{"id":29015,"date":"2024-02-26T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-26T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/finding-balance-after-a-rough-crash-paraglider-and-highliner-sean-englund-reflects-on-risk\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T00:46:44","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:46:44","slug":"finding-balance-after-a-rough-crash-paraglider-and-highliner-sean-englund-reflects-on-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/finding-balance-after-a-rough-crash-paraglider-and-highliner-sean-englund-reflects-on-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding balance: After a rough crash, paraglider and highliner Sean Englund reflects on risk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Sean
Sean Englund, a 27-year-old Durango-based paraglider, crashed a speedwing Oct. 20 on Smelter Mountain, shown behind him. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Soaring through the air, suspended by a small, 13-square-meter wing, or perched delicately on a 2-kilometer line, hundreds of feet off the ground \u2013 those spots are what Sean Englund calls his \u201cquiet space.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have the opportunity to think about other things \u2013 you need to be on point,\u201d the professional highliner said.<\/p>\n

For someone with a churning brain, activities that demand such intense focus suck his attention into a vacuum. They let him step away from everything else.<\/p>\n

But the 27-year-old\u2019s quiet space became abruptly cacophonous the morning of Oct. 20, when he pulled too much brake line on his left side and caught the tip of his speedwing \u2013 a small, high-performance paraglider built to be fast and highly maneuverable \u2013 on a tree as he descended toward the dog park off Smelter Mountain in Durango.<\/p>\n

The canopy from which he had been suspended slingshotted his body toward the ground feet first. He had been traveling between 40 mph and 60 mph, at times within 10 feet of the ground, a practice known as \u201cproximity flying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Englund bounced and rolled downhill, and came to rest on a large flat boulder.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized something happened and I unclipped my wing and called my buddy who works for Flight For Life. And he was like, \u2018You should call 911\u2019 and so I called 911,\u201d Englund said.<\/p>\n

He tallied up quite the laundry list of injuries: four broken ribs; three fractured vertebrae, one of which exploded and left fragments touching his spinal cord; a fractured sacrum; a broken sternum, tibia, fibula and ankle; and a separation of the spine and pelvis.<\/p>\n

An extensive hillside rescue, a flight to Denver, multiple surgeries and over two weeks in the hospital followed.<\/p>\n

Four months after the crash, Englund is back on his feet, roaming the dog park landing zone with his canine companion, Blueberry, and preparing to get back on the highline and under a wing.<\/p>\n

It has been tough to contend with criticism by uninformed parties, Englund said. He\u2019s goaded by the perspective of outsiders who lob unfounded critiques of his risk management practices.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople say all this stuff I do, and what my friends do, is reckless,\u201d he said. \u201cI think that people who don\u2019t wear seat belts are more reckless.\u201d<\/p>\n

The medical staff in Denver did not understand \u2013 \u201cIt just felt like I was an idiot\u201d \u2013 but Durangoans did.<\/p>\n

\"Sean
Sean Englund plays with his dog Blueberry in the Durango Dog Park on Feb. 16. Four months ago, Englund crashed while speedflying on Smelter Mountain, behind him. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

His pursuits of choice may appear to be high-risk from an outside perspective \u2013 but Englund says he considers himself to be conservative in his risk management. He\u2019s spent five years paragliding, two years speedflying and spent time living at a speedflying park in California where he would embark on as many as six flights each day.<\/p>\n

\u201cI trained religiously for many years to be able to fly the way I was flying that day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For years, Englund has dedicated himself to making highlining, his sport of choice, more accessible and safer. Like its sister sport, slacklining, highlining involves traversing a thin piece of webbing strung between two points high off the ground. In 2018, Englund walked a line<\/a> strung between the Twin Buttes outside Durango.<\/p>\n

\"Sean
Sean Englund walks a highline between the Twin Buttes west of Durango on Nov. 11, 2018. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

He is a course manager and instructor for the International Slackline Association. In that role, he certifies slackliners and ensures they are prepared with safe rigging practices, an understanding of ethics and rescue knowledge. In the decade he\u2019s been in the sport, he saw it balloon in popularity. With a dearth of adequate mentors, safety practices declined.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to reel back the community,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to dial in our systems again. It\u2019s getting unsafe and \u2026 we need to be safer.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the months since his crash, Englund has documented his recovery journey on Instagram. And he\u2019s been hard at work.<\/p>\n\n

He has submitted two grant proposals for projects that would involve partnerships with nonprofits to make sports such as slacklining safe and accessible to youths in the community.<\/p>\n

Englund is in a tricky spot as he tries to open safe access to his nontraditional recreation passions and contends with the attention from his crash and its association with his name.<\/p>\n

That, perhaps, has been the trickiest balance to strike yet. He views his accident as just that \u2013 an unlikely bad outcome from an event for which he had rigorously prepared.<\/p>\n

\u201cWould you stop driving a car if you got in a car accident?\u201d Englund asks.<\/p>\n

\"Sean
Sean Englund expressed enormous gratitude to the agencies that assisted in his rescue, including La Plata County Search and Rescue, Durango Fire Protection District, Durango Police Department and San Juan National Forest. (Shane Benjamin\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

But he also acknowledges the inherent risk in a sport like speedflying, even if he doesn\u2019t categorically define the activity as \u201crisky.\u201d The risk and reward ratio is ultimately up to the individual.<\/p>\n

For Englund, everything he does \u2013 the slacklining work around the world, the speedflying and work connecting his sports to the community \u2013 it\u2019s all a part of the grand fulfillment of his deepest passions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI absolutely love it, because you\u2019ve got to make the most of your time,\u201d he said. \u201cI hate the \u2018What ifs?\u2019 I\u2019d rather have some \u2018Why\u2019s?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

rschafir@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\"Sean
Sean Englund expressed enormous gratitude to the agencies that assisted in his rescue, including La Plata County Search and Rescue, Durango Fire Protection District, Durango Police Department and San Juan National Forest. (Shane Benjamin\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

crashing, he\u2019s grappling with public perception of his activities as he tries to make them more accessible<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29016,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,1807,976,1142,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-la-plata-county-search-and-rescue","tag-outdoor-recreation","tag-profile","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80606,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29015\/revisions\/80606"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29015"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}