VANCOUVER – In the moments after Lenami Godinez-Avila plunged to her death during a tandem hang-gliding flight, her boyfriend – one of a handful of horrified onlookers at the launch site – turned in the direction she had fallen.
“Lenami!” he screamed into the distance. “Hang on! I love you!”
As mourners gathered this weekend for an informal memorial service at the forest clearcut where the 27-year-old woman’s body was recovered, a fuller picture emerged from witnesses of the sequence of events that turned the young couple’s anniversary celebration into tragedy and chastened an entire flying community.
On the morning of April 28, the couple’s faces conveyed nothing but “joyous expectation” as they soaked in the view atop Mount Woodside in B.C.’s Fraser Valley, east of Vancouver, recalled Nicole McLearn, who was there radio-coaching some paragliders.
Their eyes “lit up,” she said, when she pointed out a paraglider sailing above their heads.
Mount Woodside is a popular launch site with hang gliding and paragliding buffs because it stares right into natural prevailing winds – necessary to give lift – and because it offers breathtaking views of the blue-green waters of Harrison Bay, the muddy brown waters of the Fraser River and the farming community of Chilliwack below.
Just before noon, Frederic Bourgault showed up at the launch site with a friend to train for their tandem paragliding certifications.
Godinez-Avila was in her harness and helmet and flashed a big smile, Bourgault recalled. Her boyfriend was also getting outfitted with gear for his own tandem flight.
Their pilots that day were William Jonathan Orders, 50, a hang-gliding enthusiast for 16 years and certified tandem instructor for the past three, and Shaun Wallace, a certified tandem instructor from Australia.
Bourgault overheard them discussing who would launch first. It was decided that Orders would.
They called over to Godinez-Avila, who had been snapping pictures with her boyfriend.
McLearn wasn’t paying full attention to the hang gliders but she said she remembers seeing at least one of them go through a practice run.
Because Bourgault was positioned behind Orders’ glider, he was unable to see if the instructor-pilot had performed a safety “hang check” – a test to ensure that harnesses are hooked in.
But at the point that Orders and his passenger took off, Bourgault and McLearn both knew something didn’t look right.
The pair had run farther down the slope than usual before taking off. Once they were airborne, their silhouettes “didn’t look right,” McLearn said.
Normally, an instructor and his student should be shoulder to shoulder. But she was below him.
“Oh, she’s hanging low,” Bourgault remembered saying out loud.
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“She’s not hooked in,” a member of the group said.
McLearn said it appeared that Godinez-Avila’s feet were dangling, meaning she was relying on her upper body to hold on.
The instructor seemed to be trying to wrap his legs around her torso, and freed one of his hands to try to hold on to her, Bourgault said.
For a brief moment, Bourgault wondered if things might turn out OK.
But Godinez-Avila kept slipping down his body. About 30 seconds, maybe a bit more, after going airborne, she dropped to her death.
There was a collective gasp back on the hill.
“Oh my God!” someone said.
“No!” the boyfriend said. “No!”
Godinez-Avila appeared to fall with her back to the ground and then tumbled a few times, Bourgault said.
His flying companion couldn’t bear to look anymore, he said.
McLearn dialed 9-1-1.
Bourgault said he tried to comfort the distraught boyfriend. He told him he didn’t want to get his hopes too high, but there was always a possibility that she survived.
The boyfriend just wanted to go down and find her.
On at least a couple of occasions, he turned in his girlfriend’s direction and yelled out her name from the edge of the launch site, and said that he loved her, Bourgault said.
Then, unable to stand still any longer, the boyfriend started running down the road.
At that moment a group of paragliders, responding to McLearn’s urgent call for help, was driving up the hill.
One of the paragliders, Kevin Ault, said the boyfriend – named David – stopped them and begged for help.
“My girlfriend has fallen!” he said. “We need to find her!”
“Can you help me?”
They got him in the vehicle and did their best to calm him down, Ault said.
A short time later, police escorted Orders back to the launch site.
The pilot appeared to be traumatized and in shock, Ault recalled. He also appeared to be pumped with adrenalin, Bourgault said.
Orders relayed to officials that he believed Godinez-Avila had fallen into a clearcut area in the middle of a forested plateau. He said that he had tried to grab on to Godinez-Avila’s carabiner on the back of her harness and attach it to his leg straps, Bourgault recalled.
Orders also said he regretted not turning around and flying back toward the hill.
For hours, professional search and rescuers and volunteers combed the area. A paraglider and helicopter pilot criss-crossed over the area but couldn’t spot anything.
While Godinez-Avila had, indeed, fallen into that clearcut area, the spot where she had landed was strewn with logging debris and brush.
Around mid-afternoon, one of the volunteer searchers, paraglider Alex Raymont, discovered a size 10 1/2 running shoe, Ault said.
They had no idea at the time that was a shoe that Godinez-Avila had torn off one of the pilot’s feet as she fell.
Raymont placed the shoe on a stump and moved on, Ault said.
Later in the evening, the volunteer searchers heard radio chatter about missing shoes. They immediately radioed in and said they had spotted a shoe earlier in the afternoon.
Authorities at the command centre pulled up photographs that the boyfriend had shot of Orders earlier in the day. They compared the shoes the pilot was wearing in the photographs to the description Raymont had given. They seemed to match.
The searchers retraced their steps back to the shoe.
About 50 metres from where they found the shoe, they spotted Godinez-Avila’s body. Dressed in mostly dark clothes, she was lying in a shadowy depression and partially obscured by logs.
A cherry blossom tree has since been planted at that spot in her memory.
Gliding enthusiasts, many of whom didn’t even know Godinez-Avila, converged on the site Saturday to pay their respects.
“It’s a wake-up call,” Ault said. “We’re a small community and everybody feels it.”
Orders, meanwhile, has been released from custody after being charged with obstruction of justice for allegedly swallowing a camera card possibly containing video evidence of the flight.
Police have since recovered the camera card.
Orders’ instructor certification has been suspended.
A message on his website Sunday said tandem hang gliding is “one of the best adventure activities you can ever experience” but also one to be “handled with care!”
Tandem passengers should double-check the preparations and “quiz” their instructor-pilots “for their own safety,” reads the message, apparently written by the site’s webmaster.
“It is not known yet the exact circumstances that led to the fatal error that caused the accident. Nevertheless, I recommend to never rush, never pressure to fly, don’t be (or accept to be) just a passenger.”
The Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association of Canada has assigned a forensic hang gliding expert to assist police and to carry out an investigation for the association, said executive director Margit Nance.
Nance said it is too early to say whether the sport, which is self-regulating, is in need of stricter oversight. That will come out of the investigation, she said.
Sometimes, even with the best equipment and constant reminders to follow the rules, there is a “human factor” that can’t be legislated or controlled, she said.
Meanwhile tributes continue to flow in on social media for Godinez-Avila, who had moved to Canada from Mexico nine years ago and shared with her boyfriend an adventurous spirit and love for the outdoors.
“You will be missed,” one friend wrote on his blog, “but tonight, we know that you are soaring.”
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