Home is where the helmet is for elite paragliding pilot and all-around “free-flight” aficionado Chris Santacroce. An intrepid traveler and adventurer, Santacroce counts many years when he was on the road literally every week. A recent home purchase in the suburbs of Salt Lake City hasn’t seemed to slow Santacroce down much either, perhaps because his backyard doubles as a famous paragliding take-off and landing-zone.
Best known as one of the world’s top aerobatic paragliding pilots, Santacroce is among only a handful ever to master a maneuver known as the Death Spiral. But Santacroce’s resume transcends that of a typical action-sports athlete — he also ranks among the sports’ top innovators, instructors, ambassadors and business leaders. So in addition to accumulating competitive titles in paragliding (for aerobatics and cross-country) and awards (for instruction and lifetime achievement), Santacroce runs a company called Super Fly (now the largest handler of paragliding products in North America) and works as a certified instructor, instructor’s instructor, and examiner (for the national hang gliding and paragliding associations).
And in his spare time, he’s managed to become perfectly handy at other “free-flight” disciplines like hang gliding, sky diving, BASE jumping, piloting ultralights and power-paragliders (and he’s close to completing work on his small plane license). Santacroce has also pulled off one-of-kind adventures on the wing of his paraglider, including a two-week long trans-Andean odyssey, in 2003, from Santiago, Chile, to Mendoza, Argentina, with Red Bull teammates and friends Othar Lawrence and Will Gadd.
So, Chris Santacroce, what do you really like to do?
“Well, one of the cooler things I do is take handicapped people up for tandem flights — right from my backyard, in fact,” he says. “That’s definitely one of my favorite things to do.”
A thoughtful kind of guy, Santacroce expands on that idea: “Passing on the good word about free-flight in general, that’s my life mission. Sure, everyone wants to be in the limelight, but when you look back, you’re going to remember how many people you helped get up in the air, how your keen eye kept your bros out of trouble, and how you showed people things they just hadn’t seen before. That’s what I’m about,” he says.
UP, UP AND AWAY
Santacroce grew up in Carbondale, Colorado, and, like his childhood friend Othar Lawrence (captain of the Red Bull Air Force), he thrived on outdoor activities in the mountains. In 1990, he graduated from the Colorado Rocky Mountain School, a unique prep school where community service and outdoor adventures share emphasis with academics. Santacroce then headed to Hawaii in search of wind-surfing and sailboat racing opportunities. But, he says, “As soon as flying came along, that was it.”
Though a relatively new phenomenon then, paragliding immediately clicked with Santacroce. And although he excelled in cross-country events, winning the North American Championship for instance, Santacroce was drawn to aerobatics — making the canopy dance in the sky, rising and falling in spectacular loops and spirals.
Santacroce soon found himself in demand to share his expertise. With other flying buddies, he created videos (including Fly Hard and Super Fly Hard) that documented the latest aerobatic maneuvers, and he started his company to help other pilots find the best equipment. But ask around the paragliding community and what you’ll hear most about Santacroce is that he’s one of those rare individuals who is a brilliant pilot… and teacher. In 2001, the United States Hang Gliding Association honored Santacroce with its highest award — Paragliding Instructor of the Year — and, in 2003, the U.S. Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association recognized Santacroce with its highest honor — the presidential citation — for outstanding lifetime achievement.
Santacroce’s travels recently took him to Italy and Switzerland for some BASE-jumping operations with the entire Red Bull Air Force. He credits his RBAF teammates with helping him expand his overall aerial repertoire. “I started off paragliding and I couldn’t believe how cool it was, all the hero stuff we got to do,” he says. “But then, as I started seeing more of these other sports, I figured out that you could actually do more than one thing. Then I realized how cool it would be to do everything. So on the Air Force, I might not be the super star every time, but I’m one of the guys up there helping to make things happen.”
To that end, Santacroce is deft at the controls of his ultralight trike — basically a hang glider with a motor and a three-wheeled cockpit. “It weighs about 500 pounds, but it’s got 100 horsepower, so it’s more powerful than your average single-engine plane and it climbs at 1,500 feet per minute, again faster than most planes. It goes 100 miles an hour with no windshield, so it’s always interesting,” he smiles. Flying the trike, Santacroce often tows paragliders aloft, carries as many three BASE jumpers at a time up for jumps, sets up shots for photographers and cinematographers, and runs support for friends and/or teammates, like he did for Will Gadd’s first-ever paragliding flight over the Grand Canyon, in 2004.
Back at home — at approximately 4,800-feet on the flanks of Point of the Mountain — Santacroce chuckles at the thought of his unlikely journey to get where he is today… literally. For six years prior to buying his house, in Draper, Utah, he lived nearby in a motor-home. But the motor-home couldn’t keep pace with Santacroce’s travels and before long it was trashed. (“I bought it for $30,000 and sold it for $2,000,” he shrugs.) Then a funny thing occurred to him — what with all his perspective on the region from above — and the entrepreneur in Santacroce sprang into action.
“It’s this place out in the middle of nowhere, but all of a sudden they started building houses there — so I bought one,” he grins.
