Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem podcast. I am Gavin McClurg, your host, where it is my job to get into the heads of the best pilots in the world, see what makes them tick, what makes them roll, how they go far, how they do it safely, and pass on that information to you. you. This one is a little different. I'm not interviewing anybody. I'm just answering your questions. I got a bunch. I've been getting tons over the last few months via email and Facebook and people just putting comments on the cloudbasemayhem.com after they've heard an episode and they want to know more. So I thought it'd be kind of cool to just answer some of the ones that I've received. In some cases, I won't be giving the people credit who answered the question because a lot of people answered are asked kind of the same question, so I'll, uh, just tick through these and give it my best shot.
I am by no means an expert, but I do obviously have opinions, and you can take it for what they're worth; apply them if you can. So let's, uh, let's get into it. The first one, this one is one I get a lot: Is it possible to have a wife, family, and be a a professional paraglider? And how does, for example, Chrigel combine family and work as a paraglider? Obviously Chrigel's playing the family game. He's got a couple of kids and he's the best of the best. So is it possible? The short answer is yes. I guess, you know, a big part of this question is what does it mean to be a professional paraglider? Does that mean, you know, like me, are you making films and getting sponsorship and that kind of thing?
Or are you, you know, on the PWC circuit and, uh, trying to be a world champion there. So, obviously, professional has a lot of different, uh, connotations and, uh, so that's different for different people. But, yeah, the short answer is, for sure, yes. Um, and, however, I don't have a family and, uh, all I do is basically paraglide and so I think if I had kids, that would be exceedingly difficult. Uh, you, you know, to do it at the level I'm doing it at, but I can give some good examples. One very good friend of mine, Nate Scales, he's got two darling little girls, 10 and 7, and I would definitely call him a professional paraglider.
You know, he doesn't travel the world nearly as much as he used to, and he's not able to compete in a lot of World Cups and that kind of thing, but he's certainly at a professional level and enjoys it at a professional level And seems to balance that pretty well. How does he find that balance? I think, you know, that's different for everybody. And I can't really chime in on that. But I think he's, he's got this way where, you know, four days of the week are his one day a week is, you know, his date night with mom and, and two days are just solidly with the kids. Now, obviously, that changes a little bit as the weeks go by, but you know, I think he's just carved out—you know what he has developed with them is a pretty good system for just carving out time, and he can shift those days around depending on the weather.
So, I think just like in life, it's just a matter of a little bit of diligence and a little bit of effort and in making it work, so but I am definitely not the example to go by there. I paraglide way too much. Shout out to my girlfriend who puts up with that. It's just remarkable.
Next one, kind of along the same lines, can you become a professional if you don't start early? Well, I didn't start paragliding until 2006, and I'm 43. I'll let you do the math. I guess I would consider that I'm a quote-unquote professional paraglider because I'm making some money doing it, but uh, most of the people that I see on the PWC, a lot of the guys that are making films or that are sponsored, um, did not learn when they were kids. So again, short answer, absolutely. Um, I think you know, how fast you get good at flying depends a lot on your risk tolerance and time. You know, paragliding's not, uh, it's just, it's, it's a discipline that it requires a lot of hours, a lot of hours on the ground and a lot of hours in the air.
And if you can get those hours and you have the right kind of risk tolerance, then yes, absolutely.
Is it possible to find a job that also allows flying a lot? And on the second half of that, is it possible to fly full-time and also make a living, but not by flying tandems? Obviously, a lot of people do make their living flying tandems. So, this person is asking for, "Are there other ways around that?" Again, short answer: yes. A very good friend of mine, Cody Mittanck, again, I think it just requires planning and figuring things out. A very friend of mine, Cody, who I was doing some macro training with this winter, flies pretty much full time, and how he accomplished that was going back to school, getting a degree in GIS mapping, and which allows him to basically work via the Internet, so he can be anywhere as long as he's got an Internet connection.
And he can tap into that and bang out a bunch of work when it comes in. So he's kind of self-employed. There's a million examples like that. Obviously, having a 9-to-5 job is going to make it quite a bit trickier to fly a lot. Um, but if you can, you know, carve out the right kind of niche and the right kind of job, um, that allows some flexibility, you know, like go work for Patagonia. If the surf's up, they allow you to go surf. I'm sure that they probably allow that with paragliding as well. But, um, I think again, I'm going to get a little bit more ethereal in general here, I think. But, um, I think one of my greatest, uh, frustrations and sadnesses, uh, in, you know, like in all those years when I was sailing around the the world was when I'd meet people that would say things like, Oh my God, man, I would just love to
X. Um, and my answer to that always was, well, then do that. I mean, I realized that there are, uh, you know, safety considerations with jobs and security and comfort and all that kind of stuff. And if you've got kids or, you know, you feel hemmed in, but I don't know, I, My opinion on that has always been that, you know, cut the cord and, uh, figure it out and make the move, make the jump, dive off the board. Um, you know, what's the worst that's going to happen? Uh, I realize that's easier said than done, but, um, we've only got this little short time on this planet and, you know, if you're doing something that you think there's a good chance in a few years you're going to look back and regret, then don't do it.
That's the simple answer to that one, okay. Moving into a different realm here, Ivan asks, "What's the max kilograms you've carried on bivvy trips, wing and harness?" And yeah, let's see. What do I think about the Sup Air to light to? What do I think someone who wants to do a vol biv should know, and the most important tricks and tips and security? Okay, so a bunch of of things here. So max kg I've carried, uh, believe you know, they've all been about the same. Uh, the Rockies traverse with Will Gadd, uh, the Sierra Safari with Nick and all those guys, 500 miles to nowhere, those have been the big ones. Um, I'm getting ready right now to do this, uh, Alaska traverse with Dave Turner. I'm hoping I'm going to be lighter on this one than I've been in the past, but without, uh, water, I tend to be up around 55, 60 pounds.
Um, and then with water, that can obviously go way up depending on how much water you're carrying. I've never been able to carry more than two days of water and about five days of food and that's the dehydrated pretty light stuff. I use a lot of Patagonia provisions you know there's salmon and a lot of their stuff there's Sampa soups and there's lentil soups because they're super lightweight packed with calories. I find that they're the best for that kind of thing. I'll talk about food a little bit later because that's another question that comes up but on the Rockies Traverse I I was carrying a normal harness and a normal wing. This time around, I'm going to be carrying a lightweight wing from Niviuk. It's called the, well, mine's going to be a lightweight Peak 4. They're not actually going to make that as a special wing just for me, but they're coming out with a lightweight one called the Climber that's going to be kind of a low-end D, pretty easy access wing, about 4.2 kg.
So I'm pretty excited about that. That's probably what I'll be flying in the next X-Out. Alps, uh, the Subair Delight 2. I actually haven't flown it yet; I've got it all ready to go. Um, got it all set, had that out in the last couple weeks, uh, hoping to fly that actually this Sunday, so I'll be able to tap into giving more depending on that, but it looks really nice. Uh, I think it's durable enough for something like the Alaska Traverse, certainly not as durable as the as like a, you know, standard harness on the on the, uh, X Rockies, uh, with, well, gad, I had the Woody Valley, um, X-Alps harness, and that was terrific, but it is quite a bit heavier. So, yeah, I'm excited about this Sup Air Delight. I really liked their X-Alps arms they made for us for the X-Alps, that's, but that would not be appropriate for bivy.
Those are way too light and way too thin material. Uh, moving on to this, what do you think someone who wants to do a vol biv should know? Okay, so a lot of things, uh, one is, uh, I'd like to tell this story near the end of the Sierra Safari trip across the the Sierras with Nick Greece and those guys. Um, I was interviewing Nick and I was just on such a high. It had been such an amazing trip. Uh, obviously Brad Sanders, uh, got really hurt the first day of that. So, um, you know, the risks were definitely in our face. Um, but at one point I asked, you know, Nick, like, Hey man, uh, don't you think everybody should be doing this? You know, this is just awesome. And he was like, dude, are you crazy? No, this is like so so dangerous. So what he meant by that is, you know, there, you know, to do a bivvy across a place like the Sierras where it's really rowdy flying, it's really rowdy terrain, there's not a lot of water, there are certainly a lot of risks.
But the bigger picture is, you know, to do a vol biv ascetically, you need to be a really good pilot because you've got to top land. You've got got to land up high before the day is over, so that means it's still thermic, it's still windy, and you've got to be able to sometimes put your glider into a really small place. Those are not what I would call intermediate skills, so can a beginner or an intermediate go do a vol biv? Absolutely, but you've got to pick the right terrain in the right place. My suggestion would be to start in the Alps. The Alps are covered with grass, they're very kind, they're very complicated. I'm not saying that the flying there is easier; it's certainly burlier and, you know, stronger, and I think more gnarly in the Rockies where we tend to fly, but the Alps can definitely have there can be punchy and they can be dangerous, especially in the summer when the the valley winds start getting really strong and the inversions get strong.
So, you know, I would suggest, you know, September in the Alps. But the nice thing is just the access there. You have lifts and gondolas, roads, transportation, bus stations, train stations everywhere. So it makes it really easy. You don't need to carry that much food. You don't need to carry that much water. You just got access to everything. And so, but you want to be an awesome ground handler. You want to be really competent at top landing, um, you want to be a good pilot, really, um, so you know, but you can also approach full bib in a totally different way. You don't have to top land, you can just fly, uh, you know, fly in one direction, land down in the valley, spend the night in a little hostel, uh, get up the next morning, hike up to the next launch, and keep going that way.
You know, there's, so there's a lot of different styles. Um, what else? Uh, gear, equipment is really important, important. And I've got lists of that type of stuff on my website. If you go to cloudbasemayhem.com, I've talked a lot about gear and lists, and I even have the list available on Google Docs. There's a link on cloudbasemayhem.com. So if you can't find that, zip me an email and I can tell you more about that.
Really important to stay fed. And, you know, Just like flying in a comp, or flying cross country, you know, we need to be hydrated and we need to be really solid on calories. Vol biv is can be really exciting, it can be pretty stressful. You know, you don't want to cut short on food intake because then you start making bad decisions. You know, vol biv tends to be day after day, so you really want to, you know, you want to be rested, you want to be well fed head. Um, you know, like in the X-Alps, that's, uh, you know, you're not getting a lot of sleep, but you know, calories are a big part of success in that race and nutrition, and that should be the same. You know, you should be thinking the same kind of thing for, for bivy trips as well.
Massiege asks, "How to develop flatland flying skills and strategies, and how do you develop as a weekend pilot?" I'm not a flatlands expert, of you know, flown Chelan, flown in Australia, had done some flatland flying. You know, the principles are, are all pretty similar. They're still triggers, they're still cloud streets. Typically in the flats, you're flying one way because you're flying in quite a bit of wind, but they tend to be friendlier than flying a lot of wind in the mountains because you just don't have all that road or to deal with. But strategies and how to get better at doing it, you have to go fly the flatlands. There's not, there's not really any shortcuts there. Um, got to spend time in places that, um, you know, that, that work for the flat. So, uh, if you've got the cash and, uh, the ability, then you know, head down to Australia in December or January and fly to Niloquin or Manila, um, and fly head to South Africa, fly their flatlands, head to Brazil in November and fly Quixadá, and those, those locations.
Um, you know, I'm a big, big proponent of travel with your paraglider if you can, obviously, because every site that you fly is, you're just taking on learning and, um, you're, you're gathering skills and getting better. Um, but you know, the baseline is, uh, you've still, you know, if you want to become a better pilot ground handle, um, that's pretty simple. If you want to become a better pilot, Do SIV training. Do as much acro training as you can in a safe environment. We've been talking a lot about acro on the last few shows, but all of those things will really lead to you flying better in the air and also make you safer. Hayden, I think I was down in New Zealand, had a bit of a scary flight.
He asked, "If you're on full bar and get blown over the back, what do you do?" So, obviously, the first bad decision was being in a bad place, but this does happen and it'll probably happen to everybody at some point in their flying career. You get into a sticky spot and there's a lot of wind; maybe you didn't recognize it, or maybe you're kind of in a venturi, or and your wing is not fast enough even on bar to punch and stay on the windward side. I had a really scary incident when I had my my big flight, the the the foot launch record, the North American one, here a couple years years ago, where I got into the limb highs. I was flying at speeds of 110, 120 K when I was up at base, so obviously a lot of wind, especially in the mountains, and I came into the limb highs on the windward side right at ridge height.
It was probably blowing 40 or 50 kilometers an hour, a lot of wind, and tried to, you know, hold it together on the windward side, and but I wasn't getting a thermal and I kind of panicked and just said, "Oh god, when I've got some height still here, I just, you know, while I've got height, I need to punch over the back," knowing it was going to be terrifically bad air and a lot of rotor, but it was quite steep on the back and dove over the back. And you know, when you decide to go, obviously the you you want as much height as you possibly can, and when you turn turn strongly and you know have your hands, you know, pretty heavy in the brakes, not too heavy, but just be ready for that collapse. Be looking at your reserve and be ready to throw it if you need to.
And if you're in terrain where you can, well, you always can, you know, reserves better than pounding. But yeah, turn, turn hard and, and, and go try to fly the wing fast and, and just have your hands in the brakes because you're most likely going to get a big frontal when you hit that rotor, uh, and depending on the wing you're flying, uh, you know, different reactions deserve different things on different wings when you have a big frontal, um, not necessarily just, you know, purely hands up, uh, if you're on a more advanced wing, that'd be the bad thing to do, but, uh, this will, this is all something you should know that's specific to your wing, but yeah, hang on, be ready and try not to put yourself in that position in the first place. When I did, it went over the back.
I literally looked like I was a juggler for probably three minutes, and it was really terrifying air. So I put myself in a really bad position in the first place, got lucky, and got out. And I was literally actually below the treetops on the next windward ridge, trying to find a place to land where I could land and not get blown over the back. When I got a big ripper thermal and got out of there luckily, and got back up to cloud base and carried on. But that should not be what you're typically doing. Don't put yourself in those kind of places. Adam, friend Adam Robinson, who I met flying around in Madagascar. To what extent should you learn acro and what scenarios will improve your XC flying? The short answer to that is learn as much as you possibly can.
And it will improve your XC flying in every aspect. I'm a big proponent of acro. I have been from the beginning. I've just never been in places where I could practice it very much, but that is definitely going to become a bigger and bigger part of my lexicon moving forward. Acro can also be learned a lot on the ground. Again, I keep coming back to ground handling. You know, people that learn at the point down in Utah, where there's a lot of wind, and they do a lot of ground handling. You know, you can take them after six months and take them up to Tiger Mountains in Seattle and fly with those guys and put them against people that have been flying 10 years at Tiger, and they're way better on the ground. And that's just a—that's nothing against the pilots and pilots and Tiger.
That's where I learned as well, but uh, they just don't get the opportunity to ground handle as much, um, but they—but you need to make that a part of your regimen. Yearly is—is doing a lot of ground handling. Um, acro will just teach you to grab stuff, and it'll teach you to feel rather than see what's going wrong with your wing and react more appropriately and accordingly. So the more you can do, the the better I think it's incredibly irresponsible for anybody that is trying to fly cross country to do it if they haven't done on at least an SIV. An SIV is the bare minimum. You should be doing that at least once a year, an SIV course with somebody good.
But if you're, if you don't, you know, if you don't know how, if you're not really comfortable full stalling a wing, if you're not really comfortable with spins and asymmetrics and frontals, you really should not be doing cross country. I know a lot lot of people do, but, uh, I think it's dangerous. That's my opinion. Um, some resources for acrobatics, uh, the book acrobatics by Nestler and, and Mike Kong, uh, is fantastic. It's a little dated now, but it's still terrific. Uh, I've read it cover to cover many, many, many times. Uh, so check that out and then try to, uh, try to get some macro training. Uh, The next question is, actually, see, Ben, my trainer, Ben Abruzzo, uh, what's the best place to learn acro? Um, again, I'm not an expert in this, but it's obviously ideal to learn acro over the water.
Uh, the places that kind of scream out are Gerlitzen and Austria. Uh, Annecy Lake. Annecy is decent; it's not awesome because you, by the time you get out over the lake, you don't have a ton of height, but it works pretty good. And Annecy is beautiful, and you're surrounded by a lot of the best pilots in the world, so that's an obvious choice. And then Lago di Garda in Italy. I did some training there back in September, a couple years ago, and I found it a little frustrating dealing with the lines on the gondola. It obviously has a real small LZ, but it's stunning. You can go XC from there. There's a lot of acro going down there, so that's a pretty good spot as well. I'm hearing good things about the site up in Washington. They've, we've got a gondola there that, oh, I can't remember the name of it right now.
I'll come back to you on that, sorry. But I heard that can be pretty good. There's a lot more. There's a good site at the north end of Lausanne in Switzerland, just outside of Verbier. But, yeah, anywhere there's a lake and there's access to a way to the top is a great place to learn acro. Brad asks, how do I balance my time and any advice for the weekend warrior? You're, um, well, if you don't have a lot of time, obviously, uh, there are some great books, uh, you know, when you're commuting or, uh, if you've got the time in the winter and the off season to check out. And there's also some great videos. Jocky Sanderson performance flying—I mean, when I was learning, god, I watched that thing over and over and over again. Bruce Goldsmith's book, "50 Ways to to Fly Better," is fantastic.
Dennis Pagan's Secrets of Champions is great. Mads Syndergaard, Flying Rags to Glory is fantastic. Burkhard Martin's Thermal Flying, just, God, that is the Bible. Read that, just read it, and then go back and read it again, and go back and read it again. You know, There's tons of articles in Cross Country Magazine every month by Bruce and by Honza that just have terrific, uh, advice, and you know, you start to see the same things over and over again. Uh, you've got to learn how to thermal well, and you've got to learn how, which in my opinion, much harder, you got to learn how to glide well, and, uh, and you like, in one of the podcasts, I talked to Josh Cohn a lot about speed to fly and about changing gears.
All these principles, principles are just things you've got to spend hours and hours doing. So, you know, for the weekend warrior, you know, one is you've got to, you know, the time that you have, you've got to utilize it. And when you don't have a good weather window, well, maybe that's a time where, you know, you can go out and do some ground handling, or maybe that's a time where you can read, you know, About, uh, you know what other people are are learning, you can listen to the Cloudbase Mayhem podcast. Um, yeah, just try to dive in as much as your time allows. I think one of the things I see a lot with lower hours pilots is they get kind of this ground suck mentality.
So one thing is really important is just to surround yourself with people who are really fired up to go fly. That'll put you in the air more. And then the other thing is, when you fly, don't just go flying. You know, always have a task. Have your instruments totally ready. Be completely ready the night before. And Nate's always talking about, you know, like no schoolboy errors, you know? So be ready. Have the clothes, have the water, have the food, have all your equipment ready. Have the maps in your phone, have XC sore or whatever you use on your phone ready to go. Have an external battery ready for your phone in case, or your instruments in case you go big and you need some extra power. Um, and then you know, one of the things I learned when I first started flying with Bruce, uh, you know, my my ex Alps supporter and strategist, uh, very, very good friend of mine, um, he just studies X contests like I think more than just about anybody, you know?
So when we go to a new site, uh, in Europe or the Alps or place that we haven't been, you know, he's already looked at all the track logs from all the biggest flights. So we've got, you know, we've got some kind of a goal, we've got some kind of task, uh, given what the weather parameters are the day, ready to go, loaded in our instruments. We know what we're going to try to do. We we're always, of course, trying to go big, but you know, set set goals and, uh, and and try to do them. And of course, you know, you always have to to fly the day, you can't, you know, Nick's saying that I just absolutely love, I've said it a million times, you know, fly the day, not your desire, but you know, you never know, you might be up in the air and hook into a day that's way better than the forecast, and you've got to be ready to go, so whether you're a weekend warrior or professional, I mean, I think these are all just good sound principles, study, be prepared, and yeah,
go big when you can. I don't know if that's a great answer to that one, but um, Tom Sleeping Ass, a good friend of mine from Canada who I was kind of mentoring a little bit down at the Monarca this January in Mexico, how do I—and I assume he's also talking about other pilots—uh, justify the risks and how do I approach it now? Um, explain the non-rational decisions in the pursuit of the rush, uh, wow, wow, this is a complicated question in a lot of ways and something I've been thinking about a lot, especially since the ex-Alps, which kind of forces you to fly in some pretty scary conditions over and over again when you're not really totally together because obviously you're pounding it pretty hard on the ground and not sleeping very much.
How do I justify the risks? I mean, probably the better answer to this is to go back and listen to Jeff Shapiro's podcast. I think it's number two. He's lost a lot of friends in the last few years in the wingsuit community, base jump community, and he's a wingsuiter and hang glider. He and I talked a lot about risk, and I asked him this very quick, how do you justify it when you've got a family and you've got kids?
For me, paragliding is the only thing I do these days. You know, I've done a lot of, I guess, quote-unquote, risky sports in my life, but and then I pursued those for the same reason, and that is that it's the only thing I can do where my brain shuts off. I'm not allowed to do anything else up in the air. I can't think about, you know, my girlfriend or bills or my house or the next film project or anything. I don't think about anything but flying, flying, and I just like being consumed by the process. And and also, I think the progression is incredibly addicting.
I—what I love about flying is that I will never have this mastered, and I don't think anybody will, even Chrigel. I mean, he's obviously better than anybody, so he's mastered more of it, but I think even Chrigel is learning new things, and you know, and we saw that last year when he got injured, so it happens to the best. And so I think that that that for me is really the addiction, and and it's also for me why it's justified because it's just so mind-blowing every time I'm in the sky and so I can't imagine not doing it and what What I'm trying to do these days is just be safer about it. And that's hard when you, you know, like this expedition I've got coming up across the Alaskan Range, there's no doubt that that's going to be dangerous.
But, you know, the alternative of not doing it is pretty scary to me. So it's just, it's justified. You know, I am not an adrenaline junkie. I think I used to be when I was a kid. I mean, I know the risks. I think it, you know, I'm very aware of the dangers. It does scare me. I think fear is a good thing, and that's what keeps us alive. And, uh, so you know, I, but I don't have one of these, like, I think it's ridiculous when people say, "Well, he died doing the thing he loved," and that's kind of silly to me. I mean, I, that would be, that would suck. And, uh, and I, you know, I like what Jeff said, that, you know, so what dying would do is not allow you to experience whatever we have coming in our future, which we have no idea what that is.
And that could be pretty incredible. So I don't take it lightly. I don't have a death wish. But this sport is dangerous. And how we get around that is training. training and being really aware of the headspace that we're in and how good we are and try not to push it beyond our abilities. So moving on, Jason asks, how to get into the sport? What does it cost? Is buying a used wing a bad idea? And what do you need on your flight deck? Okay, so one by one, how to get into the sport? Well, don't do it on your own. Get professional instruction. Here, here in the States, you know, Eagle Paragliding, Superfly are where I would go.
They're fantastic. There are, of course, many others, uh, so I'm not trying to. Those are just the ones I'm personally more familiar with, uh, so get instruction, um, and get kit, and you know, for you can get really nice kit and get the whole thing for about five thousand with the instruction. Um, you can get get used kit for a lot less than that, uh, I don't know exactly, but you know, to get through your P2 in a place like the Point of the Mountain, you can do it in as little as 10 days. and, uh, and I believe about 1500 bucks, maybe two thousand dollars, and then your kit, um, this, his second question is, it bad idea to buy a used wing? Absolutely not, um, you know the, I think
pretty much everyone in this sport is pretty honest when they sell used gear because they're, they're not going to, they don't want to lie. That would just be horrible karma. So you kind of know what you're getting. Good idea to have a porosity test if you have that available to you to find out, you know, because a wing starts aging the second it comes out of the factory. So, you know, an old ragged out wing, I wouldn't fly period, but yeah, a year old wing with, you know, less than 50 hours or something, you know, be a perfectly good wing to get. Um, so absolutely, used gear is, is totally fine. Um, and what do you need on your flight deck? Uh, in the beginning, nothing. Um, and I think actually every year, even if you're an expert, um, you should always take some flights without a vario and, uh, and just use your own senses and your own horizon line, uh, to thermal and, you know, get away from the instruments on a regular basis.
That will definitely, definitely make you a better pilot and a better thermaling pilot. Uh, when you're racing, of course, you need, you know, two flight instruments that are logging, so you don't, you know, so if one craps out, you're not going to get a zero for the day. Um, I'm a big fan of Flytech, uh, but there are other varios that are great, but I, you know, for myself, I use the 60 30. I use my phone. I always have my, my DeLorme with me, you know, my tracker, you know, in Alaska, I'm going to be using the XC Racer Vario, it's just an audible, an audio Vario, and my phone, and my DeLorme, that'll be the only thing I have on my flight deck, but yeah, that's pretty much it, you want your, you know, you want some kind of mapping device, you want some kind of Vario for sure, and you want to have habit tracker.
Dave asks, how do you break through from the ENBC wings and recreational flying to go beyond your comfort zone and say, do an expedition? I'm assuming he's talking about like the Rockies Traverse. How do you break through? First, I kind of like the analogy of kayaking rivers. I used to do a lot of boating and we used to always say, you know, you don't go start paddling class four until you're nailing class three. By nailing, I mean you're hitting every eddy and it's just no problem. It's not scary. You're playing on every wave. You're kind of like you're dominating the river rather than the other way around, just getting thrown down the river. I think the same thing is true with flying.
If you're flying super confidently and you feel like you're just maxing out your wing, in other words, you're using the full range of bar, You know, you feel like you've just totally got that wing down. You're starting to feel like it's too tame, you're starting to feel like it's holding you back, you're starting to feel like you need extra glide performance. Then, you know, that's probably the time to step up to the next wing. Never step up to the next wing if you're flying scared, if you're not feeling ready. I mean, I think this is, you know, this is obviously personal for every pilot, but you know, for example, I had never flown an E and D when I got an invite to the PWC here in Sun Valley, uh, back in 2012. And I made an emergency call to Niviuk and they sent me an ice peak.
And, um, you know, I was pretty nervous cause I'd never flown a D let alone a comp wing. Um, but you know, I had flown, God, I think at that point, 350 hours that year, uh, before that comp started in August. And I was really feeling ready, I was really excited about it, and uh, felt like I had the hours and the time, and uh, and I was current enough to get onto a hotter wing. So, make sure all those things align. Align, um, how do you go from being a recreational pilot to doing expeditions? Okay, that's a huge jump depending on the expedition. Um, again, hours. Uh, my, my one of my supporters for the X-Alps, Bruce Marks, he had a string there. He won X contest, the chocolate bar, a couple years in a row.
He had a string there where he was doing 500 plus hours a year. So, you know, with that kind of time, he's pretty much ready for everything. You know, if you're only getting 50 and 75 hours a year, then you know an expedition is realistically probably out of reach, certainly something like the Rocky Now, you know, if you want to go to the Alps and do a really cool bivvy trip and, you know, not top land and land down at the bottom of the valleys and pick your days, that's available to pretty much every pilot. So there's a lot of different levels there that can be really fun to get into and do. I'm planning a bivvy trip with my buddy Ben Bruzzo, my other supporter for the X-Alps, and he's a really low hours pilot.
pilot, but it's just a matter of, you know, finding the right place, the right time of the year with the right objective. The second part of that question he asks is when I look back at my first big expeditions, was it luck that got me through? No, definitely not. I think, you know, the Sierra trip was my first big baby trip. I was way undergunned in terms of, you know, the guys I was flying with, uh, were much better pilots. Uh, I was lucky to get onto that one. Um, and, uh, but you know, there were a lot of days where I got dropped and I just landed down in the Valley or I wasn't able to hang with them and that's okay. Um, but no, I don't think it's luck. Um, but certainly there have been moments, you know, on the rock, On all of them where I've gotten lucky, and same in the X-Alps, um, and I, I just wrote an article about, you know, not letting the luck jar run dry.
Uh, that's on, it's on the website, uh, Cloudbase Mayhem, to read that, because I just recently got really lucky doing some macro training. Uh, yeah, you don't want to tap that luck jar too many times, and the way around that, and to not tap it too many times, is again, it's back to training and practice, um, and making good decisions. And I'm like, everybody, I don't always make good decisions, I'm trying to make them more and more by good decisions. I use Brad Sanders as an example. The first day of the Sierra trip, when he pounded and got hurt, um, we came into this, we got some really bad information from some hang glider pilots on launch at Waltz. Uh, we thought the day was going to be perfect, which it ended up being perfect. Uh, Dean Stratton flew over our, our heads after the accident and set the California record.
It was a perfect day, but we thought there was a really strong westerly coming in around noon, so we decided, okay, well, we should top land before noon. So the place we were in before noon to top land was just this horrendous mountain. Uh, to top land, it was just a scree boulder field, super steep. It was right in the middle of the day in the Sierra, so the thermals were ripping. Uh, and me being the least experienced pilot, I came in there and I was just like, there is no way I'm going to try to top land this spot, and got on the radio and said that. But, um, you know, Brad thought, Sanders thought he could pull it off. Uh, Nick actually landed right before him. I let Nick later said that he almost broke his legs trying to do it. Antoine Lawrence, who's just a waga, I mean, he's an incredible ground handler, acro pilot, awesome wing skills.
He also nearly got hurt trying to land there, and he did land there. Um, and then Brad tried to land there too, took a huge hit, uh, big asymmetric collapse, got swung into the hill, uh, hit really hard, uh, broke his pelvis, did some other damage, uh, sprayed his gear all over the mountainside, and then his wing, because he was in a riser twist when he hit, his wing was still facing out the right way. The wing relaunched on its own and he flew off the mountain and down to a field where we had an ambulance already ready to pick him up. So in a lot, I mean, I mean, if we had had, if we, you know, I don't even, I don't even know if a helicopter could have gotten in and gotten him out that day. It was so thermic. So, you know, for us to be able to rescue him, if he wasn't able to fly away, it would have been really, really tough.
And so he got in a lot of ways, really lucky, even though he got hurt. But, you know, that obviously looking back from his perspective, I'm sure I'm not going to try to put words in his mouth, but that was a a huge, you know, strategy mistake and a big risk that none of us needed to take. All we had to do was, you know, fly down to the valley and have dinner in Bishop and come back up the next day and keep going. So there was no reason to take that risk. So yeah, eliminate the risks that you can. What do I eat in the air and on expeditions?
Nick Greece and some of the other guys at the the PWC back in 2012 gave this incredible talk about, uh, this very topic, uh, until the advent of p-tubes and then we actually started using them and that kind of thing. Um, you know, our strategy was to dehydrate ourselves the night before, uh, so we didn't have to pee that much in the air and we wouldn't eat very much either. And, uh, and he made the logical conclusion that that was asinine. You, you know, what other kind of sport do you not want to drink and eat with? And paragliding is no different, if anything, because of the risk and danger factor, you've got to have your faculties with you and the way to do that is to stay up on calories and water. So my strategy for eating when I'm flying, and it doesn't matter what, if it's a comp or a two-hour flight or a 10-hour flight, I'm trying to drink water at the top of every thermal and then I'm trying to eat at least once, once an hour.
That varies. Like in the ex-Alps, I was trying to have like whole food because that was a time when my heart rate wasn't that high and I could eat a sandwich or something. But I've always got shot blocks and I've always got a whole handful of my favorite, and this is just a personal thing, I just love the Patagonia Provisions bars. They're apricot bars or mango bars. They're full of fruit and protein. They're just delicious. They're easy to open, easy to deal with. You know, that takes some practice. If you haven't done a lot of stuff in the air with your hands, Then you need to practice that, you know, both toggles in one hand and using the other hand, or letting go of the toggles obviously in air that you feel pretty comfortable about. But yeah, absolutely stay fed and stay watered when you're flying; that's just totally critical on expeditions.
Uh, you know, it depends again, what kind? But when we don't have access to stores and replenishing, uh, you know, so a bivy trip, say not in the Alps, like on the Rockies traverse, then of of course, your kind of default is dehydrated stuff just because of the weight, but there's not much nutrition in those. So, you know, like on the upcoming Alaska Traverse with Dave, I'm going to be using, again, a lot of Patagonia Provision stuff. You know, their smoked salmon combined with some ramen, that's a pretty light meal, but really calorie-packed, super healthy. Their sampa soups and lentil soups are really healthy. They're kind of made for backpacking, Although I eat them just in my house all the time, they're super delicious and really, you know, all they require is water. You can, of course, add some parsnips or turnips or something along the way if you can get some veggies that you can find, so those are my favorites.
They've also got some amazing jerky, some buffalo jerky, so I'm a big fan of their products. I think they, they work really, really well, but there's of course a lot of different options. Um, so yeah, but I mean, I think the overall question is, uh, what do you eat? Well, I just eat, I don't, you know, make sure you're getting the calories. That's, that's very important. So Charles Cazaux, uh, how were great pilots mentored in the early days and how to go from also rands to keeping up with the gaggle? Uh, what are the secrets champions? Okay. So like I said earlier, uh, Dennis Pagan's book, Secrets of Champions, answers that pretty well, uh, as does Mad Center Guards, um, Flying Rags to Glory: How to Keep Up with the Gaggle.
I learned a really good thing from Russ Ogden a couple years ago down at PWC in Columbia, where he talked about discipline, um, what I see beginners and intermediates do a lot is not look around enough. You know, if you watch somebody like Josh Cone, own, he's like a bobblehead; his head, he is looking at everything and everyone and everything all the time, and so nothing is, is getting past him. So if he sees somebody climbing even slightly better than he does, he's on them. And what I see beginners and intermediates do, they're so locked up in their own world and they're not looking around, and so I could be right next to somebody clearly in a better climb and they stay where they are in their own climb. That's a mistake. So to fly with the gaggle, you need to watch the gaggle and be disciplined in terms of staying with them, and if you lose them, don't get discouraged and just head off on full bar and race yourself into the ground.
Other opportunities in the race will come up; they always do. Be patient, hook on to the second gaggle, try to do your best, but again, this all just comes down to hours and training and more time in this guy, uh, Cody Matanks, right now he's down in third place at the PWC in Brazil, um, he's been flying, you know, he flew the Monarca and then he flew the Superfinal, then he flew the Colombian Open, and then he flew a bunch of acro with me for a couple weeks. I mean, this guy's putting in a lot of hours and it doesn't surprise me at all to see him in a top position. That just doesn't, that doesn't just happen, uh, you know, it happens through a lot of training. So there's not really any secret, um, there's just you got to learn how to thermal well and you have to learn how to glide well.
Another trick that I learned from Matt Beechinor at the Superfinal a couple years ago, Matt's one of the best gliders in my opinion in the world, uh, you know, clearly Chrigel is the best of the best, um, he can see the sky, but uh, you know, when you have a lot of other pilots around, when you leave a thermal and you go off on glide, you know, you've got a map of the sky right in front of you, uh, you've got, you know, if you see this, somebody over to your right, get a little blip of good air, as opposed to somebody on your left, getting a little bit of sink, move, you know, play pinball through that whole field of pilots. And by the end, you know, to the next thermal, you should have picked off a bunch of pilots by the time you get there, if you're just really watching them. them. So remember that the trick to cross country and the trick to comps is flying fast.
And the way to fly fast is to punch it hard when the day is giving you those conditions. And then, you know, in maximizing speed to fly, but you've also, the guys who are really good, they're really good at shifting gears, you know, recognizing when the day has changed and slowing it way back down when you you have to. So I think what happens a lot with people in comps that haven't flown comps a lot is they get impatient. They race themselves into the ground. I do this myself a ton of times. That was the biggest mistakes I made in the X-Alps. So, you know, be patient, but, you know, and, but be disciplined, you know, don't race off. Don't leave the gaggle, you know, especially early on in the comp, you know, to win a comp, you just have to be consistent.
You don't have have to win tasks; you just have to be consistently in the top 10. So, uh, the—you know, the key there is to just be disciplined, stay with the gaggle, um, you know, through most of the course, and then right at the end, you can try to punch out and make some really good moves. It's always awesome to be, you know, like a Yasin and to be punching out in front of everybody, and every once in a while, that will pay off and you'll win a task, and that's super, that's brilliant, it's awesome style. There's—there's nothing wrong with it. It's fantastic. But I think, you know, overall, consistently, that will not pay off. I think, I believe, everybody, that's it. That's the last question. So I hope you enjoyed that. I hope you got something out of that. And as always, I'm here and available for more questions. If something didn't get answered, shoot me an email, and I'll get it on another InBetween cast, or I'll ask another guest.
I've got Bruce Goldsmith coming up on the show, Kari Castle, Jocky Sanderson hopefully and a lot of others. I'm hopefully going to line some of those up before I head off to Alaska, because once I'm in Alaska, I'll be gone for a couple months, so I apologize for that down time, but I'll try to get some good ones lined up before I go. Thank you as always for your donations. I really appreciate that. It really helps this thing really helps me make this all viable Appreciate it. Thank you. See you on the next show. Cheers