Paragliding in Jungfrau Region, Switzerland

On our trip to Switzerland in 2019, one of our kids saw people paragliding over the Lauterbrunnen Valley and decided that he needed to do this one day. Now that he is a teenager, we decided to go ahead and allow him to participate in this thrill activity. Traveling with teens is much different than traveling with toddlers! While I tried to talk myself into doing it with him, I ended up chickening out and let him go on his own. Though we did witness another entire family do it together.

Read: Traveling with Kids: Pros and Cons at Each Age

The Logistics

Company We Used: Airtime Paragliding (no affiliate link, we just happened to use them)
Launch Point: Mürren
Landing Point: Stechelberg
Flight Time: Starting at 15-20 minutes
Cost (2023): Starting at 190 CHF (~US$200). Add 40 CHF for photos and videos.

The Experience

The Meeting Point

The Airtime Paragliding company that we used does its launching from Mürren, which is a natural point if you are staying in Wengen, Lauterbrunnen, or Mürren in the Jungfrau region. During that week, we also saw other paragliders in Grindelwald and Interlaken; those would also be good places to go from if staying in those particular cities.

The company will meet you in Stechelberg or Lauterbrunnen, but our impression is that they’re really just going to ride the lift with you from there up to Mürren.

The Launch

Once we got to Mürren and arrived at the meet point, we walked for about 10 minutes up a slightly steep hill on the edge of town. This was probably for safety, to get some speed and buoyancy before getting to the cliff or town.

On arrival, John’s guide put him into a harness that had a zippable compartment to store a small backpack. He then laid out the parachute, paying careful attention that the strings weren’t tangled.

Within just a few minutes, they were off!

We messed up on taking our own video, but John and his guide had a GoPro on a selfie stick and captured quite a bit of the journey.

The Ride

John’s guide gave him an option of having a nice smooth ride down, or doing rollercoaster-like tricks.

Since John chose the tricks, they spent longer than normal higher in the air, then did a quick descent that included somersaults and other adventurous maneuvers that I never would have done.

All-in-all, it was a great flight and John was quite pleased with the experience.

The Return

They land the paragliders right next to the lift in Stechelberg, which runs back up to Mürren roughly every half hour. So, before he left, we bought him a return ticket from Stechelberg to Mürren and gave him some money to pay for the photos and videos.

That ended up working! We had just enough time to watch him take off, hike back to town, stop at a few shops, and be back to the gondola station just as he arrived.

What a great adventure in the Jungfrau Region of Switzerland!