Name: Calef Letorney Age: 34 . Lives in: Westford
Family: Parents, mark and Andrea; brother, Graham; dog, Homer Newton; kitten, special agent Lunchbox
Primary sports: Paragliding, whitewater kayaking, skiing:
Occupation: Vice-president at Rovers North; Paragliding instructor, Paraglide new England
Calef Letorney made a name for himself as a freestyle kayaker, but these days he’s traded the water for the sky. He owns Paraglide new England, located in Westford in northwestern Chittenden County, where he’s one of three flight instructors. While many people might think paragliding qualifies as an adrenaline sport, Letorney begs to differ, referring to it as “chess in the sky.”
Calef Letorned filmed his flight from West Rutland to new Haven.
How did you get into whitewater kayaking, your first sport?
I grew up in Westford. I got into kayaking because I saw a picture of a whitewater kayaker in a magazine. I was so intrigued! So, when I saw a whitewater kayaking summer camp at Clearwater sports in Waitsfield, I had to go. After a few years on Clearwater trips, I went on an adventure Quest summer camp trip to Canada. Westford didn’t have a high school so I chose to go to The Academy at adventure Quest, which was in Brownsville, Vt.
Then how did you become a national champion?
At adventure Quest, every semester we would travel to locations Camiseta OGC Nice like Canada, Ecuador, new Zealand, Chile and Nepal. We lived in tents for months at a time and took turns cooking and cleaning. I started with the slalom kayaking group and the next year switched to freestyle kayaking, known as “rodeo.” Kayaking over 200 days a year, I got good quickly. I made the U.S. team three times, was national champion twice and went to the world championships in 2001. I was in Boulder in 2005 when I learned that you could hike to launch and soar for hours on a wing made of nylon and dental floss. Within a few days I had found an instructor and started taking lessons.
How long until you got good?
At the training hill you learn to launch and land, but then it takes years to learn what to do in between; how to soar with the birds. I moved back to Vermont in January of 2007. At that time, I was already an advanced pilot and so I was able to fly the recognized Vermont Hang gliding association sites at West Rutland and Burke. later we started flying Sugarbush and a few other sites including Mont Yamaska in Quebec. In 2010 I got my USHPA Tandem license at Morningside Park, in new Hampshire. That same year, I started Camiseta Olympique Marseille teaching pilots who had graduated from a Camiseta Ajax training hill how to fly the bigger, much more complicated Vermont mountain sites, such as Burke. I wanted to fly with other people skilled enough to launch from a mountain site in the middle of the day, hook a thermal which is a column of rising air, climb to 500 feet below cloud base (the legal limit) and then fly for four to five hours. because paraglider pilots of that skill level didn’t really reside in Vermont, I figured I needed to instruct them myself.
Below, a graphic shows one of Calef’s longest flights on July 8, 2018 —one of the five longest he’s done. Letorney flew 37 miles, launching from a spot near Rutland.
How did you end up starting a paragliding school?
I started teaching ski buddies and hang-glider pilots. I was building a crew of solid flying buddies and it was working. A few years ago, I founded the Vultures, which we describe as a “fake flying club that does real flying.” fake because we don’t have dues or control launch sites; it’s just a group of 60 pilots sharing our flying plans. then I met my company partners, Paul Somerset and Ryan Dunn, and the idea of a full-fledged paragliding school came together.
How did they get involved?
One day Paul called me up—he was a friend of a friend. After moving to Vermont to recuperate from a wingsuit BASE jumping accident, he missed acrobatic paragliding. So he purchased a boat and a winch with 6,500 feet of line with the goal of towing people on Lake Champlain, so they could get up to 4,500 feet in the air. It was paraglider Christmas for me. I tapped into the Vultures and in no time, we were having a ball towing the lake. It didn’t take long before we realized we had created a liability nightmare and the only services were to stop towing or form a corporation, so we could purchase commercial liability insurance. Founding a flight school just made sense because I was already doing the solo and tandem instruction and leading guided trips to Mexico. Paul had been an USHPA certified advanced instructor because the early 1990s. I knew the two of us couldn’t do it alone so I convinced Ryan Dunn to join the venture. Ryan had sold his company a handful of years earlier, and rapidly became addicted to paragliding
Where do you instruct in Vermont?
We instruct at West Rutland, Burke and Mont Yamaska, in southern Quebec. beginners start in calm conditions in the morning and eveningnull