Making Friends with High Lonesome Ranch

Building relationships with landowners

by Brian Greeson

(photos submitted by numerous fly-in participants)

: During the summer of 2021, I moved to a new area and discovered flying opportunities in the lesser-flown regions of Colorado’s Western Slope. I found a paraglider’s playground in Douglas Pass and the Roan Plateau. Initially, all to myself, I soon found a crew of brave local pilots willing to explore the remote and unknown spots. We were a small crew—Lukas Hill, Casey Evanoff, Chase Anderson, Luke Rome, and myself.

Connection

As we explored, we noticed the name High Lonesome Ranch (HLR) was common on the land ownership parcel maps. I knew the future of flying in the area depended on developing a positive relationship with whoever HLR was. An in- ternet search provided the location of the ranch headquarters: at the base of a long, flat-topped, southwest-facing ridge in the Dry Fork Valley, and it seemed ideally suited for paragliding exploration. There were several possible launches, and the entire valley was wide open and landable with sparsely placed obstacles.

On a summer afternoon, I drove to the ranch headquarters. My initial goal was to educate them about paragliding and, hopefully, gain landing permission or approval to hike through their properties. Like my previous interactions with landowners, I practiced my introduction and responses to common questions the night before. First impressions are crucial in landowner relations, and this was the most important contact for the area. In short, I was nervous!

I introduced myself and asked who I should speak to about the possibility of paragliding from their properties.

“Paragliding? We’ve been looking at that,” they responded. “Is that an activity you could help us provide to our guests?”

To say I was surprised by their response was an understatement. Typically, when making initial contact with a landowner, you can spend a great deal of time explaining what paragliding is and how it’s different from skydiving or base jumping, not to mention convincing landowners that we are not wearing “one of those squirrel suits.” If you have ever been asked, “What plane did you jump from?” or “What cliff did you jump off?” after landing in someone’s field, you know the uphill battle we face when educating the public about our activities. After some initial discussions, it was clear that HLR was not only open to allowing paragliding on their property, but they were also very interested in hosting events.

A Concept

With permission, I began flying from the ridges surrounding the ranch’s headquarters and looking for the best launch and landing zones. That winter, we solidified the idea of a fly-in with an accompanying hike-and-fly competition. In late spring 2022, we selected our launch sites, and the ranch cleared the area with heavy machinery. I sent out an announcement via our local Telegram groups at the beginning of March about the gathering. I expected the event would be small; maybe we could get 15 pilots to show up. However, as the registrations started coming in,

I quickly realized that we were going to have a much larger event than I had anticipated!

The number of people attending, coupled with the remoteness of High Lonesome Ranch, were making logistics difficult. On top of that, I had never put on an event of any type, let alone a fly-in for over a hundred pilots. In short, I was in way over my head. Thankfully, an entire team jumped in to help make the event possible. The ranch’s guest services director Ariel, and her crew, Ace and Ginger, were instrumental in organizing all the logistics to make the event happen. They were able to coordinate food trucks, trash collection, campground layout, and more. Our small pilot crew managed to pull together other resources, such as fresh water and toilets for the campground, help on launch, drivers for launch/retrieve, signage, and so on. The planning was coming together, but communication with the attendees leading up to the event was challenging. Even with multiple mass emails and maintaining an open dialog on the official event Telegram channel, I still received questions that made it clear people needed to be more informed. I was constantly worried that pilots would show up unprepared in knowledge or supplies. In response, we upped our communication level on Telegram and created a welcome packet for each attendee with as much information as possible about the area, flying, and ranch services.

Complications

One aspect that proved to be a battle was our requirement for GPS trackers for each pilot. We required these primarily for safety, but there was an added benefit. The devices with two-way messaging would greatly assist with communications in the valley, which was devoid of cell service. The area is extremely remote, so having the ability to communicate could be the difference between life and death. From another point of view, it could be the difference between a happy story about a successful rescue or a tragic story about a fatality that builds a negative reputation for our beloved pastime and can jeopardize our ability to open more flying areas. GPS trackers were non-negotiable. As such, we found ways to borrow and rent units to provide for pilots who didn’t want or couldn’t afford to buy their own for a single weekend event.

In the months leading up to the event, the region’s monsoon was in full swing. Large afternoon thunderstorms produced heavy rains and, with them, landslides. A few weeks before the event, a deluge of rain caused a debris flow that destroyed the valley road near the landing area and the road to launch. Without the road, the fly-in was at risk of becoming a hike-and-fly-only event or, worse, canceled. There was so much damage that the county had to bring in surveyors to find where the valley road was supposed to be before remaking it. After the road was repaired, the ranch’s maintenance director Aiden, did a fantastic job re-blading the road to launch at great expense to the HLR.

In the months leading up to the event, there were many times that the logistics and circumstances threatened the event’s existence. Instead of becoming discouraged, we rallied together to overcome these challenges. Each challenge strengthened our relationship with the ranch and brought our local community closer together.

The Fly-In

At long last, the fly-in began on a beautiful

Thursday afternoon in September. We prepared fresh water and set up solar showers and porta potties in the campground. We also set up satellite Internet in the landing area so we could track pilots and coordinate retrieves. The High Lonesome staff and our local crew were busy checking in pilots, setting up the bar, and completing last-minute tasks in the campground. It felt like we might pull this thing off.

A steady stream of pilots arrived Thursday and Friday; in the end, we had over 110 attendees. Quite a few more than the 15 I had originally anticipated! We had a good mix of flying and non-flying activities. The trucks were loaded up in the landing area in the mornings and evenings to haul pilots up to launch, though the recent road work made the drive hilariously dusty, so much so that some pilots chose to hike the trail to launch instead. For many pilots, this was their first experience away from their home site, and many had personal bests during the weekend. Regardless of skill level, all pilots were treated to amazing views of the unique and remote landscape.

Food trucks were available every day of the fly-in. Participants could enjoy meeting the ranch life. Kiting practice in the landing zone.

The event had two competitions, Daily and Bivy, which shared a similar waypoint collection format. We distributed a waypoint file consisting of over 50 waypoints across the flying area, and each waypoint was worth the same number of points. For the Daily comp, a pilot was awarded points for each waypoint cylinder crossed, and waypoints could only be collected once per day. Each morning we designated several bonus waypoints that were worth double points. A pilot was allowed to relaunch as many times as they liked, and waypoints had to be crossed in the air. There was no defined route; rather, pilots had to make their own strategy to maximize the day’s conditions. Each pilot submitted their day’s IGC files to a website, and the top two finishers received prizes during that evening’s bonfire. Then the waypoints were reset, and everything started over the next day. On day 1 Randy Hughes took 1st and Casey Evanoff, 2nd. Day 2 was a weather day with no scheduled daily competition. On day 3, the winners were Randy Hughes in 1st and Luke Rome in 2nd. in the future.

The Bivy race was similar to the Daily race, with a few modifications. Pilots could only travel by foot and paraglider, waypoints could be crossed either in the air or on the ground, and the waypoints did not reset over the course of the weekend. The Bivy competition winners were announced during an awards dinner hosted on the last evening of the fly-in. Eric Klammer and Ryan Friedman took 1st and 2nd place in the Bivy comp. It was exciting watching the different routes and strategies during the competitions.

Pilots enjoyed the format and we hope to see more of these styles of competitions in the U.S.

High Lonesome Ranch is a paraglider’s paradise. People spent the non-flying hours lounging by the pool, hiking and exploring the beautiful landscape, and attending the excellent workshops (risk assessment hosted by Brian Doub and regenerative ranching practices hosted by the ranch’s agricultural manager Dakota Glueck). Everyone enjoyed the food trucks during the day and the bar in the evening. We had a nightly bonfire where people roasted marshmallows and filled the air with stories of the day’s adventures. The event became more than just a fly-in; it became a community of people sharing their love of free flight.

When I moved to this area and started exploring, I was flying alone and enjoyed the adventure. However, over time, I was joined by a few brave pilots willing to venture into the unknown. The shared experience was so much more enjoyable. In the end, we were able to share our adventures with an entirely new group of pilots through the fly-in, making friends and lifelong memories along the way. The small community here is looking forward to hosting this event moving forward and is planning to hold the 2023 High Lonesome Fly-In

24-27.