Stone Mountain hikers saw a weird, yellow-colored sight Tuesday evening just before sunset.
Was it a bird? A plane? A crescent moon floating down to Earth?
Nope, it was none of the above. It was a Swiss man paragliding from the mountain’s peak down to a parking lot.
Stewart Smith, a hiker who spotted the graceful glide and took a video, told Channel 2 Action News that his first clue something unusual was about to take place was the sound of rustling nylon.
“To see this young man who is in a flight suit grab onto the paraglide and go toward the edge ... he went off right over the carving,” Smith said.
The paraglider, who is a Swiss citizen working maintenance on the park’s Summit Skyride cables, took more than 2½ minutes to safely reach the bottom. However, his successful landing wasn’t greeted with applause from park police officers.
While the man was not charged for the reckless flight, he was given a stern warning and promised to never do it again, Channel 2 reported.
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“His friends said he’s from Switzerland. He does this all the time in the Alps,” Smith said. “(He) said Stone Mountain is no big deal for him — not quite the Swiss Alps.”
While the country known for its timepieces, knives and chocolate might not have any ordinances against gliding, Stone Mountain does. No one is able to fly an "airplane, helicopter, glider, balloon, parachute or other aerial apparatus either motorized or non-motorized" inside the park.
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