Hang Gliding and Paragliding Volume 44 / Issue 12:December 2014 | Page 12

Co-chair Mitch Shipley (L), with
Safety & Training chair Greg Kelly

ARC: THE NEW USHPA COMMITTEE
by C.J. Sturtevant

I

f you’ve been a member of USHPA
for more than a couple of years,
you’ll remember the “Accident
Reports” column in HG&PG magazine. Once a monthly feature, the
reports dwindled to a few columns per
year, then disappeared entirely. You
may have concluded that the accident
reporting program had been abandoned, but in fact it was merely “on
hold” and is now being re-introduced
with a new format, a new focus and
new leadership. I’ll leave it to the
USHPA’s president and executive
director to explain the nuances of the
new reporting system; my assignment
is to introduce to you the Accident
Reporting committee (ARC)—cochairs hang glider pilot Mitch Shipley
and paraglider pilot Josh Pierce,
biwingual committee members Frank

FRANK DREWS
12

HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

Hang gliding co-chair Mitch Shipley
has always loved intensely outdoor, sensory activities, typically ones that don’t
require a lot of “stuff” or other people
to do—scuba diving, backpacking,
skydiving , flying a private plane. He
encountered hang gliding in July 1987,
when a three-year assignment on the
Navy Nuclear Propulsion Examining
Board brought him to Virginia. A visit
to the Outer Banks, and the opportunity to try hang gliding at Jockey’s
Ridge, changed his life. “I was instantly
hooked,” Mitch says. “I went every
weekend until I got my H-2 and have
never looked back.” Twenty-six years

later, “I have no one favorite flight, but
rather a smorgasbord of experiences
doing the 3-D chess game of surfing
the invisible waves that give me a lifetime of good memories. The places, the
people, the gear, the exercise, the challenge—hang gliding is the only thing
that has captured my full attention for
so long.” Mitch has been competing
for a good bit of those years, “flying
with the best and reaching for the edge
of the possible,” he says. In January
2013 he competed on the silver-medalwinning US National Team in Forbes,
Australia: “Competing for the US in a
World Championships—a lifelong goal
of mine finally achieved!”
Josh Pierce, the paragliding cochair, first saw a paraglider flying
while he was in college in Bozeman,
Montana. Instantly intrigued, he found
a bookstore that had a copy of The
Art of Paragliding and devoured it in

JOSH PIERCE

ROLF BIENERT

Drews and Neil Hansen and paragliding member Rolf Bienert—and to let
them fill you in on the details of their
job and why they’re the ones taking it
on.

Who are these guys?