Well, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the inaugural episode, the very first episode of the Cloud-Based Mayhem podcast. I've been threatening to do this for an awful long time, and I've finally gotten my act together. We'll see how this goes. This first show is really amazing. But first, what is this all about? What is the Cloud-Based Mayhem podcast? It basically was born out of a hope to kind of disperse knowledge about all things free flight. So, acro, cross country, whatever you fly, I think this will be very valuable to you. The reason this kind of sparked my interest in doing it to begin with was my first World Cup that I ever flew in was here in the hometown of Sun Valley in 2012.
And after the comp, it was the first time I'd ever flown a comp wing. It was the first time I'd ever really raced with guys and gals. I was who were incredibly talented pilots. And after the race, we had an open distance competition here and had really bad weather, couldn't fly much at all. And instead of just wasting the time and going biking every day, a lot of the real legends in our sport got up and gave some really amazing talks about how to eat and how to hydrate and how to think big and basically how to fly big distances. And, you know, we heard from Matt Beechinor and Nate Scales and Nick Greece and Russ Augs. And Bill Belcourt. And it was just incredible. You know, we have resources like Cross Country Magazine and Hang Gliding and Paragliding and other resources.
But it was just so much information condensed into a really small time frame. And I think everybody that was there that was lucky enough to be there was just blown away. And I thought, God, wouldn't this be amazing to disperse this to the wider flying audience, whether you're an expert or novice like I was. I just found that I got so much out of it. But one of the podcasts I listen to all the time is the Tim Ferriss podcast. And he kind of tries to dissect excellence and provide it to laymen. And that's what this podcast is all about. I'm going to try to interview the really, really exceptional pilots, whether they be hang gliders, paragliders, what have you, in our little fringe sport and try to disperse that knowledge. The first guest I have with us is Bill Belcourt.
It actually wasn't a guest for the podcast, but he's given me the OK. To put this out live, when we were filming 500 Miles to Nowhere, we stopped by Black Diamond. He's the director of research and development there at Black Diamond. And if you've seen the film, you know that there's a couple of lines in that film that are just phenomenal. Of course, they came from Bill, our little Yoda of the sport. And but what many of you probably don't know is that we sat down with him for over an hour and a half. And I asked him all kinds of things about throwing a reserve and what the concept of bringing it means and how do we how do you fly? Big aesthetic lines and risk and reward and safety and gear and equipment and where paragliding came from and where it's going and two liners. And the list just goes on and on and on.
It was just this insane course in in in free flight that we luckily recorded it. We had the red cameras going up to apologize for some of the sound. There's a lot of kind of a fan sound coming off one of the cameras. But I've kind of put this together. And edited a bit and I hope you enjoy. So without further ado, here is Bill Belcourt, the legend. I'm
Bill Belcourt and I've been flying paragliders since 1989.
And why paragliding? I know you've got a background in rock climbing and alpine climbing, but why paragliding? What attracted you to that sport?
It seemed like a great descent tool for alpine climbing instead of carrying a bunch of ropes and equipment. To get down off of something, you could just carry a small paraglider and fly off the top. That at least was the mentality in the late 80s.
And as a paraglider myself, we all kind of see you as kind of the legend is the one that really paved the way in cross country paragliding. How did you make the transition from using it as a descent tool to using it as a traveling tool?
It became obvious almost instantly. That the paraglider had way more potential in it than just a descent tool. And I wasn't the first one to realize that. People I was flying with also had put that together sooner. My mentors, like John Bouchard being one of them, Todd Bibler being another one. They had realized the potential of paragliders to fly distance. And the glider design at the time was evolving towards that and in a way from being used as a descent tool.
And if I think back, John Mittendorf, who was one of the badass big wall climbers and one of the early users of paragliders as a descent tool. He noticed that the speed. Increase of the new paraglider designs made them that much more difficult to launch in precarious places and use as a descent tool. So it was moving away from that to a flying machine that was just more capable of flying, not just getting down off
things. What
do you
think of our aircraft in the year 2014?
Well, what I think of a paraglider now is...
I'm constantly amazed by the technology's ability to continue to evolve, and that's a credit to the companies making paragliders. I remember thinking in the 90s, all these things are as good as they're going to get. And even as much as five or six years ago, that they're as good as they're going to get. And now we're just going to see incremental gain and then there's another breakthrough. Like the two liner and they just get better. So I've been proven wrong enough to know that they'll just continue to get better. And the amazing thing about it is it's still basically Dacron or nylon fabric and string.
And they just can fold up and fit into a pack and still do incredible things. More incredible things. And I think that's what makes it so much better than ever before.
Bill, just in the last couple of seasons, it seems like a handful of pilots here in the West have been flying these really big lines. You know, you and Dadum flew to Moab this year. All these records went down last year and this year. What do you attribute that to? What's going on? Is it just wing design?
Days that you can go far. It's just a realization of years of planning and waiting. And you have some ideas in mind as to what you want to do with a particular day based on the conditions of that day. Whether it be lift, whether it be wind speed, direction. And if you can work out your schedule to have that day to go flying. And if you have a plan in mind that you've been thinking about for a long time, then you're just much more likely to be able to execute on the plan instead of just randomly coming up with something while you're in the air.
And trying to think big and trying to see the day coming. Have a plan in place for the day. Which is always subject to change. But it means you're just more likely to pull it off. And there's been plenty of days in the past where I haven't thought big enough. I've only thought about a flight up to a certain point. Only to arrive at that point with a little bit of day left with no idea what to do next. And now I just try to look out as far as possible on those. On those. Potential flights. Knowing that they can go better than expected.
They can go worse than expected. And you should be mentally prepared for both. And that is just have a plan.
And are you able to identify those days in advance? Or is this something that you're seeing in the air? And how do you have a plan for the difference? Or how do you adjust to that? You
can identify only so much in advance. And you have a plan and a couple of contingencies. And then based on the day that you get, you can adjust. And if you've thought about a big flight in a variety of different ways, then you always have a contingency. You always have an idea of what else you can do. With a day besides what you thought might be what you were doing. If that makes any sense. And you just have to have looked at a lot of maps. And you have to have given it a lot of thought. Talked it over with your flying buddies at times.
And then when the conditions present themselves, even when they're in the air, the solutions are obvious.
Last year at the World Cup, you talked about the concept of bringing it. Can you speak for a moment about risk? What that meant to me was that if you're thinking about flying big, you can't be thinking about landing and being tired or being dehydrated. Bringing it meant willing to put yourself in compromised places. And having the skills and having the mental acuity to deal with it. Can you talk about that a bit?
Yeah. What I meant on bringing it, which is basically bringing a mental attitude, a mental focus, a degree of commitment to the flight. And staying on the offensive. And it's another way of putting it. You can fly offensively or you can fly defensively. And a defensive position in flying has to happen at times. But if you can keep mentally on the offensive, you can be pushing it.
You can be going for what's next. And knowing that, you'll have to ultimately switch at times between flying offensive and flying defensive. Based on the conditions that present themselves. But you always have to be thinking about the goal, which is to fly a significant flight. And to do it within a reasonable degree of safety. But these are not safe sports. And there's no guarantee of a safe outcome. So you have to use your skills and what you know to protect yourself.
But at the same time, to be pushing it. And it's a fine line at times. And you learn where that line is via experience. And if you're not out there training all the time, which is trying to fly these flights. Then you're not going to have the experience. And you're not going to have a good sense of the line. So you have to go a lot. You have to test your theories. You have to have that attitude of bringing it when you're going for it. And you have to know when to switch from offense to defense.
Last summer, we had in kind of short succession a series of just remarks. Markable flights started off with Matt Beechner's flight of 193 miles from Sun Valley. And then shortly after that, Nate Scales went 199 miles. And then shortly after that, Nick Greece went 204 miles from Jackson. What's going on? Again, what's changed here?
Well, I think the reason those big flights were happening was there's a few reasons. One being we're a fairly tight group of friends. We talk all the time about trying to do something big. I was talking to a farmer about 200 miles with a two-liner. You know, two for two is what I was calling it. And how that was an exciting thing for me to try to get to as a goal. And if we could. All try to get there, it'd be hilarious if a bunch of us were focusing on the same thing. So that was happening. We were talking about it.
And then the competition scene had dramatically changed with the banning of open class gliders in most every competition in the world. And the fact that that to me was a signal that there was. There was a bit of an end to the amount of freedom that we had when we were flying competitions. And in order to experience something similar, we were just going to have to switch gears. No longer focus as much on race to goal competitions and start to focus on big mountain free flying.
And I
saw evidence of that in other sports, for instance. For you.
Sky-racing is a type of skiing that we're into, which is backcountry. It's gone away from.
It's gone away. It's gone away from safer lines in the trees. It's gone away for years now from ski racing, which when I started skiing, it seemed like that was everybody's focus. And now you see more people just. Riding big mountain frees. lines in the mountains and I took a little from that in my shift in focus from flying competitions to just trying to fly big lines in the mountains because as an alpinist you're you're looking for cool lines to climb they don't have to be the biggest or the longest and you're just looking for an aesthetic aspect a commitment a something
that's just inspiring to you personally and and you try to find something that reflects those qualities when you're out looking for something new to climb and with flying I see it much the same way it's not the longest line it's not it's not the records really it's trying to find an aesthetic line to fly that is personally inspiring so you just focus on that do
you think these big lines is there a maximum is it just gonna keep going is
there a maximum it depends on what the definition of maximum is if the only metric you're using is kilometers then yeah sure there's there's probably a maximum but if if the metric that you're using to judge the quality of flight is something other than just ultimate kilometers then there is none you know there's there's cooler lines to fly there's just deeper lines more spectacular positions to be in and that in my mind is is the number one quality I'm looking for I'm not necessarily looking for just measuring it the Elsa Ursuf of a flight by the distance of the flight have
we touched the surface you know I know in the Alps most if not all the lines have been done but have we touched the surface here in the in the Intermountain West we're
scratching the surface as far as big lines go in the States I
use a climbing analogy to describe this when people ask me about paragliding and what I'm doing with a paraglider and I say I feel like George Lowe and the Canadian Rockies in the 70s and that is if you look at the significant ascents done in the Rockies in the 70s George Lowe is usually the man to have done them with various partners and it's a really great place to be if you realize that you're there and I think we're here and that's why I I, we're having such good success because a lot of this hasn't been done before and to be there to do it and to figure it out is a very special time have
you ever been hurt paragliding have
ever been hurt paragliding I tell people I only broke my neck once so yes I have been hurt paragliding and I did break my neck crashing a paraglider in a competition and
did you throw your reserve no
it's too low to throw the reserve I just had one reflexive shot at recovering the glider and did so for the most part but didn't have the the glide away from the hill as the glider was recovering and ended up you know tumbling across the terrain and at the time I had one of those fairing mildly fairing helmets like a time trial helmet and it was what all the cool guys were wearing so so we had them as well and as I tumbled across the ground which I didn't impact very hard the the helmet managed to catch the ground in the crash and twist my head around and break my neck but
other than that I didn't have a scratch on me have
you ever thrown your reserve I've
thrown my reserve once and it didn't help no you really want this story
you can have it on the record so was a PWC in the mid 90s near the what
was it called it was the one near the town of Lecco and Italy Lake Como there's a PWC that happens there quite often and it was I don't know maybe the second or the third task and there was some signs of vertical development earlier in the day but then it just grayed over so anything we saw had become embedded and while we were seeing the vertical and other valleys when it grayed over we didn't notice the vertical in the valley that we were in and I was flying with Dave Bridges who's a nobody in a two-time national champion who was you know killed with Alex Lowe on Shisha Pangma in 99 and Dave and I were maybe 5k from goal with three quarters of the field over the town of Lecco when the cumulonimbus above us embedded in the gray dropped out so we had one quick turn point to hit before we could glide over the goal line and suddenly I was going down at about I don't know 24 2500 feet a minute minute.
And I was thinking, man, this is some big sink. So I pointed the glider towards the last sun patch, figuring I'd just fly over there and wait this one out. And all I could do was point the glider in a different direction, but because of the sink, I couldn't glide anywhere. And then I could feel the air get cold. And I knew that it was a cell and it was dropping. It was the very first stage of it dropping. And it was going to be trouble. So the dropping air turned to wind. And I, at that point, creeped out to the first soccer field.
I saw another glider just landing in. And before I could get into that soccer field, the wind started to pick up and blow me past it. So then the glider went off. And I was flying a Firebird Colt at the time, which was one of the hotter gliders ever made. And it was very susceptible to some dramatic frontals. So the glider would just disappear. So the glider disappears. But at this point, I was kind of used to that with this glider. And I just get it back. And then I arrived at the next field I could land in. And then I got blown past that one. The glider would disappear. I'd get it back and now I was coming up on the town of Leko.
And I said to myself, if the glider blows up one more time, I'm just going to toss it. So at this point, I'm maybe a few hundred feet. The glider blows up one more time. I just instantly tossed the reserve as the glider recovers in a steep spiral within asymmetric. And the reserve weather vanes behind me but doesn't come out of the end. The glider is just on the envelope. So it's not, I can't reach the bridle because it's just right behind me as I'm in the spiral from the glider. So I just go back to the glider and I recover the glider into the wind at rooftop level.
And at this point, it's raining, lightning, hail. And for a moment, everything stops. And I just see this rooftop to my right. The glider comes into the wind. Everything stops. And then the reserve opens. So the reserve just opens like a gunshot and starts dragging me at a high rate of speed through the neighborhood. And I'm still off the ground. So in a moment later, I get pasted against this chain link fence, which was good. It was like, because it had a lot of flex to it. So I just hit the fence. It flexes.
And I grab onto it. And the reserve is on the other side of the fence. And it's just pulsing with the wind. And the wind is blowing at like 40 miles an hour. So this reserve's pulsing with the wind. And I've got my hands through the chain link like this. And I've warmed my toes underneath the bottom of the fence. And so I'm... And I was climbing a lot at the time. And I was really strong. I could do one-arm pull-up with either hand. And so I'm thinking, nothing's getting me off this fence. You know, I don't care how hard it blows. And so the wind's just pulsing. And the posts for the fence are in asphalt. And then I'm looking at the post, because the fence is flexing a lot.
And the concrete cylinders are starting to crack the asphalt and come out of the ground, and they're really hard to do. So I'm trying my best to go around on either side of me. So it's just splintering. And I'm seeing the cylinders just kind of start rising on the two posts. And I'm going, no. No. And so I'm thinking, OK, now I've got to get out of my harness somehow. And so it had three quick-release buckles. And I just needed to be able to let go with one hand, to be able to undo them. But it was really hard. So I've... So I eventually got centered over one hand and then managed to unclip the buckles and then just raised my arms really quickly until the harness just got sucked off me and the reserve blew a couple houses away and just got caught in some tree.
So I was out. I was standing in the hail and the lightning and the rain in somebody's driveway, you know, and there I was. So I gathered up my stuff and while I was doing so, old Italian ladies were coming out of the houses going, Oh Madonna, Oh Madonna, whatever that means. Oh my God, I guess. So one of them brought me like a double whiskey and I just drained. You know, I could really have used another one, but my Italian wasn't that good. And then she opened the garage for me to stand in until the rain stopped.
So I'm standing in this open garage. I've gathered up all my kids, stuffed it into the bag and the cops show up. So it's some Italian cop with a VW GTI and he just motions me to throw my stuff in the car. And I do and I get in the front seat and he doesn't say a word and he just drives down the wrong side of the street, runs people off the road with his lights on and he drives to meet headquarters. And he doesn't say a word to me. He just pulls up on the curb in front of meet headquarters and just gets out of the car and just walks in. So I just kind of gather my stuff and I'm walking in like 50 feet behind him and he finds the meet organizer and he just starts laying into him in Italian. And there's a lot of hand waving going on.
I'm yelling and then the cop just leaves and there I am and I just check in and that was it. But the reserve didn't help me that day and I haven't thrown it since.
So that's my one reserve.
Bill, can you compare the flying here in the American West to other places in the world? I know you've flown comps all over the world and you've flown in Europe a lot. What are the major differences between the flights that we do here? Versus other places that you've flown?
Flying in the US versus Europe, in the US it's burlier. There's more winds. I think the thermals are rougher.
Being on the speed bar for any length of time requires a lot more glider management. I've just been amazed at times in Europe where I could be well into the speed bar in a really calm piece of air and just being shocked by, how calm it was between thermals. And obviously there's no place very remote in Europe. You're going to find roads and cell service virtually everywhere. And in the States, as indicated by Guy Anderson's Sun Valley experience, there's a lot of places that you can be where there's no cell coverage and there's going to be...
You're going to be difficult to find if something should go wrong and you're out of communication.
So when you're flying in the West, you're largely on your own. And there's also, there's mountain lions, there's bears, there's rattlesnakes.
There's usually more wind. So...
So there's a... There's a lot that can present additional challenges when you fly in the West versus Europe.
Do those changes that you just talked about, does that impact your kit? Tell me a little bit about what you carry when you do, say, big flights on the Uintas or in the Wasatch or other places that you've flown in the American West. Do you carry different things in your harness than you do in other parts of the world here?
Perfectly honest, not really. Besides bringing some food, certainly if you're flying at altitude, you have plenty of clothes with you. You've got your glider. I'm not bringing much in addition to, I'm not bringing camping gear. If you're flying at altitude, you've got to bring camping gear. If you will, because as an alpinist, the amount of stuff that we have with us just to go flying is more than an alpinist would have, and where you could potentially be sleeping is going to be less harsh anyway. It's not like you're high on some north-facing ice climb on some tiny ledge shaking all night because that's really what...
That's really what the high end of alpinism can involve. If you're landing out in the middle of nowhere, you're not as high. You've got this big paraglider you can sleep in, and if you've got a GPS, you can find some trail systems or whatnot and just walk out. It's just like a long approach for going climbing, just in reverse. So it's... I don't really think you need to have a lot of stuff with you besides the basics, food, water, and your gliders, your shelter.
What about oxygen? We're really the kind of only group of pilots in the world that have tanks in our houses and stuff. What do you think about oxygen?
It's a necessity out here. You're getting to the legal limit, which is about 5,500 meters, or 18,000 feet. And your cognitive abilities are much less sharp if you're not flying with O2. And even if you're flying with O2, you're still a bit compromised because the systems aren't 100 % efficient, and the tanks don't last the entire day, especially if it's a day where you're staying high for a good chunk of time. You're using up that O2. And in order to make good decisions... In order to stay warm and to have some visual acuity to pick out either climbing birds or good places to land or power lines or whatnot, you need that O2 to stay sharp enough to stack the deck in your favor as far as making good decisions and staying out of trouble.
You've inspired a huge number of people over the years. Who inspired you?
Well, who inspires me?
And I've said this before, and that's anyone pushing hard for nothing. And that's what paragliding, to me, has been about. And that is, here's an obscure sport, just like climbing used to be an obscure sport.
And you're trying to realize your own potential. And in a place where no one sees and no one cares. And there's a purity in that. And there's a lack of distraction that goes with it. And it's just you and the elements. And that's it. So it's a real personal experience.
So in Alpinist before me, like some of the names I've mentioned earlier, whether it be Bouchard, George Lowe, or Todd Bibbler, George
never got into flying paragliders, but Bouchard and Bibbler did. And they came from Alpinism. And that was a sport which the basic premise was doing the most with the least. And I see a paraglider as the ultimate flying machine because it is. It is really the least. So you're doing the most with the least with a paraglider. And you're doing it in a very similar way to Alpinism. And you're far from the public eye when you're doing it. And there's no corruption from that.
And you're just doing your craft for you. And when you have some friends, you can do it. You can do it with. It makes it all that much more special. But anything I've done relative to inspiring anybody else, all I'm doing is passing the baton as it was passed to me. And it's the obligation to pass the baton next to whoever gets it. And that's how it goes.
Well, that is it for the inaugural CloudBase.com. I hope you enjoyed all that. I certainly did. And next up, well, I don't know who I'm going to be interviewing next. We've got quite a few candidates, a couple of things in the hole. Maybe we'll talk to Nick Greece, who is our U.S. champion and just returned from the Worlds down in Columbia recently. But anyway, stay tuned and hope you enjoyed it. And this is Over and Out from Gavin McClurg. Cheers.