Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloud Based Mayhem. I am so stoked to bring you this show. About a month ago now, when I went down to Salt Lake City to do the podcast with Bill Belcourt, which has been a raging success. Thank you all so much for your comments. I'm hearing again and again from folks that they're listening once and then just hit rewind and listening to it again and again. And that's what I love about these shows. I think there's just so much great knowledge there. And that one with Bill was fantastic. So from Bill's office, I went across town and sat down with one of my own real mentors and instructors. Actually, 11 years ago, Chris Santacroce and his partner, Jeff Farrell, were the guys that taught me how to fly. And that's how I got my license and what enabled all this madness of the last decade.
And so he's been one of the most requested people to get on the show. Chris Santacroce has been in the game since the very beginning, literally since he was a teenager. Spent years, I think 13 years as a Red Bull athlete with the Red Bull crew doing base jumping and hang gliding. And if it flies, Chris flies it. And he's been running Superfly now for a long time. One of the places I always send people to go learn how to fly along with Rob Sporad at Eagle. There are other great places to learn. We talk about that in this podcast, but Chris has just been one of the, he's been a backbone of this sport since the very beginning. And in this episode, we get into all kinds of amazing things. We talk about his trip with Will Gadd flying across the Andes.
We dig back into his cross country years because he's not flying a ton of cross country these days. He's doing more instruction and acro and SIV. We get way deep on modern SIV and what he's learned over the years. We talk about. The kind of students that really are, give him a lot of pause and make him a bit nervous and how they kind of navigate that potential risk. He brings up a really cool concept of exploring the random factor, which is something I hadn't, I hadn't heard of before. He talks about, kind of gives us a caveat, a bit of a warning for the ambition of flying, which is certainly relevant to a lot of the kind of things that I do with the X-Alps and that kind of thing. So yeah, how to pick a school. We talk about his safety app that he's been developing.
That's really cool. We talk a lot about safety. We talk a lot about the business of paragliding and we just talk a lot about really terrific things. This is one of those episodes where typically I record it, put it away for a few weeks. And then when I'm making my show notes and all that kind of thing, we get, we're getting ready to send it off to miles to the edit bay. I re-listen really briefly and just make a bunch of notes and I'll listen to the whole thing again when it actually comes out. But this was one of those where I listened. And I just kept hitting pause and making notes and hitting pause and making more notes. So I hope you do the same. Maybe the first time just listen through. And then the second time, go back with a pen and paper and write a lot of this down. It'll keep you safe. It'll keep you flying for a long time. It'll greatly expand the length of your career in this amazing sport, whether you're hang gliding, paragliding, base jumping, whatever it is that you love to do.
Hopefully all the above. Very briefly, I just want to remind you. We've got this DeLorme giveaway, the unit that I took across Alaska. So it's not one of the new Garmin units, but it's fully functional. Totally awesome Explorer unit. We're doing a giveaway of that unit before the end of May. Whoever puts up the best comment and rating on iTunes or Google or Stitcher or however you listen to the podcast, I'll go through all those at the end of the May. And the one that I like the most, I'll send a unit off to. So I think retail, those are about $375. And again, this is used. It's the one I took. I took it across Alaska, but it totally works. It's great. And it's ready to keep you safe for your big summer of flying coming up. And the other one I have is Alistair Dickey with Blue Sky Vario down in Australia.
He makes these great little audio barrios that connect via Bluetooth to your whatever flying app you use, either on Android or OS, whether that be Fly Sky High or XC Soar or whatever you use. So I've been doing some testing with those. They're fantastic. I've used the XC Racer a lot, which is also fantastic. So
one's better than the other or anything else. But I've got one to give away. Alistair sent me a few of these a little while ago. They're awesome little units. And again, if you give us a good rating or and say something cool on one of those platforms, however you get your podcast and that little Vario could be yours, then we're going to let that go until the end of May. So that's about all I have for housekeeping right now. Without further ado, please enjoy this most awesome podcast with Chris Santacroce.
Chris, how's it going? Super good. Awesome, man. This is for me, it's kind of like full circle, right? Eleven years ago, I came here to learn how to paraglide. What's happened? Hard to believe. It is hard to believe. So for those who don't know, you are it wouldn't be an overstatement to say you're a legend in the sport. Can you take us back and how you got into it? Because you were a little rug rat, little teenager, right? When you got into all this. Exactly. I
was skiing a whole bunch and I just decided I should give my knees a break. I saw the writing on the wall. If I kept skiing every single day, I was going to end up with no cartilage. So I saw some paragliding and I was like, that is how I want to catch my hair from now on. And I stumbled into basically a job relining paragliders, working in the business like in my first year. And where are we? And this is here in Salt Lake City. And that's 1991, if my memory serves me. Yeah. And so I was a U.P. Soaring Center, it was called at the time. Okay.
For a
couple of years. And then I moved to Sun Valley and I worked for Greg Smith with Dave Bridges, and that lasted for around three years. And then we started Superfly in 1998. So I'm not very good at math, but it's been a while.
It's been a while. Yeah, it has. Just for timing sake, when did like Red Bull happen and when did you know, because you'd gone from this kind of skiing background and then all of a sudden you were making your money from this sport and and not just from paragliding, from from hang gliding and jumping and base jumping and wings. I mean, you're you've done kind of the whole gamut, right?
Yeah. So I was a Red Bull guy for 13 years. Okay. And the way that started was that I taught my lifelong friend. In fact, his dad and my dad went to high school together, Othar Lawrence, how to fly. And within a couple of years, he was national champion and he was in Colorado. So he met up with Chris Davenport, the basically original Red Bull athlete in the United States. And they hatched a plan to not only create a spot for Othar as a paragliding athlete, but then also to start Red Bull paragliding events in the US. And I was there and I was helping to drop the base jumpers, Frank Gambale out of my paraglider. And I couldn't help noticing that it was like really good energy and really fun to be around.
And a year or so later, there was a spot for me as a Red Bull athlete. And that was
it was
an incredible, cool ride that stemmed all the way from traveling for cross country competitions, traveling for the acro competitions for lots of years. Every single year seemed to be a little bit different. There were some years we just went to the Southeast and flew huge dudes on paramotor tandems. There was we did a full tour of the Caribbean, like every island, Dominican Republic, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico. You name it, we were going there multiple times per year just to put on shows and help pump up the Red Bull market there. Sometimes we were meant to just go out and do our own thing. And so I helped, you know, Will with his Grand Canyon thing. And we hiked across the Andes. And man, my mind just spins when I think about all the crazy fun stuff that we got to do.
We ended up with a really hot hang glider trike. And I got to fly that all over the continent for years. And we did all sorts of crazy stuff. With that thing, I can't even speak about.
Yeah, so it was a great ride, super fun.
And so, you know, before you and I met, you taught me, you and Jeff taught me back in 2006. And if I have my math right, things had quieted down considerably for you then. But there was, you know, I've heard through the grapevine, when you say wild and crazy, too, with flying, it was all of it was wild and crazy. Life was a lot different for you back then. Expand on stuff. Some of that, like just I'd love to hear just about the flying side of it, because, you know, you used to really hunt miles and kilometers and and in competitions. And it doesn't look like that for you anymore. Right. I'd love to know about the transition and why and how it looked. Yeah.
So, you know, there's no doubt that flying big distance is off the hook. I love it now. I loved it then. And just so happens that it's not my top priority now. The basic shakedown on all that is when I used to go to destinations, when I used to go to competitions, basically what I was doing was taking my vacation time away from our important distribution business in the school. And I was devoting it to that. And I couldn't help noticing that I was going back to the same places. And sometimes we were doing the same flights and it was kind of sometimes with the same people. And sometimes I'd be. Taking all my vacation to go to Europe, to go to the same place, taking up the same dudes in the rain again.
And so I just did kind of a head scratch at some certain point. And I just asked myself if it was what I wanted to fill my life with. Things changed. So I started to feel what most people would probably feel when they're 20 odd years into doing the same sort of thing all the time. And that is what starts to look a little bit like burnout, but more like inspiration to mix it up in a huge way, like to make all the weeks of the year look and feel different. And so that's been the challenge. And the way that I do it is I mix in teaching beginner students with a whole bunch of tandems with little skydiving here and some base jumping there and some hang gliding and then teaching some hang gliding.
And then, you know, some years I do 60 days a year driving the boat. And I just keep mixing it up as much as I possibly can. And when something new pops up, for example, Project Airtime and making flights happen for disabled people, I'm all over it. And as long as when I drive around the corner, you know, to the south side over there, as I have done for basically twenty five years now, there's something new going on and I'm smiling, but it has to be a little different. And in the last couple of days, it's like I have a drone. And so I'm launching the Project Airtime guys and I'm flying the drone and getting really cool video of them and then I have a GoPro Karma. And so I'm just the videos coming up to the next level.
And there's other people flying the chair with the disabled people like our one of our pilots, Blake Pelton. And it's different. And whenever it's different, I'm smiling.
Was there did it rock your world a little bit to come out of being a pro athlete? Did it is there a lot of folks? I grew up in the ski racing. Zone and, you know, some of those guys like Davenport, they make the transition really well, some of them did, you know, and ended up going down some pretty dark roads. Was it was was the transition for you? Because you seem like a lot of pro athletes that I, you know, that I've known over the years, you just attack stuff and you love it and massage it and get good at it. And it seems like that's what you've done with this business, your kids. Was it just a kind of a was it an easy, you know, I'm leaving that behind in this new thing or was it kind of like, oh, shit.
Well, one interesting thing for me was I never felt like particularly an athlete. I just fly. And, you know, when I was younger, it was always ten point five out of ten in terms of intensity and as time went on, you know, I dial it down a little tiny bit, but I just go fly and so that I was a Red Bull guy or that I was lucky enough to get to travel and do whatever projects I ever dreamt up. Was just kind of coincidental for me. And in retrospect, just a little bit surreal that it was so easy and that it was so awesome and we got to do so much.
There was a slight transition when I decided not to be a Red Bull guy anymore. That was, you know, a couple of weeks worth of just feeling a little bit awkward just because I've been so used to it. But what I figured out was that in the beginning, Red Bull made my world really big, tons of opportunity. And towards the end, I couldn't always schedule things that I wanted to do, like with family or with Superfly or maneuvers or trips or anything because I just had to be sort of on call for Red Bull. And that was my job. And so in the end, I figured out it was actually making my world smaller. So when I let it go, then my world got really big. So in the year following my departure from Red Bull, I tooled up and made my own winches, which I love and use every day, and they've proven to be excellent.
Never really got inspired to sell. But they're sweet. And that's kind of like my midlife crisis, you know, project. Got to build some. Yeah. Some people get a motorcycle or a race car. I got a couple of really nice winches. Started an app that I've been dreaming of doing for years. Got current on hang gliding, got my instructor rating back, taught a handful of people how to hang glide, started Project Airtime and
made that work and got it like on its feet. And so I looked back after a year or so of thinking that my world was getting smaller. And actually, I realized I had made a bunch of my dreams come true. So for me, everything's in its proper place. That rings true to me with with injuries.
You know, when I got hurt ski racing, it was like my whole world collapsed. And then I went when I came out of it, I was like, whoa, wait a minute. This is all I've done for all these years. And now there's all this other cool shit to do. You know, exactly. We're going to talk about your app. But a few years back and maybe you've had others. Not that I like to dwell on dark sides of this sport, but I think it's instructional to talk about your accident paramotoring because that was a doozy. Can you relate what happened there? Yeah.
So the story is since 1992, basically, any time that I came into land, if it was possible, I was dragging my wingtip on the ground or in the bushes or on the snow, whatever. And it was just my style. And so a lot of people thought it was crazy for me. It was just normal. And one day I was doing it in the desert with a paramotor with a glider that wasn't mine. And if you've ever been in the business of dragging the wingtip on the ground, you know that if there happens to be snow or just some grass, you can touch the wingtip on the snow or grass. You don't have to go as deep. And so I was kind of smiling because I was putting the wingtip into, you know, some grass.
And as I carved around, the wingtip just caught just a little more than it normally does. And the reason why was because it was wheat that had been planted and I didn't really notice it was like in perfect rows and really thick and kind of grabby. And so it just changed my trajectory just a little. And I had my feet up and I was swung out to the side and I hit my butt on the ground just wrong. And I finished the arc arc and came around and the motor was still fine in one piece and the glider landed behind me and it didn't even look like what you would expect a crash to look like, it just looked like an arc gone wrong. And the unlucky part about it was that I lined up just wrong to hit my L2. And so I didn't have really a lot of trauma and it wasn't like a high impact tumbling out of control stuff flying everywhere kind of crash.
But it was it was serious. And, you know, tons of people have hurt themselves in flying sports and the back injury is common. And it seems like people get banged up in spectacular fashion and there's never a nerve thing and they're just lucky and off they go. Well, I was kind of the other end of the spectrum. I didn't have a lot of trauma, but I definitely had a nerve thing. So it took three weeks to get sort of back on my feet walking with crutches and my quad still wasn't working. And probably a week or two weeks after that, magically, my quads started working again, my right quad, and it all kind of came back in a hurry. So talk about like a surreal experience. You know, I went from, hey, buddy, get used to that wheelchair because that's your new ride to, oh, wow, you know, I'm back hiking snowboard in, you know, not too many months.
So, you know, you have to be philosophical about stuff like that because you have no choice.
But for me, I like to think of it as the event that probably saved my life. Until that moment, I had absolutely no reason to ever believe that anything bad could happen to me. It was something that would happen to somebody else. You know, blowing it like just getting it wrong was not like my style. That wasn't a problem that I had until that moment. And then it became very real. And when I looked at my life after that event and I got back in the air and I got back on my feet, I kind of had to ask myself, like, well, am I really supposed to learn about this? And what I figured out was that for years it had been, look at me, look what I can do. And it was great and it was right and correct.
And at that point, there was meant to be a paradigm shift and the shift was meant to go toward the direction of look at you and kind of look what you can do. So that that's in reference to basically, you know, my kids and my wife and my students and anyone else that I can help and lift up and inspire and particularly the people with disabilities that we take tandem and teach to fly solo under the umbrella of Project Airtime. That's like people with special needs, especially special needs, kids, people with spinal cord injury, brain injury, people with illness, you know, chronic illness, elderly and also veterans. And so
I went forward with that in mind and it's been a dream. And so I couldn't be basically more happy with how that evolution went. And for that reason, and especially because I'm completely pain free and I made like what would be generally called one hundred and ten percent recovery from that event makes it kind of easy to be very grateful for that event. Beautiful. Yeah.
Your app. So you you've spent almost 20 years. I have that math right. Instructing now and was super fly. And you've taught thousands of people to participate in this crazy, absurd sport that we all love so much. And we do it here at the point, which is literally right at your front door.
What are some common you've seen some bad stuff go down? What have you changed in 20 years to improve the odds or what have you learned? What can you teach our audience about? You know, we've got a lot of people that are 10 hours or 50 hours or 100 hours or maybe they're just going into intermediate syndrome. How can they up their chances of not having your accident was a lot of bad luck. You were wicked are were wicked pilot. You were doing something you've done thousands of times. You had this weird thing. But a lot of accidents are more
kind of what goes down with the reason you built this app.
Yeah. So, you know, real quick from the app. Um, it's called Pilot Aware and we brought it to fruition like probably a year ago. It took a year to develop. The basics are it's a pilot communication and awareness app. If you're at a flying site, you download the free app, turn it on. You show up on a list of pilots. It shows your profile, including your car, your face, your dog, your glider. People know who you are. They can send you feedback. From a prescripted list. So all the feedback is constructive. Instead of saying, hey, dummy, that was kind of a low turn. It says, hey, please consider doing a more systematic approach.
If you're not familiar with this site and the preferred approach and ask someone, they're all kind of complimentary and they all would be the kind of thing that anyone would be happy to receive. And the idea is if the community sees one person do something not too smart, then they can all ping that person. So that person is going to get five or ten alerts that that last turn was scary. And then there's no disputing it. Now, the classic objection is, why not just go talk to the dude? And the answer is sometimes it's tough if you're not wired for that kind of communication, then it's impossible. I can do it, but I don't have time. It involves, hey, buddy, how you doing? Where are you from? Good to see you. Hey, are you interested in a little feedback?
And are you just sliding in some way? As you're walking away? Hey, but just so you know, I was thinking, hey, that last turn was kind of love. We all love to stare at our phones. It's kind of the the day and the age. That's what we do. So the idea is with Pilot Aware, you can do that. There's two other elements of functionality that are really key. One is a custom message feature that can hit everybody who's flying in the area. So you could be like, hey, smart money says get on the ground now. There's a big wind coming down the valley or it could say, hey, helicopter landing. And so that would come across people's phones as a push alert or as an email or however they set it, even a text message. If you're out of data range, it will come as a text message. So it's all pretty clever. Finally, somebody blows back over the hill.
You don't know who it was. If you look on the app, you can see that person's position. So you'll have their phone number, their name, their glider color. They're kind of an alarm as long as you're in cell phone range. Right. So here's the rub. I brought this thing to market. Pretty soft debut, wanting people to just go out and test it and play with it. It was reasonably well received. But there may have been a few technical issues here and there for whatever reason, perhaps because we didn't have it on your podcast then. The thing didn't take off. OK, so it's still there. It's still free. It's always going to be there. It's always available. I ran out of energy to go out and push the thing. That's just a little bit my style. It's like the winches. Right. I made amazing winches, but I don't really have the energy to go sell them. I made this app and it's like fully functional for skydiving, hang gliding, base jumping, airplanes, helicopters.
All the messages are in there. That sounds amazing. But for me, the magic was in making it. Yeah, you know, I'm an entrepreneur. Yeah. And so for everyone who's listening, if somebody wants to take this ball and run with it, the door is wide open because I've had my fun.
Yeah, cool. So that's flight aware. That's pilot aware. Yeah. And I'll have that in the show notes and links to the app and everything. So our listeners can can find that. Yeah. So
go ahead. Your next question was on the subject of how can people stay out of trouble? And I love talking about this. That's my daily thing. We make the joke all the time. Any monkey can paraglide and any monkey can teach any monkey to paraglide. But the question is, will the person who's teaching you set you up with a mindset that will enable you to make good decisions long enough to start to understand what you're dealing with? Like basically long enough to survive your first year. Or two. If you don't have a year or two under your belt, as you know, you haven't seen four seasons come and go, you don't know the variety of things that can happen. But if you're around and about and active for two years, then you're going to have some perspective.
You'll know how to quantify the risk. You'll know how to tell for sure if you're biting off a chunk in terms of the decision you're about to make or if you're you're being nicely conservative. So that's one of the cornerstones of what we teach in our school and what we try to spread throughout the country. We're trying to get people to assume the mindset that it's not about the technical, it's really about the mindset. And so I encourage people whenever someone's speaking to the philosophy of flying, the philosophy of decision making, launch, no launch, should I go here or go there? The feeling that you have when you're on launch, intuitive sort of stuff, physical responses you have to to the situations that you put yourself in.
If you land shaking, obviously, that's a physical response to the situation you're in. It's our opinion that that is really what it's about. So when people come and learn with us, we spend a bunch of time on that and we try to imprint on them is the best way that I know how to say, you know, we try to infect them with a way of thinking and we try to get them to make the correct answer. So when they go down the road, when they show up at a flying site, they're saying stuff that sounds smart, you know, things that make sense that kind of represent that they came out of our program and that they know the way of thinking. And that's the best we can do for those people. So that's that's what we do in our school to set people up for success.
And and then, you know, you ask kind of the question about risk in general. And that's really good when I talk about, I really feel like there's a huge random factor in life. And I've learned that particularly from having hundreds of friends in wheelchairs. It's not really easy to put the life altering accidents that can happen into categories, per se, other than to kind of speak to the randomness of life. So I feel like there's a random factor in flying, and that's the one that makes it so that if you go out and fly, you might take a flight. You might take a big deflation that turns you hard in a surprising way in a bad place, and it might happen one in a thousand or one in two thousand,
which is a real interesting number, because that means that it may never happen to you, depending on how much you fly and how long you continue in the sport or what kind of air you fly in. Might never happen. But at the very same time, it also means it might happen tomorrow to you.
So that's really rough. And, you know, you have to you have to put that in perspective. The best way that I know how to put that in perspective is that you need to stack the odds sort of in your favor. So I don't really subscribe to the be safe logic. Being safe to me kind of sounds like be happy. It's like, yeah, right. We got that. Yeah. I thank you very much. Thank you very much. So what we need ultimately in place of things to work toward that end is tools. And so a classic tool that we give our students is we have them sometimes go out there to a lesson. Everything's kind of perfect. They could fly, but they're challenged to just pick one day to just go out there and not fly.
And not because any other reason than one day they're going to be out there in their intuition is going to say, you know what, it's not the time bad sleep or something's on their mind or just straight up gut feeling. And if they. They've never stood down a session, then they will not have that skill. They won't have that tool. So that's a very sort of tangible way that a person can get in the habit of making good choices. So, you know, the list goes on and on the ways you can kind of apply tools and tricks to make yourself do smart decisions. And the grand total sum of all that might even involve being selected by who you go fly with, that you're not flying with the crazies. It might be the gear you choose. It might be the places you go fly.
It might be the times of day or seasons that you fly in or any number of things. But all of those things take the random factor and they reel it in. The random factor doesn't present itself when you're taking a really simple flight. And so that's pretty much the crux of it. That's where we try to get people to end up is in a place where they're saying, hey, you know, I'm just happy to take a cruise down. You know, simple flight is good. That's what I mean. And I feel like when they're saying that and when they're embracing that part of the sport as being very viable and just good enough for them, then they're saying the right thing, doing the right thing, probably headed a good direction, that doesn't mean that you can't go huge.
It really doesn't mean that you can't go and fly in edgy conditions. Doesn't mean you can't learn tricks, in my opinion. But when you go and do those things, you have to basically say it out loud. This is my opinion. I know that I'm taking a chance today. If you're not calling it for what it is, it's my opinion that that's the biggest mistake that people make. They blur together their simple flights that are very predictable in nature with the totally sketchy stuff that they do. And they try to con themselves into believing that the sketchy is actually safe. It's sketchy. Call it sketchy. Go out there and give it your all. Make sure you're firing on all cylinders that day. You know, at 110 % and stick it.
I do. Totally. I do this all the time. I take tons of simple flights, and I also choose some situations where I'm willing to take some risk. Absolutely. And I try to say it out loud. Be very sort of forthright about it. Being honest
about the risk you're taking. And in the beginning, you don't really know the risk you're taking. So it's learning, it's getting on that curve in the right way. Yeah. Right way. SIB, you've been teaching it forever. Talk a little bit about it and the importance of it. Is it right
for everybody? So it's an interesting subject. I'm kind of run the whole spectrum all the way from taking everybody out there and having them all go crazy and do every single thing they can do over the water, because that's what that environment is for. All the way to feeling like, being a little bit more conservative with people in the maneuvers environment.
So obviously, it started out when I was younger. We all make decisions more differently when we're younger. And so there was a time when every single person who came got the same treatment. Are you ready to stall it? Are you ready to spin it? Now let's do a sat. I figured out after a number of years, that was more my agenda. That was more me sort of having fun. That was. I my risk profile was was just what that sounds like. So over the course of time, I realized I wasn't always doing those people a great service. So the curse of the maneuvers training is that you can do all that stuff and then you can't imagine a malfunction that you can't deal with. And so then it really does actually affect your decision making.
So what I've learned is that there's essential maneuvers training that everybody needs. And I would give it to a person in their first four or five days of training. No problem. And that includes riser twists, the below pull, tweaking the A's, learning how to hammer the brake to get a cravat out, running a little procedure on what you would do if the tip was stuck in dabbling a little bit with circles to where you feel some energy develop doing some turns back and forth so that you know how to that you can reverse direction in a hurry. Pitch movement, all that stuff. I could just about do it over the desert and I'll do, you know, a good portion of the stuff over the desert with a clear conscience. So that's one portion. The next portion is the stuff that's strictly for me over the water.
And that includes, you know, accelerated asymmetrics with without the break in hand. That's big frontals accelerated, obviously working a nice progression up to these maneuvers. But the pinnacle of the training is, you know, big asymmetrics on speed that cause the thing to basically do a circle before you can say anything. As a beginner. And and then what people notice is that in the process of doing three or four of those, they get a lot more aware and they get a lot better at correcting the heading. So I feel really strongly that stuff has to be over the water. I love to teach that stuff. I feel like the outcomes are great when we do teach people that stuff.
I'm a huge fan of asymmetric spirals. Hopefully, if the listeners don't know what that is, hopefully they can do a little Google research. But what I mean to say is that I'm not a fan of round spirals. I don't feel like it's easy or a good thing for me to teach. I think that if people get in the habit of using it as a technique or practicing it, that it's only a matter of time before it gets away from them. And so I really like asymmetric spirals, you know, loosely defined as a circle in which you let the glider start to exit every time you come around and then take it back in. And I take pride in being able to take people from never ever to executing pretty well on some mild. So I'm a big fan of the asymmetric spirals in a maneuver session, a couple of toes. And I feel like that's a fantastic thing to be able to to offer people.
And one of the cornerstones of that training right now is just making sure that they get the outside hand actuating. I did a lot of years of coaching where I got people modulating the intensity of the circles really good, and I thought that they had it. And I didn't realize it was all with the inside hand. So when the circles would transition into something a little more wild and they needed to moderate it, like then if the outside hand wasn't working, sometimes they would the maneuvers, the maneuver would take off, the circles would go crazy. So I feel really lucky to have learned that lesson. I feel really lucky to be able to offer that that training and especially that insight on circles. And so then then you've got your stalls and spins and sats if you want them and anything beyond that. And I really feel like people need to do a maneuver session.
Go. Fly a while. If you have stall, spin, sat, whatever on your mind, then it's really, in my opinion, you need to do a lot of sort of meditating on it. Mental prep, YouTube research to a point brief away from the lake, you know, maybe with the coach and when you go and do that stuff, then you do it with like a high level of intent. Like, Gavin, you want to stall today? And the answer is like, yes, definitely. We're on it. If I look at the people on a given maneuvers day and I say, hey, are we going to do this? The stall as discussed and they do anything but answer me like that, then we're not doing it right. That comes from experience. I've seen how they go and I've seen how random the outcomes can be when people are half hearted about it or when they haven't done the prep.
And so it's my pleasure to do that stuff. I love it, but it has to go down a certain way. I'm kind of particular now. I really love coming back from the lake with no stories. And so every day before we start our maneuver session, whatever we're doing, we all get together and we make sort of a deal. All right, you guys, we're going to we're going to give this our all. We're going to all pay attention, take care of the one guy who's flying at that moment. We're not going to be crazy. None of this stuff should feel particularly wild. It should all be calculated, fairly composed. At the end of the day, no stories agree. They all nod yes. And you wouldn't believe it. We're not drying out gliders. There's not reserves flying out. You know, the people are coming back feeling like.
Tighter about it. They're going to do it tighter and they're thinking about it, not loose. I think that's a good point, because I think oftentimes people get over the water and they just think, oh, yeah, it's got me. But yeah, that's a good way to do it. Just to clarify, just in case some people didn't understand when you're talking about asymmetrics, what you're trying to do is break up the energy and avoid a locked in spiral.
Right. And just to be clear, asymmetric deflation and asymmetric spiral are not related. Right. Not related.
Most important maneuver, something you like to see, not in terms of SIV, but just wing control. Somebody's, you know, they're starting to thermal a little bit. They're starting to they're starting to maybe do some little mini XC's. They've done an SIV with you. What
do they need to learn? So are you asking the question, what do they need to have as a prerequisite to go do that or what do I like to see as they're going to do it? They're going to
see. Yeah, I'm kind of I'm kind of moving towards wing over. But, you know, what are some of the wing handling skills on the ground and also in the air that you like to see? OK, this person's ready to that. We get a lot of this, you know, like, hey, I'm flying with this guy. I had a question this morning with Bill Belcourt. So I was saying, I've got ten hours. My flying partners got four years. I want to start flying with them XC this spring. And Bill's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. That guy is going to know how to get into places that you have no idea, you know, and you're not going to be comfortable there. You need foundation. So that's, I guess, what are the foundationals? What do you like to see kind of checked off? Because this is too long of a question. But I think a lot of people tell me, like, oh, I've got my P3.
Oh, I've got my P4. Well, I got the North American Foot Launch record when I was a P3. I don't think that that matters whatsoever. Would you agree? I mean, I mean, ratings are great, but there's so many other little steps, you
know. So really, the question is one of progression. And so, you know, working a progression, like in a thoughtful way, is a beautiful and fine art. And this is a cornerstone of life, right? Like when your parents gave you the keys to the car, they put their money on the idea that they worked a good progression. And sure as you haven't balled it up or run anybody over, that progression worked out just fine. So we need to be thoughtful like that with our paragliding as well. And so if there weren't a million little steps in between A and B, you know, if there weren't a million steps in between your your first good thermo flight and your 20 mile cross country, then guess what about that progression?
It wasn't too good, right? It just didn't look too smart. Doesn't mean we need to be regretful about it, but call it what it is. The progression was was rough, was rough and it was rushed. So that's what I would suggest to people is make it look. Like something fairly smart. And so to do that, you kind of need community. It's tough to put the perspective together on your own. But if it was a first cross country, then my suggestion would be, you know, first try landing at new landing zones that you haven't been to, because many times that's the crux, you know, you might be able to blow down the road ten miles or whatever, but when you get there, you might have to land someplace you've never seen before. And if you haven't had that experience, then guess what?
Your progression. It's a little off. So I have a certain perspective about the basic idea of ambition in flying. And so it doesn't take a genius to see that there's plenty of ambition out there. But my argument is going to be that it's a little bit misguided. And here's how I break it down. I go, this is more like driving by the time you've flown. It's as necessary for your life as driving in a car.
And when it comes to driving, nobody's waving the flag saying, hey, look at me, I'm Gavin, I'm an amazing driver, right? Ultimately, what you try to do is you try to keep it between the lines, like out of the ditches. Knock on wood, you try to keep the thing right side up. You know, you don't crash into anybody. And your end goal is you're 80, 90, in your case, 100 year old man, and you give back the keys to your kids and you say, guys, I'm done. I just can't see. And it's just not good. And then that in that moment, you get to claim good driver. Right. So it's my opinion that flying is much more like that than, for example, you know, throwing a spear or running a race or doing a marathon. If you are doing any of these things, track and field or running or biking.
Yeah, that's where you put your ambition, you know, blow doors and punish yourself and charge and win. But when it comes to flying, just keep it between the lines, you know, because if you're here 10, 15, years from now, you will notice that you've got some amazing flights under your belt without trying at all. And will you have cross countries? For sure. But if you go out there and you have, you know, a high bar and you want to go nail X, Y or Z cross country in your first year as an agenda item. Guess what? The odds are against you. Yeah, they're against you big time.
There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old pilots. Yeah, it can happen. Right. What kind of student do you you get a new group? There's ten of them. Take them up to the point. Can you identify really quickly? OK, this gal is going to be really good. This guy is going to be a whole lot of trouble. Yeah. Putting you on the spot here a little bit. Oh, no problem. I'm sure you do. Right. I imagine. How do you negotiate that?
So for probably five, maybe 10 years, we have a program where if somebody wants to learn to fly, they come out. No, no interview, no pressure, no money. And they just hang out with us and they just check out our style. And we check out their style and we just see if we're a match. We try not to presume that we're like the perfect instructors for everybody. And we fully recognize that not every student is the perfect student for us. And so by sort of challenging the students to come with their A game, guess what? Some of them don't make it to that interview.
I'm sorry, sir. You don't get the interview. No, they still make it. They just don't show up because we challenged them. And because we told them that we had an expectation about people showing up with their A game, people who are firmly committed to being way above average, people willing to devote time, energy, money, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They just don't come. And it's it's so perfect. We bring them out there and we actually attach them to the glider naturally, we waiver them up and all that. But we don't take any money and we just see how they are to teach. And when they light up, you know, the first time they bring that glider above head and when they jump up and down and and and say something like, can I can I come tomorrow after their first flight? Then we know we have a winner. But we'll get people who will come out there and they just sort of realize, oh, wow, this isn't quite me.
And we make it really fun. We'll take them for a tandem or we'll kite and they'll come off the ground and we'll high five them. This is so good. And it's like understood this will happen when the time is right. Right. And it's not now and it might not happen. And it does happen. Sometimes those people come back a couple of years later and they say, oh, you gave us the introductory treatment and it wasn't right then. But we figured out we needed to be fit. We need to actually have some sunglasses and some gloves. We need to study a little bit. And now we decided we really want to do it. So in our school, we're real sort of selective and we use that formula and we get great people now. Now, we never know what kind of pilot a person is going to be.
So real early on, we issue the disclaimer. Look, we might figure out that you just like the training. Now, there are people in the world who don't like to be high off the ground. And that's fine. We may figure out that you just love to fly a paraglider like a kite and there's no better kite, you know. So you're welcome. Just come and just be that person. You may find that restoring is your thing when no one's there. You may find that. You just like your thermaling someplace other than the American West. You know, you just like your thermaling in Colombia or you like your thermaling in Brazil, where it's just soft and there's no hard edges. And that's how you want to do it. And around here, you just go for a little kiting and a little flight. You save it for environments that are nicer than this.
So we get people sort of stopping and planning out at all different levels. And we try to build in support for them because if you just hang out and listen to the chat. You will think that paragliding is big altitude gains, thermaling and cross country. I mean, there's no support for people just pursuing it on a simple level. There is there are no videos saying, hey, check out my simple flight that I did off the cable car this morning. Right. But it's real. And thankfully, there are schools in the world that create that support for that and make it social and make it fun. And the people are just simple flights. We need people like that. The majority of the people are like that. We also need people like you to inspire us. And a percentage of the people will be able to, over the course of years,
experience some of the views you've seen and get some miles under their belt. Something like what you've done. But it's a very select crew. It's my opinion. It's a very select crew. Hmm. Interesting. What else?
What else do you want to talk about? Tell me about a cool, a crazy paragliding story from your past.
Oh, man. Let's see. Good stories. This is a tough one. Put you on the spot. That's right. You know, one of the one of the cool ones was with Will Gadd in Chile.
Yeah. We
tried to fly from Chile to Argentina. And we looked around for 10 days to try to find like a flyable place or moment, and we didn't find any. And so we kind of hummed and hawed and we thought, well, it's a hike slash fly mission. We should start hiking. We don't have any more time left. So this was before any light gear. So imagine full size reserve, Parnas, everything. And we start marching and we march for three days. And there was not one single flyable moment. Two awesome things happened. One, we were walking down this valley and I started telling you guys, there's a lot at the end of the valley. And they said, dude, you're crazy. You know, you're hallucinating. Right. So we walked like the better part of the day. When we got to the end, there was a lodge and there was some donkeys or something.
And then in front of it. And they served us some stew and let us sleep on the concrete floor. And then the next day we hiked up a 14 five pass. And it was like a twelve, fourteen thousand foot descent into Argentina. And I started saying it again. I was like, well, that's a Unimog down there. And they're like, dude, you're on it again. You know, I said, you have energy. You're a superhero. Will you run down there and see if it's a Unimog? It looks like a Unimog. It's like our ride is blowing down the hill, like 80 miles or something. Insane. Yeah. And so sure enough, we get down there. There was a Unimog. We did jump in the back of it. We did get a ride down the hill to save our knees. Right. And when we got to the bottom, it was night and they had an army
hut and we were standing shoulder to shoulder with army Argentinian army dudes on exercise. And they had a huge bowl of soup and they were feeding us. So all of the totally, totally blown hike slash fly missions with no flying in it. That one just turned out as possibly an awesome paragliding story with no paragliding. OK, so that's true. And that's often what happens. That's why it's such a cool adventure. Yeah. The good news is the day after we were in Portillo and we were just hanging out. We decided we'd go up and fly the spot we had taken one scary flight from. So we went up there and it. It was evening. It was just Will and I, Othar had gone home and we launched.
And as we started to fly around, we realized the GPS was telling us zero wind. So we were basically trying to stay down when we got in the air. And then when we got in the air and realized there was zero wind, we were like, we got to go up. We had permission to send it over the top. Everything was in order. We had a driver and we had to scratch our way in the back of these gnarly rock canyons up over the crest of the Andes. And we keep in mind, we've never seen a landable moment, especially not at sunset ever. So we bailed over the back, like into the shadow at sunset down this incredible big valley and just fully expecting to land in a rock pile going backwards. And as we came into land, we turned into the wind.
And so it's kind of catabatic. It's just coming down west to east, just howling. And as we got into the layer, right before the ground, we were like not going backwards. We landed just fine. So it was the best trip ever. I've had plenty of other great flying experiences. They all kind of blend together for me. Yeah. You know, people always ask, what's your favorite flight and where's your favorite place to fly? And it's like, you know, the other day I was out by the county dump with my paramotor and I had the best flight, you know? And so for me, it's not all linear, right? Sure. It doesn't need to be Mount Blanc for me to have my best. I mean, it can actually be out by the copper mine next to the dump. Right. Last question.
A few years back, you had a couple of kids. Yeah. How did that? Because you're like super dad. I just dig how much you're into it. And it's awesome to have seen from the outside. But how did that change your risk profile? Did that change how you fly? Did that change how you think about flying? Did you know,
you know what happened to me was I got banged up when my daughter was one of my so my son was two.
And when I moved forward from that, I took some things off the list. So I took
like wingsuit base jumping off the list. Like I, I was jumping wingsuit out of a plane and I was base jumping. And I just thought, you know, I probably would be the kind of guy who would instead of just flying away from the cliff, I would hug the cliff a little. And I thought, you know, I'm just going to take that off the list for now. And I'm not ruling it out at all, but I'm just saying it's not on the list right. Now. And so other stuff is base jumping low rocks. It really wasn't my thing. I wouldn't totally say no to it right now, but it's not at the top of my list jumping off low rocks or, you know, desperate base jumping. I'm I've made plenty of base jumps since my kids have been alive. And, you know, I'm not taking that off the list, but there's just certain things that just I just don't need to be doing one hundred percent.
So, you know, there's there's the question of risk. Is. Along with the kids. And so there's the question of what direction they'll go if they'll end up flying, whatever. I make the joke with my son, I don't care if you ever fly, but this one's totally on you. But when you're 18 and I'm whatever, 60 or whatever, then I'm going to need you to fly some tandems. So I'm going to need you to be on your game.
I said, I'll put a radio in your ear. So, like, you know, but that's a joke because the truth is, I really don't care if they're into it, if they're not into it. If they're into it, well, then they're going to have me breathing down their neck. Yeah, they kite. They've made little flights. I haven't ever just taken them on the training hill and like sent them with a radio and just have them fly 20, 30 feet in the air and land. I haven't done that yet.
So you be comfortable with them. What if your little son, 12, was just like, Dad, I'm going wingsuit, man. I'm going I'm going full on. Would
you be
cool with
that? Well, there's the progression thing, right? Yeah. So all the guys I know that are really good. Wingsuit that have kept themselves out of the rocks in their wingsuit. They have 15,000, 20,000 skydives. Yeah. And proof positive right there. Those are the guys who are still doing it and doing it well. I'm proud to call a couple handfuls of those guys, my friends. And so I would demand progression. Yeah. And so I don't know if circumstances are going to conspire to allow my son to have 20,000 skydives, but yeah, I'm kind of a stickler. I mean,
obviously I can tell you that my son is going to be 20,000. So my dad's not a single, 30,000 skydiver.
And I'm like, I can't believe my son can do that to me anything. I can't believe you're going to get your son's life in the right way. Yeah. I'm shocked. I'm so shocked because I can't believe your son is going to be this great. I mean, he was 20,000, 20,000. I think he's going to be the best ever, my dad knows it like I can't believe he's going to be this great. I'm like, I'm not going to be this great. Yeah. so you know that's our philosophy you know and my kids know that really really well because they have you know 150 friends that are in wheelchairs from dozens of different things and they know that life is tricky and that's probably the best thing that i can do for them is is for them to know what's possible you know and what's possible is we could all end up on wheels and that's not the end of the world but you know you have to acknowledge that that's a possibility in all the stuff you do cool that's an
awesome place
to end
we'll end it there but i have one one final question that we'll throw in if people are interested maybe we'll put this in as a bonus or something but i get a lot of people when they see the films or this kind of stuff you know they get inspired bam for whatever but they don't know how to paraglide where do i go i always send them to you and i always send them to rob and santa barbara depending on where they live but we've a lot of listeners who are not uh you you know that's not a convenient place what would you tell people about finding a good school because they're not all like you guys
right let's face it yeah so there are things in life that are life choices and there are things that aren't so one example of not a lot of life choice is what gear you get it's all pretty good yeah you know there's some stuff that's going to work better for you than others but when you choose that guide for flying that's a life choice and so choose wisely right and what i i think the best thing you can possibly do is interview your potential instructors if there's one in your area find out the inside scoop on them go meet them look them in the eye shake their hand one of them is going to jump out at you as being your guy and if you don't get a good feeling on that interview moment then keep searching yeah
cool sounds good chris thank you so much you've been an honor it's uh so cool to have some time with you i wish we had more all the time but uh thank you for what you do thank you for these incredible projects with the disabled and uh and and keep people safe thanks man my pleasure thanks
well
i hope you enjoyed that uh what a cool show what a cool guy chris has just been one of my heroes since i first met him back in 2006 and and oh gosh actually before that i think 2004 when he and jeff taught me how to fly so huge respect for those guys and huge respect for their school and what they've done and uh their programs for uh the disabled and everything he's done in this sport uh just total legend so thanks so much chris and i hope you all really enjoyed that and i hope you got a lot out of it as always all we ask for is a buck a show if you got something out of this episode or one of the previous episodes i think we're now at uh 41 uh all kinds of amazing content from guys like Will Gadd and russ ogden and paul bauer a bunch of the X-Alps pilots i've got some more great shows coming up for you so uh if you can't commit to us financially i totally understand this is free and i'll keep doing it because it's it's awesome and i think it's great spreading all this good knowledge but share with your friends let every let other pilots know that it's out there or other adventurers and uh you know put it on facebook or when i put out a post share it with the the folks that you fly with talk about it in the car listen to it on the way up to uh to launch it'll keep everybody safer i
know that's awesome you can find the links to contribute to the show on the website cloud based mayhem.com uh you can do that through paypal all we ask is don't just send us a buck at a time because paypal takes quite a bit of fees uh wait till you've listened to 10 or 15 or 20 episodes and send accordingly and you can also contribute through patreon patreon.com forward slash cloud based mayhem got some really cool footage there from the alaska traverse with dave turner so you can check out some of that footage and uh there's a great way where you can just edit and forget it and it's totally contingent on me putting out content so you don't pay unless content comes your way thanks so much everybody see you on the next show cheers