Public Safety specialists from Alberta Parks say several people are lucky to be alive after two crashes involving a paraglider in Canmore and a hot air balloon in Kananaskis Country occurred over the past week.

The first incident happened Thursday (Feb. 14), when Alberta Parks received a call at about 1:30 p.m. regarding a 38-year-old male paraglider who crashed after launching off Mount Lady Macdonald.

“He had crashed his paraglider a couple of hundred metres below the tea house,” said public safety specialist Jeremy Mackenzie.

Accompanied by a paramedic from Canmore Fire as well as two other Alberta Parks staff, the rescue team was slung into the site to assess and package the wounded man, now identified as Andrew Wexler of Canmore. Read the full story at the Rocky Mountain Outlook.