Let’s Go Paragliding

I did my the P2 program with Benoit at Letsgoparagliding and it was a really great experience. Benoit has a very calm, relaxed demeanor, and lets you progress at your own pace while offering the right advice at the right time. You can tell that he has a ton of experience teaching and always really picks up on what you are doing correctly or incorrectly. Doing the full program can take some amount of time depending on the weather conditions. But even if the conditions aren’t good for doing towed flights, you should be able to practice kiting and takeoffs on the training hill. Mt Brace flight park is next to Millerton, which is a nice cute town with pretty good food and coffee options. It’s a nice location and it always feels good to go there.

This is a nightmare of a «paragliding school» consisting of one greedy instructor and one part-​time pretend-​assistant.
On a given weekend the instructor (Benoit) is running between dozens of students that are learning to kite, towing people (this is how you get certification, by getting towed), monitoring more advanced people flying from the mountain (he gets some amount of money for each supervised flight) and selling paragliding equipment. Since most lucrative task takes priority and you pay upfront for your program, teaching you to paraglide (or at least towing you) is the lowest priority. Beware, he will be very attentive during your intro class (you haven’t signed up for the whole program yet), and that’s how he gets you.
On an exceptionally good weekday you might get four flights, but even on a great weather-​condition weekend day, you won’t get more than two (and the weather is never that good), since instructor will be somewhere on the other end of the field dealing with someone else. For comparison, in the much better school I found, I would fly 15 times a day on a regular decent weather day and would get instructions in the group of no more than 3 students with undivided instructor attention, and at a lower program cost!
However, the fact that you get no instruction and spend most of your time waiting for a drop of Benoit’s free time is only one of many problems. I will mention one substantial safety-​related problem and will skip the rest. The location of the school is not great to get P1/​P2. You might know that take off and landing are the times when most accidents happen, so you really need to practice both of those a lot! While you will learn how to land in this school, you will have almost no practice for take offs (because you are always towed and there is only a small hill to practice and in our 4 – 6 days we never practiced on it). You will get your certificate with 20 flights and with 0 actual take-​offs (either right before or right after you get a certificate you can flight from Brace mountain, but that means you will be on the top of the mountain, with minimal skills for take off). Again for comparison, in my other school I would have over 100 take-​offs and landings from the different types of platforms and heights (from 150 to 450 feet) at the time of getting a P2.
This was the first school I came to, and I loved paragliding & first lesson was good, so I stayed around for four weekends. Through the following 3 lessons, the school proved to be bad, but I only realized the extent of its badness when I tried a different school.

Learn to paraglide. It will change your life!
I learned from Benoit and went on to get my other paragliding ratings from him (P3/​P4). Benoit has a calm demeanor that makes learning enjoyable. He will teach you as much as you want to learn. Even though the course is a flat rate, he doesn’t rush to kick you out of the nest early.
The site features two different winches, two grass training hills and a 1,500 foot mountain. By the time you’re ready to go off the mountain, you’ll be ready to pick up your own glider, and Benoit can set you up with a new, or occasionally a used glider if that’s more in your budget.
From there, you’ll want to branch out and fly the other sites in New England (after a site intro from a local) or even places further away such as the west coast or Europe. Paragliding is a great excuse to travel!
Hope to fly with you at Brace!

Signed up for a Groupon with Let’s Go Paragliding, then was canceled by them twice because of weather. The third time, the group I was going to go with took the Groupon but I couldn’t because of a conflict. I planned to use the Groupon later on my own. I contacted Benoit about redeeming or getting a refund, but he refused. He stated that the group I was connected with went the 3^rd time, and blamed me for not going (even though each registration was individual and paid for individually). He was not at all reasonable even though it was his company that canceled the only 2 times I could have gone. By then, the Groupon had expired, thanks to them, which they used as an excuse to deny me. I spent over $ 150 and got nothing. Not recommended.