Product Details

• Actors: Paul Hamilton, NA
• Directors: NA
• Format: Color, Full length, NTSC
• Number of tapes: 1
• VHS Release Date: December 1, 1998
• Run Time: 28 minutes
• ASIN: 1929795092
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #680,262 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

John "Ole" Olson, Ultralight Flying!, 1999

Lake Chelan, Washington is a spectacularly beautiful place, ideal for videography. Chelan Butte, which rises from the edge of town, is a consistent site in the month of July - in fact, the Butte hosts a resident thermal, which dances atop the peak for several hours each day. This thermal has, eons ago, removed all the dust from atop the Butte, and is now only visible if you walk up to it and kick some dirt at it. The dust rises like smoke signals, the message; get ready for a wild ride!

A few miles east across the river lie miles and miles of mostly flat wheat fields. These fields consist of volcanic ash often 2 feet thick, left behind by eruptions of the volcanoes in the North Cascades. The most recent deposits were laid down by the last explosion of Mount Saint Helens. It is a bizarre place.

Out there on the flats, the thermals are strong and the ash is light. Most every thermal is marked with a dust devil. The fun at Chelan comes from topping out over launch, gliding across the river to the wheat fields, and picking your next thermal. These are visible for miles and miles, narrow snaky threads or ferocious twisters, reaching for the clouds above. You look for a swirl on the ground in the direction you want to fly, and dive for it. You work the thermal up to cloudbase and hang there, looking for the next swirl. Then you dive there, and the race continues.

Into this stage came the Woman's Worlds for 8 days of intense competition. Paul Hamilton has done a nice job capturing the competition, and the flying, too.

From the Back Cover

Fly in the land of dust devils and clear blue lakes. Tour the flying site of Chelan Butte, famous for awesome hang gliding since the sport began. Fly cross-country from the butte across the desert of eastern Washington. Join 46 women from all over the world to challenge the skies and fly with the best in the world during the Woman's World Hang Gliding Competition in Chelan, Washington.

The video camera gives you a bird's-eye view of the action. Indeed, the risks of hang gliding competition are here, for all to taste. Many hundreds of cross-country flying hours and miles accumulated, and the exciting and a controversial finish of the competition, coming down to just a couple of feet of distance - so close it had to be ruled on by the committee from the FAI, Federation Aeronautique International (the world governing body for sport aviation).