Another episode of the Cloud Base Mayhem. We shook things up a little bit this time, and I invited, at the request of listeners who have enjoyed the shows with Nik Hawks, my friend out in California, and he's, those of you who have listened to the shows, he's a lower hours pilot, I think he's about 110 hours now, and chasing the sky crack like crazy, just loves it. And so we thought it'd be really fun to do a dual interview of Mitch Riley. A lot of people have been asking for Mitch. He's flying 500, 600 hours a year now. When I first met him in 2012, he was pretty new, and he's really gotten good in the last few years. And he's instructing for Eagle Paragliding, he does guided trips all over the world, competed in the 2017 X-Alps, and plans to do it again, so he's applied.
So we talk X-Alps, and risk, and instruction. And best practices, and progression, and training, and headspace, and a lot of things here. And the questions came from both of us. We thought it'd be fun to get somebody to ask questions that's at a different point in their career, and I think that worked pretty well. So if you agree, we'd love to hear some feedback. Let us know what you think, and if you like it, then we'll do more of this in the future. A couple small bits of housekeeping. I think I mentioned this on one of the previous ones. But one... One of our listeners, David DeSiebenthal, I hope I'm saying that right, has a really cool custom t-shirt company in Switzerland, and he offered to send me a shirt. And I thought, ah, man, I've got so many t-shirts, how about we give one or two to a listener, but based in Europe, so saves him a little bit on shipping.
So how you can get a hold of one of these killer t-shirts, just put up a review or share it with one of your friends and make sure I know about it. If you live in Europe, if you listen to the show and you like it, one of the many ways to support the show. Just to share it around with your friends. So if you do that, then let me know, then we'll just draw out of a hat or something, and a t-shirt could be on your way. So I think that's about it. We talk a lot about safety in this one, and I think you're just going to really enjoy it. There's a lot of takeaways. I learned a ton. We heard some great stories from the ex-Alps, and getting psyched for the next one. Mitch is just sending off to do the Dolomiti Superfly. So you can watch that.
I think it starts on the 26th, and that'll be a really cool hike and fly race. So excited to watch him on that one. But yeah, without further delay, please enjoy this conversation with Nik Hawks, myself, and Mitch Riley.
Mitch, awesome to have you on the show. We're going to change things up a little bit here, and I've got my great friend Nik Hawks on the line. He's just a total genius, and he's super hot and heavy about the Skycrack right now. And just got into it. But pretty recently, and we've had him on the show a couple of times, so the listeners will know him. But we thought it'd be really fun to both ask you questions from very different perspectives. So thanks for letting us do this. I know you're getting ready to go over to Europe and compete in the Dolomiti Superfly, which we're psyched to talk about. But thanks for your time, man.
Hey, Gavin. Thank you so much. It's been a huge resource to our community to have this podcast, and I really appreciate being on. Thanks for having me on. And Nick, I just finished. I just finished listening to your last podcast, and I really appreciate your questions and the inquisitive nature you've approached flying with. So great to be on, guys. Yeah, psyched. Awesome.
So, Mitch, I thought, you know, we've got a really cool history that I actually know pretty well because you and I have spent a lot of time together over the years, and we'll get into that. But I thought a really cool place to start because we're going to be talking about ex-Alps with the ex-Alps coming up and this Dolomiti Superfly and kind of your hike and fly race adventures and progression and stuff. I thought I've been dying to talk. I
thought I've been dying to talk
to you more about the ex-Alps because we were never really together during the race, and I heard a really fun story when we were out at the Applegate this year. So I definitely want to talk some about that, but I was just thinking, could you tell the audience, like, just whatever comes to mind, and remember, this is long form. You don't have to cut it short, but just your best and worst experience in the ex-Alps.
Sure, sure. Well, you know, first of all, it was my first hike and fly race ever. So I kind of jumped into the Olympics of the sport in my first ever time doing the sport, which afterwards I've realized was quite a big leap. Let's see, my best and worst moments of it, the last three or four days of it, I was racing against Yevgeny and Tom DeDorda and Jesse Williams for not getting cut, you know, for not taking the last cut. And it was so fun. We were pushing each other. Things were lining up well for me. We had mixed weather, so we had some great flights, and we had some non-flyable conditions and a lot of hiking, and just that energy of really pushing hard with those guys and lapping with them when we passed and stuff like that was a blast for me.
It was really fun. Hardest moment of it, well, one interesting story during it. At one point, I decided to hike up this big rocky mountain that didn't have any known takeoffs on it to come down. And I was on the peak of this mountain at probably 830, 845 at night, so, you know, looking at the cutoff flying time, and I was trying to launch, I was kind of in a lee side, wind coming from all these different directions, and my glider was on a scree field. So it seemed like every time I'd get it partially inflated, a line would get caught on a rock, and then I'd get it partially inflated, and then a different line would get caught on a rock. And finally, I get the thing up over my head. I go to turn around, and with my turning step, my shot— My shoe goes down in this hole between two rocks, and as I push off, my shoe just kind of comes off my foot.
And, you know, I had the moment to bail, to shut down the takeoff, and I was like, screw it, let's go. I finally got this thing up. So I fly, and the flight was not everything I hoped it would be. I ended up not making it very far and landed in this kind of rocky riverbed, which was a two-hour hike from the road, and I was missing a shoe. So I hiked inside. I was in my socks for an hour and a half, two hours. Yeah, exactly. Just walking down this sharp gravel road. I mean, it was a hurdy road. It hurt. For a couple hours until one of my supporters came to me with shoes, and that was on day five or six. And from then on, I had foot problems. You know, that kind of pushed my feet over the limit, and I had blisters and stuff from then on.
Up to then, my feet had been doing great with lots of miles on them. But, uh— It was an interesting story of prancing along barefoot on a gravel road out in the middle of nowhere.
I remember seeing that in a blog or something, that you'd lost your shoe. And I was like, what the hell? How do you lose your shoe? I didn't know the full story of it. I thought, yeah, that'd be brutal, man. That's like the number one thing we've got to take care of, isn't it, is our feet. That must have been painful.
Yeah, it was a little brutal. One thing is, I kind of like loose shoes because I like to use the muscles in my feet and legs to support myself. But maybe a touch tighter in the future will be a good thing.
That's interesting, because I don't actually usually lace my shoes either. I'm the same way. I don't have to think about that. Maybe I'll need to change that in the race. But, well, that leads into another question that Nick had, too. And we'll let him chime in here in a bit. But you've applied again. I know you're super psyched about doing the 2019 X-Alps. You know, just in comparison from my 2015 to 2017. You know, in 2015, we as a team— My team just made so many mistakes. And they were all, I felt, totally forgivable. It was just, we were rookies. And in the 2017, not many. You know, one really cost us. And it was just a paragliding thing. I just bombed out. But the rest of it went actually pretty smoothly. Just wondering what, you know, what were your big takeaways?
What are your big changes going to be?
Well, I want to have a guy on my team whose sole job it is to be on a computer with good internet connection. And feeding me information. It's, um, I found that it's just too much of a job for me to try to keep up with live tracking of what other athletes are doing. Or for a supporter who's driving all over the place and cooking food and in bad service to do that. You know, kind of an X-Alps nerd. Just looking at a computer and nerding out on what other athletes are doing. What people have done in past years. Where other athletes are compared to me. And sending me screenshots and kind of quick. Information that, uh, helps me be in the right place at the right time.
So technology.
Technology. Exactly. Yeah. And that person, you know, I've actually, um, I've asked Mike Lester to do it for the Dolomites superfly. And I'm using the Dolomites superfly as kind of a training race for next year's X-Alps. Hopefully I get in. And, um, so Mike Lester, he's in Australia, but he's going to have a great internet connection. And that's his job for the Dolomites superfly. And hopefully the X-Alps just feed me really useful information. So Mitch jumping in here, just trying to understand and visualize what, what you're aiming for. Is it that you want this, this person with you kind of in the van on the course, or they can be anywhere in the world and they're just looking at all the, all the digital information and forming that into a data stream you can use. Yeah, exactly. Anywhere in the world. And, you know, for example, during the 2017 X-Alps on day three, I had launched early kind of in the mountains behind Greifenberg.
And was high over those mountains and five or six pilots, X-Alps pilots were gliding away from me, setting up on takeoff. And if I had known that I would have gone and gaggle flown with them. And that's the group that came in and out of Triglov at noon or one in the afternoon or something. And instead I went out alone for a big valley crossing and ended up bombing out with a two hour hike in the middle of the day, maybe a three hour hike in the middle of the day. And it was, you know, 30 kilometer an hour days. That trip. Translates to a hundred K behind. So it just, with that little bit of information that I could have even received in flight or perhaps on the takeoff that there's, there's these other pilots who are set up and you may be able to reach them.
I could have had a better chance of gaggle flying and been through Triglov earlier that day.
What about Mitch? Like you, you gave a really good talk at Applegate about, you know, the kind of psychology of, of parry lighting. This is something you've been delving into in your own. Personal life. It sounds like for, for quite a while. Um, talk to us a little bit about like what you would change. Would you change anything, you know, from the mental side, from the physical side?
Sure. You know, I think, I think I trained efficiency in my XC flying a lot. You know, I, I really like racing. I really like seeing how many kilometers I can do in a day. And my view of it is I need to take just a step back for hike and fly races, right? It's more important to stay in the air. There's not something. Like FTV points where you get to throw away days that you don't do very well with. So I just need to take a step back and kind of think a little slower. What, one other concept I've been working with is this thinking fast and thinking slow. So thinking fast is kind of being in the flow state. And a lot of us might be in that, um, mental state when we're thermaling or when we're, when we're launching or something like that, where we don't really have to analyze very much where we're just kind of reacting.
And then thinking slow is looking. A couple moves ahead, deciding what the weather's going to do in an hour or two, or deciding if it's, if it's right to top land and wait out some shade or to continue flying. And I've been, I've been working on queuing that thinking slow. So what I'm doing is like furrowing my brow a little bit, or even frowning a touch to kind of get me out of that flow state where I'm happy and lucky and put me into that thinking slow state where I'm really trying to assess all the information I have and, um, make the best analytical decision. Got it. Gav, I'll jump in on that one. So, you know, as, as I'm learning as like 110 hour pilot way behind you guys, um, is I have these plans to go out for a day and do whatever it is, you know, launches landings or make the crossing nail cap or work on spirals or whatever it is.
And then you get to the launch and the day is not exactly conducive to whatever you'd planned. So Mitch, when you're thinking about setting up this thinking fast versus thinking slow, do you have specific exercises? That you use where you're like today, I'm going to consciously work on switching back and forth between these two and maybe do, you know, whatever it is, 40 runs up the training hill and launching off and then landing at the bottom and just switching back and forth between fast and slow, fast and slow. Or is that something that you've ingrained in your consciousness enough that it just happens no matter what you're doing, or it'll kind of bubble up occasionally and you'll think, oh yeah, I got to remember to think slow. No, it is something I have to remember. And it kind of leads to. So another thing I have is these three P's of learning.
So I try to split up every learning day. And when I'm working with students, you know, I'm a professional paragliding instructor. I try to split up the day into these three parts. And the first part is preparation, right? So obviously we prepare gear, we fill up water, we charge batteries. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about preparing the small goals we're working on for that day, these small skill-based goals. So when we prepare those goals, visualization is probably a huge part of it. Which I'm sure. I'm sure we'll get into later doing things like listening to this podcast and having goals is a great thing. So that's the preparation. And then there's the performance. And that's the actual flight. It turns out when we're in the actual flight, we're thinking in the moment so much that we're going to make mistakes and we're going to have successes.
Right. And we can learn from our mistakes and our successes. But then it's really important that after the flight, we have our progression phase where we look back at that flight. And we decide, you know, what was a mistake today? What did I do wrong? What could I improve at? And what did I do right? And we work those into our goals for the next day. So it becomes cyclical. And the next day you're going back and you're saying, okay, let's see, what was I thinking about after last flight? What did I talk about over beers with my buddies? Or what did I journal about? Or what did I do a voice recording about on my phone? And we're going back to preparing our next flight so that we're working on those goals. And for sure, that thinking fast. Thinking slow has been a goal of mine a lot lately, as well as other goals. Yeah. While we're speaking of goals, I really like to big goals are great, right?
10 or 11 years ago, I thought, oh, man, it'd be cool to be in the X ops, which is a great goal. But just thinking that doesn't get me into the X ops, right? It's it's about having a small skill based goals. So one thing I can think about is trying to be more aware of other pilots around me in the air. Right. And I'll know I'm doing that if I see another pilot. I'm climbing faster than me and I get to them rather than just being so in my own climb that I don't see other pilots. Another great thing to be aware of for kind of intermediate pilots is the wind. Right. Be looking at that ground speed, ground speed gauge when you can and be determining the wind direction and velocity whenever possible. So they make good choices. These little goals are what build us up to really good pilots.
There's there's a sports performance term, the 4 % goals, right? If we we just. Work on 4 % goals, then pretty soon we've increased a ton. But you don't do it by looking at these pie in the sky goals by being a pilot who's flown five miles and wants to fly 100. That's that's not how we learn. We learn by these small goals that we can we can reward ourself with with the outcomes of very often.
Mitch, what do you take me through? You know, you're kind of standard, you know, 50 hour part. What are the what are the students you're mostly teaching? Are they are they are they mostly just. Brand new beginners? Are they mostly intermediates? I know you guys just did this kind of old Biv trip up and up in Washington where it was kind of like guided flying. But what are you know, how are you teaching all these various things to your students? Like, are you encouraging them to journal or encouraging them to visualize? What are the what are the kind of steps you you try to encourage them to take?
Absolutely. Yeah. So I can't teach students of the full spectrum. I'm teaching P2 students first day students. Students pretty often, as well as, you know, in Washington, Columbia, teaching students on E &D gliders who are flying competitions and doing well in competitions. So I kind of have the full gambit of students and mentor as well. Mentor some really good pilots. And myself, I'm a student of the sport and have mentors. So, yeah, as far as how we go about that, breaking into these three steps is huge. I really try to focus on having goals. You know, the morning of the flight, doing the flight, accepting, having the feedback of successes and failures, and then going back over the flight afterwards and talking about those successes and talking about those mistakes and talking about what our goals for the next day will be to have fewer mistakes and more successes.
And
your own personal flying. Do you do you do journal? Do you write that stuff down and then review it? Or is this more kind of like you land and kind of mentally go? OK, I did this, this, this well, and I could have done this and this better.
I do. I journal and I have a bunch of journals from years and years ago that actually just the other day I cleaned out my truck and got to see a couple of them. And they're a blast for me to read. And I'm still I still can learn those lessons I wrote in those journals. So I do journal. Occasionally I do audio recordings on my phone, which is really easy and fun. I have good flying buddies that we just talk about flights afterwards. You know, if I do a big flight. My buddy Neil will call me and he'll he'll talk me through the flight. He'll ask me questions about it. He'll he'll ask me what the weather is like, all that stuff. And it it really solidifies what I learned in my mind. I'd also like to talk about as far as this goes with all my students and with myself. I try to talk about this fixed mindset versus growth mindset.
And we want to trend towards the growth mindset. So a fixed mindset is saying something like I'm good at thermo, right, treating it as some sort of genetic trait. And if you're in that fixed mindset, if someone outclimbs you, you're likely to say, oh, my glider is out of trim or they must be light on their glider. You're likely to make excuses for that feedback rather than learn from it. The growth mindset would be same pilot could say I can improve my thermo. And then when someone outclimbs them, they're more likely to say, OK, what could I have been doing different? What kind of techniques was that pilot using to outclimb me? Was he doing bigger turns than me or smaller turns than me? Stuff like that. And that's really how we learn. So. We want to be in the growth mindset. And we also want to talk to students and people were mentoring and friends in that growth mindset.
So instead of saying, damn, Gavin, you are amazing at paragliding. What I should say is, Gavin, you have worked really hard at this. And when I was flying with you in Idaho recently, I was seeing that you're just flying incredibly. You're making really good decisions. You're patient when you need to be patient. You're pushing hard when you need to push hard. And you've improved a ton because of all this work you've put into it. And that's true, Gavin, by the way. Nice flying, man. You were flying incredible last week in Idaho. Oh, my
God, dude. You showed up for just the banner. It was that was that was stellar. Six days straight. I was it was awesome to have you here, man. That was so fun. Very good to
be back. That was really fun. Yeah,
I bet. I bet. Nick, what's your you know, coming from your perspective, what you know, if you if you could just go fly up to Washington right now and be with with Mitch, what would you want to get out of his his kind of instruction? Well,
actually, while he was talking, I was one of the questions that came up for me were, Mitch, could you talk a little bit about a who your mentors are and then any lessons you've learned that you attribute to a specific one of them? This guy taught me this or that lady taught me that. And then I got a bunch more after that. We'll start start with that one. Sure. I've been really fortunate to have a lot of mentors through the sport. I've moved around a lot. I've maybe been a local pilot at a bunch of different. Places in the world. And because of that, I've had some great mentors. One that strikes me right now is Primoz Pobinic, who some people might remember. And I think it was 2007. He was second in the world in 2008. He was up there, too. In those years, he was one of the top pilots in the world.
And I did tandems with him for years in Nepal. And we'd fly together pretty often, even doing tandems. We'd set ourselves little tasks and race each other in a 20 minute tandem flight and just have a blast. It was funny. When I first started flying with him, he was on an Enzo one and I was on a Delta two. So different class of gliders. And if I got stuck somewhere, if I didn't climb as fast as him or got stuck somewhere, he'd patiently wait at the top of the climb. He'd wait till I was up at his level. Then get really close to me. He never carried a radio. He'd get really close to me and yell, quit fucking around, Mitch. And then he just he'd full bar off, you know, pretty much. And it's I mean, it's a. Pretty simple term, but, you know, like if you do a turn in the wrong spot and you don't go up with that turn.
Yeah, you're fucking around. If if if if you're not using full speed when you should and not slowing down when you should. Yeah, you're fucking around. You know, it's Bill Belcourt says it fly like you know how, you know, no need to be putzing around. No need to be doing something else. Just fly like, you know, how be be the pilot, you know, you know, you can be. So that's a really good one. I just want to jump in here to get in a little more. So would you say from Primo's that you got this idea of any specific thing or was it did you not have the attitude before you met him that you wanted to constantly be improving or constantly getting better? And there was something that he said that, you know, this quit fucking around that switched you on to that. Or was that more of like a not a building thing, but a shaping thing?
I think the quit fucking around represented a lot of lessons I got from him. Right. He really talked about managing a glider with speed. Speed bar very well. He he talked about kind of controlling fear and pushing full bar near the ground. I mean, this guy was at the top of the game when gliders were kind of sketchy and when when there were a lot of different gliders in the game. So, yeah, I learned countless lessons from him. But, yeah, the quit fucking around is kind of all encompassing, like do what you know you can do.
Mitch, what's been something recently like in the last year? Or that you've learned from a mentor that that's kind of fallen into your tool kit that's made the biggest difference?
Oh, give me just a second to think about that. Let's see.
Like, I'll let you think about that while while I'll tell you, I'll tell the audience about one that hit me recently when we were at Applegate. You know, Nick arranged these great talks with us, you know, in the mornings and, you know, for the for all the people there that are learning or kind of getting into comps and stuff. And. One of the ones that Brad Gannuccio brought up was, you know, glider speed through the air, which I think is one of these that bites a lot of people in the ass. So Revis brought it up on his on his podcast, too, that it's really had a big impact on me. But Brad talked about it like if you're in a thermal and there's and there's a point in the thermal where you don't feel air on your face, you're flying too slow. You know, like you need to feel air all the time. You need that air whistling through your ears. You know, like, you know, if you don't have.
Glider speed through the air, you know, you're close to stall point and it's a really simple. I mean, it's something that, you know, we all should know, but that was a really nice way for me to I've just been paying a lot more attention to that. And when I'm thermaling, when I'm gliding, you know, just in terms of a safety perspective, that's that's really changed. That's just been one of these things that I've thought, God, I'm thinking about that again. It's been pretty interesting.
Yeah, I absolutely agree. And, you know, to piggyback. On that, if if you're feeling changes in the air on your face, usually that that's penduluming, right? Usually that's swinging around under the glider and which is inefficiency. It's a lack of control and it brings you closer to either stall or collapse when you're swinging around under the glider. So I absolutely agree with that. What you feel on your face has a lot to do with how efficient you're flying and how safe you're flying. I guess mine that I recently learned is I'm Kansas during Chelan. Talk to me about just making micro adjustments on the speed bar based on micro changes in sync rate. Right. So he's saying that he might just come off the speed bar an inch or two if his sync rate goes down.
So he's sinking less. He's in more positive air. He might come off the speed bar just a touch and then push it again if the sync rate goes back up. And I've got to say that before he told me that mostly I was just using my steps. Right. Usually my speed bar settings on the B. His rear risers to control pitch, but not making all that many little micro changes. And Kansas told me that through flying with Josh Cohn, he he learned that these micro changes really result in a lot after a long glide. Now, is is that something that only applies to higher end gliders? Is that something that I can use on my B? One of the things I've noticed and talked about with other pilots is for those C and D gliders, they stomp on the speed bar and maybe they go down 10 feet and then they just zoom off and basically a straight line.
Where for me, if that same thing happens, you know, I'm going down kind of consistently on this track toward the ground. Yeah. The physics of it should work, obviously, with a different polar curve, different amounts of bar are correct based on headwind or sink. Right. Based on wind and sink. So when when a pilot on Enzo uses two thirds bar, maybe it makes sense for that high B to be using more like half because of the sync rate because of the polar curve calculation. Right. But I would say that either way, some adjustment bar and any adjustment bar should always be smooth. Right. What we just talked about with penduluming. Right. Feeling different wind on your face and swinging around under the glider. That's an efficiency. Right. You can imagine a glider going smooth through the air and a glider kind of rocking back and forth.
And the one rocking back and forth isn't going to arrive on the other side as high. So any changes with the speed bar should be done nice and smoothly. But, yeah, I think changes. Are going to bring you to the other side higher. Yeah, I've got another one. If that's OK to keep going. Go away. Yeah. So in line with this, I mean, as you guys are talking about this, I'm thinking, shit, I've been wearing this like sun protection kind of face mask that blocks the wind on my face. And every so often I'll pull it down and feel those those big changes. And now I'm thinking, you know, today when I go fly, I'm going to pull that thing down and fuck the sun. I want I want this wind in my face. I get these this data, but I'm definitely penduling around a bunch. And it's interesting. It's interesting to think about how to change that through that new data point. Mitch, what are the most common mistakes you see in guys like me and guys and girls who listen to the show, say 50 to 100 hour pilots where, you know, we've got the basics down, but there's this whole progression in front of us kind of just entering intermediate syndrome.
Sure. You know, one really common mistake that's kind of easy to nip in the bud. And I wish I had nipped in the bud earlier in my flying is landing posture. You know, you can it can really keep you safe. What what a good pilot should look like when they're about to land, let's say 30 feet off the ground and below is they should look like Killian Jornet running down a steep mountain trail. You know, they should look like someone who's about to take impact through their feet, their legs, their knees, their hips. That means chest forward in front of the carabiners. We hinge off the carabiners, which are about at our hips. So you actually have to fight to get your fight is maybe the wrong word, but you have to work to get your chest forward. Your legs should be bent and ready like a trail runners legs are and the actual flare your hands should come back behind you because that pushes your chest forward.
I mean, the opposite of all that is we've seen them people who are out of their harnesses. They say, oh, my legs are below me. I'm out of my harness, but their heels are first. Their legs are out in front of them. Their chest is back and their flare happens forward, right? Which it's kind of human nature. Oh, the grounds come in. Your hands go out in front of you. But that doesn't really help our body. Get prepared for impact. So hopefully all of our lands are nice and smooth. But if they're not, if we get some sink on the way or if we control our glider a little wrong or, you know, we we get a wind gradient, we want to be in that trail running position. You can also think, like, what are your kids look like when they're sprinting downstairs? They look like their chest is forward and they're ready to take those impacts.
And, yeah, I see a lot of pilots getting that wrong and thinking they're getting out of their harness. Nice and early, but not being in that mechanical body position to to take impacts.
So basically, you should be in your launch position.
Exactly. It's the eagle position or the torpedo position. It's that launch position that really forward, ready to run. The the mechanics of the body are ready to take any weird impacts. Cool. OK, another change for today. Good work. Thank you. I mean, I've got regular back pain because I didn't learn that one soon enough. So it's a good one to learn. Mitch, what are the risks that you like to see new pilots take? And what are the risks that you wish they wouldn't take? Oh, that's a great question. Let's start with the risks I wish they wouldn't take. Yeah. So I I think it's really important to acknowledge when we're in turbulent conditions and stay far away from the ground when that's the case.
Right. In turbulent conditions. So if you're flying thermals, you're asking for turbulence, right? That's the nature of it. And I think fairly new pilots can get into thermal flying. I think that's great. But you shouldn't be near the ground. Let's put 400 feet as near the ground unless you're launching or landing. Right. There's there's no good reason if you're thermal flying to be near the ground unless you're launching and landing. The thermals work better up high. We want that ground clearance and we want time to make decisions before the ground comes up, like throwing the reserve or something like that. So I think that's. That's a major one. And kind of along with that, a lot of pilots who are wary about being in any sort of turbulence when they're new get used to scratching near the ground.
Right. Because if we're sore and hillsides and light conditions and if we're working with light lift or flying early in the morning and flying down mountains near the ground is kind of the place we fly a lot when there's not turbulence. So maybe it's a double. Maybe it's a two part thing. But I think it's good to expose yourself to some turbulence early in your flying to get a respect for it and to train yourself to stay away from the thing that hurts. If we're thousands of feet off the ground, there's nothing that can hurt us. There's things that can scare us or make us uncomfortable, but there's nothing that can hurt us with within minutes. And if we're much closer than the ground, that goes down to seconds. Got a lot. I'm going to hold on to that second question and comment on something I've heard you done twice now is change.
The word you are going to use to tell a story. Is that something that you consciously think about your language? And if so, did you learn it from some person or book or experience? Well, I think language is really important to how we think and how we communicate. I'm probably going to look back at this podcast and wish I had used different words at different times. That's just the nature of talking. I also think it's really important to kind of how we deal with fear and how we avoid. Negative thinking and think about positive thinking. Yes, I find I find language very useful and very important, and I strive to be better at the words I pick. I mean, specifically, you didn't want to use the word fight or double edged sword. I mean, are there things where you you want to make paragliding, let's say, more peaceful?
Or is that those just happen to be the two words that I picked up on? You know, I found is that words like fight and sword, they might be they might induce fear. And when when pilots have fear. And I'm not talking about risk management. I'm talking about the kind of fear that that tensions your body and your muscles that tends to tunnel visions, your available opportunity, right? Staring at the tree and flying into the tree instead of looking at the nice open field or or whatever it is. Right. To me, when when I get scared and it's not that I've stopped feeling fear in paragliding, I feel it a lot. When I get scared, my muscles get tense. So I'm not controlling the gliders as well. My kind of opportunities get tunnel vision. And maybe just what's in front of me or just what scared me.
And it doesn't seem to help. So, yeah, when I teach, when I talk about paragliding, I really try to use terms that don't contain much fear, because, you know, if I'm up on a mountain takeoff with a student on their first time on the mountain takeoff, the last thing I need to do is to induce more fear in them. Right. What I need to do is to relax them as much as possible, to have their body as loose as possible and as flowing as possible so that they can do the right thing under the glass. And so that they can be a thinking human with as many available opportunities available to them. All right. One more gap that I'm turning back to you. Follow up on that question about risk. Mitch, what are the risks that you like to see learning pilots take? You know, and like beginner pilots,
I like to see them take the risk of landing. Right. A lot of pilots put so much pressure on any one flight that they might put themselves in a tricky place. They might put themselves in a place with a small landing zone or a tree landing zone, or they might they might put themselves nearer to the ground just because they want to get a few more minutes of flying. And I'd much rather see them take good decisions, have plenty of ground clearance and have a good flight with a safe landing rather than this increased risk. And one other thing about thermals is they're kind of shitty near the ground. Right. They don't work that well. It's a very small, available piece of heated air if you're near the ground.
But if you're a thousand feet up, the thermals coalesce. So I was actually just listening to Gavin's podcast with you, the last one. And he said something about, oh, if Trey had just flown out to the valley to land, he probably would have hit a boomer. And it's absolutely true. Like, you don't need to be right next to the big mountain peak, 200 feet from the ground to get the boomers. In fact, often when you go to land, it's hard to get down because they're above. There are big thermals down there. So I think that that's a major thing. People feel like they need to commit hard for that one flight to get up. And the fact is, it's better to have a nice, safe flight and keep your ground clearance. And most likely that will give you more thermals and more usable thermals.
Mitch, in your instructing experience, because you've been doing these guided tours in Columbia and Valle and all over the world and doing a lot of teaching over the last few years out at Eagle. You did all the tandems for all those years in Nepal. Give us three things that would eliminate a lot of the problems, a lot of the accidents, you know, and pick whatever group. It could be the beginner group, the intermediate group, the expert group. You know, what are you seeing that's like, God, we could solve that?
Yeah, well, I'd say two of them are takeoff and landing, right? Most accidents are takeoff and landing. And the takeoff, it's playing with your glider a lot, right? It's playing with your glider. It's playing with your glider in different conditions, in windy conditions, in light conditions, on, you know, hopefully smooth hillsides. If you've got a place near you that's a smooth, rolling place with plenty of open ground, go play with your glider in a lot of wind. Go play with your glider in turbulent wind. Go play with your glider on smooth, rolly ground in all sorts of conditions, and you're going to be nailing takeoffs, right? You're going to be acknowledging when the wind is crap to take off and when the cycle is really good to takeoff. I think that's huge, and it becomes really fun once you do some of it, especially if you're doing it with buddies, especially if you're laughing about it.
It becomes a blast. It's about as much fun as flying. So I regularly do that still, the train hill in Santa Barbara. Yeah, like you said, I worked for Eagle Paragliding in Santa Barbara. The train hill in Santa Barbara is just this beautiful, rolly terrain that often has a lot of wind, often has some turbulence, and just playing with my glider, just cutting it up the hill and doing little hops and then putting it in. And side hill landing and all that stuff is a blast for me. It doesn't have to be an hours-long flight. It can be just a couple minutes or a half hour during my lunch break of playing with the glider in turbulent, strong conditions that I get a ton out of. It's fantastic training. So that's the takeoff. The landing, we kind of went over already. You know, it's about getting over your landing zone with plenty of altitude to assess the conditions, assess the landing zone, see any power lines, anything like that.
And it's about being in the right box. It's about being in the right body position to land well, being in that, like, trail runner position. And then on top of all that, let's remember that straight and level flight with a good flare into a tree, into a roof, into a lot of things is way better than a hard-ass turn hitting the ground hard with a lot of pendulum forces, right? So if you are staring at that tree, if you are staring at a big bush, whatever it is, a good flare into it. It will bring you into it lightly. But avoiding it at the last second by doing a hard turn and possibly spinning your glider or adding these pendulum forces to your glider has the real probability of hurting you.
So I think that's huge. And I hope we can talk about visualization a little bit. That's one thing to visualize is visualize a tree landing, you know? Visualize having a really good tree landing because it's something you should embrace. A lot of people get hurt. Trying to avoid trees. I just saw a Facebook video of a guy who's been in the sport recently and pushing super hard. And he had all these trees around him. And he does a big turn into the side of a house instead. And it's just such a shame because those trees would have been soft and he would have been fine. And his ego would have been bruised a bit, but probably not him. Great advice. And the third thing is, you know, we talked about takeoff. We talked about landing things that happen in the air. And I don't have the percentages in front of me.
But I'd say that's the lower percentage of people getting hurt in paragliding. Our gliders are pretty damn good. We're pretty good at forecasting and knowing conditions and discussing with each other where to fly and where not to fly. But people still do get hurt from, you know, being in the air and impacting the ground. I think, once again, that's about ground clearance. It's about visualizing reserve tosses and visualizing recovery techniques. For a lot of pilots, that's hands up. That might be hands up and leaning your weight towards the open side of the glider. But the first thing is hands up on, let's say, B gliders and below and maybe mid-C gliders and below. They recover very well hands up. You know, they work really well. And a lot of pilots screw it up by trying to do something.
A lot of pilots screw it up by pulling on the strings really hard and freaking out. And it's a moment when we're in fear. So our connection to our body, our hand-eye coordination, the tension in our muscles, our muscles are going to probably be doing the wrong thing, things that we wouldn't want to do if we didn't have that fear response. So for most pilots on most gliders in the world, hands up. You have an asymmetric collapse, hands up. If you can do two things, hands up and then lean to the open side are the things to do.
Yeah, we were just talking about this the other night, you know, the natural response, unless you've done just tons and tons of SIV. The natural response when you're falling. So if you've had a big collapse is hands down, you know, you put your hands down because you're falling, even if you're in the air. And almost every incident I've ever seen from the air is people over-managing their glider with their hands way too low. And the first thing they'll say if they had their hands up and you're like, no, you didn't. You had your hands down below your ass. And, you know, and it's just, and it's because it's natural. That's what we do. And there's a lot of things that are unnatural about paragliding. You have to train. You just have to train your mind. I mean, when I have big blowouts and thankfully these in the last few years, I don't have them very often, but when, you know, when you have them, that's the first thing that goes through my mind is I got to let this glider fly.
Because if you start getting into that micromanaging, your hands are lower than you think every time.
Exactly. Exactly. You're almost always doing too much. Yeah, exactly. And I mean, if we think about the shape of a glider, if you don't do anything, you fall to the center of it. Most gliders, when you're in the center underneath the thing, it's going to be open and it's going to want to fly straight. It's, it's, if you screw with it while you're falling down to the center, that bad things can happen. And I guess it's a pretty good segue into visualization. I kind of have two times when I visualize one is before flying. And when I'm visualizing stuff before flying, say I'm lying in bed the morning before a big day in Idaho, I'll, I'll probably close my eyes. And just imagine flying in strong conditions in Idaho, thousands of feet over the ground, very going off like a mother being cold.
And I'll try to be smiling during that visualization. You know, I'll try to be enjoying it. Like, yeah, this is what I came for. This is what I want. Also, if before a comp day, if I know there's crowded gaggles, that's kind of my weak point in comps is sometimes I let the stress get to me in a crowded gaggle. I'll make sure to spend some time closing my eyes and visualizing being in the middle of a in this crowded gaggle with a bunch of aggressive pilots and laughing about it, you know, and enjoying kind of the heightened perception of it and the heightened activity of it. So that's kind of the before flying. And I think it should all be really positive. It should all be like kind of flowing with the glider and doing what you want to do that day. And then the visualization I do that's not before flying. So maybe in the evening, maybe when I'm not going to fly for a couple of days or things like visualizing a good reserve toss, right?
Visualizing a big blowout on my glider and reacting to that correctly. Visualizing a PLF. Those things kind of like the visualizing things we want to nail, but don't happen so often that we typically get tons of practice with like a reserve throw. None of us get tons of practice with reserve throws. Even the best acro pilot in the world might throw his reserve 15 times a year. It's not much practice. So you've got to visualize that stuff. But I wouldn't say visualize it. Before flying, I'd say visualize it a day or two days or a week before going on a big flight so that you've got it fresh in the mind, but it's not in your consciousness that morning.
Mitch, I know you're kind of a student of the kind of flow state and you're talking about visualization and I know you do quite a bit of meditating. One of the things that I've, I don't know if I would say had trouble with. Yeah, I guess it's trouble with, but it's... I often go through these kind of like waves and paragliding in a sense where usually early season, you know, spring, I haven't had a ton of hours and maybe this isn't relevant for you because you're flying year round. I think you were saying you're getting five, 600 hours a year, which is just incredible. But it's, you know, like it, you know, when I fly now in Idaho, you know, these last few days, it almost can't get rough enough for me to get all that freaked out, you know, whereas...
In the spring, it's like every little thing is just like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know what I mean? I find that it's, for me, it's always just been time. It's just time in the saddle and then I'll kind of get in that groove. And then once I've got it, typically it stays around. But like I went through this period and many of people have heard this on the podcast as I've talked about it before, but in training for the 2015 X-Alps, I was over in France by myself before like three or four weeks before the race. And I was, I was trying to learn that Southern end of the course. Which a lot of people haven't flown in very much, period. Even the French pilots kind of avoid that area. It's just gnarly down there. The ground, the valley winds are incredibly strong. It's a very dangerous part of the course. And when I was there, it was super high pressure, blue and really windy.
And I was by myself and I was just, you know, flying these lines that were really cool. But inevitably, there'd be just an incredibly scary part of the day. And I just didn't have that like Belcourt... Bring it attitude that he talks about, you know, that I know I get to that. And then when you get to that, you know, it's like nothing is scary. But do you have anything that you, you talked about fear a little bit, but do you have anything that you do to actively jumpstart that or get over that? Or do you even experience that?
Yeah, for sure. I experienced it and I have some techniques. Like you said, it's rare that I go a couple of days without flying and without flying, you know, in XC conditions. I'm flying a ton and I still get that. There's still times. When I'm 5,000 feet over the ground on a glider, I've done a bunch of stalls with and I check a collapse, you know, I check a quick surge of the glider and I find my body's tense and my breathing's fast. And it's a fear response. And what's to be afraid of, right? I got the glider. I've got 5,000 feet. There's no actual danger, but the perceived threat is still there. So a couple of things I do is I really try to remind myself to look a few steps ahead, right? If I'm being... analytical about where the next cloud is forming or what ridge is the next one to go on or how I'm going to make this valley crossing that's, you know, two thermals away,
then my mind is kind of occupied and it's less likely to go into that fear because I'm doing that furrowed brown thing. I'm thinking about the course ahead and I'm being very analytical, which takes a lot of mental power. So that's one. I really think looking around and enjoying the beauty of where you are, you know, saying, look how incredible this is. I'm up over this mountain range and there's a blue lake and there's a glacier and look, all my buddies are up here with me. You know, like just acknowledging the beauty of your situation and smiling about it also helps a lot. We talked about the pre-visualization. So if I know there's a struggle coming up on that day before flying, I'll think about the crowded gag lure. I'll think about the really gnarly climbs or maybe I'll think about thermaling in a lot of wind.
You know, Nick kind of talked about... I talked about this in the last podcast, but concentrating on your breathing. And I love the four seconds in, four seconds out, deep breathing because that just gets you in this flow. And once again, it's kind of a meditation technique where the fear has less chance of getting in because you're controlling your respiratory rate. You're controlling your body's responses. And then on top of all that, I think things like singing, hooting and hollering, right? If you're with buddies, hooting and hollering about how cool it is. That just puts you into this positive mindset and you're going to enjoy it. I think all that stuff is really... Those things are really good techniques to kind of put the fear on the back burner and enjoy it.
Mitch, I'm going to challenge you with something that you said earlier in the X-Ops, trying to find somebody who's really technologically savvy. You know, as you know, we lost Bruce, the community lost Bruce this year, and he was kind of my tech guy and really good at that. Really good. Really good. Either really good at internet, really good at finding new launches and stuff. And Ben and I have been talking a lot, you know, since his passing, just about, you know, trying to, you know, who's the best replacement for someone like Bruce? Because he's kind of irreplaceable. And, you know, on the one hand, you know, losing that technological savviness is really nerve wracking to me. On the other hand, you know, I started thinking about like one of your geniuses to me is that you fly, you fly super creative lines, you know, you push it super deep.
You do things that naturally are going to play well in the X-Ops, right? And yet, you know, like we watch somebody like Nick Nanens or really even Chrigel. I don't, you know, I would bet that he's flying a lot more on instinct than tech. But, you know, you look at Nick Nanens and, you know, he's got a block of cheese and he's doing it with his mom. And there's no way that there was anything. He technically, you know, there wasn't much technical stuff going into his, you know, in his team and going to him. So he was just flying on instinct and doing what he does best, which I think is what you do best. And the reason I ask this question is I'm in this kind of thing right now with the X-Ops of, you know, for some reason you get locked into that race and you start thinking about making a really good move that we would normally totally make by going 20K off route.
But in the X-Ops, that's... That's a big move. That's a lot more scary than it normally is because you're like, if I blow this, I'm going to have to walk a lot farther. Anyway, I got to make this a question. The question is, you know, how are you going to walk that balance between the technical side and just being Mitch?
It's a really, really good question. One thing I'm doing for the Dolomita Superfly, which starts in a few days, is, you know, I'm showing up to the Dolomites two days before the race. I've been studying the route. I've flown parts of the route. I've been studying maps and sky. I've been studying highways and stuff like that. But I'm trying not to put too much pressure on any one move, right? Because we all know the weather is different every single day. And even on my home sites or the sites I've flown a ton, I'm switching up my moves every day based on the conditions. So I'm kind of trying that out for this Dolomita Superfly. I'm trying out the not a crazy amount of route studying before I go, but really kind of trying to be creative with my route.
And play the conditions as they come. So I'm interested to see how that works. And I think it's a good call. I think flying demands creativity. And we all know that in races, it's rarely the local talent or the local legend who wins a competition. It's often people who come in with a new mindset or a more unique vision of the place who can do really well because they're not bound by saying, Oh, there's always a thermal there. So first we go there and then there and then there. And that place doesn't work and that place does work. No, someone who has the mindset of being more creative is going to fly the day more than this preconceived notion of how a location works.
I got one more question and then I want to hand it back over to Nick for a bit. So one of the things that Nate said to me, our mutual friend Nate Scales, who lives here in Sun Valley, was when I was going through my shoulder... Injury before the last race was, you know, hey, man, psych is so much of this sport. You know, like, don't worry that you're not getting the hours. You're going to be so psyched to fly. And because, you know, you've had all this time being injured. And I see what, you know, you're flying year round and just that's all you're doing. I mean, you do other stuff, obviously, but I mean, you're just so focused on this. And you have been since I met you in 2012 at the PWC here. I'm wondering how you keep your stoke up. Let's see. How do you approach your training when there's that much to it?
Sure. And like you said, I approach it as training. I love it. I love the sport. I love the beautiful moments of it. But there are plenty of times where I'm like, do you really, you know, do you really want to go up the mountain and fly in stable conditions today? You know, the other thing is I'm not looking to fly on the really big epic days only. I like to fly the challenging days. And it's about reminding myself that, yeah, it's true. Training for these, these bigger goals I have in the small goals I have and treating it like training. You know, if we look at the best gymnast in the world or the best skateboarder in the world or the best, whatever, skydiver in the world, they don't have to enjoy every single session. Right. They don't have to, like, really be looking forward to every single session, but they need to show up.
They need to show up time and time again and put in the hours. You know, it's rare that a session goes by and I'm not glad I did it. Right. Right. Right. Right. It's rare that the rewards aren't worth the time and the effort. In fact, they pretty much always are. But sometimes the getting out of bed or sometimes the, you know, getting in the car for a four-hour drive to chase a good forecast seems like a lot of effort. And sometimes that's not the easy part. But after the landing, I'm always glad I did it, you know. So it's about reminding myself of that. And it's treating it like training. And there's no experts at anything in the world who do. You don't kind of put in a little bit of suffering, a little bit of inconvenience to train at their sport.
And that includes myself. I
think I've been getting emails pretty consistently, you know, like, hey, I'm a 50-hour pilot or I'm a 100-hour pilot and I want to get good really fast. What can I do? It's like they're looking for some kind of vitamin, you know. You can take this and you're done. And I always reply, I'm like, there's no secret, man. Man, do everything. Read the books, listen to the podcast, and train your fucking ass off. That's how you get good. That's the secret.
Exactly. And it's, you know, the beauty of this sport is the best in the world can get better. And that, you know, I hope to be improving at it well into my 80s. Isn't that incredible that we can keep improving into old age? I really think that we can all learn a ton. And the second I don't feel like I still have a lot to learn. I'm not going to. I'm going to be making mistakes, you know. So I think approaching it with that humble attitude of, yeah, I have a lot to learn. There's a lot of lessons to have. I have these things I'm working on right now is the way to go about becoming good and getting better.
Cool. We'll make it over to you, dude.
Yeah. So a couple of comments and then jump into some questions. Gavin, the questions that you're getting, I mean, some of them I'm sure have come from me early on. But the answers are the same no matter what. But it's two things that seem to be the same but are not quite. And the first thing is hours, which is putting in the hours. You're not going to get better without putting in the hours. And the second thing is time. And I've heard Mark Twight talk about this where he said he compressed 10 years of climbing into five years. But he still didn't have the 10 years of experience. So I always took that to mean that he was maybe technically much better than he would have been had he worked less hard. But he still didn't have the. Think of it as wisdom to climb as a 10-year climber.
And there's no way around that. That's kind of the cool thing of the sport is that you can put in thousands of hours. And then if all those thousand hours are in three years, you still have just three years of flying, three seasons of seeing the Earth spin around the sun. So it's just something to think about. And there's no shortcut. The second comment I thought was worth just illuminating was that she said it a couple. Times is farrowing your brow or smiling or hooting, hollering or doing something physical and that that physical thing that you do. And it can be a finger twitch. It can be shaking your hand. It can be turning your head left or right. It can be farrowing your brow or winking or whatever. Those physical things can be really powerful for us in our psychology and our mental state.
And so some of the stuff that I've seen, Kevin, I think I think one of the shooting books I turned you on to. The guy talks about how he has like a physical routine or might be picking up one foot or flexing a muscle and he would train. He would think the best possible thoughts he could think. And then he would flex that muscle and then he'd think the best possible thoughts he could think. And he'd flex that muscle until flexing that muscle triggered the best possible thoughts he could think. And so if he was stressed out, he would flex that muscle or shake his foot around, whatever it was. So just hammering that point home. I think Mitch has talked about that. Yeah, absolutely. You know, one other thing that just came to my. That I've been working on recently is, you know, I try to be an endurance athlete.
And one thing in endurance athleticism is it's all about the perceived effort. Right. The more you can get your perceived effort down, the longer you can go. And I've tried to bring that to a long distance flying. So lately I've been trying to separate my training. Right. Thinking about what I'm doing right by the glider, thinking about my technique in the air. Those training flights. You know, sure, they can go for an hour or two or three or whatever. But on the really long distance flights, the more I'm thinking about my effort to keep the glider open or my responses to the glider, the more perceived effort I'm putting in and therefore the quicker my endurance is going to go down, the quicker I'm going to be fatigued. So once it gets to those really long flights, and I think a lot of pilots who do nine, ten hour flights will say this, that they've now trained enough.
That all of that happens automatically and they don't have to think about, am I doing right by the glider? They don't have to think about, am I thermaling correctly right now? That's happening and their mental processes are a little more external. What's happening with that cloud? What's happening with that mountain peak? What's happening there or there? And therefore the perceived effort is less and the endurance should be more. Got it. Yep. Totally. Totally agree. A question actually for both of you guys, because I've noticed it in both of you. Just looking kind of from afar and seeing your, at the very least, your digital lives, is sure there's technical improvements you can make. Maybe there's some weather guessing stuff you guys can do. But the big challenge that it seems that both of you have and is pretty common and kind of folks at the apex of any sport is the challenge of patience, right?
Mitch, you talked about it like, ah, my shoe's not quite on, but I'm going. Or I've seen you say it online, like you can't fly all day if you don't start in the morning. You got to start now. We got to go, go, go. And Gavin, I mean, look no further than this morning. It's like, hey man, it's a little early, but let's start this thing. There's, you know, I got shit to do. And so I.
It's just a really good flying day.
Yeah, totally. I mean, I get it. I get it. I'm as impatient as the next guy and looking for answers or ways, techniques, methods that you guys use to think about how do we become more patient, you know, in, in the moment. So moment by moment, as we're flying, like just wait till you get to the top of the thermal. It's not worth it to leave yet. And how do we. How do we get patient in the longer term? Are there ways that you train that in the same way that you train squats for, for your legs?
I, you know, I've that, that's been my Achilles heel and, and I have really had to train it. I mean, I think it's, this is maybe kind of a gross generalization, but, you know, we often comment when we go to comps and stuff that Americans just are universally impatient. You know, this is one of the things that kills us on the world scene is, you know, we're all cowboys and we all push out and that's just, you know, like a, you know, like, like Matt Hensley, just a Jedi pilot. And he's just, he's famous for this. He's always pushing out in front and, and that's, you know, and, and he talks about this, so that's why I can bring him up and he'd be laughing right now if he's listening. But, you know, it's, it's that lack of discipline. And the first time I heard it was Russ Ogden down at the Superfinal in like 2012 or 13 or something in Columbia.
And, uh, and I was, I was having, you know, I was doing really well, like keeping up with the gaggle for two or three, you know, moves and then I'd lose them. And, and, uh, you know, I was pretty new to comp flying and, and he was the one that brought that up, like discipline, discipline and discipline means patience really. And, and like, you know, Mitch did really well in his last couple of comps, he'd have a bad day and he'd be like, that doesn't matter. You get FTV, I can, I'm just going to be patient. I'm going to keep doing my thing and it's going to work out. And it did. Um, and like, you know, with the, something like the X-Alps, especially my, my mistakes in 2015 that just added up. Were lack of patience in the air, because in that race, more than anything slow is fast. You know, there are times where you fly like Chrigel on a really good day with 4,000 meter base and your hammer and bar, but most of the time in that race, it's staying in the air, even if you're only making 10 K an hour, cause that's way faster than six, seven K an hour on roads where you're winding all over the place.
So, um, I had to, when I went back for the 2017 race, I would just top land everywhere. Just slow it down, stay in the air. Top land, like, Oh, a little bit of serious. I'm not sure how this is going to work out top land. And so probably even way too slow, but that was how I was. I trained for the race was just forcing myself to get out of this X contest mindset, uh, and, and, you know, go big and more of that, you know, go slow and, and go small. And, uh, and I definitely do not have this mastered, you know, but it, but it's, you know, I think it's like anything else. It's it's, it was a real mindset for me of this is what I'm consistently. Growing up on, it's not the physical side, it's not the food, it's not the energy level. It's not the ability in the air. It's, it's being impatient.
It's being, you know, not topping out a climb when it's the kind of day where you need to, um, it's not slowing down early enough, you know, not recognizing that the day has changed and, and, uh, you know, being 10 minutes too late to make that decision. Um, you know, especially in comps, it's so easy to, you know, lose the gaggle a little bit. And then at the next one, Mitch, Talked about it at Applegate, like multiplying mistakes. You know, if you, if you lose the gaggle a little bit and then start rushing things, you're just going to lose them more. You know, you've got to just keep making good moves and you'll catch up with them. You always do. They will make a mistake. And so if you just slow down and do what you know best and, you know, climb well and glide well and be patient, that's, that works out, but man, it takes training unless you're just naturally good at that.
But I don't think many people are. I
absolutely agree. And. My, my, my biggest challenge is the patient's thing too. When I was recently looking back at flying journals from my first couple of years in XC, it's funny, the lessons there are patients. And usually when I make a mistake these days, it's a patient's mistake too. The discipline that Gavin talked about is huge. And one thing I find that my impatience move are often moves are often leaving a thermal too early in a competition setting. That might be, it's, it might be kind of fear. Uncomfortable based, right? It's a crowded thermal and people are being really aggressive. And my mind just starts to look for alternatives to staying in that thermal to the top. And it will convince myself that, oh, there's a good move over here.
Let's go for it. Um, when there's actually not, and it's the same thing with like a rowdy climb. If I'm by myself, that uncomfortable feeling of being in a rowdy climb may cause me to say, oh, let's go find another, but that's not actually what I need to do. It's a strong rowdy climb, staying into the top. So I try to be disciplined when I leave climbs about saying, is the next climb stronger than what I'm in? And, um, sometimes the answer is yes. There's a cloud forming on your route. It's, it's a better looking trigger. It should be stronger. And your climb rate right now is less than your climb rate has been for most of the day. Cool. Go for it. Um, a lot of times it's no, I'm not sure what the next climb is. And this climb is sure I'm in it. So I need to stay with it.
So being disciplined about that, being disciplined about whether the, the analytical thinking, whether the math says you should move to the next climb, move on course, or no, this is, this is the best thing I can imagine having right now. And I'm not sure about anything else. So I need to stick with it. I wonder if there's a way, I mean, whether it's just putting like a little paint marker thing on your, on your risers, or I used to, when I was running, I'd put a little, um, Sharpie marker on my hand to remind me to think of whatever it was I wanted to do. You know, to think about, but to train that pattern of before you make that next move is like, am I being patient? Is this, is this a patient move? And then just make that part of the pattern. And sometimes you can't afford to be patient. I mean, that's what makes the risk of getting anywhere near political.
I'm a total, total, um, crazy Patriot and, you know, love American. I think America is the best in the world, blah, blah, blah. But I think that's what makes America so awesome is that we are impatient and we don't have time to wait for things to get better. We're, we're this nation of people that get out there and do it. And obviously some, sometimes, and maybe half the time that doesn't work really well. I mean, it's a disaster, but that's also what drives innovation. And as you guys have talked and I've listened to, it seems that the strength that both of you have is this, um, impatience to, to creativity, right. To be really creative flyers and to take lines that wouldn't normally be taken. And obviously both of you guys have that in your, in your resumes. It's not just talking about it. So it brings me to my kind of next question. As, as an American, I know there's not, there's plenty of non-Americans listening, but you guys have both put in for the X-Alps in 2019.
So you got a year to train. It's all laid out ahead of you. Are you guys thinking about training together for that or flying together for that? If that's, if that's legal, um, and, and using each other's strengths and weaknesses to push each other harder so that you show up at the start line more prepared. And that if you see each other in the sky there, it's like, okay, we can, we can kind of do this for America.
Um, yeah, I'll jump in there and I know Mitch has some great comments on that too. We had a couple of really wicked days last time training together, uh, near Slovenia, the Slovenia turn point with, uh, Ferdinand Van Shelven, which were just magical. I mean, Hey, they were wicked, good flying days and it was just awesome. And I think Mitch and I push each, push each other really hard. And, uh, so yes, I hope so. I'm planning on being in Santa Barbara this winter because, you know, he's, he's there all winter and, uh, you know, it's an awesome place. You get a ton of hours and, you know, you don't hear in, in Sun Valley at all. And I'm, I'm also trying to be pretty mindful about, you know, I ski pretty hard and, uh, and you know, that can be a little dangerous. And so I'm, I'm trying to do things like the year before the year for the last one, I blew out my shoulder riding my bike.
So I definitely won't, don't want to get hurt doing something stupid. So that, that's part of it. But, you know, I have been contacted by people who have said, you know, Hey, why don't you guys stay together actually in the race? And I, you know, we got to see. Some magic in this last one with, uh, with Manuel Neubel and, um, I'm not saying his name, right. Nick Nanens, uh, there was a whole gaggle of guys that were just off the top three that the Pal Takats, they all, you know, really gaggle flew. And that was, that was really cool. But I think that that's, you know, going into the race with that plan, um, would be pretty tricky. I think if there are opportunities, like in the last race, I never saw Mitch the whole time. And so I think in there's, there's, I mean, other than at the start, uh, but. So I think that there's, you know, for sure, there are huge advantages to, you know, gaggle flying if you can, but it'd be pretty hard as a, as a goal, I think, you know, for us to, to do that together, you know, maybe, maybe I'm wrong about that, but I think that'd just be, it'd just be really tricky and probably be really smart, but I can't see that happening.
But in terms of before the race, then yeah, I think it'd be, it'd be super awesome. Um, you know, Ben's going to be training both of us in terms of the physical side. I understand. I understand Mitch, right. Just a couple of days ago, Ben called and said that was the plan. And so that'll be super fun. You know, we can kind of compare notes and, uh, you know, and, and work together on that side of things. Cause Mitch is super fit and, and, uh, Ben is a wizard. So I think that'll be really valuable and super important. Um, but yeah, what, what are your thoughts, Mitch?
I absolutely agree. I really hope to share notes and train with you as far as physical training and hopefully on the course, um, before the race. And I really appreciate that those flights we had last year, that was cool. Um, I've learned a lot from you over the years and your experiences in the X-Alps, and I hope to keep doing that. I agree. It's, you know, if any of us think about how hard it is for two people just to fly together for one day, now think about doing that day after day after day with, um, you know, with hiking and walking and choosing takeoffs and all that stuff thrown in the mix. It's pretty hard to say. Yes, we're going to stay together the entire time. And if something happens, like one pilot gets a thousand meters lower than the other, you know, what are you going to do?
You're going to continue on course or one pilots lands, the other one's not going to land and walk with them. So I think it would be a great thing to do. And I hope to do more gaggle flying in the next X-Alps, but, um, saying it's going to happen for sure is just being unrealistic.
Yeah. And I mean, it also kind of, you know, it's. The magic of that race is, is just pulling creative, really cool moves. You know, my, my best day by far in all the races, uh, was in 2015 when I I'd had a couple of terrible days and fallen way back and then just had this, you know, my, my feet were destroyed in that race and, uh, landed one night and that was, I don't know, 18th, 19th kind of going into Bellinzona and, uh, and, you know, Bruce was like, there's like five or six guys, you know, Hans and Dave and a bunch of people that, and they were like not very far in front of me, you know, 10, 15 K, um, as the road goes. And, uh, and he was all just like, you gotta go, man, you gotta go catch up. And cause it was like 6 PM and, but my feet were just like blisters on top of blisters.
They were so mangled. And I was like, God, man, if I chase these guys down, this might be the end of my race. Like I, I need rest, not physical rest, but my, my feet need rest. And, uh, so I just sat there and had a couple of beers, relaxed at a pizza. And the next day, you know, we, we, we decided, you know, we had a game plan and, uh, I knew that area really well. And I passed everybody went from 18th to seventh that day and flew right over the Matterhorn and just had a magical day. And when I tied in with four or five of those guys going into the Matterhorn, they had kind of flown the standard route over the Newfoundland and into the Rhone and, and up. So much less direct route. So I was able to catch all these guys. And when I was in the air going into the Matterhorn, if I'd followed them, they all tagged the Matterhorn and flew right back down into the Rhone.
And, and Bruce was texting me. And he constantly like, do not come down here. The Valley winds are crazy. It's way too strong. Nobody's getting anywhere. You have to stay deep, just stay high and stay deep and fly straight to Berbier, which I'd done a lot. I knew that route. And, uh, you know, if I had gaggle flown, I would have hosed myself. Those guys all flew right back down on the Volus landed. And then they were there for like 24 hours. They got totally stuck. And, uh, and so I think, you know, I think there are times where it's magic and it really, really works. And there's other times. And especially in that race where you've got to kind of like what Chrigel says, you've got to gamble and, and go with your gut. And it's hard to go with your gut when there's other people around. And that's typically when I don't fly as, as well in that kind of a scenario, you know, and comps are a different story.
Right. I mean, cause paragliding is such an individual sport. And I think of it, Gavin, you and I talked about this for the Spina Baja thing is it's not the way that pilots kind of think or usually fly is to fly. As I don't like the word gaggle for some reason, it just, it seems too chaotic to me, but like a flock of, if I think of just, you know, I've got a logical mind is thinking if we've got two extraordinarily experienced pilots or just good, whatever you want to call yourselves, it's, they've got to be able to make better decisions than one, but they'd also have to train that. Like you can't show up and say, okay, we're going to fly together, not having trained it. It's just like showing up to the squat rack and saying, I'm going to squat 400 pounds and never having squatted. So just something that came up as, as I was listening to you guys, um, I'd
like to shift the last piece cause we're coming up on the end of the time here, Mitch and be remiss if we didn't talk about physical training, which I think some of the folks are interested on is you do a lot of physical training, both you and Gavin do this, um, a huge emphasis on being ready to move on the ground. Um, when I started thinking about that, I was thinking about one thing that Bill Belcourt had said, uh, about flying. Um, I was thinking about the gliders is that people will fly safer gliders to use the safety 10 % of the time, but they miss the performance 90 % of the time versus flying higher performance gliders and losing the safety, but having the performance on hand, you guys have both kind of hit on this is that you fly way faster than you run. You know, it's a question first for you, Mitch, just because your physical training is such a part of this, but Gavin chime in is, do you guys think about that balance between flying and physical training?
And which is going to be more important to not to prepare for the race, but to win the race? I do. I do. I think it's, um, you know, for sure it's the flying that wins or loses the race. On top of that, if we look at the last race, a lot of really good athletes dropped out of the race just due to overuse injuries, right? Which we could attribute to maybe training mistakes or body mistakes. So it's a combination of the two and there's, there's no good in around that. As far as my upcoming training, I'll fly a lot. Cause you know, that's what I do. I like to fly a lot. I treat it as training and the X ops is a huge priority, but I also like to fly comps and I like to just fly big XC flights in the middle of nowhere and try new lines and stuff like that.
So, um, I'll be flying a lot in my training and my physical training will, you know, I need to get in the hours. And then we know that it's not just about doing. Tons and tons of hours, but it's also about putting the recovery in the right places. So you, you can do too much physical training and you can hit it too hard and you can suffer from that. So, um, I'm, I've hired Ben Ambruso as my trainer this year, um, for exactly that. So that I have someone to keep me accountable to both the training load and to the recovery load and to, um, be, well, I I've enjoyed being scientific with my training. I've done my own research and training in the past, and I think I've done fairly well with it, but having someone who's been a dedicated trainer for hike and fly sports for years now and had some really successful athletes, I think is going to be a game changer for me.
Yeah. And I, I think Nick, the, um, I think often the, because, you know, paragliding is not seen as a physical sport. I think it's something that many people lack and to their detriment in the air. Uh, I, I think, you know, training. You know, if you're physically fit, you're, you know, you're, you've got a much better chance of being mentally fit and, you know, this is mostly a mental game for sure, unless you're doing the X-Alps, but, um, you know, I think, you know, to, to pull off, you know, consecutive eight, nine, 10 hour flights, you know, most people can't last that long in the air. And, uh, you know, so if you want to go big, if the, if one of your goals is to be a safe, you know, big hour cross country pilot, you know, that has to have a physical component.
It has to have a diet component. It has to have a sleep component, a hydration component. I think all those things are super important to be specific about the X-Alps, you know, in 2015, I was like, Mitch, I had never done an X-Alps type race. Uh, I'm not, I wasn't, I never perceived myself as an endurance athlete. So basically I was scared shitless. And, uh, and I just, you know, I, I didn't know, I had no, I just didn't, I was so, I was even nervous about entering the race and being embarrassed. Like being the first one. I just had no idea what I was capable of. Um, I mean, I knew I was a pretty good pilot. I knew I had a long way to go. Uh, but you know, when I having been on my side was like my kind of magic pill was like, okay, you know, that was one huge area of stress about the race that I could just let go of.
I like, he, he basically said, I will have you ready in June. You will be ready for this race. Don't worry about it. So I could just let that go and not worry about it, which was huge, huge psychologically and huge mentally. Physically, you know, after the 2015 race, when we all got back together and did kind of a big, massive debrief, the debrief was I got to fix my feet because that sucked. That was just painful. I mean, it never really slowed me down too much, but it just, it hurt, uh, which we did in 2017. So we figured that out. And then, and then the other, I mean, there was a bunch of stuff, but the big one was that, you know, I need to be a better pilot. I need, I mean, my big mistakes were 100 % in the air. They were never on the ground. When you looked at the average ground speed. You know, I was really fast. Uh, and so that wasn't the thing.
It was, it was flying. And, and again, same thing in 2017, it was the same thing. It was, uh, in 2017 was, was a real ground game and there was so much bad weather. You just, you had to do a lot of ground game. And so, you know, for me, my training is, you know, going to be a lot more focused on flying because the physical side, now that I've done it twice, like I know what needs to be done there. It's a lot of work. It's a major heavy load, but, um, that's not stressful anymore. That's just, it's fun. You know, like do the work, you'll be fine. It's the flying that is the, you know, and it's the flying that Mitch is talking about there with, it's not the big eight, nine, 10 hour flights on a perfect day. It's the, it's the crappy stuff. It's the little stuff.
It's the stable stuff. I mean, cause that's what you're dealing with in the race. It's, you know, you rarely get those good days when you do, you got to rip them, but most of the time it's just little. It's little stuff and little things. And, you know, and those, those are, those are harder to piece together, you know, really skillfully those, those take training.
Dang it. Gav, I think that's all the questions I've got that are probably useful. Have you got any, anything else?
Well, Mitch, I have one more X-Alps question and, uh, you know, I'm just fascinated with this and we never did actually get to talk about it all that much, but you told the story and I, I don't need you to tell it now. Cause it's, it's a long one. It's great. But you told the story of, you know, your, uh, heartbreaking in a way, um, elimination at the end. I'm just wondering if there was any, you know, at that point, was it, uh, was that a real heartbreaker in terms of like mentally, I, I would, I would just want, you know, I'd sent you a text that next morning and I didn't know you'd gotten eliminated. And I was like, dude, you're, you're crushing stick, stick, stick with it. You know, you can get, you can get those guys. And you're like, dude, I just made the dumbest mistake. Um, it
was kind
of a. When you told the story, it was, it was an interesting way that he got you. Um, but, uh, I'm talking about the Russian, but I'm just wondering, you know, for you, what that was like emotionally and, and how have you, what was it a big deal or were you just like, God, that was just awesome. And, you know, bummer, but whatever.
It was a big Denali really wanted to finish the race. I really wanted to continue on to the end. And, um, you know, I felt like those last three or four days when, when we were all kind of racing not to get eliminated. Is when I figured out the sport a little bit, I was, I was making good moves. It was, it was flowing nicely. I was flying well when I could fly and moving on the ground low when I could and choose the right times to do both. So, um, I've been in this flow that was working really well. And, you know, it was night pass. We all, except if Guinea, we all pulled our night pass and my simple, simple mind in the middle of the night was, okay, I need to walk two hours past you have Guinea because he has an hour to go. And I'll be in a place where he can't pass me in the morning and then I'll have all day tomorrow to do the best I can with the course.
And, um, what I, you know, what in the middle of the night, two in the morning or whatever I didn't account for and none of my team did. And maybe this is another good reason to have the internet guy, the data guy feeding me information, um, is that you have, Kenny had this route where he could run down a road. And even though logistically, you know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. If it wasn't closer to Lake Garda and Montebaldo, he would be closer, um, physically there. And just, just by a touch, it ended up being 200 meters. Um, so I woke up early in the morning to you have Guinea sprinting down a road on live tracking. And I had to, I had kind of this mountain range in my way and had to kind of take these windy roads through a mountain range and just couldn't, couldn't get physically closer to Garda than, than he did.
And it was by something crazy, like 200 meters. So, um. Um, yeah, you know, that was, I mean, a beautiful lesson and another lesson in data and lesson in, you know, when, when I'm exhausted on day, whatever that was day 12, I think when I'm exhausted and been working really hard for 12 days and pulled the night pass and, you know, bodies hurt and all that stuff, it's, it's important to have someone on the team who can kind of look at things in a broader spectrum, who's not as tired and, um, a little bit. A little bit more objective and, uh, it would have been, you know, another hour during the night, which at this point feels like nothing would have been, would have been great to do go until three 30 in the morning instead of two 30 in the morning would have been fantastic
and, um, have kept me in the race for one more day. And it seems like I could have gotten the Mount of Baldo, Mount of Baldo turn point and made it beyond.
And any kind of, you know, leftover from that? Like, uh, I mean, I don't know. I've, I've always just thought, I thought. When you, when that happened to you, I was kind of like, you know, thinking about it, God, if that had happened to me, what would be, I mean, I don't know. I would, it would have been kind of painful for me, but you seem to have a pretty good attitude about it. Like it, like, Hey, that was just learning.
I try to have a pretty good attitude. I mean, it's another one of those feedback things, right? If, if, if you get really emotional about mistakes, then the learning experiences aren't as good because, because your ego or whatever tends to kind of shield things. So I, I, I try to, and I'm not always successful and maybe I look more successful to the outside observer, but I try to not be as emotional about mistakes and think of them as learning lessons and, um, think about the growth I can have from them. You know, one other thing I do, and we've all had friends get injured in multiple sports and including paragliding, but every time a friend gets injured, I kind of send them this message and tell them a story about when, um, I broke my leg when I was 18, you know, I was.
Um, I was skiing hard. I was, I was a big mountain competitive skier at that point and broke my leg. And at that point I was probably on track to be a high school teacher and I was carrying more weight than I'm carrying now. I probably would have been an overweight high school teacher and I, and I broke my leg and it was, it was kind of a big Denali had a pulmonary embolism and I still have a 14 inch metal rod in my leg. Um, so it was kind of a big break and, um, spent quite a bit of time in the ICU and stuff. And the recovery was long, but what, what it made me appreciate was how much I love my body and love being outside. And after that kind of my whole life shifted and I lost all the extra weight I had and became a more dedicated athlete.
And, um, that's kind of flowed into where I am today. And if you had asked me the day after I broke my leg or the month after, was that a bad thing? I probably would have said yes, but now 15 years later, almost 15. Yeah. 15 years later, it's the best thing that could have happened to me right then, you know? So I think, um, often these, these kinds of challenges in our life, making mistakes and, uh, kind of suffering a little bit at the time because of mistakes, calling them good or bad is, is really inappropriate, right? It's, it's only at the end of a lifetime that we can think about the influences and the opportunities that, um, that, that thing opened up.
The universe has a way of, uh, giving us what we need. Doesn't it?
Exactly. Exactly. It's very true. And kind of, if, if you get stuck in the, that was a negative thing, um, mindset, it's more likely to be a negative thing in your life, right? But if you kind of think about, okay, well, right now I'm on, on my bed for a few months. What, what am I going to study? What am I going to read? Which languages am I going to learn? What lessons am I going to bring when my body's work in order again? Um, that, that's how to kind of progress from it and become a better.
Love it. Hey, Mitch, just for the listeners where, you know, if people are looking for instruction or want to find out more, how can they reach out to you?
Well, you know, my, my main job is working as an instructor for Eagle paragliding and we do, we did tours all over the world and clinics and I'm doing, um, all sorts of instruction with them, um, out of Santa Barbara. And then, um, my Facebook is Mitch Riley, M I T C H R I L E Y, um, Instagram, Mitch Riley. Uh, dot 84 and, um, feel free to get in touch with me at any time. I'm really receptive to questions and I love, um, being a mentor and a student in this community. And
then Mitch, you're, you're putting together the kind of the first hike and fly race in the States. Uh, give a shout out about that.
Yeah, totally. Far out flying.com. The first one is in September, September 22nd and 23rd from Marshall, a site out of San Bernardino and, uh, near LA. Um, it should be a really easy weekend comp for people to come and do. We still have space available, so I'd be pumped if more people would sign up, but we have a good crew going right now. And basically they're, um, they're styled like the border races. It's 33 hours. So two flying days in the night in between to get as far away from the site and back as you can in hike and fly style, you know, carrying all your gear or flying with it and with a supporter. So I'm really excited to bring the sport to the U S. I think one thing is, um, as a U S hike and fly pilot that, uh, we've been lacking is we don't have a arena to train the sport in, in our country.
And that's the idea of these races. I hope in the coming years to have four or five of these a year and all sorts of different locations in the U S and, uh, have a arena for U S pilots to practice the sport. Ultra site.
Sounds great. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's awesome. Super fun. Mitch. Yeah. Thanks for your time, dude. I really appreciate it. We're going to be, we're going to be, we're going to be, we're going to be, we're going to be rooting for you in the Dolomiti super fly. Um, but, uh, yeah, good luck in Europe. That, that looks like a blast. It'd be awesome to be in the Dolomites. And, uh, I've got some friends over there. They're actually Hans is over there doing a tandem right now with his son. Pretty cool. He gave me, just gave me a call about an hour before the show. They're having fun over there. Maybe I'll give
him a call. Yeah,
I do. I'm sure. But, uh, good luck. Have fun. Be safe. And, uh, can't wait to fly with you again, man. Thank you.
Well, thank you, Gavin. Everything you do for our community is amazing. And, uh, we're, we're really fortunate to have you. So thanks, thanks for doing what you're doing. And I look forward to flying with you a bunch more and Nick, nice talking with you. Really good questions. And I hope we get to fly a bunch together. I'm in Southern California, most of the winter. So let's hook up. Yeah. It was super, super cool to talk to both of you. And I'm also ultra psyched. I mean, I know it's not a sure thing yet, but ultra psyched to have you guys as a two of our Americans cruising out to, to compete in the XL. So it's going to be a really fun year to watch you train and watch you compete. Awesome. Cool. Thanks guys. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you. Gavin.
If you enjoyed the show, there are many ways to support it. And you can of course support us financially because this is a listener supported podcast. All we've ever asked for is a buck show. Uh, you can do that through patron or PayPal. You'll see those links on the website, cloud-based man.com. And wanted to also remind all of you that we do bonus material. And we've got a great video show of, uh, Paul Guschlbauer. He came through town recently and did his X outs talk, which is awesome. So we had a big crowd. And we recorded it. So that'll be a bonus episode on Patrion. And then we've got another one. We're now, uh, interviewing our Patrion supporters, uh, pilots that won every quarter. And we put those up also as, as bonuses. And I recently did one with a good friend of mine, Tom sleeping up in Canada that both of those will be up in the next couple of days, if they aren't already, by the time we released this.
So another way to, uh, get some bonus material. If you support us on Patrion, those will also be made available to our PayPal supporters. I just don't have them. I don't have a very good way to reach them other than, uh, just trust a, if you're a PayPal sport, let me know and I'll send you the link. So we'll make that available to all the financial supporters of the show. Uh, but you can also just share it with your friends, blog about it and put it up on Facebook or Twitter or whatever, and, uh, let everybody know what this is all about. It's just sharing the knowledge and trying to make us all better pilots and safer. That's what it's all about. So, uh, share it with your friends and we'll see you on the next one. Thank you.