B.C. man hikes, sails, and paraglides to work following rockslide road closures
It used to take Craig Pingle approximately 18 minutes to get to work via Highway 97 from Peachland to Summerland, both just south of Kelowna in B.C.'s Interior.
That was until the route connecting the Central and South Okanagan closed on Aug. 28 after heavy rockslides.
"Now it takes about two hours or more if there's some traffic," said Pingle, who works as a general manager for Haywire Winery.
B.C.'s Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure opened two forest service roads as alternative routes following the highway closure, but the detours have turned out to be too time-consuming, so the winery manager looked for new and unique ways of getting to work.
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"First, I decided to park at the Okanagan Lake Provincial Park and then hike up over the mountain," he said.
Halfway through the trail, he realized it wasn't the safest — and definitely not the fastest — route to take.
"There was a point where I was on my hands and knees and I definitely didn't want to do it again."
The following day, Pingle went waterborne when a friend, Ron Kubek of Lightning Rock Winery, offered him a ride home on his boat.
"Again, this wasn't as ideal either," Pingle said. "It was wavy and bumpy."
This week, however, he decided to up the ante by paragliding his way to the winery.
Craig Pingle's friend, Ron Kubek of Lightning Rock Winery, gives Pingle a ride home on his boat. (Lionel Trudel)
"A friend of a friend had a paraglide and he said you should give it a try."
So Pingle did. In a video posted on the Summerland winery's Facebook and Instagram pages, Pingle can be seen hooking a parachute to a backpack, licking his finger and holding it up to get a sense of the wind direction, and taking off with a work briefcase in hand.
"It was more of a fun thing to do rather than it being an economical way to spend my time," he said.
"The people are getting a kick out of it though."
Friends and colleagues have started offering suggestions for his next commute.
Christine Colleta, co-owner of Okanagan Crush Pad — which owns Haywire — said Pingle is coming to work on a horse this Monday.
"We have a wild horse riding stable next to our vineyard, so it's actually pretty handy," she said in a phone interview with CBC News.
Colleta said three of her employees, including Pingle, were impacted by the highway closure.
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"Two of them we've managed to change things so that they can work from home, but Craig, our GM, is really sort of involved in the operations of the day-to-day."
Being harvest season, it's a busy time at the winery and missing a day of work isn't feasible, said Pingle.
The highway north of Summerland is expected to reopen to single-lane-alternating traffic by the weekend of Sept. 16-17, according to the transportation ministry.
Thumbnail courtesy of Lionel Trudel via CBC.
The story was originally written and published for CBC News. It contains files from Radio West
