The paraglider who died on Saturday was an "experienced pilot", according to a fellow glider who had flown with him before.
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The accident happened on Saturday afternoon as paraglider pilots flocked to Bald Hill for the first day in a while when conditions were good for flying.
The man, believed to be a 54-year-old father and teacher from Sydney, took off successfully but was then blown back into the cliff face before falling around 50 metres to scrub at the base.
Grant Ashford was at Bald Hill and said other paragliders raised the alarm.
"I was just down here watching the view and one of the paragliders flew across yelling out that his glider has hit the rock wall, crashed into the rock face and then he lost grip and tumbled 50 metres onto the rocks below," Mr Ashford told Nine.
A specialist paramedic abseiled down the crumbling cliff, only to find the man had died.
An Illawarra pilot who had flown with the 54-year-old at Bald Hill said the "tragic accident" was "devastating".
"It's definitely rocked the paragliding community," the man said.
"He was regular pilot who had been piloting for a long time. We all knew him pretty well and its devastating for us as a group.
"We all knew him, he was quite an experienced pilot both here and around the world. He flew in lots of different places."
The paraglider said he felt it was a safe sport and believed the last fatality at Bald Hill was more than 20 years ago.
"You get a few scrapes here and there but it's typically quite a safe sport if you follow the guidelines and follow the safety protocols," the Illawarra paraglider said.
The dangerous conditions of the cliff face and the fading light led to emergency services calling off the retrieval operation at around 5.30pm.
"The location is very dangerous and the position [of the body] is quite precarious," a police spokeswoman said.
Police and other services returned to the scene on Sunday morning to start the dangerous retrieval operation.
The police Polair helicopter co-ordinated the operation from the air, while officers from Lake Illawarra Police Rescue abseiled down the cliff to the man's body.
Once Police Rescue made it the body, it was attached to cables and the police helicopter lifted it to the top of the cliff at around 11.40am.