other members of the Hang-gliding and Paragliding Association of Canada (HPAC).

“To see the national park today work with the pilots and do a trial plan is really amazing to me. I’d almost given up, to be honest. It’s [been] 17 years, that’s a long time,” said Gadd.

“I think the policies that we’ve come up with are really respectful of other users in the park and of Banff National Park and it’s very exciting,” he added.

While flying over the park was permitted prior to the change, launching and landing remained strictly prohibited.

The program now unlocks several hike-and-fly opportunities for pilots, according to Robert Maguire, Alberta Hang-gliding and Paragliding Association (AHPA) director. 

“This has been a long time coming,” said Maguire.

“It’s always been tricky flying through the Banff area. You either have to go around or do your best not to come down, which isn’t always a sure thing with paragliding, so it gives us some freedom in planning routes in the future. Things that we couldn’t do before legally, we’re now able to plan more exciting trips.”

While the change is a huge victory for the flying community, the program comes with limitations as pilots are required to follow several site-specific guidelines.

Launching and landing is still prohibited over ski areas, the Banff townsite, campgrounds, environmentally sensitive areas and several other spots outlined by Parks Canada. Pilots are also required to be members of HPAC, carrying proof of membership on each flight and logging their activity so parks can see how often pilots are flying and where.

The Outlook requested an interview with staff at the Banff field unit regarding the changes, but no one was available to comment. A follow up request referred the Outlook to the online bulletin and declined an interview. 

The trial comes after decades of work with Parks Canada, as Gadd and several others at the forefront of negotiations worked to defend the sport as low-impact, silent and similar to other permitted recreational activities in the parks.

A big win for the community came after a successful effort in getting the Canada National Parks Act changed in 2013, which officially recognized paragliding and hang-gliding as acceptable activities within the national park.

In the coming years, negotiations to allow pilot programs to start up in individual mountain parks continued.

“Banff National Park is under intense pressure. They were the last of the mountain parks to work out a program for paragliding and the first was Jasper, followed by Yoho, Kootenay and then Banff,” said Gadd.

With Banff in the public eye more than any other mountain park, sensitive ecological areas, wildlife impacts, public safety and visitor experience were all carefully considered factors throughout the process of introducing a trial program. 

“The plan that we worked [out] with the national parks, their land use planners and their biologists and visitor safety people, we all worked together in Banff for seven or eight years to get something that would work well and respect the parts of the park that are very sensitive,” said Gadd.

“I think it’s taken longer than either Banff park or us thought it would.”

Compared to many other recreational activities, paragliding and hang-gliding leave little impact on the landscape, according to Gadd.

“I think we’re the lowest impact form of recreation out there. We walk up and then we fly,” he said.

Compliance with rules and regulations during previous trial programs in other parks like Jasper has been “very good”, according to Gadd as most pilots are environmentally aware and are outdoorspeople to begin with.

“We’re a self-regulating community, so Transport Canada gives HPAC kind of leave to regulate ourselves and especially around the [national] park, we’re all very cognizant of the fact that we can lose it, so we try to be stewards of whatever area we're in,” said Maguire.

“There’ll be some teething problems as always, but overall, I think we have a really good relationship with Parks [Canada] and I think we’ll work it out. For other users in the [national] park, most people don’t mind seeing the odd paraglider because we tend to leave pretty quickly and we’re silent, there’s no motor,” added Gadd.

After the three-year trial, the program will be reassessed by Parks Canada with the possibility of working out new launching and landing areas for pilots in the HPAC community.

A growing sport

While the aerial sport still isn’t mainstream, paragliding is gaining traction in the Bow Valley and across Canada.

“I used to launch off of Ha Ling or Lady Mac and I’d always be the only one up there 25 years ago when I first started flying in this valley,” said Gadd.

“Now there’s a big community and I think most people in the Bow Valley have probably seen a paraglider in the air and know what it is like, 'Oh, people flying’ … It’s grown a lot locally. There’s probably 25 or 30 pilots in the valley now who fly and then in Canada, it’s grown as well.”

Having flown over Banff several times over the years, Gadd says paragliding is “a special way to experience the park.”

“It’s not a high speed, high adrenaline sport, generally speaking. You’re going 35 km/h and trying to find your next thermal, just like a bird does,” said Gadd.

“The birds actually often key off of us, if we start climbing in a thermal, they’ll fly over and that’s a really cool part of the sport.”

Gadd said there are no plans to introduce commercial paragliding in the park. The priority is to first iron out the recreational side of things, ensuring pilots know the regulations and abide by them.

“Because it’s a trial, certain areas] are still closed to paragliding and visiting pilots really need to be aware of that, and HPAC and AHPA have both worked really hard to educate both local pilots and visiting pilots about flying in national parks,” said Gadd.

For more information on paragliding and hang-gliding regulations in Banff visit: parks.canada.ca/pn-np/ab/banff/activ/parapente-paragliding.