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Gatskop 2021

· 2 min read
Ryan Cook
Ryan Cook
Paraglider Pilot

Introduction​

Gatskop is a festival held every year in Cape Town attracting pilots from all over the South Africa. The idea is to camp, paraglide and have a good time. There is a little bit of competitive flying involved, but nothing that affects any world rankings (it's actually just for fun and learning how comps work).

The name Gatskop when loosely translated to English means to kick ass and that's exactly what we did!

This year's festival was very well organised by the Glen Paragliding Club and the turnout was around 50 pilots (showing up at different times of the festival). It featured 3 days of flying, overnight camping with parties and awesome prizes!

The Setting​

The festival was set at Element Adventures in Paarl (about a 1 hour drive from Cape Town). The pilots attending were mostly from the Western Cape South Africa, but I met some friends from Johannesburg as well as 2 of our country's great Pilots which was rather exciting. I cannot forget to mention the treat of being joined by some of the Signal Hill pilots who took time out of their work lives to come and fly for fun!

Day 1​

Day 1 was an awesome kick-off to the festival. The weather played the part in that we had flyable conditions, I would even call them good!