Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you are in the world. This is the second episode of the Cloud-Based Mayhem podcast. Really excited to have this show with you today with Farmer, a.k.a. Matt Beechinor. He's been a mentor to me now for years. He's an amazing pilot. He's been at the game for a long time. He's never thrown his reserve. He's a very safe pilot, but can also just send insanely deep, amazing lines. And I think we all have a lot to learn from him, whether you're just starting out or whether you're an expert. He really takes the long view on this game that we all participate in. And we talked today about a whole bunch of different things, what he calls the alien world, and what he feels like are some of the real huge steps you need to take to become a really good thermal pilot and a really good glider.
In my opinion, he's one of the best gliders in the world. And so, a lot of information here in a very short period of time. I think you're really going to enjoy it. And without further ado, here is Matt Beechinor. Hi,
Farmer. Hi, Gavin. So, we're going to have a little fireside chat about your history of paragliding, if you wouldn't mind.
And what I'd like to hear about first is when you got started flying and how you got started flying.
I started flying here. Yeah. I started flying here in Sun Valley, Idaho, the summer of 1998, and Garth Callahan was my teacher. He was a local tandem guy and instructor at the time, and he taught me how to fly.
And then, was it kind of like love at first sight? Were you pretty addicted right away or was it – what was it like learning and for those of you who don't know, Sun Valley is kind of a pretty intense place to fly. Things are pretty on here. When you first started flying then in 1998, I guess, did you know that Sun Valley was really kind of an intense place to fly or you didn't really have any reference?
No, I didn't have any reference. And I feel like I came into the sport in a really good time. We had good instruction and good gliders, and it was a really nice time to come into the sport. And I didn't really have any clue that Idaho was huge air or anything like that.
I, at times, had a little bit of intermediate syndrome and got in over my head in those first couple of years of flying. But I think it's those moments that make you, hopefully anyway, hopefully makes a pilot take a step back and learn the game a little bit more. Yeah. And helps keep you safe if you have a few of those moments, so.
You had – just the other day, you were talking about an incident that you had here. I think it was just in the first couple of years. Is that right? Can you tell me about that?
My first couple of years of flying, I was just flying for the summers because I was here working as a carpenter to put myself through college. And so I was pretty much just flying in the summers at that point around here in Idaho for like maybe my first two or three years. And my second year – My second year of flying, I came back pretty confident and all fired up to get in the sky a bunch. And yeah, I got myself in over my head pretty quickly. It was the 4th of July. And a lot of just classic mistakes looking back on it. I didn't check the forecast. I was late getting to launch and dilly-dallied once I was up there and spent a little bit too much time getting ready and waiting for friends and stuff like that. So that by the time I got off the hill, it was probably like – It
was probably like
11 or 11.30, which can be quite strong here in Idaho that time of year. And I didn't recognize a bunch of classic signs that the day was going to overdevelop. If I would have saw the day with the eyes that I have now and the knowledge that I have now, I would have recognized right off the bat that it was a day I shouldn't have been up there as an intermediate pilot. But I couldn't see it at the time and was pretty excited. And launched off the hill and was just having the flight of my life because it was so easy to climb up over the top of Baldy. And was a few thousand feet over before I recognized that it was too easy to thermal. And at that time, kind of wanted to move out towards the valley and think about heading out towards the valley to go land.
But I was kind of stuck in that lift. And at that point, things were starting to overdevelop. And I got probably up to around 14,000 feet most likely. And at that point, I was trying to descend. I was doing big ears. I was spiraling harder than I've ever spiraled in my life. And I was still going up, so I was freaked out pretty good. And I went on glide finally out towards the valley, which was my best move. So instead of just staying in the lift and trying to descend, I finally failed. I figured out that I needed to move away from this big cloud over my head that was hoovering me. And so made a move out towards the valley and lost a few thousand feet.
And I was probably at about 9,000 or 10,000 feet when all of a sudden my glider was below me for some reason. And then I went through a huge cascade for about 1,500 feet. And I had no idea what I was doing. So I was spinning and stalling the glider. And completely over-managing it at that point through this cascade. What kind of glider
were you on?
Maybe a UP Boogie. Which is like a B? You know, it was a loaner glider at the time because I hadn't purchased my own equipment. So I don't know what glider I was on specifically. But it was a loaner glider that I was borrowing from my instructor until I could put together the money to buy equipment.
Regardless of what it was, I was doing all the wrong things. You hadn't
done SIV. I hadn't done
SIV. I was pretty clueless. I was probably, you know, at that point I might have had 50 flights, you know. I was still a P2. Like I said, I was just flying for the summers. And it was my second summer of flying. So I just didn't have that much experience at all. Certainly had never been through any kind of incident like this before. And was over-managing the glider. And what really saved me, I still had a lot of terrain clearance. I still had thousands of feet of terrain clearance. But really what corrected the situation is that the glider had so many riser twists that it locked me out of over-controlling it. And it finally started flying good again. And I kicked out of those riser twists and was flying again.
And still had probably 1,500 feet or 2,000 feet above the ground. So I hadn't started. I hadn't considered using my reserve yet at that point. I probably would have once I got lower. But luckily I started flying again. And now I was in a different situation. Now I was in the valley. And I was in a tremendous amount of valley wind that tends to happen around here. Because we've got tight valleys. And when it gets thermic, we get really strong valley winds. So now I was descending into another horrendous situation. Which was probably 25 miles an hour of valley wind. And I was actually in a good position at that point. I was in the southern part of our valley. And I was over a huge field. And what I should have done at that moment was just descended and landed in that big field.
But for some reason my beginner brain said go to the landing zone. So I made a turn downwind. And as I got myself positioned upwind of our landing zone, I could see a few of the local pilots running around frantically in the landing zone. And what they were trying to do was kick dust into a huge dust devil that was cracking off in the landing area. And luckily they did. And they showed me that there was just this monster dust devil parked in our landing area. And at that point I was pretty much out of altitude and out of options. And I had to make a pretty drastic turn into the neighborhoods in Ketchum here. And managed to stuff it into a volleyball court.
That's not very big. No. It was all pretty frantic. I mean there's a lot of luck that happened in this day. And I sprained my ankle pretty severely. Didn't break it. But I sprained my ankle. And to this day that's the only injury I've ever gotten out of paragliding.
That's amazing. Let's talk about that. Because you kind of rallied pretty hard on the competition scene for a while. Which tends to, that can break people. When did you do that? And just talk about your competition scene and kind of where, how you came out of that I guess. Because you were really rallying around the world and doing that whole thing for a while.
Well I think what happened with this incident is it really made me take a pretty big step back. And really become a lot more of a student and learn a lot of these things that I was clearly missing. And get some humility in the sport as well. So I thought I'd mention that. Because it was a perfect corrective thing to what was going on in my flying at that point. Because certainly I was in a little bit over my head. And it was a nice thing to go through this. I think that it's always nice to have incidents in paragliding as a beginner. And get out of them without too much consequence hopefully. And hopefully they correct your flying. In some way that you take a lesson away from that.
And hopefully take a step back. Learn something you didn't know. I think that's important. You
mentioned, let me just cut into that real quick. You mentioned intermediate syndrome.
Can you explain that for the people that don't know? Because I think it's a term we hear a lot. But probably means different things to different folks.
Yeah, well I think there's trappings for a pilot at any level of progression. And in the beginning intermediate syndrome is when in your head you're probably a better pilot than what you actually are. And you think that you're doing really good. And you've got the skills to handle situations. But the reality is you're in over your head. And you're basically an underqualified overconfident pilot. And those trappings exist at every level. Right up to an expert. And they call that expert halo. Where you feel kind of invincible. Because you think you know it all. And you're really proficient. And you've proven to yourself that you're a really good pilot.
And so you continue to push into situations that are more and more dangerous. Because you think you can handle them. And so there's trappings for us at every level as a pilot I think.
Back to the comp scene. So that was, what years were you doing that? Were you flying comps?
The very first contest I did was in 2004. In Brazil I did the Brazilian Nationals and the Free Worlds. And those were the first couple of contests that I did. And they really caught my attention. It was my buddy Nate Scales that really directed me towards contests. I went to a few contests with him and didn't enter before all this. And he convinced me that this is how I was going to really progress as a pilot. And all the good guys were there. And if I really wanted to figure out how to fly paragliders, I would go to contests. And beyond that, they were a really killer time. They were really fun.
And did that prove true?
From a learning perspective? Yeah. Very much so. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the best places that you can learn to be a really proficient cross country pilot. All the best pilots are there teaching you all the best techniques. And if you just keep your eyes open at a contest and really approach contest flying from the perspective that you're not there to prove anything, you're not there to win, but you're there to learn, you can gain so much knowledge from going to contests. I think they're one of the best places we can go to learn all the top information. And
are you still interested in contests? Will you still be competing? Yeah. I know this year you were the coach for the world's teams. You went down to Columbia, and then you've been guiding a lot the last few years down in Columbia. And, of course, flying tandems here is most – that's most of your job, I guess, now is flying tandems. But will you get kind of back into the – do you miss the contest scene, I guess?
Being in Columbia this year at the World Championships, it was – I did a few days definitely miss racing with all those guys because it's so much fun. It's just such a hoot. It's so much fun to be flying those courses and seeing how well it can be done. It's super inspiring. For contest flying, I feel like you have to be – at least for me, I want to be very fired up about it. I want to be there with the full mindset that I'm there to go forward as hard as I can because I think one of the things that contest flying taught me that I didn't know about myself before I started doing it is that I'm actually a pretty competitive person. And so if I am going to go to a contest, I don't want to go there half-assed.
I want to – I want to be all in. And I want to be there on good equipment and with the mindset that I'm going to go race with my buddies and try really hard to win because that's part of the fun of the game to me, I guess.
You – I know this so we can talk about it. You've never thrown your reserve. You've been flying for – what did you say you started? 98. 98. So 16 years, 17 years now. What do you credit that to? Because you – like this year, I think down at Columbia, you were saying you got maybe 120 hours. You're definitely flying 150, 200 hours typically in a year, especially if you add up the tandems, I would imagine, yeah? Mm-hmm. That's a lot of flying. And you're flying in pretty heavy places like in Sun Valley. What do you credit your – I don't want to jinx us, but what do you credit your – your kind of safety record to? You know, you had that incident early that clearly taught you a lot. You know, that was super valuable. And those are the greatest lessons, you know, when we get away with stuff and realize like, well, God, you know, that's something we – that's impactful.
But what – what do you credit to – you know, when I watch you with a glider, it's like watching somebody that's dancing. You know, like your ground handling is just magnificent. It's beautiful. Is it – is it that? Is it your head? Is it practice? Is it the obvious stuff or is there something else to it?
It's my mom.
Don't die, you fucker. Pretty
much. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think when I first started getting into this, you know, I had some of those kind of frank discussions with my parents about the sport and about safety and stuff like that. And I'm super fortunate in that I've got parents that are incredibly supportive of any crazy thing that I've wanted to go through. You know, I've always wanted to go chase in my life, paragliding included, even though at the end of the day, we all know it's a little bit dangerous. But my mom has always directed me towards listening to an inner voice. And I – and I believe that we all have this inner voice and it's saying things to you. Sometimes it's only whispering things to you.
But you have to listen to it in our sport. You have to listen to the hair standing up on the back of your neck and an inner voice telling you not to do something. And I really think that my mom told me to listen to that in this sport. And I have and I've stayed true to that my entire flying career. And I really think that that's one of the major things that's kept me safe. If you're not in the game on a certain day, you have to go land. If you – You know, if you're just not feeling it and all your buddies are all fired up and they're going to go fly 100 miles but it's not your day, it's not your day. And you have to be really true to your head space and how you're feeling physically and pay attention to that and listen to that little voice in the back of your head because all he's doing is trying to keep you safe.
That's that saying that Nick Greece told me really early on. I still go back to it all the time. Fly the day, not your desire. You know. It seems like you're really good at that. Yeah. Flying what fits for the day.
So there's that. And then there's, you know, I'll go back to the fact that, you know, some of the scary moments that I had early on in my flying really made me want to master the sport and not get into situations like that again. And I really, you know, pushed the reset button really several times in my flying. And over the years and made sure that I was doing things for the right reason and progressing the way I needed to progress, you know, SIV courses. And I was super fortunate here in Idaho to have Nate Scales as a huge influence in my flying. And he really took me under his wing as a mentor and taught me a tremendous amount about cross country paragliding and how to progress.
And so I've had some, some. I've been really fortunate to have some really good pilots pass along knowledge and help me progress in a slow and safe manner. And I think that that's really important in our sport. You know, we get, we get excited and want to achieve all these things as young pilots.
But there's a couple of things that have made me realize that this game is much longer. And we've got plenty of time to achieve. Yeah. To achieve all of our dreams. So I've met a couple of people. One of them was this, I can't even remember his name, but he was in his mid-70s and I met him hiking up to launch in Switzerland. And here's this guy. He's in his mid-70s. He's walking to launch and he's heading out for a day of flying, which was really inspiring to me. And then another person in the flying world that's really inspiring to me is Luca De Nini. And he is, if he shows up at any contest in the world, people are looking at him to potentially win the thing. And he's not old. He's not old by any means. But I think he's probably in his, I would assume he's probably in his mid-50s, early to mid-50s.
And that's also very inspiring to me because we don't age out of this sport. It's not football or soccer. You're not done when you're in your late 20s or early 30s. We don't age out. I think we just get better and better. So when I finally realized that, I realized that I was on an extremely long and gradual learning curve. And I should be okay with where I'm at in my journey.
And just enjoy the ride. Well, yeah, there might be a summit, but the summit's a long ways off in the distance. And I'm okay with the long journey to get there. I'm hoping to be a good pilot in 20 years. I want to keep progressing.
My goals have changed. I want to be that guy in his mid-70s walking up to launch. I want to be flying in my 70s and my 80s. That's my new goal in life. And to do that, you take the good days and go hard when it's good days. And you go land on the bad days. And you have to be okay with that.
Yeah, I like that. I think that's a really good point that I think a lot of people need to be thinking about. And this sport, because it just takes one bad accident, doesn't it?
In 2012, I was over in Europe. And I was really just discovering kind of cross country in a bigger way. I'd just done an SIV with Jockey. And I was roaming around the Alps and super fired up. And I got online. And you had just gone 193 miles, which was just a distance that was completely unreal. It was absolutely absurd to me. It just blew me away. I told everybody. I went to the store. And I told people that didn't even know anything about paragliding. I was like, this dude at home? And I was moving here that summer. It was one of the most inspiring things that had ever happened to me in paragliding. And I've heard you tell the story about that flight. But what did you do to prepare for that, if anything?
And how did that happen? That was an amazing summer. You went 193. Nate went 199 within a couple of weeks, I guess. And then Nick went 204 from Jackson that same summer. I know Bill, in the last podcast, we talked about it. He was talking about this two for 200. Wouldn't it be cool if we went 200 miles on a two-liner? So I know a lot of that was gear. And you guys were talking about it. But for you personally, I know when you're balancing tandems in the summer, it's pretty hard to fly the tandems in the morning and get your oxygen and get all your stuff together and then go send it. That's a big day. How did you prepare for all that?
Or did it just happen?
I think that I have been preparing my entire flying career for that flight.
And at the end of the day, it did just happen. But all the skill sets required to do a flight like that, I've been acquiring them for many years. So your quote that we attribute to Nick Greece, fly the day and not your desires, holds true for every good flight that I've ever done. And there happened to be good conditions that day. And I was fired up to go fly cross country. And so I did. And that was a day that I spent. I guess there was four or five people on the hill that were fired up. I was fired up to go fly cross country as well. But even five miles into my flight, I was on my own.
And heading back towards... They
don't want you out?
Yeah, well, no. They just kind of decided to go different directions. Okay. I think that Charlie and a few of the others might have crossed over to Sun Peak with me. And the crossing, this is the first crossing after Bald Mountain that we do. And it was pretty light back in there. And I was really having to just kind of... stuff it back in there to get the day going. And it didn't really seem like anything was going to come together. But I just kept dribbling along. And I didn't really have any big plans to go anywhere huge that day. It really wasn't until I got to the Lost River Range that I committed to actually trying to go far and start hopping those other ranges for the rest of the day.
I was trying to decide if there was too much wind. I was trying to decide if there was enough lift. I wasn't super confident in the glider I was flying at that point because I think it was my second or third flight on the Ice Peak 6.
So I got really low right before Dickey Peak, which is over near the Lost River Range in the Passimeroys, and was considering landing at that point. And then I caught a nice climb and got above the peaks again. And that's when I really committed to... just flying as hard as I could for the rest of the day.
There was some wind. It wasn't uncomfortable from the perspective that I was pinned in the ranges by any means. I had the ability to fly out in front of all these ranges that I was hopping over and escape them if I wanted to. So it wasn't bad from a wind perspective. But there was some wind and there was a lot of thermal strength. It was rough at times. And I think what kept my head in the game a lot that day was just because I was unfamiliar with this glider and I wasn't completely confident on it, I just kept saying to myself, well, I'm not going to land until I have at least one collapse. And so that went on all day long. And I didn't have a collapse all day long.
That's the nice thing about the Ice Peak 6. I just kept going. Oh, it's a beautiful glider. Yeah. One of my favorites for sure. But I just kept going. Yeah. And kept pushing myself that day because I don't think that I was – I had to convince myself that I wasn't being unsafe a good portion of the day because it was very strong and on. But I guess I felt in control because I didn't have any collapses and I was still able to make upwind moves and not put myself in a lee and stuff like that. So I kept feeling good about it and kept going. Another thing that played into it was the fact that I was running an oxygen system with batteries that day and it happened to fail on launch.
And so I was running without oxygen all day long as well, which is something I'm pretty leery of from past experiences.
But I wasn't getting that high. Most of the day was spent probably 15,000, 16,000 feet. And it wasn't until the very end of the day that I actually caught a climb up to 18. But that kind of played into my nervousness up there as well that day, I guess. It's just the fact that I
was –
Knowing that
you could have been bonked out and not really knowing about it. Yeah, when you get hypoxic, it gets weird.
Yeah. So yeah,
there's a lot that goes through your head when you're flying distance by yourself.
When you came and picked me up the next summer after my big flight, I was experiencing something you call the alien world. Tell me about the alien world, which
is an awesome world that we all try to go to. But I like how you kind of described it.
I've been trying to describe the headspace
that cross country paragliding puts me into for a long time. And at that point, I think when we were talking about it, I described it as the alien world because I feel so alien when I land. The longer I fly, the more I get into this headspace.
And typically, if I land after a six - or eight-hour flight, it just takes me a while to come back down to Earth and want to talk with people again. I kind of want to stay in that headspace. So I want another 15 minutes or half an hour to myself after I land to just kind of enjoy that headspace that flying puts me in.
I think it's kind of like meditation. And the reason is because it is such a heightened state of focus that you've got to stay in for these extended periods of time
that it gets me into a headspace that I can't get into when I'm not flying. And I'm sure that people who meditate can do stuff like this and really practice those types of lifestyles. They can probably get themselves into the type of headspace that I'm talking about. But the only way I can achieve it is through flying. And the longer I fly, the deeper I get into this headspace. And it's something that's really enjoyable to me because I'm the type of person that has an extremely busy mind and I can't really control my thoughts to a large extent. I've got a really busy head. And so flying is one of the few places where I have a calm mindset, where I can truly focus on only one thing.
Cool. I like that. Yeah.
We'll wrap it up here pretty soon, but your story of your save in the Sierras is, I think, really instructive. I'd love you to tell that story.
It's like Farmer's Greatest Hits here for this. Yeah, totally. That's the
greatest hit for sure. And I've heard it a few times, but I think the audience here, it'll blow their minds. Tell us about that.
This is probably like 2006 or 2007, somewhere around there. I'm flying the Sierras. We launched from Waltz Point. And I was flying with Nate Scales and Nick Greece and Todd Bibbler. And Waltz is a beautiful launch from the perspective that you're perched high up in the Sierras and right there for a great cross country flight right deep in the mountains. But it's a flat surface. It's a slope. You're launching from a road-cut parking lot, and it's tough to get off the ground. And so I kind of stuck around and helped everyone else get off the ground, mainly Todd Bibbler, who is one of the best pilots I've ever seen fly a paraglider.
Once he was in the air, but he's worse than a complete beginner on the ground.
So he's got no launching or kiting skills, but he is an absolute Jedi in the sky. I've never seen anything like it. So anyway, we took some time getting him off the ground. And I kind of stuck around the longest. I was the last one off the ground. And the forecast said it was going to be windy that day. Quite strong wind from the west coming over the Sierras. And so we were expecting that, but we were fired up and thought it was worth flying some cross country. So I'm alone in the beginning of the flight. I'm probably about 10 miles downwind. And I'm trying to catch up with the crew, who's probably another five miles out in front of me. And I was already noticing that once you hit a certain altitude, I want to say it was probably around 13,000 feet, maybe between 12 and 13,000 feet.
There was a pretty wicked shear layer associated with that west wind that was coming over the top of the Sierras. And on one of my climbs out, I was pretty, I wasn't that low, but I was down in a canyon climbing off of this ridge and looking up the vistas that the Sierras have to offer. And this place is just radical. It's just rock walls and huge boulders. And so I'm looking below me thinking about what a gnarly place this would be to land or throw your reserve.
There's this canyon below me that has boulders that range in size from the size of a car to the size of a bus. And it's cliffed out above and it's cliffed out below. And I was thinking to myself, man, if you had to land here, it'd be, it's a guaranteed rescue. There's no way you're getting out of here by yourself if you were lucky enough to survive a landing in there. And that's kind of what's in my head because I'm in this ratty climb off this ridge line. And so I gained a few thousand feet and I was probably 2,500 feet over this ridge line. And my glider simultaneously shot directly out in front of me and had a 50 % collapse that instantly cravatted.
So I go from being in a very wound out, super strong climb, really coring super tightly to my glider being straight out in front of me, cravatted. And because it shot so far, out in front of me and cravatted so quickly out in front of me, I instantly went into a super G'd out cravatted spiral. So I go from a really strong climb to being G'd out in this spiral situation with a cravat. And I'd never had a cravat before, at least not this severe where I was actually wound up by the thing. And so now I'm dying.
I'm diving at that canyon that I was just admiring how gnarly it was. So I'm spiraling towards the ground at a really high rate of speed. I'm super disoriented by this cravat and the spiral because there's so much G going on. I'm in the back seat. I'm having trouble reaching up towards my risers and stuff because of the centrifugal force. And I tried a number of things to get out of this spiral. Weight shift, brake input to try to steer out of it. But as hard as I could pull,
nothing was affecting the glider whatsoever. I just stayed in this G'd out spiral. So I remembered a move that I'd watched in an acro video. I watched this video a lot of times. And for some reason, this move stuck in my head. And these guys had a move for getting out of... the cravated spirals where you spin the cravated side. And it's called an ESP. And so I dropped both my brakes and I reached above the pulley on the cravated side. And I had to pull three arm lengths worth of brake on that side in order to spin it. Because that
side was all slack because it's cravated. Yeah. Was it all slack? No, it wasn't all slack. Because you were in a spiral so it was... Yeah, but
there was some slack there. But there was tension on the line. It just took three arm loads. You know? So you're just pulling
it in and kind of letting it go?
No, hand over hand. Hand over
hand, okay. Hand
over hand pulling in brake line on that side. And I want to say it broke on like the third reach for the brake line. And that spun it. And the reason that works is because it reverses the airflow on the cravated side. And it spins the glider. And it blows out the cravat as it does that. So it spun the glider. And I had an associated like huge climb out. As the glider reinflates and gets energy and I checked the surge and then I flew out towards the desert and landed because I was terrified. That
is unbelievable. I can't imagine using that in the Sierras to save your ass. It's a good trick to know.
It's probably one of two situations that I can think of that I probably should have thrown my reserve that I managed to get myself out of.
Right. Yeah. But a reserve could have been really nasty where you were. A reserve just wasn't an option. Yeah. It wasn't an option. It
was an option. I probably would have survived the situation. But I definitely, I would have had to have gotten rescued out of that situation. I wouldn't have been able to hike out of the terrain that I was in. Right. You know. And I most likely would have been injured landing in that boulder field. So it was kind of like the best option I had to fight and to just battle the glider.
What kind of glider were you on? Do you remember? Yeah.
That was a Trango 2.
Trango 2. Okay. Yeah. UP.
UP Trango 2. That was my first 2.3.
Okay. Cool.
This last one, I'm going to embarrass you a little bit or make you red, I guess. But in my experience, and I don't have a ton of comp experience, but flying with you at the Superfinal in Columbia, when were we down there? Maybe 2014 maybe? Something like that? 2013? Yeah. Yeah. I would watch you like pick off dozens of people on glide. We're all on like similar gliders. You were on the six at the time. I kind of regard you as one of the best gliders out there. And I think for a lot of our eyes, it was a big wake up for me hearing you guys talk at the PWC here in Sun Valley.
You know. I think when we're learning how to fly paragliders, we're all concerned about thermaling. And as you get better and better and better, that becomes the time to eat and drink and fart around and take pictures. It's important, but we get very good at it. And it's not nearly as important as gliding. And you have a technique that you shared with me down at the Superfinal for picking off other pilots that I thought was really interesting and also worked. But just to see it in play, but also just, I want you to talk about gliding and just how you approach it. And is it, I think people have asked Chrigel and he's kind of like, what are you talking about? You just do it. You know, like, I think it's one of these things where people just have an instinct, but it's something that you've been able to really develop.
And is it, is that something you can put in words or is it something you just have to do?
It's probably one of the easier things for me to do and one of the hardest things for me to describe. So I guess I'll try, you know, something that I think is inspiring. And I think it was Stefan Schmoker that said it. If you're thermaling, you're going backwards half the time while you're flying. So I believe gliding is going to be one of the major ways that we're going to figure out how to fly, fly further and fly faster. And so it's something I've kind of tried to study a little bit. And I've read quite a few books on the old hang glider pilots and more recent hang glider pilots that have a lot of good things to say about gliding, books on sailplanes.
I think that as our gliders become more efficient, we can use more of their techniques and apply them to flying a paraglider. So how does one glide well? One thing that I noticed in competition flying,
you know, if you're in kind of the middle of the pack in a gaggle, you've got all these people spread out in front of you and they are completely describing the air mass to you.
Once a gaggle of 30 or 40 pilots leaves a thermal and goes on glide at the end of that glide, it doesn't really matter how long it is. Because typically some of those gliders are going to be higher than the others because they all spread out looking for lift. And so one of the tricks that I use in competition flying is to just scoot around behind them. And any bump that any pilot gets in front of me, I'm going to kind of like Pac-Man back there behind them. I'm just kind of gobbling up all those good bits of air and trying to put myself in the most positive air possible and scooting around as much as possible. Moving laterally, I guess I should say, in order to fly through the best air possible.
So that's probably the best trick I can offer for catching people in competitions while gliding is just they're describing the air mass to you. So use it. And oftentimes if we're on a big long glide and the whole group is getting a bad line, I'll go off to the side. And I've learned that there's often good air just really close to us. You just have to scoot over there and get it.
And so I'm not afraid to move quite far outside of the pack in order to look for a better gliding line. And oftentimes if you do that, you can catch people in front of you because they'll be then lower than you at the next climb and marking that next climb for you. And you can come in on top of them and top out their thermal. And I've applied this to my cross country flying in the respect that if I'm in bad air, I'm going to scoot around and look for better air. That's one of the main things I'm doing. And I think
that you impressed upon me at the Superfinal that that's an immediate move. It's not, ooh, I'm in bad air. Ooh, I'm in bad air. I'm in bad air. God, maybe I'll try left or I'll try right or I'll try 45. It's like I'm in bad air. I'm going to find something different now. You move.
Yeah. I'm immediately going to make a course correction, maybe go 45 degrees off course line and try to find better air. Half the time I'm still in bad air, but half the time I end up in better air. And it's worth making that move. Sometimes we're just flying into these huge areas of sink and there's nothing we can do about it, but oftentimes there's better air right beside us. And if we just scoot over there, we can find it. So that's part of it. And I think another part of it is I've trained a lot. For years, I really focused on having a number on my instrument, L over D over ground, and paying attention to that and getting a sense of when I was getting a good glide and when I was getting a bad glide.
And so your average glider's probably got a nine to one glide ratio. And so if I was getting a five or six to one, I was getting a nine to one glide. I'm going to look for better air or try to do something about it. If I'm getting a 12 or 14 to one, I might try to stay in that air and even ride the brakes a little bit to get an advantage out of that lifting air, because I know I'm on a lifting line.
So it's just a lot of practice. You have to train on the speed bar a bunch. I think it's hugely important that we train on our speed bar. It's one of those tools that a beginner or intermediate pilot can use. You should start working towards and master. It's very much a part of our glider and very much an important part of gliding efficiently.
I don't think that we should be afraid of our speed bars these days. In fact, when I'm guiding in Columbia, I actually tell people to call it the glide bar, which is actually something Nate Scales came up with. Speed bar sounds scary, but the glide bar sounds like a good time. So we should be training on our glide bar. I think it's the glide bar quite a bit. And our gliders are, in my opinion, no more susceptible to a collapse on a quarter or a third bar than they are at trim. And this is certainly more true the more the higher you go up in the categories of gliders. So for the gliders I fly.
fly, E &Ds, they actually become more collapse resistant when you're on a quarter or third bar. And I think that this also applies to modern day intermediate gliders that, you know, this idea that our gliders are just going to collapse if we're on any kind of speed bar is something that was true for gliders back in the 90s, early 90s maybe, but modern day paragliders fly really, really well on speed bar. And I don't think it's something we should be afraid of. And it's something that we really need to train on a lot in order to get more proficient at.
Matt, you spend a lot of your time guiding and instructing both here and you've done a couple big years lately down in Columbia. What are your
big objectives? Like what are the things that in pilots that you're instructing? So these are typically lower hour pilots or people that are getting into cross country gliding. Not all, some of them are probably further along, but what are the kind of the big
themes these days?
Well, we've got all levels of pilots on our tours, but it seems like one major thing that everyone seems to be working on is thermaling. And whether it's your first thermals or you're really trying to learn to thermal very efficiently, thermaling is probably one of the major things we work on. Um, thermaling speed is one of the major ways that you're going to achieve better cross country speeds and achieve greater distances. So we need to be very efficient in thermals and always be climbing in the strongest thermals, um, throughout the day in order to go as far as we can on a given day. One of the major things that I think that I think helps, uh, pilots become better at thermaling is by learning to do wing overs.
Uh, so I talk about this quite a bit and I believe that wing overs teach pilots to control their gliders and a lot of different situations that we're in while in thermaling. Um, when we get pitched out of the thermal, uh, when our glider gets into odd positions, it teaches us when we can and can't turn our glider and how to get it back to where we want it to be. Relative to it, relative to a thermal. Um, so wing overs are one of the only moves that we do in flying that combine the three movements of our glider, the pitch, the roll, and the yaw of the glider into one fluid movement. And to do them properly is really challenging.
So wing overs should always be learned in the right environment, uh, at first in an SIV course under instruction. Over water because wing overs are incredibly dangerous. There's no better way to get, uh, uh, big collapse to cravat than to do sloppy wing overs where you stack a tip and run out of energy at the top of your swing. Um, so certainly learn them in the right environment and then moving forward, practice them in smart places as well. You should only do wing overs high and hopefully in relatively good conditions. Uh, we shouldn't do them while we're rid soaring low to the terrain.
Um, you shouldn't be learning wing overs under reserve height. And also the things that I'm trying to teach people from doing wing overs, you don't have to do huge over the top wing overs to learn the things that I'm trying to teach people. It's, it's really 90 degree wing overs and less, uh, will teach you everything that I'm trying to teach people. You're trying to learn to build and dissipate energy in the glider. So we learn that through break input and weight shift timed properly, you can either kill energy or build energy in the glider. And through that, you can put your glider wherever you want to above your head while thermaling and get in that core.
Cool. Yeah. And I like that you're, um, telling people to be careful. I think they're highly underrated in the beginning when you, you know, once you get through it and you learn how to do them well, then you realize how hard they are. You know, there's, uh, you know, I've heard a lot of really good pilots say it's kind of the hardest acro move. It really should be considered acro really. Cause it's, it's a lot of things going on. You got to get a lot of things right or you end up in the wing for
sure. Take it slow on the wing overs, um, learn them in the right environment, but I believe that they're crucial to mastering how you fly a pair glider.
Cool. Well, let's end it on that. That was a great lesson and a good thing for all of us to be thinking about. I see you doing some monster wing over still. It's the, one of those playful fun moves. There is for sure. I love wing overs. So, um, thanks Matt. That was a real treat and, uh, appreciate it.
No problem, Gavin. Thanks.
Well, I hope you enjoyed that. That was the second episode, the cloud-based mayhem podcast. Uh, this is Gavin McClurg. I'm going to try to keep this going. I'm leaving for Europe. Uh, like I said, at the top of the show tomorrow to, uh, participate in the Red Bull X-Alps, which is happening July 5th. I'm going over there early to learn the course and fly as much as I can and keep my training going. Um, but I'll try to keep doing these. I'm going to bring my audio gear and try to sit down with people, uh, that I meet along the way and, uh, and keep putting out this information. Um, it's, it is time consuming and it does cost a little bit of money. I'm happy to do it, but, uh, following in the footsteps of, uh, another podcast that I really, really want to do. Uh,
they ask for a buck a show. So, uh, if you would like to contribute to the podcast, keep us on the air. Uh, if you'll contribute a buck, that's all we ask. Uh, that'll keep things moving along. I haven't figured out quite how I do that, but that'll be on the website. We'll probably just do it through PayPal. Um, and until then, uh, we'll see you next time. Thanks very much for listening. Cheers.