Hi there everybody. Happy holidays from the Cloudbase Mayhem. Hope you had a great holiday and cool to bring you this show just right after Christmas and hopefully we're all thinking about flying gliders instead of presents. Just a reminder, we've got a few more days left of our Garmin discount for an inReach device, an SE or Explorer, that it lasts until the 30th. So we've still got three more days if we get this one out on time, which we're planning on doing. on. Use the code GAVIN2017, lowercase or uppercase altogether, GAVIN2017 when you go to checkout and that'll get you 10 % off an inReach device. As I said on the last show, inReach is just far, far, far superior to a spot. I know it's a little bit more expensive, but it is your safety.
Having that two-way communication is really, really critical when it comes to anything bad going down. So I I think you just, you owe it to your loved ones to get one, make sure you have one every time you fly or you're farting around in the back country. Super important piece of device. I don't go anywhere without one. This show, as you all know, I was just down in Mexico flying in the pre PWC with Miguel Gutierrez and his amazing team down in Zapotec, which was a new place to fly. Talked about that quite a bit on the last show, but I was able to sit down with kind of a hero of mine, a guy named Phil Glutz, who I became aware of looking at his tracks. Bruce Marks, one of my X-Alps supporters and flying buddy for many, many, many years, started seeing Phil's track logs on X-Contest years ago.
And he lives in Zermatt, up right near the Matterhorn, which is kind of like the Telluride of the Alps. It's like the Box Canyon if you've never been. Of Of course, you know the Matterhorn, you've seen pictures, but it's, you know, backside of Mount Arosa, some of the highest mountains in the Alps by far. You're just across the Rhône from the Eiger and the Jungfrau and the Monk, and really tricky place to fly, tough place to fly. And often one of the kind of the main FAI waypoints when you're doing the Fiche FAI, but to start in Zermatt is really cool because you're starting off a glacier, you're starting super tall, And you fly down kind of the east-facing side. In the morning, you can, you can leave there really early and be down to Visp before the day's even really on, and so it's a great place to start triangles from, but just very few people live up there and fly cross-country from there.
And so, uh, Phil and some of his buddies, Chris Manford and some of those guys, have been putting up some really cool lines there for years. Um, and so I wanted to talk to him about that, which we did, but I also wanted to talk to him about flying tandems. We've had a lot of pilots on the show who, of course, fly tandems, but I've never really tapped into that angle of things. And so I thought that'd be really interesting. And then, not really reluctantly, but Phil had a pretty bad accident about a year ago. And I didn't know this, but Pal Taketsu was on the show a ways back, talked about a really bad accident that he had. He was living with Phil at the time when that went down. So I didn't know that. And this is not a downer. We don't get into the downside of an accident and recovery and all that kind of stuff, but what we do to get into is just kind of a warning about complacency, because it happened on a day that everything was totally perfect.
It was not an early day; it was just one of these things that happened because you're really almost even too good of friends with the other pilot that was in the air, and they were trying to avoid a midair, so some really good lessons there and some really, really cool mental lessons from coming back from something like that. Phil's totally chasing it hard. Didn't have much trouble at all coming back from that. And, but he gives some really good thoughts on how that whole process goes. And so I think you're going to enjoy that aspect as well, but Phil's been flying since the very beginning of paragliding and went from being an engineer to making a life out of paragliding, which is his journey is really cool. So I think you're going to enjoy it. So without further delay, please enjoy this great conversation live from Mexico with Phil Glatz.
Phil, it's pretty cool to be doing this live here in Mexico at the pre-World Cup. We've been having some awesome days of flying fast around a really cool new site here in Zapotec. And you and I didn't know each other personally before this trip, but I've been following your flights in Zermatt forever because Bruce, you know, my XL supporter, Is always going, I'm like, "Look at what this dude's doing, look at what he's doing." And it's been, uh, so this is a real honor for me to kind of get some, some background and some history. I thought I kind of maybe a cool place to start out would be for those that don't know much about the Alps, or that don't know about Zermatt, uh, because you know, to be a local, flying in Zermatt is, is not the same as like Annecy, you know?
There's not that many of you guys up there, and, uh, and so I thought you can—can you paint us an audio visual picture of where you guys are operating? what you're doing? And I know it's just not you sending good flights, but it's your whole life and your whole business there. So give those people that haven't been to the Matterhorn, can you describe that area? Because it's pretty unique.
I kind of by accident, I ended up in a little valley that has the most iconic peak in the Alps, the Matterhorn. and uh Zermatt's this incredible place. It's a tourist town, but it's, it's, it's the highest part of the Alps. There's actually 29 peaks in the Zermatt valley that are over 4,000 meters and 40-something peaks in the surrounding valleys that are over 4,000 meters. So the Mont Blanc is a massive and it's got, uh, it's got a few peaks surrounding it, but the, the Matterhorn valley is, is the highest area for flying. It's, it's kind of up there is extreme. It's, it's the narrow valley, it's the end of a valley.
It's got strong wind systems. Of course, we get strong valley winds in the springtime. We're very susceptible to south, south wind. We kind of have a local fern effect as As soon as the wind turns southwest on us in the wintertime, or any time if the wind is slightly from the east, we get a nasty wind affecting one of our takeoffs and the rest of the valley can be calm. But we've got a howling wind on our main takeoff. yeah it's it's it's big mountain flying and uh with a postage stamp for for a landing stuck on the side of the of a valley next to the railway station yeah
Your landing is just silly. When I was training there for the 2015, uh, race for the X-Alps, I, I ended up hooking up with, uh, Michael Witschi. We happened to just be flying there on the same day because it was a pretty decent day, and we both landed together at that little postage stamp you're talking about. And I was like, "Wow, this is where you guys do tandems and stuff. It's tiny. It's..."
It's fine if there's, uh, if there's wind, if the wind is consistent, um, and we get strong valley winds, which is, which is fine, you can land on a postage stamp. The only thing we have to deal with then is turbulence, because just in front of the landing, the the valley narrows, so we get turbulence, um, from that, and the, and it's up on the side of a hill, slightly, uh, above a four-meter wall, so we get rotor, uh, rotating off the, off the train tracks up onto the landing, so you can get dumped, uh, despite your best efforts to have a safe landing. So why
Are you there? It sounds terrifying, yeah.
Why am I there? Uh, that's a long story, but well...
Cool, well we'll get into it. I, I, I wanted to just express on the listener that if you haven't been to that area, like it's, it's a place I've flown through a lot now, and even in, in this race, the 2017 race, because we didn't have to go, typically we go north of it because we're on the way to Mont Blanc, you know? And this year we, the cylinder is always 5k because you can't really make it like a top landing, the Matterhorn doesn't really suit that, and, uh, and so this year we, we came on the south side, and, uh, it's amazing how dense everything is there, you know? Like Domodossola is right over the, I mean, the Sass Valley is right there, there's a map valley and, but just on the other side, it's a whole nother world, one you, you literally are in another country, you're in Italy, and, uh, and there's four big valleys on that side, and it all just compresses in there, doesn't it?
I mean, to me, it's still a place that just demands massive amount of respect, yeah.
And uh, I'm still learning about it, still learning about these, these passes, high mountain passes in the, in the valleys and, and the different wind systems and how they affect, how they're affected by the mountains. It's, yeah, we get constantly surprised as you know. I know the weather forecasting is getting better and better, but local effects are so local. We fly in weather and wind systems that require knowledge of what's going to happen from here to 500 metres away, and there's no forecast that's going to give you that. So we're constantly surprised, despite our best efforts to understand what the wind and the weather is going to do every day.
Is
it a numbers game? Is it the kind of thing where after all these years, you've got it pretty figured out, but things are always a little bit surprising? I mean, I would imagine to me, it's like you couldn't put yourself in a trickier place in the Alps, really. I don't know of one. Maybe there are, but you've put yourself in a place that is super demanding. Do you dig that or is it still kind of like a little bit? no it's
It's, uh, I've made it my home. It's like, uh, when I first started flying solo before I got my tandem license, uh, I started flying in that valley. Um, I kind of made an effort, but I didn't, I wasn't thinking about that at the time. But I just go and fly, and I go and fly up, up, up through these peaks and around this valley, and I, I made it my own, you know? It's my revere, like an eagle defending its territory. I, I, and I tell my students, or people, I'm, let's say, in verticom's mentoring, I'm like, "You gotta go and own it, go and fly. You gotta fly in those cool eyes, you gotta fly over those peaks." And, and you're not gonna feel comfortable unless you've been there so many times.
You're like, "This is, this is what I do, this is where I belong." And I spent a lot of time A lot of time doing that, just enjoying the altitude, before I ever got into comps or acro or or high performance gliders or anything like that. So I just went and bimbled around these these these incredible peaks, so
We, we talked a little bit before we started this. Going, you and I have some shared history in Wollongong, Australia. Um, how'd you go from—in your, your accents, uh, giving you away here, but, uh, how'd you, how'd you go from—were you a pilot in Oz? Give us the, uh, give us the resume version of your, of your flying history. How did, how'd you end up in Zermatt? I
Actually started flying. I, I retired from my engineering career and went traveling, and um, my friend and I always had this dream to, to do a season, be ski bums in Chamonix. At the time, the Greg Stump Moyes were coming out, and, and there was Scott Schmidt and Glenn Plague hucking cliffs and doing cool, and we thought, we thought we were pretty, pretty hot skiers, which we are in no way at that level that you'd
learned in
kaziosco
We had our little club called the Out of Bounds Club, and and I didn't spend any time—I spent very little time—skiing on piste in Australia, I'll tell you that. We we made a point of going skiing breakable crust through through gnarly eucalyptus snow gums, right? We could ski some pretty difficult stuff, but then anyway, yeah, we got to Chamonix. We had a fantastic year, and my friends saw this this advert for a paragliding, uh, learn to paraglide course, basic beginner's course, in a place called Plan Plan Ju, just out of the Chamonix valley, okay? And it was like discounted for some reason, and I'd been thinking about this for for, ah, since paragliding began.
Fortunately or unfortunately, I I didn't get into it when I was in Australia; I was too busy with with engineering and and surfing and windsurfing and playing music. I was I was either practicing or gigging like five times a week or something. My life was full, and I kind of knew and I suspected that if I ever touched paragliding... How did you know about?
Paragliding at that point, was it from Oz or from your time in Chamonix? No,
It was from from Australia. I didn't, um, I'd seen and I've seen them up at Stanmore Park, obviously, and I'd seen that the hang glider guys from years back launching from Mount Kira, just above my house. Yeah, sadly, that takeoff's, uh, no longer used. What a, what a tragedy. Amazing place to fly for hangies, but there was a Swiss guy who was running a restaurant called The Eagle's Nest in Threadboat, and he actually, yeah. Now, Threadboat was the site of the, the, was it the first world championships of paragliding? They probably had spot landing competitions or something a hundred years ago, and he had, and you're
You're, and it's also kind of the headwaters of the biggest river in Oz, right? Isn't that what's the river there? The
Murray, I'm not sure, maybe somewhere past... I think you're right. Yeah, just above, maybe is a dead horse gap, just above Trebo, which is that side. Maybe goes down to... oh, you're, uh, testing geography there. Maybe Trebo's got some good vertical, and anything to get good skiing in in Australia, you need to spend a season, otherwise it's pot luck. But anyway, Heinz Gluer, this Swiss guy, had this paraglider, uh, hanging up in the ceiling of his restaurant in, uh, in the Eagle's Nest in, in Threadbow. And, and, uh, we always got talking because we somehow let slip that my brother and I, and my sister as well, we, um, we have Swiss, uh, Swiss nationality because through, through Dad, okay?
And, uh, so we'd go and visit Heinz and kind of got chatting to him a few times, and he'd call us, "The, ah, the Swiss Mafia is here," so he kind of knew, knew us vaguely. And, but my brother and I were interested in learning to fly, and I swapped numbers with Heinz, and we were going to do a course with him at some stage, but logistically it just never worked out. And looking back, in a sense, I'm quite happy that I started to learn when I did because things developed so far from that point that I'm kind of happy I wasn't one of those magnificent men and their flying machines, you know, experimenting with stuff that was nutty and deadly.
The stories you hear, the war stories of, like, Miguel talking about building deltas out of bits of PVC tube and plastic. I mean, come on. Oh, it's absurd. It's crazy what
those guys went through to give us what we have, isn't it?
It's incredible. So paragliding developed along, And I kept on with my engineering career for quite a few years, and I did this course in Planjou Chamonix, and, uh, that was cool. I had seven flights under my belt, thought I was amazing. Yeah, I'll never forget. We had, we had two days of practice, and then I think one or two days of bad weather, and, and, um, and, uh, Philip, the, the trainer, didn't speak much English, and we thought we came back after a break and said, we go to a training. He's like, No, no, no, decollage, take off! Like, what? And the three of us who are doing this course were like, jaws dropped. Okay, try to remember everything you learned a few days ago, because as you know, when you, when you learn a skill, man, you need to repeat that.
And I'm trying to think, give me a
year here is 99, 99.
Yeah, spring of '99. Yep, and uh, I'll never forget you. It's one of those, those images that see it into your, into your brain. I'm a forgetful person, I have a memory like a goldfish, but there are certain things that you never ever forget, and that's standing, standing on the takeoff. You've clipped in, you've checked everything 15 times. The start helper is on the, on the start, um, you've got the little wind flag showing the wind, everything's perfect, and you know it's perfect, and the guy in front of you says, "Okay, Phil, you can, you can go now." And, um, you know that too because you've checked the wind 15 times, and but you know that when you take that first step, that's it.
It's got a flow, it all happens, and it all happens in this, in this instant, and then you're in the air and you just, you just let out this scream and like, "Wow, I'm actually flying. This is, this is for real now." And, uh, and the shock of it, you know, wore off, uh, short time later, and, and I was like, totally relaxed, saying, "This is where I belong. This is, oh, this is so what I want to do." And, uh, yeah, that was 1999, 99.
We got to veer off into this. Why do engineers like this sport so much? Because they're, they're ubiquitous. There's so many engineers that fly, yeah.
It's funny, I don't know whether, um, I think engineering probably and the geekiness goes together with with understanding flying and the aerodynamics and and stuff, but probably more so with with fixed wing and and powered flight, the whole business of checks and and, um, and the methodicalness. Yeah, yeah, that that fits together probably with an engineer's brain. For me, uh, I was kind of, I was interested in flying from from as since I was a kid. I was building bolsa gliders, and back in the day, you couldn't buy little radio controlled gliders for the price you can now.
It's incredible. I used to just build models, that gliders that just you throw them off the hill and hope they flew in a straight line, and and bolts would just crash, and you'd break a wing, and you'd go home and repair it. Yeah, I was building gliders, and I built my own two-stringer kite and stuff like that. So I had this passion for flying before I was even an engineer. Do engineers make good pilots? I hope so. I
think so. I find that, you know, especially at these comps and stuff, you get to know people a little bit more and stuff, And I find that paragliders go up and they go down. I think it also really fits people's personality. I mean, I think we're all in a sense, maybe a little, I won't say manic, but it's like, it just fits who we are somehow. And, and it, it just seems like there's a lot of engineers. So I've often wondered if it's because I'm not an engineer, the math is not my strength. And I, and I've often wondered if it's like, uh, if it's one of these things that, uh, If you're an engineer, you're really analytic and you're really inside your brain and maybe this is a way where you can get out of it or maybe it's a break or maybe it's just more that intensity that you like about it.
I think you bring that into the sport. I don't think you go to escape it. Engineers are generally, from my experience, a lot of them, well, they're highly intelligent. I'm not necessarily putting myself in that box, but very self-reliant, very self-assured, and I've dealt with that through my previous life as an engineer. And paragliding is one of those sports, I think, like scuba diving. You have to be, uh, you have to have a level of self-confidence, uh, that matches your situation. Uh, too confident, and obviously that, that can kill you.
But if it gets serious and you're up in the air, and, uh, you've got to, you got to bring yourself down. No one else can help you. And, uh, the clown on the end of the radio, I'm putting myself in that position now as an instructor. He's only the, the, the guy on the end of the radio, he's got a limited ability to help you even as a student. So right from the start of your paragliding career, let's say, you have to be comfortable with kind of being alone. I think engineers, they probably have more so than others. They get by in their careers. Certainly they don't have to be the most social people in the world. They have a task to do.
They have problems to solve and they're good at problems. solving that's what definitely what good engineers do and
That's what paragliding is, isn't it? You got to solve the problem. You can't hit the stop button. That's it. I wonder if that's it and
Scuba diving, as an example, it's the same. Yeah, things get desperate, you got to stay cool and calm and and sort things out for yourself. Buddy can kind of help you with the scuba diving. We don't have a buddy system, who can give us a wing, so we're maybe one step further along the a self-reliance line than those guys. But yeah, so I think engineers, they don't fly for escape. They, of course, you know, you've got to love, you love flying, you love being defying gravity. Maybe because we, we spent a lot of time studying physics and stuff. You're doing what you shouldn't be doing. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, we shouldn't be happy if it works. It's
incredible yeah yeah yeah it is an engineering feat, isn't it? It's a marvel. I wonder where it's going to go. We're jumping ahead here because there's a few things you've already said that I want to come back to, and we're not nearly done with your history, but what do you think, you know, is now that you're instructing, tell me about the perfect student and maybe the opposite end of that. Like, how do you, how do you know when someone's going to be, they come to you for the first time, they've never flown. How do you know if they're going to, Can you already kind of tell, like, this person's got probability here, whether good or bad? Are there, are there some signs, you know? You, you and Chris were talking about, you know, that you're tan. You hate the stereotype, but your best tandem passengers are from Korea. They're just stoked and happy and psyched, you know?
Is there, do you see that in, in students as well? Yeah.
I don't teach many students. You could probably ask the guys, my colleagues from from Interlaken, they'd be able to tell you more. I I fly thousands of of tandem passengers, so I'm allowed to to be judgmental there. Um, but yeah, uh, I guess students... a good student has a an air of like that. Like like I said about the engineers, they have at least an air of self-confidence. Usually, they have a sporting ability. You see how they behave, hey? They they normally have some motor skills, like you just... you see that right from from the start, like pulling a wing out of a bag. Who's going to be a problem student? And right, isn't interesting?
Yeah, yeah, interesting. You know, my best student is, uh, is My partner Anook—hi, Anook—but she's, she's a classic. She's, um, calm, incredibly sporty, and, and balanced. But she's one of those people who, whatever she puts her hand to, sport, she's just balanced and gets into it. You can see it coming when you get certain students who you just need to steer them into, maybe another sport. So maybe this is not for you, okay?
I'm going to put you on the spot here a little bit, back to the Alps and back to to specifically where you live. So when I was, you know, when I was learning and we started going to the Alps for the first time, it's mostly Bruce and fellow Australian good friend of yours and someone who's been following your stuff for a long time. We always gravitated toward the fiches of the Alps, you know, big mountain sites where things happen faster and it's bigger and it's bolder, maybe it's, you know, but also way more risky. You know, there's a lot of people that go to the Alps and fly in there, you know, they're going to stick with the La Ranias and, you know, places that are one, you can see farther and, and you can see stuff coming and you've maybe got more time and things don't happen so extreme.
In other words, you know, like the more of the maritime Alps or just lower you, you, like you said, you're in the biggest of the big and things happen there violently and fast. What is it about your personality?
And like I said, I'm putting you on the spot. I'm not, you know, but there really is a huge difference there. Why do you think it suits your personality to be where you are, yeah?
Zermatt. Um, I didn't, I didn't choose Zermatt; Zermatt chose me, I guess it does. It's, it's, it suits me now, having progressed to the level I've progressed. But I've never, but I was never like incredibly confident. Not, I'm not a super confident person per se, but, but over the years I've become, now I can say I'm a super confident paragliding pilot. Uh, it's interesting. Yeah, I, I, I arrived in Zermatt because a friend of mine, who coincidentally started learning paragliding at the same time in another country, I was already living in, in Zermatt for a few years and he was raving about it and, uh, I'd never done, I never spent a summer in
the Alps, or um, flying. And I wasn't getting—I wasn't getting enough flying at the time, so I moved to Zermatt.
Is this from ours?
no, I was, I was going back to, but I was doing seasons at the time, skiing in Saint Maritz and teaching in Saint Maritz and and in Perisher, actually in Australia, so I was getting very little flying time in and And it was bugging me. So I moved to Zermatt because a friend of mine said, you've got to come here. And so I spent that first summer with a little bar job and flying every day. And
when you say flying every day,
were they tandems or just for fun? No, no, this is way before. I had like, I don't know, maybe less than 100 flights when I arrived in Zermatt. And, yeah, I was a real rookie. I remember going up to Rotterdam, our main kind of takeoff, for the first time by myself, not having tandems there or my mate Ronnie just being there for the first time on this 3,000-metre peak, thinking, ooh. But I'd been there enough times that I knew the conditions were okay and I guess I'd probably checked in with the tandems before that. And I just nibbled away at it.
I, I didn't know, I didn't know any better, I suppose. I mean, yeah, it's not, it's not, it's, it's not as though I, I looked around the Alps and said, "I'm going to choose Zomat um to, to progress my flying or to start a business or anything like that." It's a, it's a series of coincidences that brought me to Zomat, and it's rugged high mountain terrain, and it's not, it's not beginner terrain, and I don't teach many students for that reason. Nobody comes to Zermatt, or I won't, I won't take a student um on a week's course in Zermatt to learn to fly. I'll send them, I'll send them to Interlaken for sure, because the conditions are and the potential to fly is so much higher.
You know, we teach, we fly in the mornings with students where the conditions are calm enough to allow us to do maybe one or two flights, and then that's it for them. What is it about flying in Zermatt that suits me? I guess through a long, slow process, I've become so familiar with the terrain that I feel like I belong in those mountains. I feel like I'm at home up in those high peaks. And I don't forget or I try to remember when I'm up there that I'm flying. It's such a privilege to be there. I'm flying stuff on an afternoon where I might not have a tandem that people dream about to achieve in their paragliding careers.
And I'll go and blow off an afternoon to go for a buzz around some 4,000-metre peaks. It's crazy. well
How did you, how did you start putting it together in terms of XC then? Because I mean, it's, man, it's a bold place to start sending it from. Were you, or did you really, you know, did you, uh, grind the brass tacks there? Did you? Yeah, so you had this, you had kind of 100 flights, you moved to Zermatt, and then that all I'd, um, actually
I think the first, first proper, or relatively big cross-country flight I did was in Turkey. Guy know there, Sammy, Sammy Champion, Sammy took, uh, he kind of took me under his wing a little bit, pardon the pun, but, uh, he was, he was running a little course for some, some of his potential cross-country pilots, uh, comp pilots, in a place called Zulu, which is a little out of the way, uh, mountain, uh, north of the main place that everyone goes to, which is Aludinez, Barbado. And I was there on a holiday to Aludinez. And he took me to this place. And I ended up, it was the first time I had a proper task to fly.
And I'd never really flown cross country before, but I'd flown quite a bit of thermal by that stage, just around the Zermatt Valley. And I ended up flying 50Ks. And it was like one of my first cross country flights. And I flew over this high range and landed in the middle of nowhere and got some crazy way too easy retrieve back to back to, uh, Lusiners, and that, that was it. I was absolutely hooked on, on cross-country flying, but, um, in Zermatt, yeah, I just chipped away at it. I started flying around the end of the valley, not going past the, past the landing really, uh, and then I don't know, little by little, I just, uh, I was trying to get out of the valley.
I guess it took longer than, than most people's progression because I was on my own. There was no one else, no one else was flying cross-country in Zermatt. I was either flying, flying tandems, or not flying much, and, uh, yeah, I just, after I tried to fly out of the valley, and then I was, think I was flying a, back in the day, a DHV one-two glider, and, uh, I'd get to the end of the valley a few times and I tried to cross this, but I always, I thought, this is impossible. I kept bombing out in this. It was like three, four, five times. I just, I'd make it as far as this, which is, was quite easy at the right time of day. Yeah, uh, if you leave it a little bit. I mean, I wasn't trying to launch for the first thermals, I was just trying to, trying to fly out of that valley and cross the valley and just going down that east-facing side.
Yeah, it was a long time before I actually connected With, uh, it was lift on the other side, and that was it. That was like the massive barrier being been broken. Yeah, exactly. And, uh, of course, my flying got better. I, I got onto high performance gliders. Gliders improved, and it, it's become, it's become easier. It's
Definitely, you've done some monster triangles out of there. What's still left to be done? What do you got? What are you and Chris looking at? You know, what if you could just, if you had the perfect day tomorrow and it's July 10th, you got long day, you'd start early in the morning at like 8:30 off the, what's it called, the rut.
off the climb, Matterhorn, yeah.
Oh, okay. Yeah, then go down the east-facing side and cross over and go where? Or would you just lob over the other side and go down into Italy, I...
Could tell you, but I have to kill you.
Excellent. Can we do it together? Absolutely, that's
the plan, uh, we we got got all sorts of plans, and we're bored. Chris and I are swapping, um, swapping emails with, uh, with the latest triangle that we've, we've come up with, um, xc planner. Thanks, Tom. Well, yeah, yeah.
thanks tom
exactly yeah so um we're pretty lucky we can we can launch from 3880 meters uh but it's It's glacier and snow-covered, and on a big day for triangles, you don't want any wind. So that's tricky. But Chris is talking about staying overnight in either Climb Matterhorn and hiking the Brighthorn in the morning so we got an extra few hundred metres and heading east. Okay. Or somehow scamming a helicopter right up to the Margarita Hut, saying we do some filming or something. spend the night there and and be even higher and and and closer to the to the mac and jaguar valley or closer to doma dorsola.
Uh, yeah, so we've got we've got a few plans. Um, well, what's another
one, what's the okay, so
the big flight I did, we can—we'll talk about that. Is the climb Matterhorn to to Mont Blanc to Neeson and back?
over, and you went right over the spine, like somewhere around the Jungfrau, or did you come back into, uh, what's the really on your side? The, uh, you know, across from this, but and down, down valley like this, Sion, what's that? Leukerbad? Did you come back into Leukerbad when you did that from, from Nissen, uh?
No, I came over, um, Kandesteg, I think. I came over the Lodzberg somewhere more
stunning oh
That was one of of the most beautiful places on earth. Yeah, that was 230, 231, okay? Triangle FAI. Um, so the uh, the plan will be to just do that again because it was so cool. That's amazing, but it's like, look at look at the turn points and try to expand that. Maybe um, we're looking at, I don't know whether it's, it's going to work, but to fly like due south. Uh, I don't know whether it's going to be too stable in the in the mornings in the in the kind of, I suppose, the four Alps down there on the other side of the valley from Ayosta. Uh, maybe in the springtime this will work, but then maybe you have to fly south of Grand Paradiso and then and then head west into France and then come up the Chamonix Valley.
Uh, you can probably help me out with this in terms of the the national parks and the and the problems with that. I've been studying that a bit and that looks that looks complicated, if not impossible. Um, the thing about
you just don't land, yeah.
exactly um you can fiddle with the the The triangles, I've come to realize with the percentage of closure, if you're going to fly a record, then you need to be within a certain distance of your start point. But if you want to fly an FAI, Now we're kind of opening up that little wedge that moves around when you move your turn point around to see how far I have to get, or how far away I can fly, and what angles I can get that my landing. um the realistic the realistic landing is still an FAI and then any anything up after that's a bonus so if you head south from klein and then west and then you come through chamonix
You've done some monster triangle by the time you hit Martini, yeah? And it's in, it's a triangle, and then if you fly, it's all just a bonus, yeah? If you head back up to this from there and then home, I don't know what you're talking, yeah, to 300, like 300K triangles.
Yeah, proper big triangle in the biggest of the Alps. That would be pretty amazing. And
the other option is, yeah, like from what Chris is, we're using that extra altitude is to fly east across Macanagra, Domodossola, Chento Valley. If you're in there, then it's going to be amazing. Amazing pick, uh, what's you fly all the way to Locarno and then, and then diagonally up back into... oh, I'm not sure how far you have to go. I have to look at my old go tag.
the Eiger and come home, yeah, something like
that yeah
Yeah, that'd be ripping.
That'd be really good, yeah. There's the potential, like, is is there wings are getting better, we're getting better, we're getting bolder. Yeah, yeah, yeah, watch this space, don't
You think that's... I, I, I've said this too many times, but I don't... you dig that about this sport? That, that you know that even you're in the mecca of paragliding in the world, and there's still so many possibilities, you know? I mean, it just feels like we're barely tapping it, you know? There's just so... I mean, where I've... where I'm from, at home, it's just a joke how much there is to do, you know? It's overwhelming, even you know, but...
For for us, so Switzerland's a playground paragliding in terms of retrieves, and it's just, it's just so easy getting up a mountain and and getting home again. Uh, for you guys where you fly, that's just, it's a little whole Finn's tiger country, yeah, a little more of a crazy
little more of a girl oxygen
and all of this stuff, yeah. The Alps is is incredible, and the potential just just grows where
would you you know, for people that are thinking about, you know, coming over the Alps for the first time this summer, what, what's the perfect itinerary? Give me an, you know, if you, if it, assuming the weather's epic over the whole thing, you've got a nice high pressure system and there's, you know, there's no rain and not much wind, you know, like give me your 10 favorite sites. I wish I'd flown
So many sites. I'm a... this is the thing about, um, running a tandem business, um, you know, this is one of the reasons I do big flights from, from Zermatt, is because, uh, well, it's where I live. I can get out the front door early in the morning and I can go up a mountain. I don't have to travel the day before or something. So, uh, that's limited my, my, uh, experience, experience in terms of, you know, all the, all the fantastic, amazing fly sites there are in the Alps, um, you know, but someone who's never flown the Alps before, you, you've got to think places like Ansi and Interlaken just give you that incredible view with the, with the mellow four Alps.
So, you've got nice takeoff conditions. The only thing you've got to deal with is traffic, uh, in, in both of those places, but the potential to do some, some little, little circuits with incredible white caps for four thousand plus white cap peaks in the background is is is amazing. So you probably want to work into it with with one of those sites you've probably got better ideas of the first sites to go to. Fierce, you've got got to go to just because it's it's mecca, you know. I had to go to Chamonix because 9,000 vertical feet, dude, steep. Yeah, yeah, just had to be part of that.
Yeah, skiing. So Fiesh is um um and you can Fiesh Goms. So so heading from from heading east from Fiesh, that's for the less experienced pilots. It's probably it's a great it's a great flight you can probably do. What is it? 50 k's up to up to the first up and back. Uh, you've got a big wide valley. Uh, they've they've even made the Munster airport uh airspace skinny, so you don't have to, you can land pretty much on the side of the valley with it. You can land anywhere rolling fields. It's and uh it's a series of spines that you can hop across or you can stay up in the back range and fly right along the ridge. Uh, that that that flight is is the classic easy and a classic and and fun.
Once you head down into the main ballet, then things get serious depending on what the wind is doing. It's a oh yeah
There's spots in the road that can
get pretty
Wild, yeah, yeah, pretty well, for sure. Um, um, so we've had—we've had a lot of tandem pilots on the show, but I've never asked any tandem questions. Uh, but let's get back to your history a little bit. How did that all get going? It was that—the was that the end of your engineering career, yeah?
My engineering career had been put on standstill, and it was, it was kind of, you know, the mining boom was kicking off in Australia. This is 20 years ago, and uh, part of me was thinking, you know, do I want to go to Western Australia and when cleaners are earning a hundred grand or something? That was ridiculous. Yeah, a small part of me was thinking, should I just go there and earn some money? And I just couldn't, I couldn't do it this. And the meantime, my friend Ronnie, Ronnie Schneider, had the other Swiss Australian. He was a, he was a bit ahead of me with his tandem training, and and I kind of, he was the, the friend that brought you to Zermatt, exactly. Yeah, and and so I came to Zermatt just as he was getting his tandem license, and um, while I was, I was still progressing really, really slowly.
I was a beginner. I had this inner confidence about my flying abilities, and I thought, yeah, I could, I could do this. And uh, so I had that first year of 2002, I just, I flew and flew and flew. I had, I had some restricted Australian license, I think. So I had to get my Swiss license.
Which is a little demanding, I understand, isn't
it? The solar license is probably one of the more demanding ones. The good thing about it is it's an exam, under exam conditions. So they're really friendly guys, but you have to perform in front of strangers, possibly a strange fly site, depending on where you sign up. and um, you have to perform under exam conditions, and that's, that's a, that's a good thing, and it's the same goes for all the other exams. So I, so I did the solo license, and within you're allowed to do the tandem, what was called the tandem B at the time. You have to wait 12 months and have minimum 150 flights or something. So um, I had that within Within a few days of 12 months, I was signed up for the Tandem B and pretty much a month or two after the minimum requirement to do the Tandem A solo licence, I did that.
It's a long, difficult and expensive process. So it was two years of solid flying with a few odd jobs in between.
So that one of the, so one of the reasons I've always avoided being a commercial tandem pilot, I fly tandems for fun, but but uh, is that I always hear from tandem pilot, I think the the number one way to destroy your solo flying, like your your passion, yeah, is to do tandems. Is that true? It doesn't seem like it with you, you
know maybe Maybe Chris and I, I don't know, maybe we're the exceptions to the rule. I haven't – I'm still learning. I haven't lost the passion for learning about this sport and improving and progressing.
Maybe all these other guys are just better than me and they've just done it all and asked me in another five years and maybe I'll give you a different answer. Is where
you guys do tandems, is it kind of the churn and burn? an interlock in, you know, there or no? I mean, you are, you doing them all day? We're
doing them all day, but we do, um, we do a lot less, and we get stopped by the weather a lot more often. Those guys fly 300 days or something a year, and we, I don't know how many, I haven't, I haven't looked, but it's maybe half that. I don't know, yeah, where there are a lot of days, or there are a lot of afternoons where we stop because of strong winds and turbulence, so we don't risk a, uh, a rough landing, and, um, so yeah, we, we're, we're yo-yoing, uh, a lot less than those guys, but we're, uh, it's full on now. Business has picked up, and it gets, it gets busier every year, which is a good thing. Yeah, so, um, yeah, we now, we've come to the stage now where, like, I'll look at the weather, I'll study the weather, and I'll consciously take a day off tandem flying.
I know it's going to cost me a bomb, but I'll take a day off tandem flying and go fly solo, to go fly one of these crazy triangles, if the weather's good, because I don't want to miss out. Yeah,
Yeah, so you've still got—you've totally got the energy for it, even though you're doing these tandems. It's not like, "Oh god, I gotta go flying," but
I do see it. I, I, I see that. Not, uh, not in everyone, not in every, um, pilot that I know, but, um, yeah, it's like, it's that, it's that saying, isn't it? Don't turn your, don't turn your passion into a good business if
You, you know, looking back, if you had to do it all over again, would you do the same thing? What
Do you mean my life, or the flying side of it now? If I... the flying side of it, um, I wish, um, if I was surrounded with some, some like-minded, um, people kind of pushing their abilities a bit more, maybe, uh, you know, I wish I would have progressed a little, a little faster, just because you
didn't have the mentors and the people flying yeah Yeah,
maybe I need someone to say, wow, you're doing great now and then, you know. I just, yeah, you know, paragliding is a solo sport. A lot of time you're on your own. You have this amazing experience and you come home and, you know. Yeah. Some of the other paragliders might be interested in it, but really you've done it for yourself. And it's great to, to, to share that, share those experiences and, and, and the good and the bad with, with a like-minded, with a like-minded group of people and, uh, yeah, I didn't really have a lot of that through my whole paragliding career, let's say.
Yeah, if, I guess, if you're in somewhere like Fish or Interlock with a whole bunch more, more pilots, you get exposed to that. Um, and the other thing is, I didn't really, I didn't learn through a school. Uh, I learned, I did my basic training through a school. After that, I was doing bits and pieces here and there with a, this, this instructor and borrow glider here and there and everywhere. So, and after that, I was kind of self-taught. I, I did my solo exam. I was training for my solo, um, paragliding license, and I was doing this landing approach, because landing approach, you had to do. No one really taught me anything about what was involved in the solo license.
Ronnie told me the maneuvers I had to do in the time, so I went trading them. Um, I was doing the landing approach, someone said, "You should have, you know, you should... You should have hands up." You should have maximum speed so you can flare. They didn't explain why. I just picked that up. You need to fly maximum speed when you land. So I'd be doing a whole landing approach with zero brakes, doing these big S's and stuff and judging, which turned out to be fantastic practice because when I realised, wow, you can use brakes and I can halve my glide ratio on a school wing, what a revelation.
But hey, and then the other thing was, um, we, you know, after I, after I did this basic course, I was backpacking around Turkey and, of course, landed in Aludinez and all I could see was a sky full of paragliders. I said, "Goodbye to my friends, I said, I'm staying here." And, uh, luckily, you know, I thought I was brilliant. I had seven high flights, I knew how to fly, and, uh, I hooked up with Sky Guysports, who, a fantastic company, I just lucked out to get probably the most professional tandem company there to look after me. And, uh, after two weeks, finally, Murat, the boss, uh, he was like, "Go ground handling." I'm like, "Come on, I'm gonna fly, let me fly, let me fly." He's like, one day he just said, "Okay, you want to fly?
Go fly. Here's a radio." And, uh, so up I went in a tandem truck, but and, uh, we used to have this, me and this South African guy who was working at the camping there, we used to have this old edel, Ethel the Edel we called it, and we'd take turns going up in the morning and he'd be like, I'm going to smack that bee.
I'll give her hell today. I'm going to do a spiral. You won't believe. Oh, I did the spiral. So we would push each other. and uh, I think that um, it had quite, it must have quite short line, but you know, after 10 flights, I was doing spiral dives and everything on this thing self-taught, just doing them by myself, and uh, so I was quite comfortable with the g-forces and stuff, and and uh, came to the swiss exam and uh, had to do a double circle to the right ending on axis in in 20 seconds or something, so So I had it all wired. I pulled a full spiral. I was in the spiral by the first circle. And about 90 degrees before the exit, I'd ease it off and I'd come out a really smooth, slow turn on axis, zero pendulum.
Had it nailed. And I land the first landing in the circle, walk away, and the guy's like, nope. Like, what do you mean? He says, no, you're supposed to do two circles without a break. In German, it's like, you did a, you stopped the circle. I'm like, well, that's how I exit. Like, he says, nope. He says, because he knew, like, I had 200 flights. He says, come on, come on, show me what you can do. So I had to, so that was, I lost a so-called joker. And you get three flights, you get to do one repeat flight on your solar license. And so, so I had to relearn my double circle without break, slowing it down, take it easy.
And yeah, one of the downsides of being self-taught, learning by doing.
Maybe, maybe you, maybe you just answered this, but a question I ask pretty much everybody, cause I think it's enlightening. If you could go back, usually I say 50 hour self, but with you, I'm going to say a hundred Cause you said you kind of had, you maybe had about a hundred flights. Well, but that wouldn't be a hundred hours. Okay.
So what would you change if you could go back to that, that fill then, you know, is there advice that you wish you would have taken or, or is there something you wish you would have done differently from that point forward? um
I know that, um, I was, I was kind of overconfident internally, like I didn't probably display that, but I was just super quietly confident. Um, I remember thinking I'd done 50 launches and 50 landings that were, that were textbook, like I never had a problem. I'd do these flights, I wasn't doing big long thermal flights or anything, but, but everything went from, from the, the very first flight was, was absolutely fine. I don't think I had a, uh, a start abort, you know, maybe one, I don't, I can't remember that. I just remember that they were all perfect, everything. And then things went kind of downhill from there, so
I would say, you know, talking to myself, then I'd give myself a little slap, say, "Dude, you know nothing, you've got 50 flights is is nothing, it. It starts here."
And always get some advice. Like, yeah, just have people around you that you can talk to, people watching you fly, people to give you that good advice that may save your life.
What about being receptive to advice at that stage? You know, I think that, you know, when you're overconfident, that can be kind of hard is do you remember do you think you would have been receptive
Yeah, good question. Um, I hope so. I think I just... I hear this from
instructors a lot that, you know, there are a lot of people that are just earmuffs, you know? They, they'll nod their head, but they'll tell you about how great they're doing, and they're not really taking it in.
Yeah, yeah, no one's actually sat me on my bum and said, "Phil, you need to." Yeah, and I'm not saying you—I'm not saying you necessarily, yeah—but I'm wondering, I'm wondering whether they, whether there were, whether episodes in my past where people were should have said something and didn't. Like that clown, I'm thinking specifically of me. Yeah, what is he doing? Yeah, uh, it is, it is definitely, um, a problem that I see with, with, with students, with, with good students, that they, they think they've got it all dialed in, but they, um, they, they don't. And, and they're, they're setting themselves up for, for full, and it's up to, yeah, I mean as an instructor, I, I try to highlight
as much as I I can, as well as I as best I can to the situation and sit down and explain the situations and what can what can possibly go go wrong, uh, where someone kind of is in a in a hairy situation that they didn't realize, you know, how how close they were to having something really serious happen. So, um, yeah, I wish there was, you know, a bit more of that in my in my past. Um, yeah, Phil.
13 months ago ah that's a good transition. Uh, 13 months ago, you had an incident that, uh, I think people can really learn from. And, you know, we've, we've talked about accidents a lot on the show, so we don't need to go to the dark side of this, but, um, I, I think it is, it is, it provides for good learning because it was one of these things that was, was, it wasn't like you guys were flying in rowdy conditions. It wasn't like you guys were pushing the envelope. It wasn't like you guys, you know, it was one of these like snake in the grass came out and bit your ass and uh and almost like for no fault but there was you know takes through it yeah
How about that, huh? Talk about, uh, I'm not going to say, uh, it wasn't a a life-changing experience mentally, but certainly physically. Um, you go to work one day and two weeks later you leave the hospital, and two months later you, uh, you come home for the the first time. Like, you go to work one day and you come home two months later, like life just, bang! It's like life just turns left, whoa. Um, yeah, and it can happen that quickly. And, uh, you know, I suppose I, I do have that reputation now, in, in at least in Zermatt, because of the things I've, I've done.
I fly the big triangles and I fly a bit of acro and I fly some comps and, and I'd probably fly more solo flights apart from Chris than anybody else. So everyone in Zermatt was like, no, it couldn't be, not Phil. How could this happen? You know, how could this happen to Phil?
And that was tough. It was tough to digest as well. And, you know, your reputation is a little bit in tatters. It's not, but it is. You feel like it is. God, I've let everyone down. Um, here I am kind of championing this sport as being incredibly safe as long as you, you build up your experience slowly and and um, you get a breath of experience and then suddenly this happens. And it's, yeah, so how did it happen? Um, I'm flying tandem in, uh, uh, in autumn conditions. Are very light, we're on a south-facing slope to get the only thermals that, that are around.
Uh, fortunately for us, you know, we thermal well. I was thermaling Christmas Day on in 2016, which is crazy. Um, so yeah, Zermatt, Zermatt gets good lift, uh, probably longer than most places, but um, still, conditions are nice, they're gentle, they're light, but involves flying and soaring close to a steep rocky slope and I'm following my friend and business partner in, in his tandem. Um, we're both flying with the right wing tip to the slope. He turns out to fly, fly back.
I follow him, so we're both left wingtips a slope and then he turns, he turns back into the slope. I fly a little further and it's not a big area, but the timing is such that, that we both turn out away from the slope together. So we're both turning back towards the slope to, to, to get the lift and it's at that point where there's this little hesitancy and I asked him about it and, uh, he, he said the same thing. There's a little bit of this, what's he gonna do? Do I do? I turn left or right? Left or right? And and it's like bumping into someone in the street, an empty street, uh, that can happen.
You just, oh, it's embarrassing, booming chest bump someone accidentally and you, you move on. On a crowded street, it's never going to happen because everyone kind of separates. And and yes, there are obviously right-of-way rules in flying, as in lots of things, and um, the the combination of our relative positions to the hill to each other just put us in a a situation where that wasn't 100% clear. And paragliding, especially ridge soaring, is a lot about keeping eye contact, and and we had the eye contact, see each other plainly, but we had this little hesitancy, and one and a half seconds of hesitancy when you got two flight, two gliders closing at a closing speed of 70 kilometers an hour, suddenly all of your, all of your wiggle room is gone.
And you could just hear me, I, I filmed it, I filmed the, uh, the accident, and you can hear me swear and just bury the brake, and uh, I had to bury the left brake to, to fly out away from the hill. Um, my, my colleague, he felt like if he turned at that point away from the hill to give me right away, he would have hit me for sure, so that such was the position of our glider, so he went super close to the hill, as, as close as he could go to the hill, and I smashed the brake, spun the glider, looked up, I'm like, "Got this, I can stabilize this," and uh, within like two to three seconds, I, I looked down, the ground came up, I was like, no, I'm done, smashed.
I buried both brakes to kind of flare, I suppose, as best I could do and incredibly landed on a super steep slope with flat rocks and grass, tufts of grass. The glider held us, but we didn't slide. We were in a kind of a flat-bottomed or a steep couloir between cliffs and rock outcrops, and it's just a fate that fortunately put me there rather than somewhere else, and fortunately flying in Zermatt, having Air Zermatt next to our landing, and friends phoning them from the air, it was probably less than 20 minutes before I was in the heli heading to Inselspital in Dörn.
And that's probably what saved my life, I guess. Oof, yeah.
How life changes from one second to the next. The the question that lingers is, is, yeah, how to, um, it's easy to say, well, stay further away, be more conservative. That's, that's true, but to, um, how to avoid those, that, that exact situation, being exactly far enough apart and exactly positioned so that it brings that level of, of doubt as to whether to go left or right. And, uh, I think, um, yeah, did the single take out from that is, is, is, uh, on a ridge, on ridge soaring, it's, it's almost, it's more critical than flying out with 100 people in a gaggle.
You know, you know what to expect, you know what to expect the gaggle, unless someone does something stupid. You know, in a gaggle, everyone's turning the right the same way. People be hot the heart below, you may climb quicker than you watch them. Someone, gonna, a good pilot's gonna turn in because he's core in the thermal. That's okay, let it happen, find your slot, but, um, uh, Yeah, flying with friends, yeah, where you're going back and forth on a... on a ridge, there's always that eye contact that you... that's required when you're pulling out from right away into... not right away, leave room, make sure you got eye contact and... and really be conservative. Yeah, and obviously,
uh, my friend and I weren't... or circumstances conspired to, yeah, to produce that situation, so
Here we are, 13 months later. Um, you're flying really well on the comp
It's rehab, yeah. I'm sure, I'm sure. Um, but I mean, they—what can you teach us about, you know, coming back from something like that? Is it was—it, we were kind of talking before we started recording it, because it wasn't like you guys were, you know, it wasn't like you're being stupid, it wasn't like you made a mistake. I mean, you made him—okay, you guys made a mistake, but it was like a complacency thing. It was like just this weird—I can't teach you much
about how to avoid that accident? No, I mean, it's super aware of complacency. How do you? Yeah, yeah, that's a oxymoron kind of. Yeah, right, ridiculous. Okay, be aware of complacency, yeah.
Exactly. I mean, I mean, I don't even think we need to say any more about that. It's just great that people—it's another reminder that, you know, on those mellow days is when we really got to be heads up. But, but, um, I'm thinking more like the mental side, you know? Just, was it—was it the first time you flew again? Was it scary? Was it nervous? Where did you find you were in a different headspace than you ever were before in your lifetime of flight, or was it like, "God damn, it, thank God I'm back, I get to do this again"?
Uh, I was, uh, I was definitely nervous on the start. I, I bought a, so I bought a lightweight weight school wing. I need to buy one, uh, anyway, so I just bought two and, uh, I thought, "This is my, you know, I need something that's super easy to start, doesn't, not too fast, um, uh, but I want to fly." And I didn't have anything in my, my, my current quiver of gliders that suited that and I thought, "No."
EMAs in your current clippers.
Strangely enough. Yeah.
And unfortunately, as a result of the accident, I have some nerve damage, which may or may not fully recover, but it's resulted in some limited movement in my left foot. So that means I can't run very fast. and uh, so I was nervous about how I was going to be able to take off, and it was six months and one week after I, after the accident that, that I was on, uh, I was on Rottweil, so I was in Zermatt, and um, I had a perfectly groomed snow-covered takeoff, which gave me lots of confidence and an easy wing.
I had about 5k front wind-like conditions were, conditions were perfect, so So, um, and, uh, yeah, I was, I was nervous at the start, um, not about having an accident. I was nervous about, um, how I was going to feel. I didn't know how I was going to feel, you know, just talk of talking with psychologists, psychiatrists in, in rehab. have, um, they're super, um, aware of post-traumatic stress, and they were saying, "You know, don't be surprised after six months or 12 months, or that suddenly, um, it hits you." And you know, touch wood, till now, um, mentally things have been going just, just great, just fine.
So I was nervous about the takeoff, but, um, as soon as I pull the wing up, um, that just the the tension on the carabiners lifted that the lifting off enabled me to run as almost as fast or with minimal limp, um, off the mountain much easier than what I expected. So I was, I was super happy that I was to be back in the air and And I was supposed to fly down and I think it was at that flight even. I was supposed to fly down and land because my girlfriend was a student at the time.
And maybe one or two others were up there. And I was supposed to fly down and then get on the radio talking now. And it was thermic and I could actually hang out. So I was thermaling. On my little Jomo lightweight school wing, woohoo! And, uh, so I radioed the to the start and said, "Um, send students, send a nook." And, uh, so she launched and, uh, and we flew wingtip to wingtip, which was, which was very romantic and very healing. And, and after all we'd been through together, together, that was a, that was a big deal. That was a huge milestone in the whole rehabilitation, physically and mentally, to, to, um, to be in the air and then, and then to fly with, with this person who, who's just been with me through this journey.
Um, yeah, thanks Anouk, I love you.
That's a great place to, uh, I think that's a beautiful place to end because otherwise I'm gonna start crying. So, um, Phil, thanks, man. I, I really appreciate it. There's, uh, some great lessons there, and, uh, I guess we got one more day of this awesome comp, so I look forward to flying with you and, uh, getting, getting in the air with you in Zermatt. I look forward to having you on that place a little around, yeah. But, uh, thank
you very much gavin it's been a pleasure and an honor I look forward to flying with you a lot in the future. Cheers, ladies. Cool.
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