WS Paragliding LZ

West Coast Soaring Club , The place for free flight pilots

The West Coast Soaring Club (WCSC) traces its roots to a ragtag bunch of free-flight pioneers bound together by their passion for getting high (in the sky) in the mid-’70s. These formative early years saw a variety of clubs merge and diverge across the lower mainland. Although the finer details are hard to pin down, the WCSC genesis is generally traced as a split from the West Coast Hang Gliding Association calling itself the Fraser Valley Hang Gliding Club.  That club eventually grew to include Vancouver and in the early ’80s changed its name to Vancouver and Fraser Valley Hang Gliding Club.
Sometime in 1986 Paragliding entered the scene (invented primarily as a decent tool for extreme mountaineers), a new group of free flyers began forming. Max De Jong was one of the first paragliding pilots in the area and created what some Hang Gliding pilots refer to as the Renegade BC Paragliding Club.  Initially, the paragliding community was made up of people that lived the extreme mountain lifestyle, mostly climbers. They were the type to brag about how many bones they have broken and named launches after prescription pain medication.
However, the new wave of Paraglider pilots was growing fast and encroaching on the local Hang Gliding establishment. Eventually, the age-old ethos of ‘keep your friends close, and your enemies closer’ was adopted. In 1991, Martin Henry along with a few others started a process to merge the ego’s and created some letter driven representation of the activity that finally morphed into the West Coast Soaring Club aka WCSC.
Photo Credits: 1970’s Martin Reichenbach Hang Glider flying Grouse Mountain and 1980’s Kevin Ault Launching his Paraglider
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