His life hung by a thread, or rather a piece of veil, hanging on the cliff on the west face of Grand Replomb at 2,500 m altitude, in Isère. It is there that the helicopter of the civil security and the teams of the CRS des Alpes rescued a paraglider on Saturday. This is what says one of the rescuers, Brigadier Damien Astoul, at the microphone of Europe 1, two days after this accident.
50 meters of vacuum
"It was hooked by a small end of its sail which capped a rocky spoiler. It was suspended on a cliff which must be 80 meters, and below it there was 50 meters of vacuum", he testifies. "When the paragliders are in these postures, the peculiarity is that with the helicopter you cannot get too close to them, the risk being to inflate the wing with the breath of the helicopter and that 'he falls,' explains the sergeant.
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"We were able to get dropped by helicopter above him, but in an area where we weren't in danger of blowing him, and then we fitted a handrail with climbing rope, to descend to to him ". This operation was particularly delicate, but it was successful: the paraglider was kept in his harness so as not to touch his vertebrae, which he complained about. As night fell, he ended up being hoisted and evacuated to the Grenoble University Hospital, injured but very relieved to have been rescued in time.