Welcome to episode 17 of the Cloudbase Mayhem. I am your host, Gavin McClurg, where it is my job to distill knowledge and excellence from the greatest pilots in the world and pass it on to you so you can be a safer, better pilot. Before we get into today's show with the legendary Will Gadd, I wanted to remind you all that I'm still taking questions for an upcoming In Between episode. Since launching the Mayhem podcast, I've been getting more and more questions via Facebook and email and that kind of thing. And I thought it'd be fun to turn it into a podcast on its own. So if you're curious about anything that you think I can answer, whether it be sponsorship or ex-alps or filmmaking or cross country or anything technical or mental when it comes to flying, please ask away. Hit me up via Twitter, Facebook or Instagram or the website cloudbasemayhem.com and we'll get it lined up in the show.
Thank you as always for your generous donations and listening. Our last show with Cody Mittanck was exciting. It was a huge hit. God, this one, our numbers went way up. Seemed like people really enjoyed it. So I'll keep that in mind for the future. If you haven't listened to that one or any of the previous shows, I highly implore you to go back and check them out. Some great information there from guys like Josh Cohn and Mads Syndergaard, Tom Dourladeau, Paul Guschlbauer and many more. So check those out. Also wanted to thank you for your great reviews on Stitcher and iTunes. That really helps us get this out. So thank you so much for your time. There are really appreciate it. Okay. Right before we get to the conversation, just one quick apology for the sound quality in this one. Um, a few minutes into the conversation for whatever reason, I've got this all, all this brand new, great audio gear.
It's been working really well, but for some reason, something went wrong in the conversation with will. So I had to revert to the backup, which is this app that I use. It's what MPR everybody uses for Skype conversation. It's pretty good, but it does. It's not as good as having a great microphone. So there is kind of a background hum here. And there's some funny edits that it makes you do where it kind of clips part of the conversation. I've done, I've done my best to put it back together. Hopefully you won't even notice. Um, but I do want to just apologize that I am trying to make these better. I realize I've got to put out good sound for you to be able to listen. And, uh, but it is what it is. Hopefully you won't notice, but I, again, I apologize. And now, uh, Will Gadd, my God, where do I begin? Uh, will was of course, my partner for the Rockies traverse back in late.
2014, I hadn't met him until the day before the expedition and that next 30 days that I spent with them really changed my life and my view of the world and how I pilot a paraglider, uh, and how I think about risk and safety. And you're going to get all of that condensed into a third 60 minute version here. I promise you, this is just a truly amazing, uh, episode. He is still at the age of 48. He's been a red bull original gangster. He's still, uh, one of the best, if not the best mixed climbers in the world, world-class kayaker, of course, world-class, uh, paraglider. He held the distance record in the world for more than 10 years. We get into how he approached, uh, those records and state records, uh, what he learned from doing those, where he went wrong in the ex Alps.
Uh, he's a blogger, journalist, public speaker, uh, the, the father of two beautiful kids. Uh, this guy just knows how to get it done in this, uh, episode. So we really get inside Will's head about what he thinks about safety and risk and sending it and technique. We hear about creating useful tools to break things down, which leads to justified confidence instead of careless optimism, how to get rid of fears. What's so special about paragliding, recognizing the dark side of dangerous sports, why our desire to see things as we want instead of how they are leads to accidents. And by far this, we got the best answer yet to the pearly gates question. Um, and. And sending that out to a lot of guys in the past. I think you're going to really enjoy this. So without further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Will Gadd.
Will Gadd, it is awesome to have you on the show. I think we've been working at this for almost a year. Uh, good to finally sit down with you, even though we're not together. You're in, in Canmore, I assume. Is that correct? Yeah. Where are you in Sun Valley or where are you? Yeah. I'm in Sun Valley. Just got home a couple of days ago. Nice. Looked like you're having some good adventures as usual. Yeah, it's been a, it's been a fun winter, man. We're having a banner snow year and I was just out in the desert, training some acro over the dirt with, uh, Cody, which was pretty interesting. Got my, got my laundry out a few times for the first time ever. Ah, battle wounds, man. That's awesome. Yeah, no, it was good. I, I decided after the ex-Alps that, uh, I needed to get a little more serious about my, my acro skills. Yeah. Well, you're, you're basically flying acro all the way across the Alps.
Yeah. Was that, was that the video of Cody where he was doing a double? Or was that, that was somebody else or? No, that was somebody else. Yeah, no, that was just something I found online. Wasn't that hysterical? Yeah, I, I guess it's hysterical cause it all worked out well, but yeah, that was not a good day. No, exactly. I think the title of it was Maldia. Yeah, no, that was, that was not a good day. Um, Hey, so for our listeners who don't know your history, uh, I'd love for you to just give us a quick background of how you got into this crazy sport that we're so passionate about. And, uh, and tell me a little bit about how that got you to where you are today.
Yeah, it's going back a ways, but I was working as a reporter in Colorado writing about different sporting events and stuff like that. And I went up and covered the us nationals in Aspen, Colorado. And I think it was like 91, 92, somewhere in there. And, um, went up there and I was just blown away. I was like, this is a really cool mountain sport. And I already did all the other mountain sports, you know, from skiing pair, you know, skiing, kayaking. And a lot of my friends had gotten to paragliding, which is one of the reasons I went up there. Dave bridges and all these, you know, really good pilots in that era. And, um, I watched the event and I was like, this is really great. I've got to try it. So I went for a tandem with John Yates and scared the shit out of myself and him. And it's been downhill or uphill, depending on how you look at it ever since.
And so 91, that is quite a lengthy career. Have you ever had an accident? Um, I've had a few pretty hard landings and I've had a lot of situations. I've had situations where it could have been a bad accident for sure, but, um, nothing too traumatic. I've strained my thumb, but I've had some situations which were ridiculous and it was only by relatively good luck and gymnastics training, maybe that I walked away from it. You, you have a principle that I want to get into here in a bit. Um, when we were walking up to the first launch, the very first day, uh, the Rocky's traverse, uh, you had me pegged pretty quickly. Yeah. As a pathological optimist and you said, you know, you're the kind of guy that looks for the rock. That's going to break the glass. I've been using that joke by the way, at every BAMF stop.
Thank you for that one. But, um, flush that out for me a little bit, because you know, when you say, you know, you've had a couple of minor things and you've had some luck, but I also, you know, you've, you've talked about this and for the listener, if you're not familiar with Will and his writing, I would highly encourage you to check out his website, Will Gadd.com. Um, I've been following your writings for years. Years and years and years. You have great things to say about all of this stuff, uh, the more than we can say on the podcast, but, um, flush that, that kind of very, that, that difference of, you know, looking for what can go wrong versus hoping everything's going to be right. And how that has allowed you to, uh, pursue what you have, uh, ice climbing, you know, relatively dangerous sports for a long time, relatively injury free.
Yeah. Well, I mean, everybody's involved in any of these mountain sports. Ice sports is kind of an optimist to begin with. I'm going to fly off this mountain and it's all going to work out like you're, you're in a pretty optimistic place to begin with, or I do a lot of ice climbing. I'm going to climb this frozen waterfall and everything's going to be great. You're starting off from a pretty high, you know, it's an act of optimism, no matter how you look at it, to, to just do something like that. And I think right now in our society, there's this heavy emphasis on the positive power of positive thinking. And I think. I think this is bullshit. It's just going to get you killed. So what I'm quite into is, is being an optimist just by doing these sports and, and getting up and doing battle with life every day. You're an optimist, you know, it's a, it's a, how to, in my view, a useful tool for surviving these sports or anything dangerous in life that you want to do a new business, whatever
is trying to figure out what can go wrong and why, and using your imagination to break it down into chunks. Yeah. And then solving those chunks. And then when you go out and do something in life, you've got justified confidence, not just this sort of YouTube style belief that I could do it. You know, YouTube has a lot of videos of people who really thought they could do it on there. You don't want to be that guy. You want to be the guy that's like, all right, I'm going to do something that is, is cool and dangerous out there, but I'm going to break every little chunk down and I'm going to use the best tool I have at my disposal, which is my imagination. To, to figure out in, in sometimes gruesome detail, everything that you think can go wrong and why, and work through that.
And what that allows me to do is get rid of my major fears. And, and then I'm, when I'm standing on launch and you know, it's a bit surly and it's going to be real. I do, I still do that same thing even after 20 years of flying. I like break it down. All right, what's the issues here? Can I deal with them or not? And then if I'm still afraid, I pack it up and go home. I run away a lot, but I'm into the positive power and negative thinking. It's served me really well for a long time. I like that. I like that a lot. You had an incident in the X-Alps in 2003. I wondered if you could recount that because I think that was one of those times where, you know, you, you had to eliminate or greatly reduce your margin for safety and, and you ended up really not liking that race because of that.
Can you go through that flight? I think from, from the Chamonix day. Uh, yeah, I had. I mean, I had a few incidents in the X-Alps. I think anybody who does that race is, uh, is, is going to have incidents. That's if you're, if you're trying to fly in the X-Alps, you're going to have incidents. Even I don't care who you are, pretty much everybody has adventures in that race. But yeah, on that race, I, I launched, um, you know, it was a, I was in the Lee of Mount Blanc and that was okay, but I got destroyed a few times when I climbed out of the Lee, which was sort of okay. Cause I was high. Um, but that, that made for an interesting morning. Yeah. Yeah. In the afternoon, I got, uh, I just totally, I got sort of blown by the wind that was coming over Mount Blanc and down into the Aosta Valley and that valley, that's just not where you want to be.
It's full of high tension lines and, you know, power lines and dams and cities, and it's just mayhem in there. And, and I, I was flying along going 40 or 50 K thinking this is great kind of ridge soaring a bit. And then I looked down on like a hundred meters below me, all the trees were just bent over. And at that time, I'm like. My career, I didn't have as much experience with really strong Valley winds. Cause we don't get them to the same degree in the Rockies, most other places I fly. And I was like, yeah, there'll be a Valley wind, but you know, 20, 30 K, whatever. It's the end of the day. It'll be fine. And I landed in this thing or I went into this wind and started going backwards up the Valley at a pretty incredible rate of speed and, and dodging power lines. And eventually I managed to sort of crash beside this sewer plant. And, um, it was like, I was fine with crashing into the.
The sewer pond, to be honest, that would have been a better option at that point. That would've been great. Yeah. Sure. Sure. I keep in there, you know, your trip, I think you tried to crash into a, into a pond that is here. I did. I didn't, I didn't make it though. I did not. But I, I stack it into this, I think it was a couple of minutes, just really horrifying going backwards up a Valley with power lines everywhere. I didn't feel like I'd been pushing it hard that day and it was way out of control and you know, I could have easily been, been killed and I landed on the grass. And kind of rolled down the hillside and I think the guy who ran the sewer plant watched all this and you know, he, he wasn't a pilot, but it was obviously a pretty traumatic situation with the wing balling up left, right and center and recovering it and then landing and you know, just timing of surges and collapses, it was just luck.
And I, and I, a little, a little, you know, obviously some skill, I didn't stall the wing or lose it, but yeah, crash there. The guy gave me a beard. I sat on the grass and realized that not only did I have some things to learn about flying, flying in the Alps, but also for me competing in that style of competition was leading me to make some bad decisions. So I needed to modify that. And you, you did fly comps for a long time, won nationals, flew PWCs and I want to also talk about your, your kind of record era. You went out to break a bunch of state records. Many of them still hold your Texas record, which was the distance record in North America held until last year. Yeah.
When you
were flying in a seat, you know, I don't know what kind of wing you were on back then, a Firebird or something, I assume, always jaded, Robbie Whittall designed, what
led you to that and how does that mesh with your kind of your approach to, to risk you, you said, you, you know, when you, when you approach things now in the mountains, you know, it's a, it's, it's a collection of skills and understanding the environment and the ability to. Yeah. And the, you know, the knowledge of when to walk, walk away. What got you going down the, the record the record momentum? What was the, what was the purpose? Why'd you do it? And and what'd you learn from it? Well, I think for me in life, doing interesting things is about as good as it gets. Like if I'm fired up and interested in something, that's where I feel like our office and operate the best. It's like, all right, let's go do something really cool here. And, and I love doing that.
Yeah. Whether it's paragliding or ice climbing or whatever I'm involved with first, a sense of a river, or it's just, this is going to be interesting. And I'm a happier person when I'm in that environment. So with records and paragliding was like, how far can we fly? And that was really interesting. That was what it was all about. I didn't really care too much about the record per se, but it was like, let's go fly really, really far. And, and that was awesome. It was trying to figure that out. And I, I started doing that right away in my career, I mean, in the early to mid nineties, it was always, can we fly over the next mountain range? And yeah, our, our gear was by today's standards, pretty primitive, but it's the same thing. It's like, get up high, go on glide. How far can you get? And, and a lot of the things I did that people are like, oh, you were the first to do that. Or the first to do that. I didn't really think about being the first.
I just thought it was like, let's go fly somewhere cool. This is going to be great. And then you didn't do the negative thing and figure it all out and try and try and be positive and learn and learn and learn and learn. And. And when I almost got bitten off, you know, understand why and apply those lessons, I, I really spent a lot of time thinking about flying and analyzing it and breaking it down. But yeah. And, and the record thing just grew out of that. It's like, where can we fly the farthest possible distance in North America? And I started looking at where the sail planes were doing their records and the hang glider pilots were doing their records. And it was pretty obvious that somewhere in the sort of Southwestern South sort of South Central West area of, of the United States. And then, yeah, I spent three or four years with Josh Cohn and a bunch of other good pilots chasing records and Hobbs, New Mexico, which is a fantastic place to do it.
And then Gary came up with, uh, with Zapata, Texas, which is full on flying. And then, yeah, next thing you know, it's, it's late in the evening and you're looking at a world record. Life is good. It's, it's, it's. Did you, through all those years, Will, and then, and then I, I think you're a lot of the comp flying was both before and after. But were there any kind of aha moments along the way or, or, um, you know, was it, was it a, a, quite a rapid ascent into flying far and getting good really quick in the beginning? Or were there things you had to kind of back up into or, uh, were there, were there, uh, did you ever have to tackle kind of areas of progression, um, along the way? Well, I, I was pretty obsessed with flying. I'd come out of a career as a competition climber and I'd had a really good.
Career as a, as a competition sport climber, but I, I wanted something different and paragliding was that. And when, and the first time I flew, you know, I basically quit competition climbing right then and there. And uh, and I got stoked and I flew every day that I could and, and I was obsessed with it. And, and that's what I wanted to do. If I couldn't fly, I'd go ground handle in ridiculous conditions and, and I learned something every single day and I, I progressed not because I'm any good as a pilot, but because I, I am quite good at going at it as hard as I can and is learning as much as I can day after day after day. And I mean that first year I spent new year's Eve flying at the point of the mountain with Steve Merritt at midnight, just because it turned off and we're like, dude, we got to go. We weren't even, I don't think we'd even had anything at all to drink.
We were just so stoked to go flying. And I flew every day in the winter, even though there wasn't a thermal to be seen anywhere. And you know, living in Boulder, Colorado, and if it was like any hope of, of turning a circle, I was out there on the hill. And there were a bunch of pilots like that, and they had the same mentality and we were not competitive. We were very supportive of each other and, you know, trying not to get killed because it was, it still is a risky sport and we were washed out for each other, but it was, it was hardcore about who was in the air at the end of the day, you know, you milk everything out of the day. And there are a bunch of guys who went at it with that attitude and being surrounded with people who structured life. So they could fly pretty much every day. And we're good at it and we're motivated to max it out.
It's like, who can go farther? And man, you, you went and it was never a discussion about whether or not to go cross country. It was like somebody was going and, and it was like, okay, who can do the coolest thing with the day? It wasn't a competition like beating everybody else, but it was like trying to do the coolest thing you could with the day and, and stay in the air the longest and go the farthest. And that really structured my attitude toward, toward paragliding. It's like. You do the most with what you've got and it wasn't, I don't think I got any good at these things cause I was talented at them, but I did obsess about them and restructure my life pretty radically so that I could go fly at nearly every opera, every possible opportunity. And you're Stoke after all these years is still really high.
I mean, I know you're a lot more versatile than I am. You get pretty passionate about ice climbing and climbing and guiding and other things as well. But, um, what has kept you so excited about, uh, what we're doing after all these years? Well, paragliding is a complicated sport. Just when you think, yeah, I've kind of got this figured out, you learn something new. You know, I got, I got waived the other day and wound up at a ridiculous altitude above the Rockies. And it's like, how does that happen after 20 some years of flying, you know, on a day that I didn't think there were any significant winds aloft that I get waived and I get beamed out of my local Valley here. And I'm like, I'm on the moon. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm a hazard.
So things like that, a paragliding, it's just intensely interesting on a small scale. Like why are the thermals here today? What's going on with that? How does it work? And on a big scale, why am I getting beamed out and what's going on with that? And it's just, it's endlessly complicated and I think that's the real reward of paragliding is solving. Yeah. I mean, there's always complicated questions and understanding them and there's always unknown unknowns and paragliding things you just didn't know. You didn't know that makes it, that makes it engaging in a way that very few sports are to me. It's always the mountain sports that have some of that, but paragliding has got more of it than others for sure. So yeah, I'm fired up to go fly. My next question was why is it worth the risk?
And you've just answered that. So it's so nicely done. You don't even need to answer that one. Good. It's a good look at though. I think everybody who flies should have an answer to that question of why it's worth the risk. And the answer shouldn't be, well, I can be safer than anybody else because you know, everybody makes mistakes and errors and, and in paragliding, those, those errors are certainly likely to, to put you in the hospital or, or kill you. So you gotta have an answer to that question. I think that's a, that's a really good question. Everybody's answer is going to be different. It's not like one size fits all. But asking that question for me helps me make better decisions about, about what I'm doing, not only in paragliding, but in ice climbing or mountaineering or guiding or whatever I'm doing. Well, answer it for me then.
How, how, how do you perceive that these days? Well, it's different than when I was younger. I think when I was younger, it was simply, this is the coolest thing ever and I'm going to go do it. And I, I was broadly okay with dying doing it. That's how it works. And I think that's not a problem. It's not a bad state to be in, actually. That's if you're, especially as like a young guy, you gotta, you know, there's, you're going to either turn to a life of crime or do really cool things. It's like, you're not going to get it, like, you're not going to get it trying to fit into a cubicle. Like I'm not going to fit into an average workday environment. Other people are, and that is awesome and I'm not trying to denigrate their experience at all. But for me, that's not going to work. So I need more positive things to do with my life and, and, and paragliding.
Paragliding certainly fits into that and so does climbing and, and they're beautiful and wonderful. But it has changed. I, I look at the days differently now than I did when I was, when I was younger and I'm not willing to take the same level of, of risk. And I do recognize that all of these sports, you know, can, can and, and may ultimately kill me. And I'm, and I'm still okay with that. It's, it's who I am and how, how I look at the world. But I've, I've definitely backed down my tolerances for risk on, on any given day. A fair amount over what it was in my twenties and thirties. It's a, today's a good day to, today's always a good day to, to come back. And that's how I approach every day I do any of these sports. It's like all of these sports are very dangerous, but today is a good day to do them right and make good decisions.
I want to be back at the dinner table tonight and, and that's helped me work with them. But they're magic. You know, in, in total, these sports are, are wonderful. And, and. And I believe that they're magic, but they also have a very dark side and, and you have to also recognize that and, and be in touch with it and realize that accidents can and will happen to, to me, to you, to anybody who, who does sports and, and then make better decisions as a result. So in, in total, it's, it's worth it, but no one day is, is worth getting, getting destroyed for. You know, I walk down a lot from my local site if it's not really on or I just can't figure it out. Nothing makes sense. I don't become the human probe and huck myself out there.
I'm like, right. I don't get it. Today's a good day to, I've had a great hike and I'll go rock climbing and back it down. But yeah. Well, talk to me about contentment. You, you had this enormous year last year. You climbed Helmken, Helmken Falls, that thing beat the shit out of you guys, but you pulled it off. You climbed, you, we did the Rockies Traverse together. You went and climbed the last ice on Kilimanjaro and then you polished it off wet by climbing. The Spray Ice at Niagara by any standard, a lifetime in a year. Just amazing. One of the things that I battle with sometimes is you get done with something like that and the need, the desire for, for the next is just what are you going to do next?
You know, because the highs from those endeavors, you know, the planning and pulling it off and and being fit enough to do it is, is super, at least for me, super addictive. It are, do you, do you deal with a lot of kind of coming down from that or how will you maintain, um, contentment? I don't want, I don't like the word happiness, but how will you maintain this level of contentment as, as the years when you look ahead into your future? I think you need different things at different points in your life. You know, that was an amazing year and, and from a sheer accomplishment perspective, I'm, I'm probably unlikely to ever have it. You know,
I had a, I had a fantastic year. I've had some other years where I, where I tried really hard and just nothing worked right. You know, I went to the Hebelea and if I'd done that route, maybe I would've won a big award for it or just been totally satisfied with doing the, the coolest route in my view that was yet to be done at the Hebelea. I didn't get anywhere near getting up, but I got beat down for two buds. The same year I tried to do a big paddling trip that went nowhere. I mean, I just got, I went to Texas, I got nowhere flying. It was like, you get beat down, you get beat down, you get beat down and, and a, you know, and then some years it's like that year everything just went right and, and it was a great year, but it, it, you know, the, you just can't live at that level over and over and over again and trying to live there probably isn't that healthy maybe.
The last year I've done a whole lot of teaching and, and traveling and talking and sharing stories with people. And that's been very, very rewarding and successful in other ways. So I don't think I need something to look forward to where it's like, yeah, that's going to be cool. And, um, a few of those things didn't work last year. I was, I was supposed to do a couple of trips that just didn't work out for one reason or another and, and, uh, it's got some things on deck now going forward that should be pretty neat and I'm fired up on, but you just gotta be where you are and get up and keep going forward. And you know, there's nothing's guaranteed in life. I'm I, I have zero fun. I don't have any financial backing from family or anything like that. You know, this is, I've spent a lot of my life washing dishes and pounding nails.
Every time I get to do one of these trips, I'm like, man, I won. This is great. And, uh, there'll be more, I guess. But yeah, I think if you're always living, living, you gotta have a future goal. Like this would be cool to go and do this, but just be where you are too. And you know, today I'm going to go for, go for a good Nordic ski and huck along and that's going to be cool. And then I'm going to hit the climbing gym later. And that's going to be cool and trade there for an hour. And then, you know, it's like a few friends and I are going to get together and that's going to be a pretty great day. I'm a bunch of work and my kids are going to do some fun things and I'm going to take them skiing tonight too. And that's going to be cool. And like, I don't know, I don't, I don't think you need to always like being rad is very hard work.
I think the hardest person to be rad for is yourself. Right? Like nobody else ultimately really gives a shit and 50 years, nobody is going to care what we did. Probably only 50 years. It'd be like next week. It'd be like, who? What? So that shit's all, that's all really transitory. You know, it's, it's like, you got to like where you are and be stoked at what you have going on and then change it if you don't. I believe that's really, really important is to create a life that you dig and if you're not digging it, then change and I don't know great philosophy on this, but it sure is good to be alive. Yeah, it's true. It certainly is. It certainly is good to be alive. On that note, you've, you've lived a very public life. What's something that, that no one knows about you? I think I'm probably more of an introvert than most people realize I need to read and slow down and think and process quite a lot.
And and I dig that, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of a product of the punk era where you're, you know, stuff's life's loud and meant to be lived and you do it yourself, but you better think about it. Try and come up with something that's cool. And that thinking is really, really important. So as an ADD child of the ages, you know, like I don't do that thinking my life gets really Western and sloppy and I've got to put it all back together so that that introverted time is, is important in life for, for me, for sure. And for all of us, I, you know, I had one thought for you, Gavin, you might get a kick out of this, but you know, on our trip we were continually problem solving, right? And both quite proud of our problem solving. We're like, yeah, we're doing this. We're making it up.
I was so proud of this for a long time, but I was, I was, I was doing a talk or something the other day and I realized midway through my talk that the reason I'm really good at solving problems on the fly, like onsite climbing and paragliding, whereas the next thermal is my whole life's like that. And I was like, Hmm, maybe it's time to spend a little more time dialing things in. If all you do, if you're really, really good at solving problems, it probably means you create a lot of problems.
I thought of you. And I was like. Totally Gavin. Yeah, that's totally us. You're absolutely right. Why are we good at problem solving? Cause we live there, you know? So it's, it's interesting. I thought. That is interesting. That is interesting. Um, when we were up in Banff, we were given a talk after the film and, and an audience member asked a question about sponsorship that I wanted to flesh out a little bit more. Are there any, what, what are the benefits and pitfalls of, of being a really public persona? Um, you know, your dad told me when we were up there that you've been public since you were born. It's a real gift that you have. Um, but are there, are there, are there pitfalls to, to, are there times where you go, God, you know, I, I just want to disappear.
Well, I mean, I, first of all, I've hung out with people who actually are famous. You know, I've been to some events and so on where hanging out with the a list, like the vanity, vanity fair Oscar party or whatever, you know, I'm all of a sudden I'm like shoulder to shoulder with John Travolta, right? Things. Cause I've been in those scenes and those people can't walk anywhere. They can't do anything in public. Like they're, they're like, that's just a crazy life. So our level of minor celebrity is like, you know, I'm not, I'm in no danger of getting stopped. You know, most places of life, nobody, I think that's a, you know, there's nothing going on there as far as sponsorship and everything else goes. The, the key distinction for me, that's, that's helped me to understand where I'm at and to keep things, um, both ethical and, and rewarding is that I get sponsorship to do things.
I don't do things to get sponsorship and I've seen the careers. Yeah. It's pretty important. So if you're like, I really want to go climb the last Dyson Kilimanjaro and Red Bull has said no, you know, I think they said no six times to that project. And then finally I like cobbled together plane tickets from one company and a bit of help from another. And, and, uh, cobbled this trip together and we went and did it and it turned out to be super successful from a, from what sponsors want marketing and, and awareness and everything else. Um, but I really, really wanted to do that trip and, and I had, you know, if I had like an unlimited bank account, I would, I would, I wouldn't need sponsorship or anything else. I would just go do this stuff, but I don't, you know, I've got like, I gotta, I gotta make it work economically.
So I need sponsorship to do things and they need things from me to make it work for them. And, and, and life's good. But if you're gone, right, I'm going to do something cool to get more sponsorship. Then at that point I think I'm, you know, it hasn't worked. And then the careers, the moments in my life where I found myself in that situation and let it kind of get away from me, it, it, you know, pretty quickly that you're bullshitting yourself and, and, and not really in the right place mentally.
What is the, what's the most common kind of, um, you know, in the years that you've been flying and going to sites and competing? Um, yeah. What's the most common, oh shit, I wish this guy knew X. What do you see? That's the, what do you see that leads to most, if not all of the accidents?
Ah, I mean, there's a, I guess there's a variety of ways to look at that, but a, a desire to see things differently than they are. So there's a, there's a really basic Buddhist idea of trying to see things as they are like what's actually happening, not what you want to happen or you think should happen. Yeah. Or you've been told it's going to happen, but as it actually is, and we all get to the hill with these preconceptions. It's Saturday and the forecast has been good and I'm, I'm off work on Saturday or I don't have to, you know, talk or do something else. So I'm psyched to be there. And so it's going to be great. And you get there and it's a bit snarky and a bit messy and ah, it's going to be great. The forecast is good. And this is the only day I've got to fly and you launch and it's like blowing a hoolie and you, and you go sideways and end up in the trees and it's like, okay, well that didn't work out like I thought.
It was going to. So in my own career and generally what I see with accidents is people wanting the world to adapt to them rather than adapting to the world and seeing what it is. And often it isn't the way we want it to be. It's like, it's windier. I'm closer to the hill than I really should be. Well, this is going to be okay because I've taken an SIV course and I'm really good at controlling my wing. And then the asymmetric is quite a lot bigger and well, hello pine trees. It's just, it's just, it's just, and then, and then that goes for yourself as well. You know, like I'm not Chrigel. I, I cannot fly my wing backwards in a tail slide 50 feet off the deck with any hope of recovering it. That's not going to work. So I'm like, feel pretty good some days.
Well, I'm flying well today. I'm scratching out over here and I'm making it happen, but I don't, I have to be realistic about where my skill levels are and what I can do and, and, and, and not push too hard and to leave, leave a margin. You know, it's, I try to always leave a little more room than I think I absolutely need because I'm going to screw it up. Everybody flies or does any of these sports. We screw it up. So you got to have enough margin that you can recover, be that throwing your reserve or big, big banging close to the hillside. And then very rarely you got to go, right. I feel this is important enough that I'm just going to gamble here. And if you've made that decision, then I've got no sympathy for me or anybody that stacks in. It's not a tragedy. You've made the gamble.
And you need to know when you're making that gamble. That's fantastic. Have you ever thrown your reserve? I've never thrown it in anger. I got it out once and put it in my lap.
I might need this. I was really going really bad. It was a, it was in Colorado and I totally screwed up and wound up, wound up in the Lee and I spent about 3000 feet doing tricks. And, and I, I decided I was going to throw it when I was close enough that I could see individual pine trees, but I kept recovering the wind. It was like collapse, boom, boom, boom, do some tricks, recover. And finally I was like, I might not have time to grab the handle. So I actually got it out and put it between my legs. So that would be faster to throw it.
But I ended up, so now I've got this reserve between my legs and I'm like, well, what happens if the reserve falls out from my legs and apply it or out? So eventually I just went and crashed into some bushes. Basically the logs that actually happened twice, but it only got my reserve out once. And it, it's amazing the human mind, you know, I fall out of the sky for like thousands of, thousands of feet. And then I had to go do it again to understand how strong the Lee could really be in the Rockies on a windy day.
At least me, I should have learned from that. It took me at least twice, maybe three times to learn that one actually. Yeah. That Lee, as you know, I'm quite fond of it. Um, yeah, you're good at it. I don't know about that. Maybe like you said, lucky again and again. Um, it, tell me about you had, you had a really interesting hypoxic experience. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, uh, in your old home hometown of Boulder. Uh, yeah. Can you recount that? I love that story. I'll try to cover the microphone so I don't laugh. Yeah, it's all good. But I know I launched in Boulder, Colorado and I was actually flying in golden, which is my home site in many ways. And I'm not golden BC, but, but golden Colorado right outside of Denver.
And, and it's a good day there. If you can get to like, you know, if you get to like 9,000 feet, it's a good, solid day. You can go places and do things. The ground's at about 6,000 feet. So you're, you know, occasionally there you go to like 10 or 11 and you're specked out and it's like, this is awesome. And on a really, really good day there, you might go to 14. Like once a generation, you'll go to 14 there. Maybe. Yeah. I, I basically ended up in the Lee of the Rockies, probably a combination of mostly wave there too. And, uh, ended up going quite a lot higher than that and watching jets go by me and below me and things like that. There's a, there's a, yeah, a couple, a couple of bits of airspace there that came pretty close to getting involved. And it was not a good day. Um, and I, and I'm, and I'm still making pretty good decisions. I think I was making decent decisions. I'm like, normally there, you just fly straight for a bit.
You get out of the thermal, you're done. But I think I got high enough to, and that was the first time, second time I'd ever been in any kind of wave. Basically I got into the wave and I'm, so I'm flying down the front side of the Rockies, um, parallel with the Rockies, assuming that I'm going to hit big sink at any time. And I'm not, and I'm still going up and now I'm getting really high and starting to get pretty hypoxic because I'm not well acclimated and don't have oxygen and, um, end up trying to kind of breathe really hard to compensate for that. And you get into this really fun feedback loop, which is, if you've ever been at altitude, trying to sleep is the same thing with chain, stoke breathing. You, you hype basically hyperventilate, end up with too much carbon, uh, blow off too much carbon dioxide and, and you end up with alkaline blood and you end up with this crazy cycle where you, there's really, it's very hard to break that cycle.
And, uh, so I'm losing my vision, seeing out of the pinholes and I'm trying to decide if I should throw my reserve now, but I'm like, well, if I throw it now and I'm still on the wave, I could go to like 40,000, 50, you know, you could go really high there. That would be bad. And I'm like, well, but if I don't throw my reserve and I don't wake up before I hit the ground,
as I'm pondering all of this, I'm getting higher and higher and it's not so cool. And, uh, my vision is now down to literally like pinholes. I'm seeing one pinhole and, and I'm like, all right. So one of the things I found pretty critical in anything I do is when it, when things get really wild, you've got to get rid of everything else and then, and just focus. And so, and I can do that pretty intellectually after years of doing this. I'm like, all right, the key things here are to head north because sooner or later I'm going to get out of this and there's less people to the north. So I've got better options of not getting hit by a jet. Or if I do go really sideways, I'll probably land in like a field or something and not a set of high tension lines. So I get out of the airspace. I'm going to keep the glider pointed north and I could tell that where that is by where the sun is.
Cause I can't really see anything. And I couldn't move my hands anymore. I couldn't move my legs anymore cause my blood's all messed up and I'm very, very hypoxic and everything else. So I put the brakes through my elbows. Um, so I could still control the glider some. So I'm controlling the glider using just my elbows cause I couldn't. You're doing the Jesus Christ pose. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, yeah, only, only my arms have to be tucked in cause I can't, my shoulders can't go out to the side. So I'm like flying the glider with my elbows over my head in the pod and it's cold, right? I'm really high. So it's really cold. So I'm like, I'm getting covered up in some, my face is just frozen. And anyhow, I'm, I keep flying the glider and I don't pass out. I just, I'm looking at the world through the pinhole for awhile and, and, and really focused on just flying the glider north and keeping the glider open, which I'm not talking about.
I'm not totally doing very well, but you know, I get, I fall out of the sky for a bit, get reoriented. Task is go north. So I would. And finally, after a long time, I flew, I forget how far it was, but I don't know, a hundred K or something like that. And I ended up landing way out in the middle of nowhere and I get lower. My vision comes back and I get it all sorted out and I go out there and land and I'm like, wow, that really sucks. You know, that's how am I going to not have that happen in the future? And pondering all of this and I pack up my glider and it's super hot on the ground. It's about 105 degrees or so. Yeah. And I start hitchhiking, which is what you do. And it took me a long time to pack up my glider. It probably took me an hour. I was just totally brain dead and stored all this out and pack up my pack up. My glider starts standing beside the road hitchhiking and I'm standing there and I'm like,
you know, why is nobody picking me up? It's like, yeah, I'm not the best looking guy, but come on. Nobody is even like everybody's swerving to get around me. I'm like, what is wrong with all these people? This is the most unfriendly people I've ever met. At which point my hands are starting to hurt. I thought, and I'm starting to kind of like get back with the program. And I realized that I'm still wearing a black Bella clava. So I'm standing out there.
Hello,
I'm a serial killer. Pick me up. Yeah. I had a big bag on my pack that probably has a body in it. Like nobody's going to pick me up. It's just that I spoke at a hypoxia conference. So this is all the people like deal with hypoxia professionally, mainly in medical settings for surgery patients and other people with compromised lung function and so on. I spoke at this conference and I told all my hypoxia tales and there's a bunch of them. And my question to the audience was how much smarter would I be if I hadn't have had all these experiences? And the general consensus was about 10 to 15 IQ points. Are you serious?
Holy shit. So I didn't, I was like, okay, well, I wasn't that really to begin with, but I, you know, it was pretty interesting. But they also said that I could probably rewire my brain in other ways. As, as I, you know, as I aged and, and I was still young enough to maybe get away with it. But it was an interesting thing to know that I was damaging myself. That is, that is really wild. Holy cow. 10 to 15 points. That'd be substantial on me, man. I could have been way smarter than this. Like, God, I could have been something. But anyhow, it was a, it was, it was a, it was a realization. So yeah, don't, don't get waived. And if you do, you know, you got to turn and fly away from the wave, flying in line with the wave. Was not a winning strategy. But I, I couldn't turn out and go that way.
Cause the Denver air sport, airspace was right there. I basically had to pick a direction and fly it. And then I didn't have enough brain power left to make any more decisions at that point.
In that, in that vein, let's go to the opposite end of the spectrum. Do you have kind of a standout flight in your 20 something years of flying? Do you have one that's just, that was the one? You know, I, I, I love going flying. Like so many flights I've had are, are just great, great memories. You know, the flight we did, um, our final really big flight there was, was awesome. Our flight on the final day where we just scraped, how far did we go? 30 K or something. And we felt like, like amazing. Yeah. We felt like we'd won. And that was, it was late in the year, barely worked, you know? And so I don't, I don't, I don't think there's any one. It's just the experience of flying for all these years and getting to see the world. That's what I love as much as anything is getting up high on a paraglider and seeing the rivers I paddle and the mountains I climb and just getting to see it all laid out.
And on a, on a, on a pretty slow speed event, like I fly over these mountains and jets all the time and it just stops by and there you are, you're at the place you're going and you haven't really seen it, but on a paraglider you see it and you know it, you know? And I never really understood the, the scope of the US until I flew across it on a, on a paramotor way back in the day. You know, we took like 30 some days to fly across the US and I've got an idea of what it looks like all the way from Ventura, California to Kitty Hawk. Um, you know, the whole trip and, and that's, that's the thing that any flight like that, you know, that first flight, when I remember the 94 Canadian nationals flying from Golden BC down to Radium, it took me 11 hours. So my average speed was like eight kilometers an hour, right?
But that was one of the best flights ever. Cause I remember William Mueller was like, it was my first flight with a Vario, I think. And he was like, when it beeps, turn. And I took that advice, literally.
Eight kilometers an hour. But I flew like 90 K. And I was like, I was so pumped, man. I was, you know, I was just so. Beeping. I'll turn. It's beeping. I'll turn. I'll make it beep. I'm sure half the time I was turning, I was going down on in the net effect. But how great was that? Like it was an awesome flight. And, uh, it was, it was great. So I don't know. I just like going flying. I don't think so many good flights, the world record flight, you know, that was a pretty cool flight. Cause we tried and tried and tried and fought so hard for those flights. And then to finally have it happen. And realize that I was like on glide to a world record. That's, that's like, that's all I really wanted. It was to fly as far as farther than I, you know, anybody thought possible at that time. So I don't know. Paragliding is great. Flying at midnight with Steve Mara on new year's Eve in the air.
We spent new year's Eve in a snowstorm at the point of the mountain getting blown backwards. And it was great.
There's a really flights with Chris at a crochet, the whole team of guys. And I don't know. It's been a great ride. I really, really enjoyed paragliding and I got a few goals for the summer to, to get out and chase. And I wish you the best of luck on your flight. I gave you a good reference to Mads. Yeah. Just, just, just skyping with Mads this morning. He wanted to say, hello, he's, he's pretty excited. That's going to be, that's something I've been dreaming about for years. You know, that's going to be exciting. Sure. Yeah. All the questions you've, you've asked me, I should ask you, we could, I'll turn it around. One of these days. Well, it might take us another six, seven, eight months to, to come together on that. But I wish you the best of luck with that. I think that would be a really, really cool. So isn't the X helps happen in the summer? Is that next summer? Next summer. Next summer. Yes. I'm on kind of a maintenance program right now.
Ben calls it Gavin's plan to not go backwards. And then picking up in October, this next, this next fall, I'll get into the meat of the, the hard training again. And yeah, try to do it again before I get too old.
Well, who was, some guy, who was old, was like 50. The year that I did it, he did an amazing thing. or maybe it was the second year that the X, I did the X helps the first year. And then the second year, and the third year I reported on it, that guy was like 50 something. Walter, maybe great guy. Yeah. And there's, there was the Japanese guy. And then last year, Eric Reinfeld, he was pushing 50 and he did really well. The, the, the sweet. So yeah, as long as my knees can hold it together, I, I'll, I'll keep trying. It was, God, it was fun.
Yeah, it's, that's a, that's a pretty, that's a, that's an athletic battle for sure. That's a, that's, I don't know. I couldn't handle the walking on the roads. I just, that just was not interesting and that it all fell apart for me pretty quickly. But the, that was a cool event to, I, I sure do hope you do. I hope you fly it safely and get what you need out of it for sure, man. Yeah, yeah, no, me, yeah, me too. Well, that's, that's when I'm doing all this acro training. I have a new profound respect for reserves after the last couple of weeks. I was, I was getting myself in all kinds of problems. But, but good stuff. It was all stuff that, you know, I needed to be doing. So, like, cause like you said, I'm no Chrigel either. Well, it's good to realize that in your life. And, and that was, that was, you were okay landing on the dirt under Kenneth? Yeah, it's quite, it's quite soft out there.
It's a, it's kind of like that Chelan type dirt. It's, it's quite soft. Um, it's, we're just outside of Zion and pretty impressive to watch, uh, Cody throwing, you know, infinities and misties and every, he's doing everything. And it's, it's, it's pretty impressive. I'm, I'm nowhere near that level, but it's, it's fun to try. Yeah, he's going well, eh? He's a, he's a good pilot. Yeah, he's going really well. Hey, um, Will, just before I, I, I want to be respectful of your time. I just have a few kind of like what I call, uh, well, what Tim Ferris calls, actually, I'm a podcast junkie, kind of like crossover. Actually, I've got one real question for you and then just some quick ones. Um, but you don't have to answer them quick. You can answer them however you want. But I ran into a guy down at the Menarca that had a theory about, uh, he was asking me about paddling.
He knew I used to be a paddler and you're a paddler. And he thought that there was a ton of crossover that he'd, he's seen paddlers get good at paddling. And he said, I just wanted to get your thoughts on that. Well, I think that's, that's a good theory. And, and I remember the first time I seriously got my butt in the sky and there were a lot of people watching at the, at the time. And I got destroyed and like did a whole bunch of tricks and fell out of the sky for a while. And, and, um, the people in the gun are like, you know, you're, you're, that's terrible. You just did like, you know, how did you like sort that out? Weren't you really scared? And I was like, well, it was just like being underwater in my kayaks, except I could breathe. So it wasn't that bad.
And that's sort of true and sort of not, but the, it is true that if you are used to being disoriented and taking a beating, then, then the paragliding ones seem a little bit less severe. And then the way you fly a paraglider is pretty much identical to how you paddle a kayak. So big crossover there. And also in kayaking, you're often dealing with things you can't directly see. You have to feel them and, and understand them. Have a theory about how they work. And you know, you just can't, can't see what's going on with the water or the air. So you've got to have good models in your head of how those systems work and then, and then adapt your model to reality. But, but that really crosses over. So all three of those things I think are, uh, yeah. If a paddler says, I want to get into paragliding, I'm like, yeah, that'll probably work out pretty well. If a climber says, I want to get into paragliding, I'm like, all right, this may involve an uphill road.
You know, kayaking is a very slow sport. Same as like Alpine ski racing and Alpine ski racer wants to get into paragliding. Yeah, that makes sense. If you're like used to doing, if you're a triathlete, maybe not so much. I mean, our brains are wired different ways depending on what we do for sports and kayaking is intensely related to paragliding for sure. So I think your bud in Monarca had a good point and obviously you've done really well out of, out of kayaking and Nate and a lot of people have come out of those more action flow sports and done well in flying. Yeah, cool. Um, if you could place me back at that time, a question people like to hear the answer to, what would be your advice to your 50 hour self and where were you back then? Well, I was, I was living in Colorado still and, and flying a lot.
I think at 50 hours, I don't know if I'd actually normal anything yet, but I was really good at hiking up hills and flying.
I don't know. I think it would be just, yeah, pretty much do, do what I was doing. Like, you know, I basically quit my job to fly and, and put a lot of time into it. And, uh, and, and I don't, I don't know if I would do anything radically different. Maybe I pretty much was determined to invent the sport myself. And there was a large body of knowledge out there. There was the craft of paragliding. It's like, there's a really good instruction program now and, and a lot of knowledge out there that you can access maybe a lot more than there was when I started. But there, there certainly was more knowledge and, and I just didn't, I kind of went at it very experientially. Like, I would just hurl myself into the pool over and over and eventually I'm going to swim, I'm sure. And learning that craft is really important.
Like, doing, doing the acro courses and watching good pilots and, and learning from them and, and continually building your, your model. I think I did some of that, but I sure could have done it a lot, a lot better than I, than I did. It just, it wasn't, it was, it was like sort of willful ignorance at times on my part. I was like, I just will learn this. And, and I would just beat myself into a pulp doing that. And I think I probably could have learned it in less violent and dangerous ways by, by listening to other pilots. But some people don't learn well, that well that way. All
right, buddy. Well, hey, I'm, we're going to finish it off here with the Proust questionnaire. I love this. This is just a whole bunch of questions. These are mostly just one word answer, but feel free to answer it however you want. What is your favorite word and what is your least favorite word?
Yes and no.
Ah, best answer yet. I love it. Well, hey, think about it. It's like, do you want to do this? Yes. Well, great. I mean, it just, whatever it is, yes is always a good answer. I love it. You might, you might have answered these next two questions then too. What turns you on? What turns you off? Um, interesting things and, and repetitive things, you know, respectively for sure. Um, things that are interesting, great. Things that are repetitive, probably not going to be so good at. What, what sound or noise do you love? Punk music. Ah, you're still into punk. I love it. And, I do. So good. What, what sound or noise do you hate?
Artificial silence. Like, that bank vault sound. I hate that. I like silence when you're out in the mountains or whatever. That's great. But that artificial sort of deadness, that, that stuff drives me batshit or the, the drone of a, like the drone of, of nothingness. That's, that's pretty annoying. That is pretty annoying. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Um, what profession other than your own would you like to do or attempt? Uh, I mean, there's a lot of them. I've thought about going back to school for geography or psychology or, or, I mean, anything that's interesting out there. There's so many great things to do in life, I guess. I don't know. I don't know what I would do. I mean, I, I was going to be a doctor, but then I met organic chemistry and, and that interfered with my climbing season. So that didn't work out so well.
And, and then I was going to be a lawyer. And I, I discovered you had to spend all your time inside the suit. So that, that wasn't going to work either. But I, I don't know. I think you just have to, the coolest thing is, it's, is to, is to create your own life. You know, it's the, it's the old existentialist, those guys like Sartre and all those guys that were, um, you know, believe that you just had to create the coolest thing you could create. And, and I think that your profession comes out of that and what you do in life comes out of that. And finally, uh, if heaven exists, uh, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
Heaven exists. Um, there's been a mistake. You get to go back.
Oh, well, I love it.
Really good. Oh, I don't think I'm gonna be able to ask that with anybody else from now on.
Yeah, just, I don't know. I never thought of that. That's a good question. There's been a mistake. Go back. Try again. Do a little better this time, bud. Toughen up a bit when you need to, eh? That is great. Hey, well, before we sign off, how do people, uh, connect with you? Uh, if they have any questions or advice, I know you're very busy. Uh, so I'm not, I'm not suggesting people just send you blind emails, so don't give them that. But, um, how can people find out more about who you are and what you're up to? Well, in that vein, like I learned to fly from a lot of people, so I feel I owe those people a huge debt as well as the people that, you know, from Dick Jackson, Aspen onto the guys, the hill, look out, whatever. A lot of people put a lot of time into me, so I do respond to emails.
As you know, it could take some time, but I do respond to them, and especially because those emails are often interesting. They're from people who are trying to figure things out, and those do get answered faster, unfortunately. So, um, if you just go to Will Gadd.com, there's a, there's a, uh, contact form on there, and that's probably the best way to get ahold of me. And, and, you know, there's Instagram and Facebook and all the rest of it, but I get pretty buried on there. And, and, uh, probably just a direct email off my website would be the best. And yeah, thank you for the questions and best of luck with your, your expedition. Uh, I don't know if you can talk about that one publicly or not, but. Yeah. Yeah, that just got signed off on, uh, just a few days ago. So, you know, as you know, I've been working on that with those guys over at Red Bull for a long time. So, um, yeah, that's, that's pretty exciting. We're going to head up the last week of April and put the food caches in, and I've got the line all hashed out.
Not, not to say that that's the line that's actually going to go down, but in my fantasy brain, I've got it all figured it out. So, uh. Right. Yeah, it's, it should, uh, it's exciting, man. It's all coming together. So that's kind of what, where my, uh, energy's, energy's going right now. Well, let me know if I can do weather or whatever for you guys. I think it'll be an awesome trip and, and wish you the best with it. Of course. I wish you were coming, man. I wish you had more time. I would love to be doing this with you. I would too, but I, I, I'm pretty sure I'm not capable of spending that much time, uh, uh, with, with unknown goals and stuff, but I'll,
it doesn't fit the ADD personality role. No, no, it doesn't. And that's one of the things about getting older. You're like, that isn't going to work, but I think it's super cool. So go do it. Right on, right on. Well, we'll say hi to Sarah and the kids for me and everybody. It's so good to, uh, talk to you again. And, uh, I'm sure our paths will cross in, in better ways than just Skype one of these days, but thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. And, uh, hope the listeners enjoyed that. I'm sure they did. And, uh, we'll talk to you soon,
man.
Well, I hope you enjoyed that. Wow. What an amazing talk. Uh, the legendary Will Gadd, always such a pleasure to sit down with him and get his views on this sport that we love so much. If you enjoyed that or one of the previous episodes, as always, always asked for is a buck, a show. Uh, we are not funding this with sponsorship. We're just funding it through our listeners. I really appreciate that. Thanks for your generosity. Uh, again, if you can put out a rating on iTunes or Stitcher or something like that, I'd always also be super appreciative of that. That helps us, uh, reach a larger audience. Of course, I realized at the end there, uh, Will and I were talking about this expedition I've got coming up and we never actually said what it was. Uh, we were talking about the Alaska traverse. Uh, I'm doing another big Red Bull project, kind of like the Rockies traverse with Will, but, uh, and also a new announcement.
I'm doing that with Dave Turner. He's going to be my, uh, my buddy on that one. It's been something I've been planning pretty intensely since 2012. So we're going to try to cross the Alaskan range from the west to the east. Starting late Clark national park across Denali and all the way across to the rain kills. So if you have any questions about that or anything else, uh, shoot them to me via cloud-based mayhem or Twitter or Facebook. I'm going to be doing this in between cast here coming up. I'm going to be heading to Canada here, uh, tomorrow and be gone for a week and a half, but I've got some great guests lined up. More shows coming your way. Uh, more about the Alaska project. Have a fantastic day. Thanks for listening. See you on the next one. Cheers.