“One of the things I love about the Khumbu is its symmetry, all earth and sky, with the Sherpa people living in the balance. The mountains drew me here in the first place, but the people are what kept me coming back.”

That’s Dick Jackson — expedition leader, international mountain guide, paragliding instructor and narrator of a short documentary film, “Between Earth and Sky/Over Khumbu” — describing the pull of a region in the Himalaya foothills of Nepal, where in 1984 he made the first American ascent to the summit of the 25,895-foot Himalchuli.

On that climb he met Pema Dorje Sherpa, who became and remains a close friend. So when Jackson’s interests later broadened to include paragliding, he was eager to return to Khumbu, this time with very different goals: to fly from a very high peak, to share the experience of flying with the Sherpa people and to make a video record of the expedition.

“The mountains drew me here in the first place, but the people are what kept me coming back.”

And in November 2003, despite permit issues, language problems, high and narrow valleys, obstructionist yaks, sacred summits and high jet-stream winds, Jackson’s “dream team” of expert paraglider pilots, alpinists and a modest production crew succeeded on all counts, helped significantly by ultralight portable technology — wing-in-a-pocket gliders, handheld digital cameras, a 12-inch iBook for the trek up and Final Cut Pro for the final glide through post.

Flight Plans

Although paragliding was invented in the mid-80s by alpinists seeking a method of safe, rapid descent, it quickly took off as a sport unto itself. “Today, we climb to fly,” says Jackson, currently president of the board of the American Mountain Guides Association.

While many have climbed in the Himalayas, and some have paraglided there, nobody had completed multiple launches of single and tandem flights — let alone with Sherpa passengers — until Jackson did.

He conceived the project with his wife, Paulina Vander Noordaa — with whom he owns and operates a tandem paragliding flight and mountaineering guide service in Aspen, Colorado — after an expedition to Nepal in 2000. “Dick had brought his small mountain glider with him, but it was a solo glider, and every time he landed the whole village would come out to greet him,” says Vander Noordaa. “He swore that next time he would bring his tandem glider. So we came up with this concept of bringing the tandems to Nepal and then also trying to fly off of a high summit.”

After arranging for sponsorship by Marmot, a mountain gear retailer for whom Jackson frequently consults, they contracted with Frank Pickell of Rattle Can Films to shoot and edit the film. “It all came together in a hurry,” says Vander Noordaa. “Last September we found the funding and by the end of October we were on the way to Nepal.”

White Peaks, Red Tape

But before climbing even a step, they encountered a serious impasse. Although they’d arranged for flying permits from the Nepalese civil aviation department, it wasn’t clear that permission extended to Sagamartha National Park, where they would be making multiple flights from several villages not far from a neighboring army post.

“If you’re already in the mountains and need to get permission of this sort, which had never been given before, it can be quite a little process,” says Jackson. “And because of a continuing Maoist insurgency in the region, nothing was certain. Fortunately we were there when you could pull this off. I’m not so sure we could do the trip now, just the way things have changed in the last year.”

Next page: Clear for Takeoff