“I Told Them It Was a Terrible Idea” Download PDF
A paramotor race over mountains and desert
Trey German got a late start on the day he crash-landed into a cactus field and ended up with dozens of inch-long spines protruding from his butt. German, 30, lives in Houston, Texas, and is a paramotor pilot. His encounter with the cactus occurred while he was competing in the Icarus Trophy, a 1,000-mile air race that spans five Western states. From its start in Polson, Montana, near Glacier National Park, German had been following the race route south. He’d threaded the Rocky Mountains into Idaho and was midway through Utah’s desert badlands when what might be considered a piloting error forced him to descend.