Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. I'm recording this from a hotel in Bogota. I'm on my way to British Nationals. Just wrapped up a couple of unbelievable weeks in Valle de Bravo. Did Marco's XC Sky Race. That was the second edition of that. He's doing that every year. Marco, of course, is in the X-Alps this year and put on a really, really fun comp that's really designed. Instead of race to goal, it's really designed to reward the best pilot for going big and flying fast. And he has all kinds of algorithms and handicaps for different wings. So in theory, you could be on a bay wing and win the race. Hats off to Matt Henze, who won that. It was a really terrific race. We had six days of awesome flying and then a day off. And then the Monarca, 150 pilots in the Monarca.
Monarca, as always, was just amazing. They put me on the task committee again, which was super fun with Gunnar Sabu and Enrique Figueroa. We just had a blast. And the flying was super epic. A few days of some pretty big OD, but it never went too big. And yeah, another six days. So just terrific. Before we get into the show with Adrian Garza, who is super inspiring. He's actually one of Marco's X-Alps supporters this year in the race. And then he went through his P2 stuff and got his 30 flights with Marco. About a year ago. And then on his 31st flight, went up and hiked one of the major volcanoes in Mexico and has been kind of volcano hopping.
So it's really inspiring. I thought really cool to see somebody with such low hours chasing things really neat. And he's, you know, he's got a lot of altitude and climbing experience and sounds like he's doing it really safely. And I think you're just going to enjoy this. It's not really on the technical aspect of flying, but more just the inspiring side of what you can do with a wing. Even with very low hours. So I think you're going to enjoy it. Before we get into the show, though, I wanted to talk a little bit about some of my observations. One, there was in that two week span, at least 16 major incidences. So and by major, I mean like a reserve toss. Most of the reserve tosses were, you know, were pretty benign other than people hanging in trees for a long time in some cases.
But there were also some pretty major injuries. And some evacs, some helicopter evacs. And the percentage is not great. I think this was, you know, there was quite a bit of high pressure, which makes by even more spicy than it typically is. But I have some thoughts on why some of this is happening. One, people are rusty, you know, so they're coming into a place that is notoriously pretty sharp air and pretty dynamic. And there's a lot of trees and you don't have an often have a lot of room to work. Between cloud based in the trees. So people usually haven't been flying in quite a few months. So they're not really on their game vies high altitude Mexico City's high altitude. So you're coming and you're more tired and less sharp than you typically are often hydrations.
One of the problems people are tired. They're often dealing with maybe a little bit of an off stomach, that kind of thing. So all those factors for certainly play a role in just something to be really aware of. travel and go to fly.
Being not current is a huge one. I always talk about that in the winter as you're coming into spring, you know, when thermals are sharp, you have to treat it kind of like being in the spring. So, you know, even if it's a comp, you're there for a comp, just recognize that you might not be totally on your game. The other thing I saw a lot of, and this is distressing, is just way, way too many people flying wings that are above their skill level and above their hours level. This is a topic that we talk about on the show again and again and again and again. And most of the people I talk to, the, you know, the experts, the really high hours folks are always talking about not moving up too fast. Well, way too many people are moving up too fast. In the Monarca where we had 150 pilots, you know, the gaggles are obviously really big.
And, you know, a lot of the folks that are on wings above their level are spending the whole time looking up at their wing and not looking around at the other guys. And so, other pilots and makes it super dangerous. And the gaggles, um, makes gaggle flying pretty sketchy, uh, very different than in PWCs where everybody's on the same wing, um, you know, pretty much. And everybody's really confident and they're looking around and not saying looking up at your wing is a bad thing. I do it all the time, but you, uh, if you're just staring at it because you're nervous about it, you're on the wrong wing. That's, you know, you should be able to feel it, uh, as well as seeing it. And, um, just something to think about. I'm seeing a lot of people on Zenos and, uh, and the Peak 4, which, you know, just a couple of years ago was one of the hottest, you know, it was a hot comp wing.
Okay. So it's now a more mellower comp wing, but it's still a comp wing. Uh, the Zeno is a two-liner. It can be definitely, I mean, farmer got third overall in the Monarca. You can make that thing go really good. Um, and just because it's a stable two-liner. Or people say really good things about it. You know, if you're not getting 200, 250 hours a year and you don't have years and years of experience and a whole bunch of SIV, like a whole bunch of SIV on your belt, that is way too hot of a wing for you. So, uh, just cause it doesn't blow out super easily. You hardly ever see those wings go. That doesn't mean that they're quote unquote safe for you. So, um, Be thinking about that. The other thing that I still find incredibly distressing is how many people either don't have
satellite trackers or are still on spot. Uh, you all know that I'm sponsored by Garmin, but this is not a sponsored thing. Um, you know, there were quite a few people that were hung up in trees for hours and hours and hours without cell service. So I'm, I'm always hearing, oh, well, I've got my three little messages that I can send out with spot. Well, big Denali mean, you're in a tree. Wouldn't it be nice to communicate? Hey, I'm okay. Or, Hey, I have a broken leg or, Hey, I need a helicopter or, Hey, I don't, um, or, Hey, I need really need some water. There was one guy that spent until 3am and got pretty hypothermic, um, because he didn't have a way to communicate. And so, you know, you, you need an inReach. I mean, we travel, we buy a very expensive gear. Cost is just a ridiculous excuse that you don't have an inReach. Um, you can two-way text, uh, people know exactly where you are and exactly what the problem is, and they can pull in the correct kind of resources.
So if you are a pilot and you're flying cross country,
you can pull in the correct kind of resources.
There's just no excuse. You need to have one of these, but you also need to know how to use it. Uh, there's, if you go to my website, cloudbasemayhem.com and just put in inReach best practices or inReach, you'll find articles on kind of how to set them up and, uh, how to best use them. But there was quite a bit of confusion. I landed one day in the sky race to help two people that had thrown the reserves together and, uh, Revis and Matt Henzey, Revis Gray and Matt Henzey were above me. And so they immediately gave me, uh, Latin long. Locations. I dropped, I dropped a waypoint into my inReach, uh, changed the Latin long to, to match and walked directly to them. It was super easy. It took only a few minutes. Um, they were both totally non-events. Um, but a lot of people don't know how to do that.
One, you got to make sure your group is in the same, uh, lat long format. So, uh, I recommend decimal degrees. Uh, that's pretty standard for emergency, uh, folks. Um, you know, if you're in the PWC or something, they're still in UTM, you know, so you, if you're in a comp that asks for something else, obviously you've got to switch and you want to switch all your instruments to that, but, um, decide in your group what you're going to use. And again, I recommend decimal degrees. It's just, it's the easiest, what Google earth is automatically in, uh, that works pretty well. And then if you need to know either your location or, uh, or if you're flying over somebody's head that you've seen gone in and you need to send that location to somebody else, the easiest way to do it is just drop a waypoint. It's got the little waypoint icon, you can do it with your device or you can do it with your phone through earthmate.
Um, and then bang, it just shows it to you, drop it. And then you click on it, you can name it. And like, in this case, I did pilot one and pilot two, cause I didn't know who the victims were. Uh, and then if you need to edit the Latin long, you can do it right there. So like, in other words, if somebody is giving, giving you the Latin long, just drop a waypoint, open it up, and then you can edit, you can put the numbers that they give you in there, which is what I did. So make sure you know how to do that. Um, the other thing is, what I see a lot of is like the first day, like, Oh yeah, we need to, we need to make sure we all have each other's inReach addresses. And then, then you go and launch, um, inReach addresses are, are still very confusing to some people, the inReach address for your device. So like for mine is mail35 at inReach.garmin.com.
Um, that doesn't mean that the outside world can email me at that address that's inReach to inReach. So the easiest way for people to have your devices, uh, uh, uh, Address is just send them a message. So, before launch, get everybody together, get your 10 pilots, your 10 buddies together. Make sure a you're all in XC Fine. So, you've sent Dave, your Dave Wheeler, your money, and you're on there, and and he's got your your share page or your spot share page, but hopefully in Reach share page. Make sure your share page is set up correctly, so that takes just a couple minutes. You go to Garmin and you log into your account and make sure you've got that, you know, people can message you and people can see where you are. Some pretty basic stuff there that you just need to change, it's real obvious.
And then send everybody a message from your device to their phone and then also to their device, and then that you've got the message thread, you never need to worry about what their address is ever again. It's in your message, it's right there. The other thing that a ton of people are not doing is when they in their flight, they just turn their tracking off. They never put in an okay message. That's also super simple, it's in your message threads. If you go to messages, you'll see one of them is called Map Share, it's always there, it's automatically with the device. You just type in "okay, bam," or you can just do it with the okay message uh on the device itself. So make sure you do that, because otherwise people are, if they're watching XC Fine, they're not really sure what's going on. Is there's, you know, do they need help? Because if it just stops tracking, you could be in a tree, you could be hurt, you can be dead, and nobody knows.
Um, and so make sure you put that okay. In there, and then make sure you talk to one another about, you know, what you guys are doing, um, and, uh, and make sure you have, you know, each other's radio frequencies and all that kind of basic stuff, but be looking out for one another because I think the—what people think is they go to Y and there's so many people that, you know, somebody's looking after you, but all those people are like, well, somebody else is looking after them. And so I think a lot of people just get left out there, and, uh, and those trees swallow you up and you disappear. Both those reserves that, uh, that I saw go in, and I landed to help, that I watched them go right to the ground and I couldn't see them again. And that's why I landed out, like I don't trust the radios; they're probably all hopped up on adrenaline even though they're saying, "Okay, I want to go make sure they're all right." So anyway, some things to think about.
Uh, lastly, um, there were several folks that got into kind of auto rotation situations Uh, which makes reserve tossing pretty hard to do, and often the reserve goes right into the wing. Um, SIV, if you've done it, hopefully you've done it, um, over the water with instructor in your ear and all that kind of thing. Is way, way different than SIV in a real situation. Um, your adrenaline starts pumping, uh, you may or may not be thinking very clearly depending on how much SIV you've done, um, and you're in really spicy air. You're not over the lake and totally still air where you're just going out to glide out where you know initiating a flat spin is just no big thing. Um, you initiate flat spin 500 feet off the deck in a big, massive thermal because you hit too much brake, um, you might have a pretty, you know, you could cascade there and end up in an auto rotation situation pretty fast, which is really dynamic.
So I want to encourage all of you to do more if you can, more SIV, um, get on a wing that's your, that you're really comfortable with and really practice it, practice, practice it. I had a situation in one of the race days in the Narco, we were pushing out just after the start out to Deviz, uh, in a notorious place where the air is notoriously rough and, uh, had a pretty good tip tuck on one side and I went to fish, when I went to fish that one out, had a huge whack on the other side and I looked up and I thought, "Wow, there's not very much of this wing open." And, uh, and I was kind of wondering if it was still flying and took a quick look at the ground and I was only about 300 feet off the tree. So I had, I had to make a decision really quickly, either throw or deal with this. Um, and then I heard my, my vario just doing that whole plunge sound and realized I was like instantly in a parachutal situation.
And you know, if I hadn't had, you know, so much practice over the water and done so much SIV, that definitely would have been a reserve situation. So I just stalled it really fast, let it go, it went a little bit asymmetrically, had to come back to deep stall and then let it go again and flew away and got in the thermal and kept racing. It was not a, um, but you need to, that stuff, especially when you're that low, needs to be automatic. And I think another thing that people are doing, and I see this over and over and over again, is, you know, Rev has talked about this in his podcast and it's so valuable at every stage of your flight. You know, even if it's a 10-hour flight, you need to be constantly aware of, "Right now I'm at a thousand feet, right now I'm at 5,000 feet, right now I'm at 200 feet." You need to know exactly how much height you have so if something goes wrong, you know approximately how much time you have before it's a, it's a throw situation.
You know, like in that situation for me, I had a few seconds. If that didn't work, I really needed to throw. Uh, you know, 300 feet, you've got almost nothing. So for somebody else, if they, if that had happened, uh, that's an instant throw scenario. And there were just, there were a lot of people that threw, uh, this week and were fine, and there were quite a few people that didn't, some of them were fine, um, but some of them were not. And so that's just testament to reserves, they really do work, but you got to get them out. Now we've said that many times on the show, but just want to reiterate that. All right, cool. Well enough seriousness, uh, let's get into this very fun talk with Adrian Garza. Uh, the sound is, is tough here. We were sitting in the backyard up by Evandro, uh, where we were staying for the, for the comp, and there's trucks and there's dogs.
Just classic Mexico, but I thought that was kind of fun. So, uh, we've done our best here to drown most of that out, but, uh, there is going to be some background noise. But I think you're going to find this really inspiring, and, uh, volcano hopping in Mexico, uh, please enjoy. This is very cool talk with my friend Adrian Garza, Adrian.
Welcome to the mayhem. So good to, uh, meet you, spend a little bit of time with you this week, and I'm sorry you couldn't join us for the sky race. That was a blast, but shout out to Marco for putting on a good comp. That was super fun. Via came through as it always does. Six great days of flying. Um, but yeah, I'm excited to talk to you because you're, uh, doing some really cool stuff. Is a very new pilot, so we're going to talk volcanoes and ex-alps because you're gonna be supporting Marco in the race, yeah? And, uh, learning and babies and family and living in Mexico City and chasing it. So, yeah, uh, I thought maybe where we'd start, uh, off the top here is is just have
an incredible
flight because, uh, we just did this for the last 20 minutes and the recording wasn't working, so we're doing it again. But we did a little dress rehearsal—we did a little dress rehearsal kicks, yeah, yeah. But, uh, pretty amazing, you tell again that the history of the 30 flights and then going out and doing your first one off of a big volcano for
Sure, oh, thanks for having here, having you here, Gavin. I'm super excited. Um, so yeah, I learned to fly here in in Valle. Um, like my mom and dad had been on a trip to Peru and and she did a tandem flight in Lima and loved it. Um, so she got me into this and I'm super glad she did. We learned to fly together here with Marco and from the start when she came up with the idea, the first thing that came to my mind was, you know, I'm already climbing these big mountains and I would love to be able to fly off the summit, right? So that was kind of my main motivation when I started. You know, it's it's evolved since then, but that's how it began. Um, so after you know my 30 flights, um, and my practical and theoretical exam to get my license, you know, flight number 31, so my first solo flight, real solo flight, was going to be off of one of the big volcanoes of Mexico City, which is a 5,230 meter tall volcano.
It's about two hours from Mexico City, so I've been, uh, preparing for that with, you know, the equipment that I would need, um, checking out the weather forecast. I had already been on the mountain, you know, many times, uh, by myself, um, and you know, camping out on the summit and I did, uh, circumnavigation of the mountain, so I, I knew it pretty well and it's pretty accessible from Mexico City for like a weekend climb. It's like two hour drive to base camp, which is about 3,900 meters and then from there to the summit, it's probably like between four and five hours and all in all it's a 10 hour day if you, if you walk back down too.
Um, so I really wanted to fly off of that volcano. I knew that other people had done that before Um, and I wanted to do that as well, so I got out there on a Saturday. Uh, I took it easy so I could, you know, get used to the the altitude and started early. And at night, um, when I got to the summit, uh, you know, it took me about maybe an hour to get everything ready and be ready to to take off, just because, you know, I've been climbing for four or five hours with with a pack on that weighed maybe 10 kilos, and you know, I had to get rehydrated, you know, have some food, and you know, as I was saying, you know, at that altitude, sometimes just tying your shoelaces, uh, when your boots can can get you out of breath, um, so anything that's usually done, uh, you know, quite easily, uh, is a lot more complicated over there.
And of course, you want to have your head clear, um, so you can judge the conditions and make sure you—you check your equipment and all that did.
You have a lot of time at altitude, like a lot of climbing experience, and that kind of thing. Because I know it could be like, when I, when I was first learning—uh, just gonna interrupt your first time, but when I was first learning and just getting my P2, so kind of going through the same phase that you were—it was like the last sign-off flight that I had, and I was with some friends that were good pilots, and then my instructor, and uh, you know, it was middle of the day and it was hot and it wasn't that high. This is outside of Salt Lake City, so nothing like what you're talking about, um, but like I just, he, my instructor was kind of watching me and I was really having a hard time, like even just kind of like, do I turn right or left? He could tell that I was just kind of confused and I was
Like, oh my gosh, how do I even feel like I'm flying this way? And he was like, "Oh,"
Yeah, you're right. Yeah, I'll get some help, and he just, he...
Just walked over to me really nicely and he said, "Gavin, today you're done." You know, he just knew it. That's it. So did you, did you feel pretty comfortable that you kind of knew, you know, the difference between a little bit of
altitude sickness
and just kind of of being out of it
Yeah, um, yeah. So I'd been on the mountain before many times and, um, like a year before that, a year and a half before, I went on a climbing trip to Peru and climbed a six thousand meter peak. So I really trained hard for that. Um, so I summited that same mountain like four times in, in a month, on the weekend straight. And, and when I started doing that, I got into really the literature about, you know, acclimatization and training for altitude and all that. I read a lot of books and, and articles. And, and my secret weapon for that was a hypoxic generator that I have at home. So it's a little machine, um, and it's, it makes probably the same amount of noise as like, like, like a stand-alone air conditioning system.
And what it does basically is it takes oxygen out of the air and it substitutes nitrogen into it, which is what most air is mostly made up of anyway. So it, you don't, it's not toxic or anything, and you can use that to simulate altitude, so Since I knew that I wanted to do these hike and fly trips, I used that beforehand, and I had used it before when I went to Peru. So, before going to Peru, I slept in a little plastic tent that covers my body from like my chest up, and you sleep in that, and and you're able to gradually increase the altitude to where you feel comfortable. And you know, what you're depending on what your objectives are, so already in Mexico City, we're pretty high as it is.
I mean, it's like 2,200 meters, which is like almost—oh, it is as high as Aspen or higher than Denver, you know, it's pretty high. So then, if you put, you know, 2,000 more meters on top of that, you're already at 4,200 um So you start gradually increasing the simulated altitude, and I have like a pulse oximeter that I wear before going to bed, and I check my pulse and my my pulse ox reading in the morning as well, and try to keep it like under 90 and above 80. And so gradually, when you start using it, you start to see that at the same simulated altitude, you have a higher pulse ox reading.
So your body's starting to get used to it, and you use that to calibrate, you know, the intensity of of your your acclimatization training, so that that whole period really made me aware of, I mean, the all the theory behind that, and and also, more importantly, as you mentioned, like, how does my body feel when it's starting to get hypoxic, right? Yeah, and with that same machine, you can also do hypoxic intervals, so you wear a mask on your face and I can... like, pump it up all the way to 8,000 meters and just breathe the air for five minutes, and then you take it off and give it a rest for maybe two minutes, five minutes, and then put it back on. Or you can do the same thing while you're doing exercise, like on a treadmill or something like that, so that really gives you a lot of practice for actually, you know, observing and feeling the effects of hypoxia and altitude.
That really helped me out on that trip to Peru, and and for doing these high can fly trips, I started sleeping in that tent for like six weeks before I plan to go out to do it, so it gives me a really big advantage when I got out there, and you can really feel it. I mean, you're, you're resting heart rate really drops, you're actually, your body actually produces more
oxygen than you think you're actually producing more oxygen than you think you're actually producing more
red blood cells, and you just have way more aerobic capacity than you would beforehand, and your your aerobic threshold really goes up, so you can push harder before you start to feel a lack of oxygen. It's
A very cool Tim Harris type hack, yeah.
I like that yeah I mean that's super useful I mean I know like some like Michael Phelps uses something like that and the U.S. soccer team trained with one of those things before they came up to Mexico City for a match, because there's a difference. So, a lot of, you know, big athletes use it, and I think this is probably gonna be used more often, and you know, in mountaineering, for sure. There's some agencies that are starting to rent out this kind of equipment to their clients for some, like, like big trips, big mountains in the Himalaya or in the Andes, and and they really allows them to shorten the time that it takes to, you know, to go on one of these trips, so
You don't have to acclimatize nearly as much when you get there; you're already, you've already done a lot of the hard work, yeah.
Exactly, so you shave a lot of time off of that, and I think it makes it a lot safer. You know, anytime you're abroad and you're eating different kind of food and even different water source, it can really mess up your gut, yeah, and debilitate you as time goes on. So just having that time shaped off, I think, just really makes it a lot safer and a lot more useful. And, and it's like also having, uh, like, uh, reserve fuel in the tank in case something goes wrong, you're gonna be a lot more, well, equipped and prepared to handle, um, you know, something unexpected where you're gonna have to push yourself harder than you thought you would.
I'm taking you down a really cool side road there. We're gonna have to come back to that because that's fascinating, and I think it was very applicable. You maybe you've—you've read some of Matt Wilkes' study stuff that he's been doing in cross country with with Tom de Dorlodot and the guys that have been flying a lot in Pakistan and the Himalaya? They've done some fascinating work on those guys because it's, yeah, it's quite different isn't what we do when you're thermaling up. You can go up really fast and, uh, it's they're finding it affects people in really different ways. Pretty interesting, interesting research there. Okay, well, back to your, uh, back to your story. So you're, you're, you're, you're gonna half and you're way less than half the time because you're gonna be able to fly down, but you're, you're on the ascent that first day and take us back to there.
Yeah,
So I get to the summit and it's, uh, pretty early morning, uh, get everything ready and it's a little windy and I had seen people, well, I've seen the flights of people that had done this before, but the wind is coming in the completely opposite direction, so, uh, sort of what I had envisioned was, you know, useless at that point. So I had to improvise and find another takeoff, uh, and it worked well and I was able to take off and, and it's the feeling, it's is like, like your very first flight, um, where you're nervous, you're super excited, uh, and you want to take it all in, you want, uh, you want to have pictures of the flight, you want to have video, you want to look around, um, and you have to fly the wing, of course, um, so that, that made everything just go by really fast and it was like a 12-minute flight because I just at first I was really, you know, worried about how the wing would behave close to the volcano.
Uh, how fast it would sink with, you know, in the air that's a lot less dense up there. Uh, so that was my first experience flying at that height. Um, so a lot of things going on and a lot of excitement, and it just went by really fast. What was the wing? It was, uh, it was my, my school wing. So, since I knew I wanted to do this when I started, uh, learning, uh, I got a wing that is an
extension of their deck, which is their, their beginner wing or school wing. Um, it's really, I think it's a really great wing to, to start using when you're learning because it's makes ground handling more fun because it doesn't, doesn't weigh as much, and the harness is also a lighter harness. It has, you know, back protection and like a air protection on the bottom. Um, so yeah, it's an a-wing, which also, it's a wing in case you run into some turbulence or something weird. Um, and it's also nice to know that you're not going to be hitting the ground as fast when you land because I landed at 3,800
meters, which is still pretty high. Um, so I think is a good choice for, for, for those kind of situations. I mean, I was able to function as my beginner wing and also as a—I kept it now as a high can fly wing as well. Um,
Was there ever any moment, uh, you know, being your 31st flight and your first flight without an instructor, was there ever a moment you're up there, you're like, "What the hell am I doing? Do I know?" Do I... was there any like proper self-doubt, uh?
Not once I was in the air, so I was too excited to be worried, yeah. Uh, but definitely, uh, once I got to the summit—and I mean, not even, even before that, I would say, because you're—I was hiking alone and you have like four and a half hours or five hours just to just, uh, have that voice in your head tell you all kinds of things. Yeah, so I had plenty of time to question if, if I'm, uh, going in over my head or not, if I should do this or not. And when it's still dark, you can't really see what the sky looks like, and then when the sun starts coming up, you start trying to observe while you're still hiking, and you, you're out of breath and you're a little hypoxic, and so, yeah, for sure there were a lot of moments where I, where I was constantly
You know, is this still something that that I want to do? Is it still something I want to do? Is are the conditions still what I expected them to be? Is the winds still look like it's doing what I thought it was going to do?
Did you kind of have parameters set beforehand, like if it's X or X, I'm not doing it? Yeah,
Um, well, your regular like flight check stuff, like I mean, if it's like the weather really changes and it's raining or I can't see the landing stuff, like that, like normal stuff. But also, since I knew it was going to be a little windy, if, if I couldn't, uh, if I didn't feel comfortable with, with the glider on the summit, even before taking off, I didn't feel like I was going to be able to handle the, the wing coming up over my head, I was going to abort. Or if I couldn't find a place where I, I felt that if something went wrong, I would be, I would still be okay. So I wanted to have enough space, you know, behind me. I wanted to make sure that if
In front of me, I could also have time to abort, or if I tripped or something, I wouldn't fall off a cliff. So, so all of those things were really on my mind, and the takeoff that I had in mind wasn't going to work because the wind was coming in different directions. So, it's also part of the reason why it took me an hour to to really get ready, you know.
To double check, and also to make sure that I'm still thinking straight, I'm not hypoxic, and I'm still, uh, convinced, you know, for, for an hour straight after being there, that I still want to do this. Um, and on the other hand, I'm also, you know, also worried about, you know, maybe it's getting late, maybe it's going to, you know, get overdeveloped soon, maybe it's going to get more windy, so you kind of feel rushed. Or is that a temptation to be rushed because of that? So it's kind of a finding, finding a balance, time to make sure you're comfortable with the situation and not letting yourself get pressured by, uh, you know, changing the possibility of changing conditions, but also being aware of that. If conditions change, then you can abort, right? And you have to go up with the mentality and the mindset that that
that you might have to walk down, and that's okay. You have to enjoy, you know, that part of it too; otherwise, it's going to be a lot of pressure on yourself, so
I mean, super unusual progression, uh, for, for a pilot. Um, and I know that Marco's a really safe, very, very good instructor. I've seen him instruct; he's amazing. Um, it sounds like you told him about this beforehand. Was, what was his reaction? What was his, uh, what are his thoughts? Yeah.
So before going on that first flight on Volcano, I, you know, talked to Marco and I told him what my plan was. And, you know, at that point I knew what the forecast said and told him what I planned to do. And, and he did give me a few tips as well, like, you know, be careful of when you land because you're going to be going, going faster, you know, practical things like that. And, you know, send me a message when you land. Um, so yeah, he was really supportive. And I think it's also, you know, like any, any really good instructor or teacher, uh, it's really good at, at, uh, judging what where his students are going, stepping out of their, you know, their, their, their experience level or where they should be. Um, so yeah, for sure, it's not the typical progression, um, and it's not like I had in mind that I wanted, you know, my first solo flight has to be on a Volcano.
Like, that's not the way it happened. I said, you know, this is something I eventually want to do whenever I'm ready, whenever my instructor also feels that I'm ready as well. And by the time, you know, my third and my first solo fight came around, I had already been flying for a while and and you
know it's
I kind of did P2 twice because I started a full week like an intensive course, but I wasn't able to finish. And then I did it again with my wife, so I had more time to train. I did an SIV as well before that, so that really helped give me more confidence with wing and, you know, handle those kinds of situations. And I think also I have a pretty non-typical background as well. I think for one thing, I've been on these same mountains, you know, many times by myself and
then one
thing that
I'm part of a little bit more, so you know...
So that's one way
to get you
around, so I think that's one
way that I'm part of
A little bit of
a real player
i just i
was, so I have been on
this path for
a long time, and one day I was like, "Oh no, I didn't know what things like that and"
I've been doing a lot of ice skating, and I've been doing kind of like ice and flying different sizes and kinds of kites, you know, also, I think, made it easier for me to be able to feel out the wing in paragliding, even though it's a different technique and everything. But I think it helped me progress a little bit faster than I would have otherwise.
So I think it was more of a coincidence that by the time it was my first solo flight that I felt that I was ready and it worked out.
So you have this 12-minute flight, and the major thing that strikes you is that's not long enough? Exactly.
So then what? Yeah, I mean,
it's cool that you can come down in 12 minutes instead of three hours, but you're not looking for efficiency unless you're competing, right? So after that, I said, you know, I have to do this again, and I have to make it last longer than that, you know?
So, you know, the adventure. The advantage of living in Mexico City is that I can, you know, wait for the conditions to be right, you know? So if you're flying in your home site, you can, you have that luxury, and you don't have that when you're traveling, so I had to take advantage. So I went out there again about a month later, and I knew the wind was going to be hitting the volcano kind of perpendicularly. It's kind of an elongated volcano.
And at that time, I thought maybe I would be able to... I was able to soar for, like, I don't know, maybe 20 minutes close to the glacier. There's two glaciers on that volcano. And I managed to take off, and I went headed towards the central glacier, and I was able to soar.
And I did that for, like, 20 minutes, and I tried to go back to see if I could fly over the summit, and I didn't make it. I didn't get the altitude, so I had to turn around. And at that point, I was content. I was satisfied, and I said, well, this is already a longer flight. I took some video, took some photos, checked those boxes. You know, I feel fine. And plus, I was starting to get a little cold, right? Because, you know, wind in your face for 30 minutes at 5,200 meters, it was probably close to zero degrees Celsius. And with hypoxia, you get colder faster. So I said, well, I might as well go land. And when I was at 4,600... At 4,600 meters, I was crossing over a lower part of the volcano again, and then I stumbled onto this convergence.
So I had the sun coming up on the east, and then the wind was coming from the west, and I hit this thermal, and it just shot me up to from 4,600 meters to 5,200 meters again. So back up to where I was when I took off. And I was able to go back to... To almost the beginning of my flight and soar over the glaciers again for as long as I wanted until, you know, my fingers started getting cold. I had put on just my liner gloves because I wanted to be able to handle the lines more easily on the takeoff. And I was not expecting to be able to stay up there for an hour. So basically, I just got cold, and that's why I had to go land.
So it was an hour flight versus the 12 minutes from that first one. And that's my favorite flight so far.
Wow. Of all the volcanoes you've done. Yeah. Yeah, wow. And then I understand you did Pico de Orizaba, the one that Cedar did the fledgling film about, right?
Yeah. Yeah, so thanks a lot to Cedar for putting that out there. And I'd seen that film before I started flying, so that was a big part of motivating me to go out and do this.
Oh, really? That was kind of the volcano catalyst? Yeah. Oh, wow.
Cool. Yeah, so since... I've
been on
these, like, social media, I'm on these, like, mountaineering groups locally, and somebody saw that and posted it out there. It's like, wow, that looks super cool. I have to do that someday. So between those two flights on Iztaccíhuatl, I went to fly off Pico de Orizaba. And that's the third highest? It's the third highest in North America. Yeah. So it's Denali in Alaska, then Mount Logan in Canada. And then Orizaba in Mexico. And it's 5,600 meters, a little bit more than that. Okay. About 18,000 feet. Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty high. There's a glacier on it as well. And Cedar and his team, they went up the north face of the glacier.
I went up the south face because I was going alone again. And on the south face, you can get a little bit higher on the approach to your base camp. So instead of starting at 4,200... You start at like 4,500. So 300 meters at that altitude really makes a big difference here.
And I got to summit and it was really windy. The forecast said 10 kilometers an hour and then it said 15. And when I was there, it was definitely more than 15, probably closer to 20, 25.
And looking back, I probably should have walked back down. So I did really question if it was still the right thing to do. And I was also afraid that I would get blown back if I lost control of the glider and fall into the crater of the volcano, which is really, really deep. And there's no way you're getting out of there if you fall. So that was definitely on my mind. So I climbed a little lower down on the... South slope to a point where I felt I had enough distance between me and the crater. So it wasn't that big of a danger anymore.
And I would have time to react if something went wrong. So I took off and it was not an elegant takeoff, but I think it went okay. And then another mistake here that I was started... Well, first thing I did was turn so I didn't have the crater behind me anymore. And then once I got that... When I got done, I started feeling with the camera to turn it on, the video camera. And that probably took 20 seconds or less. It's pretty fast. But when I looked back out to my, you know, my flight route that I had planned, I realized that I wasn't going forward at all, basically. So again, it's an A glider. It's a school wing. It's not really meant to penetrate, you know, 20 plus kilometer an hour winds.
So I was just kind of falling. I was straight down. And then with the speed bar on, I finally started getting some forward motion.
And but I had to land on the volcano again. I wasn't going to be able to get down. So at that point, it was either I turn left and go out to Veracruz somewhere. And then we'll see how we get back to the car or land on the mountain and then gather my stuff and walk back down the rest of the way. So I landed at 4,900 meters. So and that took... Like a minute and a half. Like 600 meters of vertical in a minute and a half. Wow. Super fast. And then I just packed up my glider and walked down the rest of the way. And I had to kind of traverse across to get to the route again and then walk back down. So in the end, it would have been faster to just walk down once I got to the summit instead of fly down and then traverse and then pack your glider up in the volcanic sand on an incline.
And get back to the car. So it's
not without its challenges. Yeah. So, yeah, it
sounds really glamorous, right? Yeah. I'd fly off the summit and you're down in no time. It doesn't always quite work out that way. And what
about how are you going about now that you've done and we'll get into the... I know you've done many more, but how are you going about forecasting and figuring it out? Because, I mean, these mountains are so high. They kind of create their own weather. I mean, I know. You're launching super early, like right at sunrise. And so, you know, ideally, it's pretty mellow conditions. But, you know, like in Cedars-Film and the fledglings, it was a little windy up there. And, you know, I know that they spent a lot of time down here before even attempting it because it's just windy day after day after day. Take me through the process of there because you're also a little limited on time, right? You're doing the weekend thing, correct?
Yeah. Yeah. So I only have usually the weekends available for that. But the big thing for me is having enough experience specifically on these mountains to where I can check the forecast. And then, like, I don't ever commit to going out there until, like, the night before. So I'm ready. And, you know, I'm packed and I know I'm well trained and I made time for it. But if the day before that things really change, then I'll wait for another. Another time, another weekend.
And what's the you did these the first two in January, you said it was like January. And then so is it now is the season for doing these volcanoes in the winter?
Yeah, I think now it's probably when you have the better chance of actually being able to fly off the summits. So here we have kind of two seasons in Mexico City. It's it's like rainy season and dry season. So the mountaineering season really coincides. It's with the with the flying season. So that's perfect. So you have a really low probability of a big thunderstorm systems, really big overdevelopment, stuff like that. So it's good that those two things coincide here at least.
And but, yeah, I mean, in the end, you always have to be be willing to walk down if things change. And I always try to check the forecast at the last moment. And. The whole way up, I'm trying to looking around and seeing what what the weather's doing, it still looks like what I what I thought I was going to do. And if it changes and then you just. And are you
using paragliding specific forecasting like XCSkies and that kind of thing? Are you using more like Noah? And I imagine these mountains don't have like wind cams on top of them.
No, they I mean, they have some of them have some webcams. So, I mean, you can at least look to see if there's clouds there. And. And and I use this website called Mountain Mountain Forecast, and I think they use the data from GFS. Yeah, so I think that's accurate enough and try to check what what there's going to do on the summit and then in the lower down as well. And also just I mean, like any like paragliding flight in a new place, trying to look at the broader weather system, see if there's anything weird in the area. Any like here we have hurricanes. So. On both sides of the country. So there's a hurricane on the other side of Mexico, then stay away from from those kinds of plants.
Yeah. So just make sure that everything's kind of mellow all around in the broader region as well. So, yeah, windy also helps. Yeah, but for me, my forecast with the GFS data has been reasonably accurate as as long as you check it like every day and up to like the last minute possible.
So. So I mean, to me, they're all successes, you know, even the walking down or in some ways more successes. But what what's your what's your win loss ratio right now for how many of you done and how many of you had to walk down?
I have a I've only walked down once. Great. And in the phone six times on high volcanoes. So that was
two of the first one was the you did that twice. Uh huh. And then Orizaba. What are the other ones?
And then the. The other ones are another volcano called La Malinche, which is like 4,600 meters. And there I flew straight down, it's getting cloudy. Another one is Nevado de Toluca, which we can see from here, from Valle. And that was just a really super short flight from the side of the crater back to inside the crater, because it was also really cloudy, so I have to do that again sometime. And then the last one I did was also on Iztaccíhuatl, the first volcano I flew from, but from a different side of the volcano. So even like way past the summit on the normal route, it's like on the, it's
like, well they say it's like a woman that's lying down, it's what the form looks like. And the summit is on the chest, and this other summit is like past the head, like on the other side. So it's kind of like a separate summit. And it's like 4,660 meters. But the approach is from the north, from a completely different side. And I didn't, I don't know of anyone that has flown there before. And I was looking for something that I could do, like on it as a day trip, without having to camp out in the mountain. So this I can do from, like starting from Mexico City at like 5 a.m., go out, hike up to 4,600 meters, fly, and then come back on the same day. So it's kind of a practical reason why I looked for that, and it ended up being a place where nobody had flown before.
And that was a lot of fun too. So
tell me about, right about when you got this obsession, if I've got my math right, you've got a two-month-old, so that was right about when your wife got pregnant. You guys learned to fly together. Let's talk about that whole dynamic a little bit.
Was she also into the volcano thing? Or was she more flying Valle? Yeah. And then since you've had this baby, who's now two months old, do you foresee that changing things much?
Yeah. She's been super supportive, and we learned to fly together was also a really cool way for us to spend time together and do something fun. So on the weekends, we would come out to Valle and be out here by ourselves, I mean, with the other students. Sure.
It was a
really good time. It was really good for us as a couple.
So yeah, if you're a significant other, it's a paraglider paddle as well that really makes things work.
And then when she got pregnant last year on February, and she hasn't flown since, so now we're working out what would be the best way for her to get back on that horse. Yeah. And having the two-month-old definitely makes, is a factor in the whole risk evaluation part of these flights.
Do you find that it is, are you thinking things, are you thinking differently about risk and... Yeah.
Yeah, I think for sure. So that last flight I did from this other volcano as a day trip, that was in late November. We're in January now. And I mean, this was the unknown, right? Nobody had flown there. I was by myself again, and I had been on that mountain once before. So I tried to climb it without my paragliding equipment, just to get to know the route and get to know the possible takeoffs and not have any pressure of trying to fly off that same day, where you're just getting to know the place. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
So, you
know, the takeoff that I thought I would use, it really didn't seem to be, to work. There was not much wind so I was going to have to wait for, you know, a little bit of a gust to take off. And I didn't have room behind me so that I could run. So I wasn't going to be able to run. And then it was going to be a kind of a step into the void. Like a cliff launch kind of thing? Yeah. Like
a cliff
right in front. So I had the equipment out and I had my ladder laid out in front of me. And then that, you know, the being a parent thing was on my mind, right? So I said, you know, is this really worth it? Right? So I just, you know, I can always walk back down. And then I said, okay, well, I'm going to try and get the glider over my head. And if I can keep it over my head for 30 seconds, like under control. Perfectly under control, then I'll take off. And if I don't, then I'll pack up and we'll see what happens after that. And so I tried to get the glider up and I wasn't able to keep it under control.
I think I should do more ground handling. I think it really helps in those situations. But then I said, you know, I'm going to pack up. And then it's also a lot of pressure because packing up your glider and then walking around, carrying your equipment. To look for another possible takeoff, it's a massive effort at that altitude. And at that place, it's also really rocky. So it's not like you can just like carry it over your shoulder like you would when you're about to launch on your home site. So I had to really pack it all the way up. So the more efficient you are with packing and unpacking also helps. So I said, you know what, I'm going to look for another site and if I don't find something that's safe. Then I'll just walk down.
And it took me like maybe an hour more and I found a place that was like way safer. I had plenty of room in front of me. It wasn't rocky. It was sandy. So it was a lot safer. There was some snow so I could put the glider on the snow. I didn't have to worry about the lines getting caught on the rocks, which happened on the previous site. So all that was, you know, because partly because I was, you know, thinking about the weather, having a one month old at the time. So it does factor in for sure.
Tell me about your relationship with Marco and kind of preparing for the X-Alps. When I was down here last year, so for a year ago, and he and I were flying together in the Monarca and he mentioned that he was probably going to apply. And I was really excited to see that he got in this year.
So were you friends before you did the instruction stuff with him? Did you guys know each other before then? Take me through, you know, how that all came about. That's a big commitment. It's a lot of fun, but it's, yeah, I mean, you're going to be going to Europe for, imagine, hopefully more than just the race, but yeah, it's a big commitment.
Yeah, it is. It is a big commitment time-wise and, you know, all the preparation and all that. And so yeah, Marco, I met him when I started learning to fly with him. Okay. So
we were going
before that and when I was still taking lessons with him, we started talking about maybe going on like a hike and fly together. So we kind of started talking about that and he was interested in the mountaineering aspect of it. And of course, I was still learning. I'm always still learning, but at that point I was more of a beginner and we never made it work. It never worked because, you know, his weekends is when he has the most work and my weekends is when I can go out and do this stuff. So it's hard to make the schedules work.
Hopefully we get to do that soon, before the X-Alps. But that kind of started developing as I was still a student of his. And when he asked me, you know, if I wanted to be part of his team on the X-Alps, I didn't hesitate for a moment, you know, it's just, yeah, of course, you know, we'll figure out how this is going to work later. Who else is his team? Is he, how many people? So his main supporter is also a former student of his and he's French.
He's going to be coming down later this month to Dubai to fly. So we'll have some time to work on our plans and all that.
He's spelled, his name is spelled almost like mine, but in French, so Adrien. And then there's me as a secondary supporter. And then we have, I think, Hector from Eduardo's team in X-Pyr. So he brings a lot of experience to the table. I'll be helping with weather forecasting and with getting the van to the right place. And we have another. He's another former student of Marco's, an Argentinian who flies here. And he's helping with, you know, the budgeting and kind of the sponsorship search and those kind of things that they do beforehand. And hopefully he'll be out there with us as well, help drive the van, stuff like that.
So yeah, three of us on the team are former students of his. And then Hector brings a lot of experience. I think it's a pretty good combination. Yeah. Yeah. You guys will have a blast. Yeah.
So you're a year into this volcano hopping. What's kind of on the radar? You know, just more? You've got a lot of volcanoes down here. Yeah. But is that, and then also what other kind of, you know, flying are you pretty engaged in right now? Is it mostly the hike and fly because you've just got the weekends or are you still, are you doing a lot of training here in Valle?
Yeah. Yeah. So, so when I started paragliding, I had, you know, this, this idea of what paragliding was before. And I didn't know, I had, I didn't have the slightest idea of, you know, the possibilities that, you know, cross country flying on a paraglider, I thought you could just soar on the coast, like I did in Lima and fly down a tall place and that's it. But as soon as I started learning, you know, that's when I got the idea, well, I don't, I don't just want to fly down. I want to be able to thermal. I want to be able to thermal and, and enjoy and fly around the mountains. And I want to keep trying to do those kinds of flights, like from, from this other peak I flew off. I think it's, it should be possible to thermal and then go up higher over the main summit of the, of the volcano of Ista and above the head of the volcano, which is a summit that's really hard to, to climb, climb to because it's pretty dangerous now that there's less ice.
Um. So. So I think those are the kind of flights that I want to do on the volcanoes. Um, so kind of combining my initial, uh, you know, aspiration of flying down with, with what I've learned from thermaling and, and just starting into cross country and, and, and then, uh, doing some Volviv later. Like, uh, uh, also part of what, uh, attracts me to, to, you know, being a supporter in the X-Sops and getting to know the place. Um. And seeing what all the pilots do out there and doing something like that by myself sometime You're not in a race, but you know, in a more of a relaxed Volbeat trip, and yeah, just since I've been flying, I mean, looking at what other people are doing around the world and when things that you've been doing in Alaska and in the Canadian Rockies and all that, and then Antoine Girard and and Damien, who was on the show recently, I mean, what they're doing is incredible.
Yeah,
that's that's next level. Yeah I mean the whole base
and and high altitude mountaineering That I think that's I'm really excited to see what where that leads But for me, it's you know more Thermaling over or the summons of the volcanoes and and and trying to do some bull vip cool
Adrian I appreciate it. I think we got to get this gear out of the rain and and go get registered for Monarca. But cool stories, and I'll be watching with fascination. If you take more of these off and look forward to doing some fun stuff with you in the Alps here in June race, that'll be fantastic. I think you're gonna really enjoy that. It's a precious experience
But thank you, man. I appreciate it. Likewise. Thank you Gavin
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