What's up there everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Cloud Base Mayhem. We're going to start this one off a little bit differently than we typically do. This podcast is with Guy Anderson, a fantastic British pilot who's currently at the Europeans doing really well over there. Some of you know the name because you know the name and some of you probably heard about the accident he had here in Sun Valley in 2012. Went in and in a very remote part of the Pioneers and it took us a couple days to get here. It took us a couple days to find him. It was a pretty heroic effort to get him out of there and it was a pretty heroic effort on his part to get through that one. So this episode is a lot about safety and what Guy went through and the success there and his success since and coming back from some pretty major injuries.
It's not a downer by any means. This is a really inspiring talk but I want to talk about and start this one off a little different because of an incident we just had here in Sun Valley a couple days ago. Nate Scales is running the Intermountain Wide Open. It's been epic. This is the second year he's done it. It's attracting some great pilots to the zone from Utah and Wyoming and Montana and Nevada and people were just sending. And a couple days ago we had maybe the best day of the year. Just fantastic. Tons of people showed up. We must have had, I don't know, 25 people on launch which is about 200 times what we normally have. And boomer day. Fantastic. Got off the hill. I think 12 of us got over Trail Creek and we were heading towards the Big Lost.
We know it's a fantastic day because Nick Greece went on and did I think about 300k that day and nearly made it to Bozeman. So it was just really lining up to be a fantastic day. Clouds were lining up. Base was super high. And all of a sudden on the radio there was this terrifically bad scream. And one of the pilots went in low. Was clearly very hurt. And that rescue effort to get him out of there really I don't think could have gone much better. And so I just wanted to talk about some of the things that went down. Some of the things we did that really really worked. So you can be thinking about it in your own flying and your own kit.
I'm going to be writing an article about that. In fact the article might even be out before I get this podcast out. So there will be more detail in the article both for USHPA and on my blog. So keep an eye out for that. But just some of the things that really tipped the scales in terms of the success of getting the victim out of there and getting him to the hospital in pretty record time I think. We got him out of there in about three hours. Which sounds like a lot of time. But when you start throwing helicopters in the mix and the terrain that he went down in and what we had to do to get to him. Yeah pretty heroic effort on the part of many people. Some of the things that I just wanted to kind of walk through in regards to the success of that.
One was Life Flight. We used Life Flight for the helicopter extraction. I think very few of us had Life Flight membership. It's $60 a year. If you live in the Northwest that's awfully cheap insurance. You know instead of paying for a $15,000 helicopter ride. Make sure you've got something. When you travel make sure you've got something internationally. When you're home make sure you've got something that works at home. That one is pretty critical. You know suddenly you have a bad day and you rack up a whole massive bill. And be careful things like GEOS. You know the insurance that we get through Spot or DeLorme. They've got a paragliding.
Exclusion. So I don't believe that covers it. I might be wrong. But you know make sure you're covered. One of the things that was really critical in the success of it was keeping somebody high. We were in a place that didn't have any cell coverage. But if you were high you could reach one of the towers. And so Matt Beechinor Farmer was staying up you know right around our legal limit or up around 18,000 feet. And he was calling the shots which was just a remarkably insane and awesome effort. You know this Sun Valley in the middle of the day. The pilot went in about 1 p.m. And so the day was smoking and booming. And it was on. And he was up there you know managing his glider and calling 911 and managing search and rescue and talking to us on the ground with his radio.
Just an unbelievable effort. But I think even more important was just having somebody immediately take the lead. You've got to have a lead in this kind of a situation. Nate Scales just kind of automatically went into that zone and took the lead. And so he was calling the shots with the radio. He made the decision to keep Farmer high. He was putting people in place before we were even on the ground. So make sure you've got somebody that can just keep a level head. Be a leader. Call those shots. That was really critical. Every single one of us had a DeLorme. Having that two way texting capability is just totally critical in any kind of situation like this. In my opinion it's critical every time we fly.
But in an emergency like this you would not believe the amount of two way texting we were doing. And you know at one point for example Revis had a really great spot LZ planned out for the helicopter. So bam he sends them a message. They've got his Latin long. They've got a position on him. It doesn't mean we don't have to radio it to Farmer. He doesn't have to radio it in from there. It's just done. With a spot you've got your pre. You've got your four messages that you have planned out to certain people. If you haven't set up the right people before that certain flight it's pretty much useless. I just keep. To me spot is useless. You've got a tracking device. Great. It's better than nothing. But with DeLorme you've just got the maps. You've got the two way texting.
You've got the little icon you can press to see where a person is and immediately see their direction. And course from you and how far away they are. I just can't stress enough. I mean if you come and fly here in Sun Valley I would actually be pretty reticent to fly with you if all you had was a spot. They're just an inferior piece of equipment. We could not have done this rescue with spots. It's just impossible. You know number one the victim couldn't reach his DeLorme. So luckily we had a visual visual on him. So that's one thing I wanted to stress. Make sure you've got your DeLorme in a place where you can hit him. Hit the SOS if you go in hard. But we did have a visual on him. A couple other pilots Bill Belcourt Revis Gray and Evan Boucher you know put their gliders.
They were they were able to land very close to the victim which was really critical to be able to get to him quickly and you know keep him calm and put him on oxygen and and and then start taking vitals and relaying all that information to the rest of the team which we were then able to relay to search and rescue and the helicopter all that stuff. Was was really critical. O2 keeping the victim you know keeping his pulse and blood pressure and everything in check because we all had O2 that was that was really helped by having that. Good thing to have in your kit. First aid Revis had a really solid first aid kit but we all need to have really solid first aid kits. You know that's got to have a minimum of some pretty basic stuff. You know some pretty powerful painkillers some gauze some super glue some starry strips you know make sure you've got a pretty decent first aid kit that you carry with you all the time.
You know this could have gone so much worse. You know number one if this victim had gone in and it was just a typical day here where we only got maybe two or three people on launch it would have been really hard if not impossible to get him out of there. So you know having having people around having the first aid Revis had a couple of things that are really critical in this kit. He had like an emergency blanket and he had trekking poles so he was able to build a big flight sock for when the helicopter came in. Super important. He had pen and paper in his first aid kit to keep the vitals with. Another thing really important that I don't think many other of us had. Enough food and water. You know it was a really really hot day. We all had to hike a long ways to get in there. It was you know you got to have sunblock you got to have water you got to have food.
You got to have you got to keep calm and you got to move at a pace where you don't forget anything. You know you got to have people that are really thinking and working things out. What could we possibly need in there. You know in this case before the helicopter got in we were thinking OK we're going to have to carry him out. Really really I cannot emphasize how hard that is to do even when you have a perfect board to carry somebody out on a backboard or something. But you know we took a couple fence posts and we had a bunch of paraglider bags and a bunch of straps and so we could we could have fashioned one or built one. On the spot if the helicopter couldn't come in there which was that we were actually thinking wasn't going to happen because it was such a big booming day and the train was pretty rough. A lot of times helicopters don't like to go into that kind of thing. It was a great extraction. Went really well.
The victim's going to be totally fine. You know surgery he was pretty banged up but he's going to be fine. So I guess lastly it was also a reminder to all of us to just you know watch where you're going. Watch where you're putting your glider in. You know I can't even make a call on what happened here at all. But you know if you're going into the lee and you're going to be low you know God be careful and maybe just you know if you were if you've already blown the move maybe call it a day. You know maybe just decide OK this isn't the day for me. I don't need to go in low and scratch in a place that might be dangerous. Save it for another day. You know like Nick always says fly the day not your desire. So yeah hopefully that helps.
And let's go ahead and get into this talk with Guy Anderson. I think you're going to really enjoy this fantastic person and an incredible pilot. He's been at it for I think 24 years now. There's a lot to learn from this one. Stick with it. Enjoy my conversation with Guy Anderson.
It's been some time since I have seen your face.
Mr.
Anderson I have always wanted to say that I'm a huge fan of. I'm not a huge fan of Keanu Reeves but the Matrix. Welcome to the mayhem. It's it's really cool to finally be able to do this with you. I know you're in the middle of pretty awesome Europeans. What's happening over there.
Well it's all it's all kicking off. It's we've had we are seven days now into into a potentially a total of nine days. And yes it's been very very racy conditions over here. Pretty full on full full bar mashing stuff. And yeah it's it's it's great great fun. Great fun.
And I see you're you're sitting very nicely in 17th place. So you're you're definitely in striking position. Yeah. How's it been going for you.
Well it's all been certainly a bit of an education. We've been given the run around by honor in his own fashion. He's he's really playing the game beautifully. But yeah this is hard in this level to get a break on on anybody. They're all so good here that we've had days where you know 60 70 pilots are all arriving in goal within two minutes of each other. So to really make a jump and make it make it count is bloody hard.
Yeah I'll bet. Very
exciting all the way.
Would you compare this to like a Superfinal or is it is it the same kind of. Caliber. I'd say
more or less. I think I'd say the super finals probably a touch a touch higher because you've got everybody who's on form turning up and that would include some of the guys from the States and Australia and elsewhere. But but yeah you've got all of the main countries from Europe with their best guys really really showing showing how they how they fly. So it's a pretty fast and furious. Level definitely.
And you know honor and is just he's just having one this year. My God that guy is just wow. You know his big 300 plus F.A.I. triangles in southern France which is to me a terrifying place to fly. I know that area quite well from the ex-Alps and he's just sending it over there. What's he doing differently.
I think honor is he's always had the speed. I think now possibly from chats he's had with Russ I don't know but he's showing a real measure of control as well which I think is it was always going to come. He's he's he's got such lovely glider skills and but he's now got an extra level of discipline I think to his flying so he can control gaggles when he wants to and he can push when he wants to as well. So he's. He's he's really is becoming the sort of amazing pilot that we all thought he would become so and he's and he's such a lovely guy at the same time there's no he's he's not arrogant in any way he's he's just a lovely really really pretty well formed guy so it's a pleasure flying with him he's always a real gent in the air is no he's not pushy in any way it's just an edit yeah a nice a nice.
Yeah. Thing to share this guy with.
Fantastic way I want to talk a lot about comp flying in this in this kind of interview with you but I'd love to you know there's not a ton of information available about you online but so I wanted to just give our our listeners who aren't really familiar with you and what you're doing a little bit of background can you kind of walk back the clock and give us a brief history of guy Anderson in the air.
Well I I got started I saw I was walking up in the Pyrenees I mean I'm in the wine business so I had I was down in Bordeaux and I had a weekend off so I headed up to the mountains just just to go walking up and up and up in the high Pyrenees and I saw a couple of guys take off and they thermal around and then flew all the way down the valley to a bar. And it took me probably four hours trekking to get to the same bar and I just thought that maybe paragliding was a better way of getting around mountains than walking so I came home told my wife about this thing I'd seen and she actually went off and bought me a weekend experience in Wales and has totally regretted it ever since.
That poor woman. Oh my. Yeah.
Well I yeah because I I knew the very first moment my feet left the ground on a glide down a shitty little hill in Wales that I was totally addicted to this this silly thing and. And what year was that. That was in 1992. Oh my. And it was and I took it up at the worst possible stage I had two small girls one. One. Just just walking the other one in a pram and I would go off at a drop of a hat to Wales every every time I could to just just to learn and and get better and eventually start thermaling and yeah and I've just been totally hooked on it ever since.
And who are your not a good thing not
a good thing for the family is it no.
Have your girls gotten into it at all. They sort of understand but it's been. A long time and it's sort of one of those things that dad does so anyway but yeah it's it's they've been very good about it over the years. Have either of your girls gotten into flying. No I took them up from quite an early stage I took I used to put my helmet on whenever I was in charge of the girls I'd take them off and we'd we'd go flying off the cliffs in. On the south coast and I just sit zip them into my flying suit and. Put my helmet on their head and off we go and but they haven't really it's not their thing they they quite enjoy coming along on a tandem but it's it's it hasn't gripped them the way it's gripped me so but that that's great I mean everybody does it does their own thing and.
So they should and
and so when did you start getting into comps and and who were your crew back in the day. Was that you know Eddie and John Sylvester and those guys or Russ or.
Yeah yeah it was it was probably pre Russ when I there was Bob Drury around and yeah John Sylvester certainly and Eddie Colfax back in the day Eddie actually was the guy who taught me Eddie signed off my club pilot rating in Wales and he's a complete hooligan yeah and but yeah and we've we've shared lots of. Memorable flights ever since but yeah Eddie Eddie would have said told me to have a go at comp flying and I turfed up at the Brits in 96 I think and but in those days the comp flying was completely different we used to have to take photos of term points and it was all a bit daft I remember one one day Hugh Miller actually lost both his.
Cameras because they were tied together he lost the whole lot over the side so that that screwed up his comp and I I I I did comps for a couple of years but I just decided that the technology then wasn't really up to it when you're we had one comp in more zine and we were having to go around the back one of the term points was the hotel on the top of the avorias cliff I don't know if you know avorias in. Near more zine there's a big cliff there and a bunch of hotels perched on the top and some somebody had you had to have very visible term points that people could identify whether you were insect insect or not but we were going around the back of this hotel in in a terrible howling gale and photographing the back and proving that from the room number that you could see that you were actually in sector and I was just.
Thinking this is stupid that you know you're taking your hands off your brakes you're having terrible collapses as you're doing it and it was just it was too frightening for words and that and I had had a bit of a of an episode because I just got a new comp wing that might had a gradient avax back in those days and we didn't know anything about trimming of gliders it when it when we when I first got it it was fantastic but.
After probably a hundred hours of flying it it was going seriously out of trim and I just thought it was it was possibly me or something but it would it would spin the drop of a hat and in the same comp in more zine I had a bit of a deal it it collapsed in front of me it started spinning and then I managed to stop that and then it dived behind me and carried on spinning. And so I'm getting wrapped up but the brattle of the of the of the risers is is getting closer and closer my head's being forced down to my knees and just the last minute I managed to pull both risers over my head but by doing so I pulled my helmet off and so I'm dropping through so then I managed to correct it and I got it flying again and but I've been whipping past this cliff at the time which was a bit.
Scary and the helmet actually landed on a chalet down below below and broke some tiles in some chalet owners roof so he was he turned up a bit later and he was pretty furious but at the same time I got ordered out of the air by this by Innes Powell who was our safety officer because I in those days you weren't allowed to fly without a helmet but it was pretty that was all pretty scary. Oh
that seems quite rude.
Yeah very very rude yeah and this is the same Innes Powell safety officer who do you know you do you know Bob yeah yeah yeah well he was Innes famously came tumbling through a start gaggle and Bob came over on the radio and said mind out everybody the safety officer is coming through so we all had to part ways and let him let him come through. And
down through your your tumbling incident and ripping off your helmet did you manage to take the photo I
did get the photo and I was I was ordered out of the sky to go and land and there were people but in back in those days you know gliders were not like they are now they there were people flailing around all over the place and they were they were very big floppy things that would drop out of the sky it was they're not the machines in any shape or form that we're flying today.
Yeah sure.
Um but I just sort of decided about that stage that I'd had enough of um of going around um taking photographs and I didn't think it racing I like the racing side of it but I didn't like the lack of technology and that there's having to wait until three in the morning to find out that you weren't in sector and we had we used to do pin uh you'd actually have to mark in in a map where you got to with a pin. Yeah. Um it wasn't very it wasn't very tech techy and uh there was forever pin creep going on with people saying oh well if if Bob got there I got two fields further than Bob. Right. And that was about as as um scientific as we got to finding out who was the winner of a comp and it was it was all a bit of a joke but it was great fun but um yeah not not really uh measurable.
Things have come a long ways it makes me realize how much I missed out on. Uh if you those of you listening if you want some more really hysterical stories about taking pictures you've got to listen to the episode with Nate Scales he was the uh he he had perfected things like dropping your camera and dropping the batteries out of the camera and it's it's pretty funny. Yeah I mean
those days.
Good thing that's over. I can't imagine especially in a place like this I mean god taking your hands off your brakes is a full on thing to do anyway let alone take a picture. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What happened then between those kind of early days and let's say Sun Valley did you uh. Well
well I I after so I did a few years of comp flying and then I I got into a bit more of the not well a bit of vol bivouac but more vol visa um so we would disappear off and fly from uh I'd I'd get a flight to Nice I'd meet up with Ulrich Jessup and we would fly from there up to Geneva. Yeah. Over a couple of days and I really enjoyed doing that and I did quite a bit of flying with uh two other Englishman Simon Headford and um and uh uh Tim Guilford um and we we would we would head off on silly treks through the Pyrenees and uh decide it was all dangerously unflyable but um yeah yeah we did did a bit so some of the things that you do but I know very much.
The tamer version and um with the odd stop at a decent restaurant as well um which I quite enjoyed and then and then because I I'm I my wine business I had to go on trips to places you know rather lovely places like Argentina a lot we were importing quite a lot of Argentinian wine back then and uh so I'd bunk off and take my glider with me and um fly quite a lot. Yeah. Up up and down the uh the the uh the Atlas not the Atlas the um the the the mountains of uh around Mendoza and um uh and south of that.
I don't know that. Barry Lake. Yeah I don't know that area well at all it looks like a really fun place to have adventures.
Yeah yeah I mean it's it's it's pretty pretty epic stuff it's very very windy and uh a few a few times if you land out it can be. Just ridiculous uh I had I landed I I I had a quite a uh windy trick trek in and it was you get a lot of wave forming there which can be quite scary on on paragliders special well maybe less now but back in the day they were it was it was a bit more treacherous um uh but you you could land out only few hundred yards from a road and it would take you three or four hours uh to push your way through to uh a three or four hour ride. through the cactus plants you have to you know reuse your use your glider as a battering ram and um and just yeah so that wasn't wasn't much fun
ouch that's some proper kind of adventure flying is that still where is your heart in in paragliding is it more with the comps or is it more that kind of thing well
I've got back into comps since I I loved I loved doing that and uh I love the places it takes you uh and the silly experiences you get. Yeah. Having to I used to take a fishing rod as well and um I quite like uh doing a bit of foraging um so trying to survive off what you what you you can take with you as well I I quite enjoyed that um but but yeah I've I've really got back into comp flying probably seven six seven years ago I I sort of decided to have another another go at it and the gliders are so different now um that. I I it's it's opened it up for me and I I the year of sun valley was the first uh year I got back into um what got up to a level where I had a letter to get into it into the world cups and um sun valley was actually my only my second world cup but I'd sort of put given myself that year a target that if I could possibly get a place uh to get into the Superfinal maybe.
Yeah. That that was that would be that would do it for me for that year but since then um I I've I've really enjoyed the everything about it and the people are such fun and and I I totally agree with what Nate was saying that one year of world cups just one world cup is probably the same as doing as a learning experience compared is is about same as a whole year of flying cross country so um yeah it's it's a real eye opener. Yeah. What you can do when you're married like that.
And then you you were uh you know before the before we started the show you were telling me you guys have been doing some pretty cool uh I guess you'd call it adventure flying but more kind of one day stuff in in from your home here in Britain tell me about some of that. We've
got a fantastic Hugh Miller the editor of cross country he set up Hugh and and Jim Mallinson. Yeah I know Jim very well my
first ever bivy was with uh. Was with John in in uh in beer back in two that was at nine or eleven um it was very early on and we did a little flight from beer back to top landed above Manali and spent the night in the ice and then flew back the next day and yeah he kind of introduced you know this whole bivy thing to me a few years back but those guys are great. Well
Hugh Hugh Jim and and Jockey uh decided to set up a north. Versus the south of of Britain competition and uh it's so for just one weekend a year we all get together in in a location uh normally the middle of England and the principle is that we will travel because in England the weather's so shit most of the time uh you've got there but there is somewhere in the UK that's going to be good um so we decided to have a a mobile competition so it's it's the top. I think. I think 30 pilots from the north versus the top 30 in the south and we all get together have a bit of a party and then head off in our cars to wherever it's going to be good so this year we um all met up in the Lake District at Jockey's Place and then the the after a big night out at um at Jockey's Center we all headed off in a coach that we we uh found that morning and headed up to Scotland to a mountain called Tinto well a mountain called Tinto.
It's it's a it's a big biggish hill um but we don't really have mountains in the UK not real ones but um the biggish hill and then set a goal of 217k down into England and um uh I think out of a field of of 60 probably uh a third made it I think 20 15 or 20 people made it to to this uh little field down near Barney. That is
awesome. What a cool flight.
Yeah and and flying over the English countryside is uh an absolute treat it's it's always sort of emerald green and you can see both coasts uh from about you know 5,000 feet where we were and um it's this comp is becoming a really special weekend I mean we've had just ridiculous um weekends for the last couple of years. We've flown probably uh sort of goals of 200k um three times uh yeah over the weekend it's ridiculous. Are you guys calling that on the on the weather
is is the weekend flexible or do you just keep getting lucky with
the weather? It's it's totally mobile so we started in Scotland we all trekked down to the to the north north of England the next day was going to be good in the south so we're getting there. We're getting on the car and you drive for five hours and we all went from a little a really tiny hill sort of like 100 meter top to bottom and we flew from there down to Brighton which is 150k to to to where yeah I mean it's just ridiculous um Russ came over from uh because he he lives in France and um he he'd never flown 100k in the UK ever and uh in two days he flew 300k. Yeah. 75k so it's just unbelievable
that's awesome it's kind of it it's kind of along the principle that of the uh you know Nate's comp that's going on right now called the inner inner uh Intermountain Wide Open you know he runs it for two weeks and it's basically it's your four best scores on on X contest and people can fly anywhere you know it's it's kind of a bragging rights thing you know the the if the if the best scores are from Sun Valley then Sun Valley wins but it's not really the person it's more it's basically a way to get everybody to get to the top. Yeah. In the same zone and and go go flying which I mean the other day we launched here a couple days ago and there must have been 30 people on launch and we haven't seen that since the World Cup you know that just doesn't happen here usually. Yeah. There's maybe two of us so that was pretty exciting.
That sounds brilliant. Oh well I'll hit. Yeah. It's very tricky in the flying in the UK as well because you've got all sorts of airspace restrictions and things so yeah but it's all down to just it's. there's no prize or anything it's all down to bragging rights and it's just a good fun thing to get together with other other british nutters who um who share your your addiction to a silly sport well
so you you started kind of getting back into comp flying six or seven years ago and you know in the last couple years i mean really since sun valley so that's what i want to ask about is it seems like you have really uh upped your game especially since that incident which is you know in some ways kind of unexpected um but how have you before we talk about the incident how have you approached um just progression and training is there training involved or um because i i believe you're defending the british title this year is that correct i
i i did i'm sadly i lost it but i was very happy to to hand on the cup to alex coltman who who flew flew his socks off and thoroughly deserved it but uh yeah i came i came uh third in our comp this year but um yeah i was very happy to win it last last year yeah
and you are you are not surrounded by slouches in the air as well that's a that's a that's a hell of an achievement no
we've got a good good we've got a very good level of pilot in the uk and we've got an exciting new um section yeah
so we were asking about uh how you've kind of approached training and progression and um improvement since you got back into comp flying yeah
i i i think that um the comp is something you've got to spend time learning it it doesn't go in straight away the whole the little tricks here and there and the the whole the general uh discipline that you need to really um get to takes time i think and i i don't think however good you think you are there's there's always so many other pilots who just know how to get through a landscape quicker than you do that it takes a while before you understand the um the the sort of flow that you need to adopt so i don't think you can expect to um get to the to the high level that quickly and unless and you just got to sacrifice time with pilots that are much spending time with pilots who are much better than you are until you it starts to rub off on you um and and i've learned so much from so many people but uh probably i mean i've got a few people who i really admire in in our game and i try to match their style and i think um people like
well Russ Ogden is is a is a complete legend and the way he flies is is uh it's hard to emulate because he's so good but i like i like his style i like uh i like nick Nick Greece style as well um he's a great climber which i think is the main the main skill that you need to achieve if you can climb climb well with a with a in a good gaggle then you can generally fiddle your way towards the front um that's one skill i think gliding i love the way charles guzzo glides he always uh can seemingly get from just just from the top from the bottom to the top on a on a long glide just by being a bit more intelligent than everybody else um so but i i just think it takes time you know in our game um and you'll only you'll only get to a
level if you if you can put in the hard yards and um and and um and observe those around you who who are really doing a good job how much are you flying every year i fly i spoke about 300 hours a year a lot and quite a lot um and that's uh i try to do as as much as i can in in competition um because i think it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's i think that's really that's really where you can measure how you're improving or if you're improving or not um but it's such a hard game though as there's a there's a there is an element of of luck and i used to yeah i i used to think that i was always being a bit hard done by but your luck your luck improves the more practice you put in um it's funny how some people are more lucky
than others
isn't it yeah yeah but then but then you can have um some it's such a there is an element of lottery in this even we had this week we you know pepe maleke who is i think one of the one of the the best pilots he he won the competition in gemona the world the last world cup in gemona in italy uh and and he had been flying brilliantly he bombed this week um two k's from the start gate the whole he he did appeared to do nothing wrong but the air swallowed him up and he was gliding off and doing nothing that he wouldn't normally do that would end normally he'd end up right at the front and would win it but this day he ended up landing scratching his head and going well how did that happen so that's the i think it's the lovely thing about this spot sport is that you just never quite know where it's going to take you and it can it can be uh on an amazing journey and you can end up winning a task uh or it can be uh it can be uh it can be uh it can be uh it can be put you on your ass and um and you end up and you think that you don't even don't even know where to start right scratching
your head out in the field not in the middle of nowhere what the hell just happened it happens to everybody doesn't it yeah um it is of the 300 hours how much of that would you say is comp versus just free flying just approximately percentage wise i
would say about about 50 50 about 50 i love i mean i just love flying i'll go flying on a crappy day in england quite happily uh i love i've got a new tandem which i'm enjoying um any any form of being in the air especially if you can if you can get up to get up and away from a hill is is is fun so
20 give or take 24 years of flying um is have there been times where you haven't had that passion or desire or uh there have been times where you've gone off to to other things or has it been pretty consistently epic it's
the one thing in my life that i'd say has been a consistent grip uh i i love doing everything i i i like i like playing any or any game i'll play you know i i love skiing uh i i go quite hard when i ski i i love fishing i love playing tennis i'll do anything but the one thing i keep coming back to is is flying i'm i'm i can't i can't get away from it i i'm i'm the worst person to go driving with because i'm all got my head up looking at clouds all the way my wife hates hates it i might she says i'm either looking in a river or i'm looking up at the clouds i'm very rarely looking where i'm going so
the of the 300 hours you said about 50 50 you're comp flying and then you're you're free flying um when you're free flying are you really actively working on things that will help your car are you thinking about okay like this is a skill i really need to work on or is it more just uh going out to have a good time and those skills you know obviously they just add up and stack up anyway regardless every time we're in the air it's you're you're getting better but um are you quite active about your training to to bring it across to confine i think
i'm always trying to improve my yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
I mean it all comes back down to glider handling and how confident you are in various scenarios when it when it when you've got to be you've got to use your skills to at all stages and the sort of concentration is is such a important part of it I I really virtually I can't stop myself now but every time I'm in a thermal ideally I'm with flying with other people but I'm always I can't I'm competitive with anybody else even if it's a bird I'm ready I'm I find myself desperately trying to out thermal buzzards at home and not happy if I haven't you know out climb them and showing them that they're not not not not seeing it properly so it's a bit silly but I think that you've got to have a competitive side to you to to him and to want to improve and so yeah I don't I don't let any flight go by without thinking about how is it it's if I can improve certain ways I mean my my pitch control of my glide my reading of clouds cloud device and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on cloud decline it's just the whole the whole pattern of flow of the air flow through through a landscape I'm always always trying to improve my knowledge and and it's never quite good enough you know you
always think that you're gonna be better right there every every flight there's something that you can learn that you didn't know before and that's part of why I love it
okay buddy wall this is a story I know you've got a different windshield but you're wrong you've got a different written about and told probably too many times but we have to talk about it uh it was my first world cup sounds like it was your second world cup after coming back yeah uh tell me about what happened on the last day uh of the PWC in sun valley well
we we'd had uh sun valley is i i still think probably one of the most amazing places i've ever flown anywhere i've flown all all over the world but i still think sun valley is is the biggest experience you can have you know the air is so big the we'd had an amazing comp up until that point um we'd flown places in in landscape that i i it's hard to describe it but you know some of the flights we'd had a long long flight over um uh when we went to king mountain and and you're going you're linking mountain ranges and it's with insanely long glides between them and the air is so huge you you can't quite describe it you know the countdown you can see gliders ahead of you being ripped up in the sky like like confetti just being blasted up and you have to just hold on to the seat of your pants and count we were literally going 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 oh my god boom and yeah but that that flying was indescribable and um and and it well i'd loved it i absolutely love sun valley but um the day the last day was uh another
100k task and i think we only had one turn point to go around and it started out pretty nice but by the halfway stage it had got progressively windier and the climbs i'd noticed that you know i it's another standard sort of five meter climb but i noticed that this one was i was the normally in a five meter climb you're going up pretty quickly and and uh it pretty vertically at that at that rate but i was tracking back in this one i just said to myself okay you know this is really getting properly windy and we were getting into a section where the it was pretty mountainous as well i think and i'd started telling myself to be careful um and to be so i was i was flying on the safe side and and i'd been flying with another guy uh juan becerra who was on a ice peak as well and he disappeared the wind was coming in and flowing up up the mountainside's upper side of the mountain and i was flying up the mountainside's upper side of the mountain and he disappeared the wind was coming in and i was flying up the mountainside's upper side of the mountain series of gullies and and juana decided to we'd separated and he'd gone into the uh the lee side and i was i said to myself god that guy's a complete nutter uh he's he's really going to be asking for it down going down that side of the system straight into the rotor anyway so i headed off in down the what i thought were going to be the the the better um from a windy windy point of view the least turbulent area
and i thought i could still get up there from there and it was would be possibly one more big climb and then into gull um but i headed down a valley system and i've got there was a bit of a pimple i got a little bit of a lift off this pimple and i was thinking well i'm probably too low now and i was only probably 40 50 feet off the ground when uh i heard you know that awful puff noise and i knew it the way it was and i was like oh my god i'm going to die i'm going to die i'm going to die you know the wing are completely locked gone but i was just at that awkward height where i i was too low to throw the reserve but still high enough to really hurt no i just thought well this is this one this one is going to be a bit of a of a thumb pin and sure enough i um hit
the ground a couple of seconds later and a couple of bumps run rolled into uh into some low scrub the glider rolled up and i was like oh my god i'm going to die i'm going to die i'm going to die up a bit as well and i think just sat there for a while and took stock and thought well i really have bumped in this time but properly in the middle of nowhere um ah what did i do i i i lay there for a while i sort of managed to i tried to push myself up but realized only one of my arms was working um and i so i pushed myself over to be face up and um my face was bleeding i had i bought a nice new pair of specs um that gouged a big gash in my nose so i was bleeding quite a lot but i sort of checked myself over pretty quickly realized there were no bones sticking out anywhere and so i thought well i was quite encouraged by that because i had hit the ground pretty hard but i i knew i'd either dislocated or broken my arm
and i knew my ribs were not in a good shape my my pelvis felt a bit um a bit busted as well so i just lay there and um took stock of the situation and tried i reached for my radio tried to call people on the radio but then realized that the battery had gone flat um looked at look got my mobile phone out which had plenty of battery but no signal uh and then i realized i was properly um i was looking up in the sky hoping that other gliders would come over but it's such a big big sky there um and and i thought we were possibly a bit a bit offline because of the wind um i so i and and
apart from juan i hadn't seen anybody for the last half an hour so i thought oh god actually maybe because of the wind maybe the task had been stopped and i hadn't heard it over the radio i didn't know i think it was i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know she stopped wasn't it
yeah it was i don't know we were trying to piece this together i don't we don't think it was stopped before you went in it was stopped very very late we were actually just uh i had a bit of a wild episode that day as well and when i landed at goal with russ and nick and some other guys i i thought already a couple of vans had come through to get the pilots in front of them yeah i was so far off the back i ended up taking a line totally directly i didn't push out into the flats like everybody else did because my instrument was saying go that way and this was my second comp and i didn't know any better so but they ended up calling it uh i i had the same thing my radio wasn't working i ended up calling it right about when the first gaggle got to that tiny turn point at that kind of windy corner which was about 20 miles from goal so it was just about you know give or take five ten minutes about when you went down we think
so so um anyway i couldn't see anybody i was looking up and i was like oh my god i'm not going to be able to see anybody in the sky trying to see if there was anybody coming past and and i'd i'd had this weird thing when i i was looking i'd been looking at clouds and looking across the valley and i could see the valley and everything and looking up at the mountains around and then i looked again and i i couldn't see the clouds which was odd and i couldn't see the the other side of the valley and i was looking at um bushes and trees maybe 200 yards away and then all of a sudden i couldn't see those and i watched my folk my focal point come towards me in the grass you know actually moving towards me until to a point where i could only focus on the twigs in the bush above my head and it was all a bit shocking everything else was a blur beyond it and i had this shock i had this voice it wasn't my voice but i had a voice uh it sounded a bit like my dad who knows everything about me and i about everything but he uh this voice said uh well guy this is obvious it's a clear sign that you're going into shock what you need now is some oxygen and uh i said i said out loud i said oh i've got some i've got some oxygen because we carry oxygen and uh i reached around into the back of my harness grabbed my cylinder of oxygen because yeah because we had it for sun valley flying and um
turned it on full blast and just snorted this uh gulped in air you know lungfuls of pure oxygen and watched the whole thing reboot it just it was amazing the whole system went right out and just worked out buff and then the clouds appeared the other side of the valley worked okay yeah so that that made me feel a lot better um and i didn't so i didn't lose any consciousness or anything which was uh which was important and i and i've people have told me since that that is is a classic sign of of of shock um so i was lucky i didn't i didn't succumb to that but then i lay there so i lay there in the harness made myself sort of comfortable i couldn't really i thought about putting the glider out a bit the glider was my glider was half out and it was still howling gale coming up the valley so it would sort of grip the wind a bit but i was i was pretty well pinned in with these bushes so i wasn't going anywhere i wasn't being dragged or anything and i thought about getting my reserve and putting that out to if anybody came past they could see it a bit more easily i just didn't have the strength to do it i i couldn't i could just about get on my all fours sometimes and then it was too much pain so i i just sat there in the harness and thought well um maybe there'll be somebody coming along he'll see me and come and come and rescue me in a minute but um and then it got it got sort of started getting dark uh and i thought well you know probably unlikely that i'm going to be rescued tonight um so i just made myself as comfortable as good as i could i was perfectly warm because i had all my you know all the weather warm clothes because you fly so high there and i thought well you know this isn't going to be too bad and then i i heard this
just rumbling noise and i what the what the fuck and i i looked up because i couldn't really look i had to sort of strain over backwards and i could see up on the hillside you know it was a sort of sage grassy sagebrush valley side that i was on and i was probably about two-thirds of the way up up the side of the valley and probably 200 meters above me was this bloody great bear
sitting looking at me and uh and it was and it would sniff it could sniff and it would look and i could see its eyes and it it could see me i could see it and i knew it was interested and it wasn't it wasn't scared at all it was just looking at me and then every now and then the glider would fluff up and he'd back off a few steps and um and then but he just he was definitely intent on on seeing what what i was so and then it got darker and darker and i couldn't see him again so uh he'd been sitting there for probably 10 minutes 10 or 15 minutes as i just it got darker and um and then i couldn't see but i was just perfect yeah so i thought oh this is good and that's you probably slept you
probably slept like a baby
well i at that point i just thought you know what i'm edible i'm edible and i've and i'm i'm covered in blood because of my nose there's blood all over my face and stuff and i thought oh god you know this isn't very good so i thought well what i bet what the bears not like and i thought well they don't like americans with guns hunting them uh so i thought well if i can make it look like i'm a little hunting party out so so i got my mobile phone that had i still had a battery so i took flash pictures and i thought i'll sing sing american campfire song so i i sang she'll be coming around the mountain when she comes yeehaw as loudly as i could took pictures with my mobile phone and got i got my pen knife out a little silly pen knife with about a two inch blade on it and and i had one cheese sandwich um that i didn't eat and i i i've had it ready for the bear i just thought well
this might be the only thing that puts him off eating me is if i feed him a cheese sandwich first so i i did my best anyway i didn't i didn't see him again i heard i heard him later that night in the trees below down and there was some a couple of sort of saplings and things i think i heard what sounded like the bear just sort of crashing about a bit down there but um i didn't see him again but it was that that wasn't that wasn't a very restful night no that wouldn't
have been a restful night yeah
um so anyway so i woke up in the morning uh about uh well i still didn't really sleep but i i i was pretty conscious about at about eight o 'clock and i sort of decided that i was um probably not going to be found i don't know why i thought that i knew mike uh and nate nate had always said if you get lost um head down hill and eventually you'll you'll get out of you'll get to somewhere as long as you just head downhill get to that that will lead to to a road eventually so i had that in my mind and i had mike fow the meat director remember when he he gave a a lecture because the the i think the south americans were a bit worried about um how wild the countryside was that we were flying over and he'd said don't worry we won't if you do get lost we won't leave you out there on the hill so i had that that was the first thing that i did and then i went to the really kept me going mike's words i kept on repeating it they're not going to leave me out here but i just thought it would be so hard i couldn't i hadn't seen any sign there was no sign of human life at all and i was quite quite high up where i crashed so and that night the first night uh i hadn't seen a single light on the horizon there was nothing out there so i realized how remote my chances were of being found um
and i just thought well if i can just it looked like at the bottom of the valley there was some there was a stream and i had a i had i had about three liters of water with me as ballast but i thought that's going to run out soon if i can just get to the to the stream i'm going to be i can i can last i can eke out an existence for days and days and days i just need water and and i'll be fine so i decided that at if if 10 o 'clock that morning i was going to be able to get to the you know no sign of anybody i was going to go um which was probably the wrong decision but in my state i just thought um i i needed water so i i i left everything that was heavy i took i didn't have any any of my warm clothes i'd left my jacket stupidly and i uh just worked out that if i pulled with my my legs my legs were felt good
i pulled with my legs uh ignored the pain of my pelvis and pushed with my good arm and then i could actually snake away through the bits the tufts of grass and a bit of sagebrush and i could actually get a get going down the hill because it was quite steep hill down to the and it probably took me about three hours but i made it down to the bottom of the valley uh only to find that this lovely stream bed was dry and i was able to get to the bottom of the valley and i was able to as a bone um absolutely it had had been a stream once but it was completely bone dry
august there's no water yeah
no water at all so at that point it was flat and i couldn't carry on doing my um my pulling and pushing and i i just had to find some way of um of standing up uh if i was going to carry on any further i thought well maybe maybe a bit further down there'll be the odd pool maybe i'll be able to get to the bottom of the valley and i'll be able to maybe there's a some some some form of water that i can find from somewhere or a bit of damp earth that i can dig and find a find a spring or something so i just reached out my hand and there miraculously was this big strong stick uh that was about five foot long i snapped the end off and it had a nice little spike that i could put my ballast um bag on that's the only thing i took with me uh and the i'd left the cheese sandwich up with the um with with all my kit decoy for the bears yeah exactly
and um so off i went and uh well so so i i got this stick and i worked out if i if i levered you know use my good arm and levered myself forward i could get into a state where with a good old push from the legs and a and a heave on the on the stick i could maybe get up onto my feet i thought if i could just be upright you know my pelvis i knew my pelvis was not good because i could feel the bones not quite right you know it was definitely broken but i thought it wasn't sticking out it wasn't like i'd broken the whole uh something off the you know the ball joint off the top of my legs or something and what it was basically there and intact what
level of pain were you in at that point uh
yeah it wasn't good yeah okay it's more pain than i've had before but i think that you've got so much adrenaline going around your system that you can you can sort of park the pain and and i knew uh your pain is only created by your brain so you if you can concentrate hard enough you can you can sort of ignore it yeah i mean it's hard but but once you when you've got no alternative and you've got to you've got to find a fashion a way of saving your you can it's you can put up with an awful lot so i you know it took me a couple of hours probably and i did pitch myself off a couple of times which wasn't good but i put that eventually i managed to get all the leverage right and everything working and got up onto my feet and then then i could if i just swung a leg you know six inches plant the pole again swing the other leg you know just you
swung leg by leg and then i was sort of moving and that just that sense of being upright and and going somewhere and every 10 meters uh i i sort of stop and look back and go oh yeah that's i'm getting out of here somehow um so i did about i think i got about a kilometer that day uh a few times uh yeah you sort of stop i lent up against a bush a tree for a while and um yeah you sort of contemplated my sad state that i was in um but then yeah you just when you just have to move on and uh
but later that that day i saw i did all these um this over development going on i couldn't believe it but it you know the clouds were just getting bigger and bigger and then the tops were coming through and they were going q nimi and i thought oh god yeah and sure enough about eight o 'clock that night this huge thunderstorm blew up and it just dumped rain from eight till about i don't know two in the morning huge electric storm i'm sure you would have seen it and i got absolutely i lay down in this ditch and just got drenched i just had a i had my gray pulley out gray woolly pulley on and uh luckily i had some merino undies and i think they would probably save my life but i got properly high properly hypothermic that night it was you know freezing cold and and my my legs were i had different a weird thing with my different body parts uh all having a conversation so i was lying there freezing shivering and just breathing into my jumper had my my busted shoulder and arm was like a canada canadian we we sell quite a lot of wine in canada so i know i know the canadian accent and it was a you know as canadian and he was sort of on my side saying you know don't worry you know it looks bad but uh it's it's not it's it's not really not that bad and i had my legs were two english pop you know sort of posh english twits who were saying well we don't care what you're saying and i was like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry he says we're not going to do any more walking at all uh we've we've had it this is this is like the
uh the animal house you've got the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other yeah
literally and he was this guy going don't you worry about those boys guy you know they're going to do what they're told and i'll sort them out you just carry on you know doing what you're doing that that's good that'll keep you warm and this this pullover is a lot better than you think it is so i had this this really weird thing and then I eventually I think I nodded off and I had this odd dream that I was in a like a camping a trade show selling camping equipment and I was lying there in the ditch and people would be coming past and they were saying so so what are you selling there there was and I was saying I'm just not selling anything I've got a very warm pullover but I tell you it's freezing cold and I'm wet and if I were you I'd buy any other tent in this in this uh anything other than the gray woolly that I'm wearing and anyways I think I was sort of hallucinating a bit and going off on one but um and that was a wicked storm that
night man we were all freaked out we just thought holy shit things just
got a lot worse for him it was I mean I don't know if you often have a problem with that but I think it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's have storms like that but it was the lightning was sensational and I just watched this storm I think that actually that was the other thing that's that probably saved me because um there was so much thunder and noise and and it was pretty terrifying to if you were an animal and I reckon all the bears and cougars were holed up not wanting to be out hunting eating anything that night so I think I was I was very lucky because of that but um anyway in the morning I I I so woke up I was freezing cold but luckily the sun as soon as it came out it was so it's actually you've got such a lovely hot sun there it warmed me up pretty quickly that fixed fixed the hypothermia and um I again but I took another couple of hours to get to my feet and my because my all my clothes were soaking wet there was a lot heavier and everything but so that was a really brutal
brutal morning but I got going and I got around the corner uh in the in the valley bottom and um I could see this little wooden shack this beautiful you know little wooden hut with two windows in a door in the middle and it was underneath a lovely willow tree that was by the stream and and now the stream has some water in it by now because of the storm and uh I was just cursing my life thinking you idiot you if you'd just gone another 200 yards the night before you could have slept in there and I was thinking that but I bet you there's a some guy who's got baked beans and he's probably got some food and uh and he might who knows he might have a radio and and anyway so I'm walking up to this this hut and I can see I can I'm thinking that well there's definitely well it's definitely inhabited because there's glass in the window getting closer and closer and closer I'm probably 50 meters away and I'm walking up to this this hut and I'm walking up to this this hut and I'm getting really excited and I look up again no shack nothing and I go I go what
how did how how did that happen I could see I was like counting the tiles on the roof I mean it was just very vivid it was just totally I could draw it for you uh today and the tree was still there this lovely willow tree was there and it was the perfect place for for a shack but it's just a gone and um excellent it's just your mind just just just trying to keep you going while you're trying to keep you going while you're in in pain and yeah just keeping you going a few hundred yards but um that was pretty weird um but then I carried on and um it got a bit hot and then you start playing games just to pass the time I was I'd noticed that the there were a whole crew of um
fly that it had this big big scabby gash on my nose that I said and and the flies were getting into it and uh I noticed most of them were sort of blue bottles but then there was one green one who was a bit quicker than the others who every time I'd I'd I'd sort of brush them away and they'd all get back but it was always the green one who'd get back on their quick quickest and so I'd I started sort of playing like musical chairs with the flies and I'd I'd I'd go up my nose and they'd all fly up and I'd sing them a song and see who who could who would be back on their last uh anyway I did that for a couple of hours that seemed to amuse me I have to I have to jump
in and give the the listeners a little bit of perspective on where you were what what uh I mean this is literally our backyard and it seems like when it when you know when of course we knew you were missing that first night and by the
time I got there I was like oh my god I'm gonna die I'm gonna die I'm gonna die
the next morning had mounted the whole town uh to go search and we had ATVs and motorcycles and helicopters and uh you know the Blackhawks so I think we had two of those operating and and I mean it was this major mission and you think with that kind of personnel going on we were all just super confident that we would find you in no time and the but the the problem is we had no idea where we assumed you were on course line because we had to um but because you know we didn't have a tracker on you we didn't know where on course line and it's you know it's 100 kilometers which is 60 miles but the course line is pretty defined it could
be you could be you could be 20k off the course line and and then suddenly it just becomes
you know when we met down at the police station and they mapped it all out you still don't get an idea until you go out there I mean and this is country that I've said at the time that was the first time I'd flown through there but now I've flown over it a lot um and it terrifies me every single time I fly over that because you realize that it is no man's land I mean it's just you know you leave this town and literally you know if you go 15 kilometers kind of Southwest which is what we did that day we call that no man's land um and it's just when we started hiking on those hills looking for you and I was where they put me was wasn't even close to you um but you know what you start dispersing up these hills and you've got all these people and even with all of that you know
they they they set it up really it was very organized and you know you always have to be able to see the next person in the line and you know don't make sure you don't go over the same place again and that you know they really taught us how to search uh and you go out there and by the end of that first day I just started thinking there's no way in hell we're gonna find guy I just thought this this is this is a needle in a haystack and it was just so interesting how it changed from everybody in the morning just being so excited okay we're gonna find them it's not gonna be a problem and then by that night and then the storm by that night it was just like there's there's no way we're ever gonna find him he he doesn't walk out of there or it's gonna be a miracle basically I just I we've had a couple no not a couple we had one incident just a couple days ago that reminded me of of how incredibly hard it is to find somebody and especially in that kind of terrain it's just it's it's really tough but anyway carry on yeah
it wasn't it wasn't good but so but I I hadn't seen any I I knew everybody would have been looking around but I I I'd seen the odd plane go over but I just thought it's that's such a long way away and if you you can't see somebody on the ground in a little in a light aircraft how how are they ever going to see me you know I knew that my glider was pretty well rolled up and and I my glider happens to be it was an a a nice ice peak with some gray blue cloud which is pretty much the same color same color as the as the sagebrush I knew it was going to be impossible and I hadn't put it out very cleverly well at all it was just a little probably one corner a third of the wing was out and fluffing around in the breeze but really you it was pretty well camouflaged so I I just thought there's no way anybody's going to find me unless I unless I walk out myself so I'm doing my best job um
and and then probably it's it was 12 o 'clock I think on the set on the third day I heard for the first time the helicopter I heard a definite helicopter you know engine saw sand I looked around couldn't see anything and then um about probably about 10 minutes later I heard it again and it came actually came into our into my Valley I saw it fly in up but there was sort of a bit of a curve in the Valley and I and then it seemed to fly straight through at ahead of the valley and and then out and i just didn't hear it again and it looked like it had gone so i just i i just thought well that's that's as close as you'll come and that's it that they've they've they've tracked through they haven't seen the glider and they've actually gone and missed it so i i actually put a little bit of video on my phone i was keeping a little bit of a phone log because i had some battery left and i just said how disappointing that was
incredibly disappointing after that you know to be so close and not to be found but i resolved that my fate was was going to be to walk out so i carried on going but actually um the black hawk had one Russ Ogden in it who is not noted for his eyesight um he can generally not see further than his glider when he's flying but he had he was in the helicopter and i don't quite know why they'd chosen russ to be in the helicopter but uh he was there and he'd seen out of the corner of his eye my glider and told the and it was the it was a sweep they'd been he'd been in the helicopter all day and and i think the previous day as well and it was the furthest sweep to the south that they were doing uh and and just as they were leaving that valley he saw it and he told the guy to go around and the pilot to go around and land
and that's why i hadn't heard the engine because they had actually landed and and shut the engines off pretty quickly and um russ had leapt out of the black hawk where he said he ran towards the the um the wreckage of my glider and my harness saw the blood on the on the uh on the harness itself and thought oh god he's definitely been eaten so they're looking around in the bushes for uh body parts or anything calling out yelling out and then the other guy i don't know who the other guy was who was with him but the other guy saw i think the track my track going down the valley and they um so they followed the trail down uh to the bottom of the valley and then they found a footprint and that's the point where they got went oh actually this is a bit interesting uh so they came they came running down you know like like the lone ranger and king masabi track tracking my trail and found more and more footprints yeah and um radiated the helicopter to to meet them down further down the track the helicopter took off came down and flew down the track flew down the valley to pick them up um came all the way down i saw i heard the helicopter and then saw it's flying uh probably 150 meters above the ground came right over my head and i'm there with uh my stick with a red t-shirt on the end of the stick and i'm waving it at the helicopter going yay i've saved i've been saved that's fantastic and the helicopter turned around went flew back up the valley went around the corner gone again and i'm thinking are you kidding me fuck no way and they hadn't seen they really hadn't seen me again i mean that just goes to show how lucky i was to have been found because i was right underneath them by this time on a on a like a cow track uh and they still hadn't seen me there were still people in the helicopter not one of them saw me so anyway they went they flew around the corner landed again picked up russ and um and then about probably 40 minutes later it seemed like eternity but like they came down the valley this time at about 150 feet and oh sorry at about 50 feet and and nearly knocked me over with the wash because it's such a massive helicopter and then landed and um i struggled over and the the door of the helicopter goes back and it's a beaming Russ Ogden now i said what what took you so long
but uh it was uh pretty emotional moment yeah for me certainly and i and i know russ was um oh
it was so awesome seeing his face that night he was lit up like a christmas tree i mean really you know to to take you through the the opposite side of it you know they you start you know everybody's so excited it's gonna happen and then you know and then inevitably you know time stretches on and you start hearing all these grim things like oh if you don't find somebody in the first 24 hours it means x and then you know then there was the storm and then there was the next day and i mean really we were really starting to think we were looking for a body and it's just yeah you start to get really down and you know the adrenaline is gone and and uh and the search seems hopeless and and uh i mean when we got that call that next day that you'd been found and you
you'd walked a half a mile or something and uh i mean we were just wow it was a really a special it was special for the whole town i mean really the town was you know this this little town's small and the town was pretty involved and excited and yeah that was a special moment for me and i think that's that's what i'm trying to do yeah
i mean there's some i mean it was it was the backstories i think i mean my my trudging along the valley is is was is my crash story is one story but the other stories i think are almost more interesting the um when i was in hospital i had a um a visit from the guy you know uh is it bob wolf who is the one of the retrieved drivers we had and i i got to know him uh on the the long time he was there and i was like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die we had the 190 odd k one where we didn't nobody made it but we up to a busload of us got pretty close to the goal and i'd been sitting in the front seat it must have been rob rob wolf
yeah he was our support driver on the rocket traverse yeah rob rob rob wolf
yeah what am i saying rob and he uh i got to got chatting with him and he's uh he's a nice very nice you know normal fellow and we've been swapping good good stories and telling jokes and stuff and you know we've and things and we stopped for dinner and i had dinner with him anyway he he um had heard about the accident and uh well because the crash and he was looking up on the internet and he with his wife at home and he said that um they got all of the maps out and he was saying that's a real shame because that english guy you know he got on really well and uh it's a shame he's got gone missing so they were having a look and he was telling his wife he's saying i haven't got a clue where he could be with they had all these maps out on the kitchen table and uh and he could be anywhere in this you know with the wind the way it was he could be all over the place here and uh she said to him well that's interesting but what are you pointing at and uh he said what do you mean pointing at she said all this time you've been saying how impossible it is to find him your
he he said well i'm not pointing at anything and she's so she got a pencil and she put a cross on the map where his finger was and he said well he could be there it's a bit weird but uh but but yeah it's just sort of you know with the way the wind could be but anyway but it could be anywhere and he said they went to bed he didn't really get to sleep at all and uh in the he said he got up about three o 'clock in the morning and decided well i'm not going to sleep i'm going to because it was really niggling him uh he said i'm going to go and join in the rescue so he went into the because the rescue got moved to the sheriff's office i think so he said he went into the sheriff's office and said look if it's okay with you this might sound a bit weird but i want to go and look uh where i this cross is on the map so the sheriff put on the official record okay rob is looking in in this this spot he drove his truck to his near as he could get to it i think on the other side of the the cot there was a sort of a bit of higher ground and he hiked up uh and took him hours and hours and hours to hike up and he got up at about 12 o 'clock he came over this top of this coal and he was looking down to the point where he'd marked this cross on the map and uh when he saw the helicopter come in from the other side and yeah and he said yeah he said he said look you know he came into me in the hospital and he said look i'm a redneck sort of guy and i don't believe in this sort of shit but i just wanted to tell you face to face that this this is what happened and and and i he said i was looking down i got my binoculars out of my own backpack and i could see the helicopter land i saw he described how russ leapt out of the heli out of the helicopter and tumbled down the hill and you know russ told me about this as well so i don't think he could have i you know he didn't
know that bit up so it's it was all pretty credible but he said i looked and i could see them them tracking down the hill i could see them running along the bottom of the valley and then i looked further down the valley and and there there i could see you walking along with your stick so i watched he said he watched the whole rescue play out over the course of an hour hour and a half cool and um i packed up his bag he said he was in a pretty emotional state because he he was like the rest of you he thought he was in a pretty emotional state and he said there was no chance in that that that scenery you you could ever be get found so uh he said that's a so that's one pretty weird story wow and then the other one was zach zach hargreaves who'd done an amazing job uh talking to my family at home um yeah that's a pretty horrible job for anybody to have to be the he was the liaison man and um he
had he'd got uh to know the girls pretty well well over the you know i've got two daughters and my wife and my eldest daughter chloe was the main point of contact with with zach and he'd kept them going over all this time and he'd he'd he'd said to them that you know his his background he was in charge of the search and rescue i think and his background was was in the military and he'd never not found somebody he'd been looking for which gave them a lot of hope but he hadn't actually told him that a lot of the time he'd been looking for somebody he'd been looking for people he'd he'd been looking for were already dead so uh but anyway at the end at the end of this he um he uh was like a real hero when when the word got back home and uh that i'd been found
he as far as my girls are concerned he was one of the greatest men on the planet and so uh i wrote him a letter after afterwards and sent him this this letter uh just for the pictures of his of his new fans and um he said he so he'd been away he's a he's a long distance truck driver and he he'd been away in his truck driving and he hadn't come across he hadn't been home i think but he came across this handwritten letter um in amongst a pile of bills and he opened up all he went through you know opened up the letter saw the picture and he'd heard in the meantime that my recovery um i'd recovered from the accident and that i'd had some crazy idea of going off to the uh Superfinal in columbia so he said he looked at the date the calendar and he went oh shit a Superfinal is um it looks like it's in three days time he said so he said he bought himself a ticket uh an airline ticket that that moment got on a plane they're pretty much the same day came out to columbia and um because he thought that i better he better keep an eye on me and i i was in the bar in roldanillo when i get this tap on the shoulder and it's zach i couldn't believe it amazing uh who was there just just yeah just keep an eye on you buddy and that night that night in the we were all sitting out in the square having drinks and having a you know the final time that you're doing in roldanillo which is a great place and um zach um saw this rather good-looking uh colombian lady across their square and their eyes met and um anyway he's only in the rest of history as they say right yeah it's unbelievable yeah so i think that those stories are possibly more interesting than the crash well
two two things we've got to talk about uh before we sign off i'm so glad you shared that story um the first is uh you know other than having a track record of the crash and the crash and the crash and the crash and the uh which of course back then in those days you know we weren't very religious about doing and of course we are now but uh what are the takeaways uh from from the accident and then and this this may not be even correct um but it seems to me and this was one thing nate wanted to to ask you about uh it seems to me like your flying has kind of gone through the roof since sun valley like you you've really stepped up your game um you know it's one thing to go for it's just take me through that a little bit because that was you know uh a pretty serious accident and you're you know you're at the Superfinal three months later uh and then since then you've you know got the british championship last year and you've done you have had some really remarkable results um tell me just about coming back from that because i think often in in in paragliding this is way more of a mental game than a physical game um was that hard was it obvious was it yeah what
was it well i i've had i mean i've had the fear in the past we all can get the fear i had i had uh i just i've had um situations where i've lost lost the wing and had nasty cascades which bizarrely were more frightening than the the the crash that i had i because nothing i could do about it wasn't it happens all so quickly and i i i was a bit surprised that i didn't feel any real flying trauma um after the accident i just i i i'd broken my arm pretty badly and i'd had a surgery on my shoulder um but all my ribs fixed pretty quickly i you know i'd punctured a lung that fixed quite quickly all your bones will will mend um i was a bit i didn't know how i would take
flying again but i was just um concentrating on getting my my body mended and i i knew that if i could fix that i i set myself this goal of getting into the Superfinal and and i was so surprised that where i crashed just gave me enough points to get into that that uh that final and i was buggered if i wasn't going to uh turf up there and see just see what see what a Superfinal was like um i don't i i just i just think that you know you you only have one life and if you you can't and what i suppose the crash if anything has told me not to not to not do things so i i now if i get an opportunity if i'm asked to go to some something and i'm a bit tired i'll still go uh whereas in the past i might have declined an invitation i
think now because um i suppose that yeah yeah i'm i'm more determined to do to do what i want to do tell me about and flying
style have you have you changed anything because of the accident do you fly more conservatively do you fly more risky do you no
i've i'm i've always been quite conservative uh and it's always a bit of a battle to to let go uh i'm a bit a bit too yeah too controlled i think and that's my i always my big problem at the moment is the end game i um i can roll along quite happily in the in the for most of the task and because my climbing is quite good i can i can keep keep uh the sort of the upper end of the of the thermal at the front but i'm terrible terrible at deciding when to go and that's the big area i've got to fix in my flying i'm always way too you know i watch the likes of pepe and yas and especially it just just go and go and go low super low and you know win tasks from impossible positions and that's something i've got to work out of my system but um no i i just um
the the whole Superfinal i think has getting getting over the accident and getting into that Superfinal and in that first task i had i'd only flown i'd fluff the glider up literally once on a cold november day uh so i crashed with the crash on the 25th of august uh i'd got better enough to get the glider out my shoulder was still a bit shit but i um could i i fluffed the glider up and took a little hop off the hill uh in november and then the weather was terrible in england until the Superfinal and i was able to Superfinal itself in january and um i arrived there with no practice at all and we had the first task day and um i fluked a sixth position in on the first time my first flight after after the accident i came sick on the first task and
you're fixed
and you're repaired i just i just thought yeah that's it i'm i'm fine there was no trauma no nothing and i'm sick in the Superfinal
i thought right well there's no way back from this so i i ended up coming in the mid-20s i think so i was i was and i thought this and i love the bunch of people that you mix with in world cups they're all so different and i love the different nations and but real characters all sharing the same stupid addiction and i just thought well i want to do more of this and um uh i think the just the more you do the more you learn and um style i don't think we i don't think we really radically change you just improve um here and there and it's a small game job if you can climb five percent better glide five percent better avoid making stupid decisions that get you isolated um all of a sudden you see the game a bit more clearly and um and i think um what we we've you know moving on from that i've i've um been keen to to put back into the the youth of the uk what what we can you know what knowledge i've gained and and i've managed to uh convince russell also that um russell has been been brilliant about um sharing his knowledge he's got way more knowledge than virtually anybody on the planet about how to race a paraglider so i've really enjoyed um this the um british paragliding uh racing academy that's that's been set up by some other english guys russell uh barney woodhead and Malin Lobb and and russell and i've been doing a boot camp so listening to russ uh instill his knowledge into young people about how to race a paraglider has is so uh it's such a privilege to hear because it it it's it really helps me as well i think there's i think we're all able to improve our flying and um listening to russ it's it's like it's like hearing something coming yeah coming from uh on high uh there's there's nothing that is is wrong yeah he knows the whole game we
always talk about Bill Belcourt being our guy like that that's around you know he was he was here the last few days and it's just like he opens his mouth and just flowers of knowledge come out that you you go god i just need to capture these things somehow and not bend them or hurt them or destroy them and russ is the same way i mean i i haven't had enough contact with russ he was here you know of course after the the PWC in some valley and was the inspiration really for this show i mean he gave a talk one day which i happened to just put on a camera and it was oh my god i mean i still have to go back to that and i'm still using that all the time in defense of the things that i do and it's just he's just really there are certain people who have really thought about what we do in a different way yeah
bill bill bill was really kind he came to see me in the hospital as well in in boise and he's such a sage uh level-headed uh experienced guy and the when you know my wife uh obviously had issues about because i was um adamant that i wasn't going to give up my life i was going to give up my life and i told her straight off that this wasn't a bump in the road however horrific the accident was for me and i how horrible it was for her and and and my girls i wasn't going to give it up and it was a bit of a shock to to her that that i was saying that but i was i just said i wasn't i'm not prepared to live a diluted version of my life in future when such an important part of it is it was um is is paragliding and bill kindly was there and and explained that you you can't you can't take that that's that away from somebody and he his i think it was really he who managed to convince her that um it wasn't such a bad idea to let me carry on paragliding guy
that is uh kind of a poetic and perfect place to leave it i think i've uh i know you you need to get to bed dude you got some crushing to do in the next few days and uh i really have appreciated this time with you i'm sure we're going to be spending some time together in the air in the future but thank you for sharing that quite quite yeah well when are you
next coming over when you must come over and come and oh i'd love to yeah actually yeah and you know what i've been talking to
barney quite a bit lately he and i become quite good friends and i just need to uh yeah i need to make that happen as you know my my focus uh has been kind of on the ex-alps and i'll be getting into the training here pretty shortly the physical side of that uh for the for the next ex-alps and i but i think this next one will probably be my last so after that i'll be a little more freed up to uh tee off around the world and go do some uh yeah but that north south cup just sounds brilliant and uh you guys are always just you know we there there are still lots of stories about you know mark wats pounding it in chelan and taking off again and i mean you
know i've been doing a lot of things and i've been doing a lot of things and i've been
the brits are you know we just love having you guys over here so likewise uh the invitation is always open i hope you'll come join us again in sun valley as you pointed out at the top of the show this is a pretty special place i'd love to it gives and gives so yeah
i would definitely jump at a chance of coming back to sun valley and i think everybody should experience your big air and your hospitality because um that was the the p all of the genuine hospitality you get in the states i think it's probably only matched in the in arab countries probably but the way you welcome strangers in and uh and uh it's it's uh very humbling and uh all the people there you know the Nick Greece the farmers the uh nates uh you know mike fow they were all so special people to meet and um yeah i love you oh
thank you well we love you too man and it was that was uh that was a heroic effort on a lot of people's parts and especially yours and uh we were glad of course you got through it and uh keep on crushing and uh yeah let's let's let's do this again but in the sky next time thanks guy i really appreciate it okay
thanks nick cheers
i hope you enjoyed that a lot of lessons there a lot of little pieces of advice some good things to be thinking about when it comes to safety and your kit and uh what we all need to be thinking about every time we launch off a mountain i'd really love your feedback i'd really love to hear what other guests you'd like to have on the show uh send me any questions that haven't been answered in one of the previous shows if you're just discovering the podcast um i'm just reminded over and over again when i have these talks about some of the great things people have put out there in the past i got i was fortunate enough to fly with bill belcourt this last week um he was part of that rescue i was talking about in the beginning he was the very first show just some unbelievable advice there you want to learn how to glide check out matt beechner's episode if you want to laugh hysterically check out nate scales he's got some story about the X-Alps that i promise will make you cry with laughter um a lot of great shows there go back check them out enjoy them uh as always all we ask for is a buck a show if you've got something out of this one or one of the previous ones you can find that donation link on the website cloudbasedmayhem.com thank you thank you thank you it makes this all possible really enjoying doing it we're going to keep doing it and just finally i want to put a shout out to my buddy michael lang who sent me some acro toggles a few months back i just put them on my cross country wing on my peak four recently and i gotta say that i think this is a really good move i had a pretty major incident last year after i came back from the X-Alps i got all spun up in my glider i won't go into the full details here but uh long and short of it was i couldn't get my hands out because i had big gloves on it's quite cold here up high and all spun up went to throw my reserve and i couldn't get my hands out of my toggles out of my brake toggles and uh so that was pretty exciting ended up being able to sort it out didn't have to throw my reserve so it all ended up okay but a good reminder to be thinking about things like that but also um these you know using acro toggles number one it allows you to just reach out and grab them um doesn't have to have your hand stuck into something but it also gives you just a lot more
and a lot more input uh if you have acro toggles on your wing so i just wanted to put out a shout to to michael appreciate those if you want to get a pair let me know just reach out to me via email or facebook or whatever and i can put you in touch with michael that's it for the show thanks a lot hope you enjoyed that see you on the next one cheers