Review: Skydive Gananoque

Hey everyone!

So first thing’s first, I’d like to Lucie to the team, I’d also like to wish Ashley (www.skydivechick.com) well and I’m happy to hear that she’s well on the road to recovery. =D
It’s always hard for me to hear about friends of mine that sustain injuries, especially the kind that stop them from doing the thing they love most… Skydiving!

 

So Back to the topic at hand. Earlier this month, (March 31st and April 1st) the “Frenchie Invasion Tour” (my friends from Quebec and I) went to Skydive Gananoque.
I had never been there before (Yes I bought beer) and wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I heard a lot of stories about the place from friends of mine that had gone about the crazy campfires they have there. (More to come on that later on in this post).

Friday evening, I was picked up by a couple of friends, and we headed down to Gananoque (1000 islands). We arrived just after 8:30 PM to check in at our motel.

Needless to say, we’re kind of childish (Would you expect different from a group of Skydivers?).

 

 

So we headed out to a restaurant called the Riverside Bar & Grill.
We were greeted by Will McCarthy (The Co. DZO at Skydive Gananoque), his girlfriend Michelle (Who also happens to be a Skydive coach) and a bunch of the others from Quebec.

The food was awful, but we had some beers and headed back to the hotel.

We proceeded to do what skydivers do best: Crack open a case of beer and sit around and tell stories.

 

The next morning we headed over to the DZ to meet up with the rest of the group and start our day.

Now, Skydive Gananoque is fairly off the beaten path in a sense, you could quite easily drive right by it without realizing you passed it until you’re 5 miles down the road.
We had a GPS with us, so we sort of got saved by that.

The Drop zone has quite a big landing area, it’s easy to spot from the sky and has a HUGE hangar… Unfortunately, the packing area isn’t so huge, so we just packed in the hangar.

(Pictured above: Rachel P and Alex D.)

(Above: Aerial view of the DZ taken by Will McCarthy)

So we began our day with the tandem master refreshers. As I had already mentioned in my last post.
(Above: My girlfriend and I posing for the camera before we “risk our lives” in the hands of someone who’s name we don’t even know =D )

Following  the tandem jumps, we did several loads including Lucie’s 100th. The load was planned by Will McCarthy and was quite a success.
(Pictures above taken by Alain Milot)

Of course, this jump was followed by a good old fashioned Pieing (Video to come)

(Above photos taken by Alain Milot)

We ended the day all together at another restaurant in the area (I can’t remember the name) then headed back to the DZ for an INSANE campfire. I’ve been around a LOT of campfires at lots of DZs, but this was BY FAR the best I’ve ever experienced. I’ve never witnessed someone needing a farm tractor to keep it going… (Yes, Will supplied a tractor for this campfire)

And no, the logs were not cut before being used. (For you tree-huggers out there, all the trees being used for the campfire had fallen during the winter)

Overall, I can confidently say that this is my favorite drop zone that I’ve been to so far. Tom and Will McCarthy are extremely welcoming, the entire staff of Skydive Gananoque were great to us and jumping out of the sexy King Air was a blast as always.
I will most definitely go back, and I suggest that anyone who’s reading this head there too!

A HUGE thank you to Tom, Will and Michelle (Didn’t get a good shot of Will to post):

As well as a shout out and thank you to Alain Milot for allowing me to use his pictures:

PS: I’ll be back at Gan on Victoria Day weekend, I hope to see some of you there and maybe get a few jumps done with all of you!

Blue Skies!

Adam