Big Cross Country from Idaho Peak

Intimidating cross country flights with big mountains, big valleys, lakes. but the summer of 2015 had Benjamin Jordan putting in a couple of nice flights, starting with an out and return to Nakusp, Kaslo, attempts at going south and then a vol-bivi flight to Brisco flying over Kootenay Lake, to the four squatters and Bugaboos. In the summer of 2014 a cross country flight by Rob Rae starting in Salmo landed in New Denver.

Idaho Peak cross country

Paragliding over Kokanee

The Kootenay's are famous in the world of photographers for the soft evening light. The Kokanee Glacier is the snowfield in the photo. A bunch of years ago I spent an afternoon up here with a film crew from Kokanee Beer shooting a beer ad which included a .00005 second clip of flying from Idaho Peak. 
These awesome photos are taken by Sara Rainford. 

Landing from Idaho Peak

There are two popular landing fields - Centennial Park at the campground in New Denver and then a private field north of the golf course which requires PRIOR permission. Idaho Peak is the right peak in the photo.

Valhalla Range

Flying from Idaho Peak is spectacular. The small towns of New Denver and Silverton lie 6 km away and 6200 ft below the old fire lookout tower on the spherical Idaho Peak at 7650 ft asl. The Slocan Lake stretches for 60km in the valley bottom. The mountain range to the west is the Valhalla Range with steep rock climbing in the Mulvey Basin area ( in picture ).

Paragliders at Idaho Peak

I flew Idaho Peak around 1993 or 94 and it sounded like there had been a few flights before me. That first flight I flew into a snow storm in October which dropped 5cm of snow on the peak. A couple of years later we had the first Idaho Peak Fly-In  with 20 pilots. I can't remember if it was that year or the next when we had several pilots getting to around 13-14,000 ft and I ended up flying to Nakusp ( about 50km ) with some 6-7 km glides between thermals. I think it was that year we also flew from Idaho Peak across Slocan lake (in the picture) to the other side and returned and climbed back to cloudbase.

Hangliding history at Idaho Peak

I'm not sure when the first hanglider flew from Idaho Peak but there was a flying competition with a fancy trophy in 1973 and 1974. It's a little bit of a tough hike with a hanglider - at least an hour on a good trail but with steep drops off the trail. I think the hangliders moved to Mt. Buchanan over in Kaslo. There have been a few hanglider launches over the years including this one of Tyson Ehlers. Larry Strom flew to Kaslo ( 50km ) in a Topliss glider about 8 years ago and Doug Blake landed in New Denver after flying from Slocan Ridge ( about 80 km) about 4 years ago.