Selecting a great paragliding school is PARAMOUNT to both your enjoyment and safety in this sport. There are a few reasons why I don't recommend this school - and I am an enrolled student there working on my P1 certification. I'll be fair and share both pros and cons. Key things you should look for in a school: 1. They need a designated training hill (nope!) 2. The instructor needs to be skilled pilot (yep!) 3. The instructor needs to be a good teacher/good at explaining things in a manner that the students receive well (nope!) 4. The school needs loaner equipment for all of its P0 students (nope!) 5. Ideally the school should have more than one instructor, but regardless of the instructor count the instructor(s) need good availability and need to communicate clearly on schedules and respond to students (nope!) Pros: - Inexpensive - Ernie's program gives you lifetime access to him for a fee that is roughly the same cost of a single year of lessons from the other schools in Colorado - Location - most of the schools in Colorado are up north of Denver. Many Feathers does a lot of their training on BLM land, often at Kenosha Pass, Leadville, or out in Douglas County. - Accessibility - Unlike the schools up in Boulder, Many Feathers is actually accepting students. Cons: - Ernie takes liberties with the safety rules. USHPA does not allow pilots from flying by themselves before they have their P2. Ernie ignores that and actively encourages his P1 students to fly solo, log the flights, and he counts them towards P2 certification. This is a violation of USHPA rules and eventually someone is going to get VERY hurt (or worse). - This school does not have a training site. That means that you cannot fly at any of the maintained sites in Colorado. Training is on BLM land and has a lot of "things" (sage, cactus, etc.) that will damage your wing over time. - Ernie is a one man shop. On top of that his life is a pretty unorganized and he doesn't communicate well. He maintains a Telegram group to communicate with his students, and as of today he has not replied to or posted a single message in over 8 weeks. Students are reaching out to him to see when he's actually going to do his job and coach, and he has not replied. - Ernie does not have adequate loaner equipment for new pilots. You'll be buying your own equipment before you have the knowledge to know what you want and you'll end up putting the types of wear and tear on that equipment that all new pilots do. The bullet about not having a maintained training hill factors in here as well, because of the wear and tear on the wing. - Ernie doesn't have availability to actually run a school. Ernie has left us new students (several of us are working on our P1 and many other are working on their P2) stranded in our progress. Zero communication in 8 weeks, even though we can all see that he's reading the messages students are posting in Telegram asking him when training is going to occur. In speaking with other students in the program that have been with Ernie for longer than I have, this is apparently the norm with him. He disappears, doesn't respond, and there's no real explanation when he returns. We have missed AT LEAST 15 training days this year where the winds were good, other schools were flying, and Ernie was just nowhere to be found. read more