Pioneering: Queenstowner Nick Grant brought kite-surfing to NZ ­– he was also a long-time tandem paragliding pilot

Queens­towner Grant, 38, took his last tandem paragliding flight just two days before his death last week due to cancer.

“He lived life to the full, he was an energetic wee bubble,” says fellow pilot Rene Schwaller, who was surprised when Grant visited him and mates in Bali just two months ago – “when he was told he shouldn’t get out of bed”.

Schwaller recalls Grant first succumbing to cancer six years ago in Hawaii. “He came back from Maui with a colostomy bag.”

Grant’s cousin, Bruce Grant, was also a well-known local adventurer who was killed climbing K2 in the Himalayas in 1995.

Bruce and his brother Andrew got Nick into paragliding in his late teens, Schwaller says.

“[Nick] definitely couldn’t wait to jump into Bruce’s shoes, for sure.”

As well as being a commercial paragliding pilot off Skyline, Grant is credited with bringing kite-surfing into this country from Europe in the mid-90s.

As a result, he spent a lot of time chasing Glenorchy’s north-westerlies. He was “pretty hot” at it, recalls another local adventurer, Chuck Berry.

In recent years “it wasn’t uncommon for him to be out kite-surfing with his colostomy bag tucked into his wetsuit”, Berry says.

Paragliding pilot Thomas Rold says Grant was always doing something, whether flying, mountain biking or kite-surfing.

“He did a lot of travelling in between chemo treatment as well – he went everywhere, he went heliskiing in South America.

“Not many people fit [in] as much as he managed to do with some pretty severe pain and cancer.

“He knew it wasn’t going to last forever so he definitely decided to make the most of what he had.”

Schwaller says at Grant’s funeral in Glenorchy last Saturday, “we had 27 gliders heli-tandem in next to [Nick’s] coffin on the beach, where he used to kite-surf, from Mt Judah.

“It looked quite amazing.

“We flew the whole family in.”