Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. On Monday, just three days ago, we dropped that show about COVID-19, which was a little bit dark, for sure, but I think maybe the best piece of journalism we've put out. And I've heard from many of you that you really appreciated it, and we're grateful that we did put it out. A lot of people are taking this seriously, but many aren't, and it was just good to get the perspective of a couple people that are really kind of on the front line. And certainly Terry, my friend, who is an ER doc here in town, is on the front lines. And just an update, just since Monday, if you listen to the show, two of his staff are now intubated non-ventilators, and neither of these people are old, and neither of these people have underlying conditions.
So it is quite serious, and I just want to reiterate that it's really important that we all, as a community, take this seriously. Seriously. It's not just the potential for getting hurt and ending up in a hospital, which would be a bad thing to happen right now, but it's the potential for continuing to spread this. The only way to stop this is to social distance, and if we're taking Ubers and getting in car rides with other people, we're going to keep spreading it. And you could literally kill somebody if you do that, and that's pretty uncool. I've heard a lot of people say, well, yeah, it's only getting... The older people, well, exactly. And the older populations, it's right up there at 12-14%, if over 80.
So what you're saying, if you're saying that, is that you don't care about old people. And like my sister said, that means you don't have a heart. So anyway, you don't need me to preach at you. That's not my job. That's not what I want to do. I'm just requesting that you all think about it. Kriegel's not flying, and he's the best in the world. We can all get back to this thing that we love so much. Later. And it's also our community is going to be judged by people from around the world that see us doing what we're doing, and that's important as well. This show is the polar opposite of all of that darkness. It's one of the more inspiring talks I've had with anybody. I sat down with Hansa Rishmanik, my good friend and five-times X-Alps athlete and longtime columnist for Cross Country Magazine.
You all know him through his meteorology column there. I'll just meet the urologist out in Davis, California. And he and his son, Martin, who's now 11, have been doing these awesome eight-day tandem vol biv adventures in the Alps the last three years. They're planning on going back over again this June, but that's looking increasingly unlikely. But they're putting together some really great routes and spending amazing time, you know, father and son, and you're going to dig it. They're just, they're covering ground and they're having amazing time. They're doing amazing flights and they're doing it all by human power. So this is kind of filling Hansa's Red Bull X-Alps hole that he left after 2015. And they're doing it in style.
They're moving a lot slower, of course, than what Hansa's used to, and he's carrying a lot more weight than what he's used to, but very cool. And I think you're going to enjoy it. So enjoy this talk with Hansa and his son, Martin. Hansa and Martin, it's great to connect with you. What a fantastic thing to be doing while we're traveling. We're trying to be social distancing around the world. So it's fun to talk to you guys on Skype. I'd rather do it in person, but we'll probably leave that for another time. And I'm really excited to talk about these fantastic adventures you guys have been having in the Alps. I thought before we do, I'd love to just hear, you know, this isn't a show obviously about COVID-19, but I'd like to just find out what your reality is like right now and how you guys are dealing with this and to give the listeners some
perspective. It's March. It's March the 20th.
And yeah, that's the time. That's the kind of things we're dealing with. I understand California and specifically your part of the world has gotten pretty locked down. Yeah. So we have already had to cancel our Belize trip, and now we're hoping that we don't need to cancel the trip to the Alps a fourth time. But we'll see how that's going to turn out with COVID-19. And Martin, are you home? I guess schools have been canceled across California, right? Right. Okay. Yeah. And so how long have you been home? And what's it like just hanging out with the parents all day? Well, I just finished my first week, but I go to my grandma's house a lot. And with my classmates and my teacher, we created a Canvas link. So we're still continuing our projects, and we can communicate with each other via Canvas.
Very cool. What's Canvas? You're talking to an old guy. I don't even know what that is. Canvas. Canvas. It's like sort of. It's like a blog, but there are different projects and links to websites. And you can talk about which experiences you've had with those websites with your classmates or whoever's on Canvas at that time. Oh, cool. So you're still going to school? Sort of. Yeah. But I'm still going to have to go to school in the summer since. Oh, I see. Is that how they're going to try to balance things out? Exactly. And Hansa, what are you doing right now for work? Are you able to work from home? Do you
have all the... Do you have all
the kind of computing power you need to be dealing with meteorology, or are you just in furlough? Yeah, no. They've sent me home, and I've been basically teleworking. I come in occasionally into the office, but I'm not doing specifically forecasting. It's more air quality that I work in. So we manage to just work on projects at home. Yeah. That was a surprise to me, Martin. You said you guys are going back, hopefully, and we'll see, right, in June for your fourth one? I thought you've done three of these already. Yeah. So we were planning to go back for our fourth one because we... So the first year, we had our destination, Zalmzi,
to Corvara in Italy, but we didn't make it. And the next year, we tried it, and we got to Corvara in Italy. Okay. So then we made a new starting point and destination, Annecy, in France, to... Where was it? Zermatt. Zermatt in Switzerland. And so we tried it
once, but we weren't...
And that was
last year. Yeah, that was last year. We weren't able to get to Zermatt. So we wanted to try it again this year. Let's give... That's... I think we got to first rewind a little bit and tell everybody... What you guys are doing. What are these missions, and how does it work? So it's a father-son sky camp, where the first day, we start up at a launch somewhere high, and then we cannot use any buses, public transport, any motorized vehicles to get ourselves anywhere until our finish, which we usually have a time limit of eight days. And we have a start
point and a
destination. And we need to get there with only hiking and flying on a tandem paraglider. Wow. And so how much are you carrying versus your workhorse dad? He's carrying the paraglider, the tent, basically everything except for me, and I'm carrying the food. Ah, the food's quite a bit. And your clothes now. Yeah, and my clothes. And are you... So you're allowed... Are you eating cafes? Are you guys top landing and having an espresso in the... In the Dolomites? You haven't been to the Dolomites, I guess, but are you... You're allowed... You're going through restaurants on the way, or are you carrying your food as well? We do carry food, but if we end up in the valley or somewhere where there is a cafe, yeah, we do stop for a raspberry tart or something.
And we also have been to the Dolomites. Oh. Our first destination is in Italy, so that's the Dolomites. Yeah. You're cool. Eight days sky camping with your dad on a tandem rig. Tell me a little bit more about your gear. What are you guys carrying? Are you carrying stoves and fuel and, you know, how heavy is everything? No, we have one titanium bowl. Okay. And
I think we
have one titanium spork, and that's about it. Yeah, we don't have fuel. We just... We go dry food, nuts. Fire. Yeah, sometimes we'll make a little fire. But it's... The idea is we just got beef jerky, nuts, some fried fruit, some... Wild blueberries. Are you collecting quite a bit of food? Depends on the year. If it's in August, on the second trip, we found a lot of berries. This last one, which was in June, was a little early, so we didn't have too many. But this one in June, we had a lot of... We stayed at two cabins. Both of them gave us food, which was fun.
And this one place, they were celebrating something, and the flying conditions weren't good, so we sort of hung out. And there was this really good meat and good food last year. Yeah. They made a pit in
the... Like in the ground and used some dried old vines from an old vineyard and made the coals with that and basically... They made a pit in the ground and used some dried old vines from an old vineyard and made the coals with that and basically... There was, I think, a pork loin that they roasted underground. It was really nice. It was after... That was after five days of eating dried...
Just dried
food, so it was just...
Fantastic. Hopefully a beer as
well. Yeah. That sounds great. What's been the biggest kind of crux, or is it weather? Because, I mean, in the Alps, you've got the water, right? You've got plenty of food. What's been kind of the hardest thing,
Martin, about doing these? Between two. Either... Weather, or the first year, the Skullcross Bones Trail, as we named it, which is a trail, which actually isn't a trail. It was a nice trail on the map, it said. But then when we got there, it was a little bit of an animal trail. And other than that, it was mostly
bushwhacking and through slippery waterfall grounds. Yes, I'm not sure what's worse. It was either having to deal with the weather or that. Oh, so you're hiking. You're covering ground on foot, too. You're not just flying, top landing, waiting for the next flyable day. No, we're kind of... We're basically doing it at
ex-Alps without the intense fervor of having to move all the time. But yeah, there's times we end up in the bottom of the valley, so then we got to get to the next launch. Unless it's ridiculously rainy, we're trying to... Right, right. And how heavy is your kit, Hans, on your side of things? It starts out pretty darn heavy. I'd say it starts out close to 30 kilos when we start, because it's a regular weight tandem. I've got my Nervos Bivouac harness, which I used in the 07 ex-Alps, same one as Nate Scales used. And that one's got a lot of room under the seat, which is good for stuff.
It's maybe 1.3 kilos. We just use a lightweight one-person reserve, because we're still pretty light. We might have to upgrade as Martin gets older. Martin's in a thin red line, which is just a 300-gallon harness from the
90s. But it's still... Then we've got a tent that's about a two-kilo tent. We don't bring sleeping bags. We use the tandem as a massive blanket over ourselves. And maybe, Martin, you can tell what... How we kind of... How we settled on sleeping pads. So we brought them. And now what we do is we sleep in sort of the middle of the wing, and that's underneath us.
And then we... Each of us has our own sector of the wing, which you can put over us in any way we want. And that is what we have done for this year and last year. And so the theory there is you've got quite a bit of clothes for flying, and you can just... Are you just sleeping in your clothes with the wing? Yes. Yes. Fully dressed. Fully dressed. This is always something that sounds kind of romantic. But every time I've tried it, I can't sleep because of the noise. Do you guys both just don't move? No, we move. And if... Hopefully, we're tired enough to where we just sleep. You're just going to get worn out. Yeah. Martin
sleeps through it very well. Sometimes we arrive jet-lagged, so I'm bringing some Benadryl and some melatonin and kind of popping both to get myself straightened out with my sleep cycle as quick as possible. Or if I'm just laying there awake and I know I need to get some rest. Yeah. And your route, are you adjusting that kind of literally as you're on the plane going over? Or is this something you guys, okay, we're going to do this this year, regardless of the weather, you start and push through it? Or do you adapt on the fly? We... So we have our starting point and our destination. And once we get to the spot, if we have service, we check the weather and we're like, okay, would it be better to go this valley, that valley?
Or should we go? So we adapt mostly on the... Not on the flight, but like when we're laying in the tent
or after we've settled in for the night. And I
see what you're asking, Gavin. I think on the... You know, especially for the first one, I wasn't totally fixed on starting at ZLMC.
It was kind of, you know, we were in Prague and trying to decide, you know, where made most sense given the weather. And then the next time around, we, you know, we decided to try for the same goal. We've kind of... Martin, you want to tell a rule about how we... Yeah, so we adapted a rule. So we set a point. We try it once. If
it doesn't work, we try it the second time. And if that doesn't work, then we try it the third time. And if that still doesn't work, then we go to a new destination and starting point. So we have three tries to get it. And if we don't, then we switch. If we do, then we automatically switch. And is that switch getting on a train and going to a new, like a new zone? Well, it's kind of year by year. So the idea is, you know, it's like, for example, we didn't make it all the way to Zermatt or to Matterhorn. So our plan, which is up in the air, literally, with
the COVID-19, but is to try again. And by our personal rules, even if we don't make it this year, we would get one more year. So it's kind of three tries. And then we change the starting point and the destination. It's either we make it. And if we give it three tries and we don't make it, we're not flying very well or it was too hard. And then we can change it after three
attempts. So, Martin, by my math, your first one was when you were eight. Is that right? Yes. And how did you how did you guys decide to do this? What were you? Because I know, you know, you used to ride on your dad's back at the start of the X-Alps and stuff. So I know you've been, you know, intimately familiar with his flying and, you know, his exploits. And I know you guys have been doing stuff in Chile for every year for years. But was this, you know, is this just, oh, let's go do this? Or was this something you guys kind of trained for at home? Like you took some
little flights, kind of figured it out? We only had a one day, maybe two and a half hour cross country here locally. And that was the longest flight Martin had had with me. And the whole idea almost got sabotaged because I started talking about this idea, you know, when Martin was seven, just turning eight. And then I made the big mistake of showing him the 2009 X-Alps video. With your face and stuff? Yeah. Yeah. One day when he was, you know, home from school and I was watching him because he was sick. I decided. I show him the 2009 X-Alps video. He's all, dude, dad, we're not doing that. That's way too crazy. So I had to really like explain to him it's going to be a lot mellower. We'll get to do fun stuff along the way.
And we do fun stuff. What are some of the fun activities, Mike?
Well, we do a lot of whittling on the way. And we also do a lot of berry picking, which is fun. Yeah. And. But afterwards, what I really like is I get to make Moyes from it with the pictures. So I make like music videos with the pictures, sort of. Oh, fun. And what's the what's the what's the most memorable point of these, Martin, for you and then for you, dad, too?
The most memorable point, I'd say, is finally having some time with my dad, because since my brother was born, it was mostly dad. My dad and brother were just or me, my dad and my brother. And, yeah, so I've never gotten to have from that moment some time with my dad. So I feel like we get along really well there. And it's so much fun.
God, that. And
how about for you, Hansa? What's what's the kind of most memorable moment of these three and hopefully four adventures? I mean, I think in some ways it was our second. No. Our fourth day on the second trip was we we we had a five hour flight and it was basically it was like
textbook is zero wind up to about three thousand eight hundred meters. And every every spine was working just like it should. We just to kind of back up. We had started with LMS. He had a decent day that first day. And then we had two days of just hiking through the rain. So after two days of hiking in the rain, we woke up to a beautiful morning, got ourselves. To a great launch and five hours, about 50 K as the crow flies, even though it was much a little more of an arc and made it into the Dolomites. And we even that night we reached our destination. We reached our destination to hike the 10 K into Gubara. And so we had what was eight days for that. I think we had seven days for that one. And we on day four, we reached our goal, which was really cool.
So then we got to spend three days. Just flying around in the Dolomites. And even on the last day out to Trey Chime, which was a turn point in the 2011 next helps. And we got to within maybe five K of it. We like from the north, we came into the Dolomites and then backed out. But it's overcast. Yeah, it was getting overcast and just had to just. And on the second one, we landed in the exact same spot that we did on
the first one to end it off. Hau Lau or City by New Orleans, same field? Yes. The first the first one was mostly walking. The first the first trip was, you know, walking in sled rides, walking in sled rides until the last day where we had a three hour flight. And we covered more out more. We covered more distance in three hours of flying on our on our final day of our very first trip than we did, you know, the during the five days walking. And so the second trip was the most successful as far as flying goes. I think we had 18 hours of airtime. Like I said, we made our goal on day four and then we had three days to just explore, fly to the Marmolada.
It was just it was just, you know, top land up
high. And but it also was exciting. You want to
tell them about the one on
the where we got close to the trees on the on the landing in that tight field? Yeah,
so we were flying. And we needed to top land. And so we were coming in. And since it was looking good, my dad decided to do one last circle around just so we could lose some height. But then when we're coming in, our toes were almost
touching the
trees. And I was like, Dad, what are you doing about all I know about flying? We shouldn't have done that last circle. You're not supposed to hit the trees. Yeah. So we
almost touched the trees. But we made it into the field. A lightweight loaded on a tandem with trimmers out into headwind. It's it's easy to forget how bad your glide ratio can be. Yeah. Yeah. In
a three to one. It wasn't even a full circle. It was just an S turn. But enough of that S turn was enough to like just as I finished it and check the glide. And I was like, oh, we might not be clearing this. There's literally like a little bee in the trees that we were that we were getting through. But it was a cabin and there were people in that cabin. And then they were like outside and stuff and they were like, did you guys touch the trees? We thought you almost did. They probably gave you some delicious salami and cheese and just bananas. Oh, well, those were really, really good. Yeah. Those were great because we hadn't had any fruit. Right. Yeah. I mean, I felt that was the one I felt, man, I was like, I'd never 25 years of flying.
Never, never landed in a tree. And for a second, I thought we'd be putting it down in a tree. In a treetop with my son. I would have felt just really silly waiting for some rescue if we weren't able to self-rescue. It would
have felt really silly. It would have been interesting to hear what they said to like, wait, you're doing what? What are you doing? That's pretty extreme, even for the French, even though you weren't in France. But yeah, that's it. Do you get any of that? Do you get any kind of pushback? Are there any but are there any people that are just like, what are you guys doing? No, so far it's been very supportive. We did get a rescue called on us. Yeah, but that was on the first year. Yeah, it was the second day of our first, you know, it was these little sled rides. It was one across, you know, Zellemsee. We flew westward for a little bit and then south across the main valley. And ex-alp style just decided to put it
down in some, you know, a place where the very short trees where, you know, these patches where we needed to. Well, we needed to because we didn't want to land in the valley. It was kind of ex-alp style. Let's land 300 meters up the hillside. Yeah. In a little spot. Save yourself some work. Exactly. Well, somebody down. Down in the valley saw this paraglider just fly straight into the hill. And we saw later, yeah, it looked like just straight into the hill. It wasn't a small
bush. It was a hill. So we'd already set up tent and we were basically, Martin was already asleep. And then this crew of five people, the search and rescue, come up to rescue us. And we just had to explain to them we're doing a father-son ex-alps and we're fine. Then they had to wake me up. Yeah. It was okay. Yeah. And then they were on their
way. And then the day after that was also interesting. We were up on a launch and it just kept raining and raining. And we sometimes just hide under the tarp. Just, you know, we had a tarp that we could deploy very quickly over us, even if there was no trees. So we could kind of shelter in place. And so then we decide, okay, we're not going to stay up here. We're
going to fly down to the valley. And we landed in a ranger. Anyone know about the ranger? Yeah. So the ranger came. It was raining when we landed. And in very scrubby English. So we didn't understand him very much. He started speaking to
us about scaring the deer. And we explained to him, we showed him on a map, we are not in the park yet.
We're in
legal flying zone. And he said, like, the deer will jump off the cliffs and suicide themselves because of a large bird and stuff like so. What? Wow. Yeah, he was very upset. He was saying the deer could jump and hurt themselves because you landed here. But, yeah, in the end, once we kind
of were
able to explain what we were doing, he let us basically stay and he calmed down. But it was kind of one day after another. So it wasn't necessarily people, you know, being upset
with the idea of what we were doing. But just little events like that happened. That was
especially on that first adventure. Martin. When you fly with your dad, especially on these long flights, five-hour flight stuff, do you get any air sickness? No. Nothing? I feel really lucky because I do not get car sick, sea sick,
air sick. That's
great. Stomach sick. Yeah. Are you flying yet? You're on your own? I mean, I know you're kiting and that kind of thing. But are you taking little flights on your own yet? No. I have. But he steers. Yeah, I steer. I let him thermal for a while. Like if I'm taking pictures and especially if, you know, we're not in close proximity to a cliff or anything. I don't like him taking pictures. He's really good at it, though. I've seen him do it in really hairy conditions. How do you guys approach, you know, do you kind of have like a
tap out, you know, do you guys have kind of a like a, what's the word I'm looking for? Rules of just like, hey, dad, I'm scared. I don't like this, you know, or it. Does Hansi, do you just make all the calls or is it kind of a team effort? I would say it's a team effort. You know, sometimes there was there was one on that last one of the second year where we're kind of flying into the Dolomites. And I kept doing these sort of hopper flights, top landing. And Martin was like, made the call.
He's like, this is the last top landing you get, dad. Like, it's the last day, you know, just just just deal with it. If we're sinking out, we got to sink out. Like, don't don't try. Try to salvage this one for all it's worth. Yeah. And another time Martin made the call, he was giving me advice. I should have listened. You want to tell the story? This was when we're trying to get into Chamonix. Yes, we're trying to get into Chamonix. This is from, so you were flying from Annecy? Yeah, this is Annecy. We had the first day wasn't much. We got over over the back. Yeah, this is the third trip. So we got
we got over the back of the tour net and just a little past it. OK, so down to like Cluzar or whatever that is down there. Yeah, not even not even. To La Cluzar. Yeah, OK. Basically, almost like over the back of the tour net and the first kind of hill towards the RVs that forms beyond that. OK, that was day one. Second day hiking most of the day to get onto the RVs. And it was overcast in the morning. And then we had a really nice blast down the RVs and just across the main valley
and a top landing. It was starting to overdevelop big over Mont Blanc. So we had to, you know, we had a very short one hour flight. And then. On the third day. So now we're
not too far out of Chamonix and finally gets good around two in the afternoon. And and I decided to kind of cut a diagonal. And Martin, go ahead. Well, so I was like, why don't you follow the ridge? Like, why are you cutting the diagonal across the valley? What can follow the ridge and go along the ridge? Which what I've been flying with you, I've learned that if you're along a hillside, the vaults are better there. So I sink out. And the
valley and make the huge crossing, which is a risk when you can just dolphin fly along them. Yeah, Martin. That sounds smart. And we sunk out in the 3 p.m. Nice cumies and we sunk out right in Chamonix Valley. And so that was. Yeah, I should have listened to Martin. Yeah, he's got some good advice. We hiked up a thousand meters. Yeah, we had to hike up a thousand over a thousand meters right out of the Chamonix Valley. But and we still
got to
fly. A little bit. But that got us stuck on a glacier on a snow on a snow field. Yeah, yeah, just
not stuck, not stuck per se, but stuck as far as, you know, it didn't
make sense to hike further at that point. It was kind of the weather was was was was pretty bad the next morning. And it was it was hard to launch because it was kind of always
crossing slightly cross and down
or at slight moments still. But. Yeah, I mean, you know, it made it made it tough to to get off the next day. Yeah. So we were
there till
about what was it, 11? No, I think it was later. I think it was maybe maybe two in the afternoon when we. Oh, well, about two. Yes, we got airborne. And then we. We made it to the back. Called the BLEM, called the BLEM. Yeah. So we got almost to call the BLEM. It was getting pretty windy. So we decided not, you know, and we thought we either got to get a really tall thermal to go over or let's land before the call. Where it compresses and landed on a nice snow field and then hiked to the call. Which one was the flight where you almost got stuck in the power lines? The power lines, that
was the day before. Well, you saw the the the cables to Ogier du Midi. Yeah. And you were seeing some cables way far off in the distance. You were saying they're still far away. And I'm like, no, they're pretty close in front of us. And we'll see. Yeah, that's that's why having a fresh pair of eyes, a young pair of eyes. Oh, man, there's so many cables in the Alps. It's I've had several flights where it's just like, whoa, I didn't see that. But
it was just beautiful flying over the glaciers, you know, next to Mont Blanc. I mean, you were the time of year where you could still be on the north side. Sorry, south side. It's June, yeah, so it allowed us to fly
the north facing the south side of the valley,
which was really cool to get to fly there. And, yeah, I put the call the
next day after that, when we did get there. Yeah. We did get to call the bomb. There was a pilot, a paraglider pilot
who bought the refuge right at the summit and he was remodeling it. And when we told him what we were doing, he said, well, you guys can just crash out here. You don't have to set up your tent. It's raining. So, yeah, come on in. That was really nice. We stopped there. We had spaghetti and apple pie or crumble. Yeah, that was. And then the next day. Yeah. So after that, early in the morning, like super early. Before sunrise. Yeah, like 5:45, 6:00, we had this half an hour, this really long half hour,
sled ride about, what was it, 1,400?
Probably even more than that. I think 1,800, 1,900,
no, meters of descent, because we started at 2,300 meters
and flew down past Martigny, just, yeah, a little bit past Martigny we landed before we got to the Sion airspace. So if you, I mean, this is kind of, for a lot of listeners, this won't make a ton of sense, because unless they know that area, but because we do so well, and
Martin, you've obviously got awesome geographical knowledge of the Alps now. But if you guys try to do this again from
Annecy to the Matterhorn, would you take the Verbier Valley instead of the Sion Valley, avoid all
that muck in the Rhone? Let's see now. So I'm trying to remember, the Verbier Valley would be once we got past Martigny, we'd go to the south. Yeah, so you wouldn't go to Martigny, you would
just from Balm, Col de Balm, I mean, if you could get
up there, you would lob over the back and keep Martigny off to your left, you know, off to your north. And, you
know, if you don't make Verbier, there's a couple, you know, you would fly up the, what is that, the St. Bernard, up towards the St.
Bernard Pass, the one into Italy, but you'd
fly, I'm only thinking that because then you're avoiding the rowdiness of the Rhone and the valley winds and all that stuff. You're avoiding the Sion airspace, and you're kind of staying high, and then so you, and then if you made it into Verbier, then from there, you just fly out, you get up, there's a bunch of launches that are all gorgeous in Verbier, and then from there, it's a 50K flight to Zermatt, and you just fly, you kind of backdoor it, you go,
if you get one climb out of Verbier, you can start punching along those kind of north-south ridges that lead to the Sion Valley. Yeah. Yeah, I've thought, I'm definitely looking at it, even last year, looking at how, especially in June, the way the sun goes, it seems like some
of those, even though they're north, you know, my original thought, Gavin, was, okay, we'll fly the south faces, like the whole Rhone Valley, we'll just do all the, we'll be the north of it and fly all the south faces.
Mm-hmm. It's a much
nicer ground to work by foot, too. If you, there was one time I flew into Geneva,
you know, I came in on like the 9.30 flight, whatever it is, and I took the train up to Verbier, I fell asleep on the train, so it went to Sion, I didn't get off, and I'd go back on it, going the other way, go back, so I was kind of late, and I got to Verbier, I don't know, at noon, and took the gondola up to, you take the gondola to this launch called Runeit, and it's a kind of an afternoon launch. You know, so it starts working at, you know, 12, 12.30 kind of thing, and, you know, dialed up there and was in Zermatt in no time, actually flew to Fiche that day, but it was, you know, for you guys, I think it'd be a pretty easy connection, because it's just 50K, you know, from there, you really got it, you're pretty close, you just need one decent day, and if you've got a little bit of west wind, which you usually do, if you got the base, you know, then you can just, you can kind of stay high, and you're still flying down the Rhone, but you're on the south side of it, and deep.
Was he one of the ones way out front, Maxime, or Gaspard, or? I'd say it was the, yeah, Maxime, or the second French guy, one of those two. Oh, maybe Benoit. Yeah. It was that super, super stable day. It was like, it was, it was super stable, and a few days after that, it got really good where everybody had, you know, we had to finish by then, but when the top landings on Mont Blanc happened, like, so, so we, we finished just a day or two. Before that, we had to get out of there for schedule-wise, but it would, gosh,
that would be amazing to have a day where, you know, we have that kind of fight. Oh, yeah, that'd be, oh, that was, yeah, that was pretty amazing. I was not happy to be on the ground when that was going on. It was so stable and so hot. Yeah. But, Hans, has this helped fill the, the hole that must live in your heart of not doing the X-Alps, or is, you know, is this kind of like something you could really look forward to and fills that gap? Oh, yeah, this is, now, you know, now that I'm not doing the X-Alps, this, this is the one thing I look forward to most in the year, because it's, it's, it's on that kind of same, it's still got the same thing where we, we, we make this time to do it, and we go do it no matter what. It's not like a normal paraglider. It's not like a normal gliding comp where tasks get canceled.
I got, really, I got kind of over that after, I think, my last comp, normal comp was the 2008 U.S. Nationals, and they just canceled one task after another, after another. And I just, to go somewhere, you know, spend a lot of money and just be told you can't fly, I'd much rather, you know, have a hike and fly adventure where you make it happen
no matter what. And to get to do that with my son and to share it with him is just, you know, right now, I think it's the coolest thing. That I can be doing. And Martin, how do you, do you look forward to it kind of in the same way? Yes, I really like it. And I feel like it adds that gap of time with dad. Yeah. You know?
That's so special to me. I mean, that's, that's a really intimate time. You guys are flying
together, which
is intense and fun and, you know, exploratory and aesthetic. And then you're getting to camp together and figure it all out. You're getting to navigate together and eat together. And that's fantastic. Yeah. So, um, after that super long sled ride, uh, what did we find, uh, when we got just landed just past Martini before we
started hiking up? Oh yeah. We found, what was it? Cherries. Cherries and apricots. Yeah. Cherries and apricots. Yeah. Oh man. It was so nice after being up in the tall mountains for a while. Yeah. I had a particularly rough training day. I can't remember which one I was training. Maybe it was the 2017 one. And I did this monster hike. I couldn't fly. I walked back down. And I, and I
just happened to cross this like huge strawberry plantation farm. And I just thought, oh, I have to steal a few. I hope that's okay. You know, I was kind of dehydrated and bonking and, oh, they were the most delicious thing I've ever put in my mouth. I think for ex-alps pilot, that's allowed. That's been my ex-alps rules and hiking through the apple orchards of Italy. Oh, it's just such a treasure. It's just like coming
across a field of ice cream. You're just like, oh, thank you so much. Any, uh, any intense moments in these three that you've done? Um, skull crossbones trail. That sounded like hell. You know, you know, the outdoor active app, right? Do you use that one? Yeah, not anymore because it kept screwing us. I was going to say, I bet you were using that app. It's just not. Yeah. Yeah. It looked like a great trail. So I was like, Martin, look, we'll go up 200 meters, you know, in elevation. And get onto this nice trail and we'll let us traverse while we get to this trail. And it's like barely noticeable, if at all, kind of in and out of being a trail at all. And then it just got onto, it's in forest.
So you don't know how steep the terrain is coming up, but it got into these really
partially cliffy areas. And it was, you know, it was, it was very, it got kind of sketchy and just uncomfortable in some parts. And it was wet and slippery. It was wet. Yeah. Wet and slippery. So we had to walk. Yeah. So we just, there's, it was one of those trails. So you're like, wow, that's definitely not a trail. Like we would, if we could leave feedback, I would put a lot of skull and crossbones or you'd send somebody that you don't like on that trail. Gosh, you know, but buddy, I think that's actually maybe my fault. I think I put
you onto that app before the 2015 race. I was like, you got to check this out. But what we learned in that race and the reason we stopped using it is that
it's open source. So anybody
using it, if they go
hike something like that and they've
got their recording on, it becomes a, it becomes a trail in the app itself. And so, uh,
yeah, we've, we've switched to, I would highly recommend a little plug here, but I would highly recommend using the Gaia, uh, their, their trails are fantastic. If it's a trail, it's a trail. If it's on there, it works and they've got awesome, you know, you can put in where you are and then where you want to go and it'll map you the most, the accurate, most accurate way you can download everything in advance. Um, yeah. It's, it's really terrific. And that, yeah, with that
outdoor active, there were many times where I was just, it was a goose chase. Yeah. Well, I'm glad to hear that. We're not the only ones.
Pretty funny. Any other things like that that, uh, I don't know, been, you know, learning points. What, what are some of the things you've changed along the way? Well, we, the, the mattresses. So we did start bringing in the super lightweight, just three quarter length thermo rest. Um, you
know, the ones that are just air, uh, but, uh, they have that little mylar, they're in their, uh, the, the, so those thermo rest, we do, we do
do mattresses now. Um, let's see gear wise this time we
brought, uh, ice axe and crampons, but I think we might not do that. I don't think it's, it was necessary and it just added a lot. I'd say, yeah, definitely not the ice axe. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think they've had it. That's like, no. And they haven't had a real big snow year. I mean, last year when you guys were there, we had that monster snow year, but this year is, I think. It's more normal so far. Yeah. So I think we're to minimize on gear eventually, you know, looking to the future, I'd love to get a lightweight tandem. That would be, uh, uh, that would lighten things up and then Martin's getting bigger and stronger. So, uh, you know, we'll probably be sharing the load a little, a little more each year. Yeah. I've been having, uh, these little adventures on a single surface wing. I've never flown in cross country or anything, but they make those in tandems now.
Is that a possibility or is that
those just don't, they don't work? I don't, I mean, I've heard these stories of people flying like a hundred K on them. And I just, when I fly mine, I can't imagine doing that, but I could, I could, I could see in the right conditions, it could fly a hundred K, but then if you get into a windy situation where you're like trying to push against wind, I can see the glide ratio being really like, you know, I don't think you really have one in those. Yeah. I don't, you know, like, I don't know. I mean, mine has a speed bar on it, but it's kind of, I think it's kind of pathetic when there's any wind. Yeah. I think it's better to lose weight and other things. Just, just lighten your gear. Uh, just try to really evaluate what you need. Like we've been bringing a folding saw, but I'm just thinking of more of a saw blade that's wrapped up in something, you know, to keep it from cutting things up and just make and make and handle if we really need the, the saw or little, little things like that.
Just trying to always evaluate, um, we weigh our food, which we usually try to like not have more than five kilos. We're trying to fit as many calories
into five kilos of food. So, you know, looking at
ideally more fat content in the food. So trying to be self-reliant for about six days is the idea that food wise. And so tell me about your food. You mentioned nuts. Are you, are
you trying to buy calories and fat? You're probably trying to go, you know, cheese, nuts, what, what are you putting in your food kit? Yeah. We, we bring cheese, salami, uh, what else, um, some dried berries, but not too much of that. What was it we had? Oh, bacon bits. Bacon bits. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Bacon bits at Costco. They have Costco in Europe? You can never have enough of those. Like those are always out at the end
of the trip. Yeah. Yeah. We look at, we look at what's
at the end of the
trip and what didn't, like, if there is anything that didn't get eaten by chance, we know we need less. Yeah. You don't need to bring that. And if it's eaten on the second day, we need more of that. Okay. So Martin, after six
days of eating cheese and salami and nuts, uh, what do you think? are you dying to have when you guys get back into you know quote unquote civilization what do you what's the first thing you go for i'm not sure what did we do the first two times i think remember when we when we took
the train to land some stuff we had ice cream ice cream yeah nice and some wienerschnitzel yeah let's see yeah i know we had a well no the first time we had a kebab yeah yeah like a hero yeah yeah um and martin has there been any times in these three trips you've done with with
dad that have uh have you been scared at any point um well there's always but that freaks me out a little bit always like when we're about to launch okay like right when we're
starting to run like but that i've talked to my grandma and she also has that same feeling like fight when you're about to do it there's that
like little feeling of but what if yeah this is gonna work um and also just to say in a quick summary i'd say that the first year was like going into it and seeing if this is gonna even work and then the second year was really enjoyable enjoyable in terms of flying and where we're gonna get and then the third year was also really really enjoyable in terms of the people because we stayed in two cabins on the way we had some good food there and we for the first time actually stopped by a cafe um that time
to have pie or tart yeah yeah each one has a kind of a different flavor different feel to it i mean you know it's just like each xops has kind of its own sure
it's kind of on particular yeah they all belong in their
own category for sure yeah wow cool the one time i being a little scared
this was uh my fault was uh i said just wait here i'm gonna go look if this
if there's a launchable spot and just just wait here so i left my backpack there you know with all the gear and kind of ran around the corner and i looked a little better around another corner
and you know i said i'd be gone for five minutes it was probably closer to 15 by the time it was done and he
could he was visibly upset that i'd been gone that long but that was just before we just that evening before we flew across the valley where the search and rescue got called on us later that yeah well that night now you guys have really inspired me i mean my my little one's only two and a half so it'd be a
while but i i did uh we were up in uh lake walawa when she was 13 months old i
was doing some acro training there over the water
and i i
put her her and mom on a
tandem with todd and uh and he did helis with them all
the way down in the water so
she she actually knew what was
going on but i was flying right next to him and i took all the video and sent it to grandma and grandma was not impressed yeah it's it's a little tricky i mean some some people would you know so you definitely some people frown upon it i haven't really run across that too much but uh uh you know my wife sometimes reminds me that some people might frown upon sure upon this activity it's a it's understandable yeah i could see where they're for you differently doing this is it is it more tense is it more is there anything that is is much different than you know solo flying or flying how you normally do i think um it actually in some ways being just on a uh on a on a big tandem it's it feels it feels way more secure uh the tandem i mean it's just it's uh you know it's like tandems are usually like a big uh b glider or at that yeah it's it's so it's a it feels very safe i have to respect especially in the early years when martin was lighter uh that we are lightly loaded uh so i have to kind of keep that in mind uh as you know i have to be very like cognizant more cognizant i think that i would be on a normal on a solo wing of um of valley winds and uh
wind in general but uh the flying off you know it's a it's a upk23 and it's uh it's it it's just a it's been a great wing
uh for this adventure it's
a it launches great and it's been able you know can land it a lot of side hill landing uh on it and uh it's i've been just super happy with the wing so you know sometimes easy sometimes you kind of forget what you're doing that you're just with you know with your eight or nine or ten year old kid you know circling up next to a cliff face and the dolomites and son don't take a picture of this don't send it to mom but it but you know but it feels very very natural i mean i've been doing this like i said almost 20 over 25 years so it's just it's just a natural extension of what it's like we should be doing you know the other
thing i should ask is what about mom how does she feel about you guys doing this good time with dad yeah she's actually you know just uh does she give you any uh what does she say no well what they do is since they are here it's summer it's hot they go to the library and then when that closes at five o'clock they go to ikea and then when that closes at nine o'clock they go home and then they go to bed because our air conditioning is broken and it's hot here
and so yeah so no she's just yeah she's she's been very supportive she actually you used to uh fly um when we when we met each other and stuff she'd actually she actually
tried paragliding
we did the math and it was when she was 14 so she was younger it
was earlier in time than when i first tried it like yeah i think i tried it in 92 i think she tried in 91 or something and uh so she she she understands uh flying she's got probably 100 hours and maybe some 30 30 mile cross countries uh back in the day so she's uh
she gets it she she gets it yeah and then yeah um luckily uh you know trust in my abilities and i try to respect that i try to you know like any flying you're always always evaluating the conditions uh and and especially in the dolomites it does get tricky because sometimes it'll you know the clouds look pretty ripe but it's not you know then it then it gets overcast sometimes if some high clouds come in and everything just kind of pulses back down again and so it's uh you know there's each place has its um you know some those kind of clouds you'd be like oh i gotta get um i gotta be on the ground immediately whereas um i think the biggest biggest one there
with the
tandem is you don't want to be flying a really windy day just if it's a windy day just just don't fly if it's if it's light wind uh that you know then uh then you can you didn't get your escape path but if you're if you're on a light loaded tandem and it gets windy your your escape routes are going to shut down really quick sure that's i think that's the one thing i would if anybody like gets inspired by this and wants to do this with their kid first of all be very honest with your um flying skills uh you know make sure that you feel very comfortable with your flying and then of course that you know
mom is uh or dad is cool with uh is cool with it and
uh uh then just you know treat it like any other tandem but it's you know it's a light lightly loaded tandem and it's your kid so yeah yeah that's that changes the dynamic quite
a bit and what's going to happen when uh tomas gets old enough to start doing this you're gonna have to do two
i think he's yeah he's already been flying with me he had his first flight when he was 11 months uh at that time he was more interested in the cows
in the landing area than uh of the flight itself but now he's he's already talking about birds and thermals and cumulus clouds yes yeah he mentions it i mean when we're flying he says you know like yesterday we had a little flight and uh just a sledder but he's like dad are we where are we gonna land where's the landing area where's the landing area wait i don't want to land in the water so he's he's three
just turned three a few weeks ago and uh but yeah i'd say that he's probably gonna get a chance to do this because i'm gonna be 16 when he's gonna be eight oh yeah so oh he's eight years younger yeah that's a big difference so we'll get to do this with that'll be pretty yeah so it's a nice smooth transition yeah and honza that'll keep you fit man you're gonna be doing this in your 50s maybe by then i'll invest in a lighter weight tandem i don't know man you use gear
a long
time yeah that's true you probably still got that harness i gave you a bunch of years ago so in the future you know this one's kind of up in the air but do you guys see yourself doing the foreseeable future yeah i'd like to um we're kind of starting to make a contingency plan because it looks like covid 19 it might be a while i mean i think they're they don't want to scare us too much and say it's a few months but it's uh i could see you know i'm i'm starting to doubt june june travel is going to happen or even well i'm hoping maybe we could push it towards the end of the summer but uh what were we talking about doing uh maybe a few days uh and the sierra yeah cross country skis yeah bring some cross country skis and try to fly with those because those are pretty light yeah i mean we could probably use uh you know and try to like get around all those and set up foot yeah like land up somewhere maybe do it uh maybe go mcgee's south or get on to maybe something in the owens but before it gets too strong maybe you know like late april early may uh and and if there's still enough snow up there land in some of those box canyon kind of ski around for a little bit set up camp ski around and then get up to a higher ridge and but it just the sierras are tough because you have to have several days ideally you want a period of it's either calm winds or light easterlies ideally so you're not in the lee gosh maybe i mean it's a little bit farther but maybe the rubies would be a good place for a mission
like that there's not i was i just drove across nevada there's not a lot of snow i drove up through i drove down through you know where you and i were a couple years ago i drove down the rubies on the eastern side down
to through vegas to go out to california and then i came back up the sierras just so i could look at them there's not much snow yeah so so that might be the way to go early rather than late because you know being nevada it can get pretty cranking but i think uh we were there in may so i think if if it wasn't too much snow in april that might that might be something to do even if it was shorter even if it was maybe you know three or four days and but we in that sense we'd have to probably arrange some kind of a retrieve especially now that you can't really there's no probably public transport is shutting down pretty quick too yeah right yeah yeah hitchhiking is probably not all
that reliable either well it never is in nevada there's nobody out there but um martin were you in a few years we are you excited to get into flying do you see yourself being a pilot like dad i'd like to try it definitely um i do a lot of climbing nowadays but i definitely like to try paragliding is climbing kind of your what's your main kind of
outdoor thing that you like to do um outdoors i don't
get to climb outdoors that much because well um i don't have the gear yet i usually vent it um but outdoors thing that i like to do i like to rollerblade a lot um but other than that i'd say the climbing is like my main sport it was
we have a climbing gym called the rock and so that so he's been climbing there and have a little is it a club or it's a class it's a class yeah are you guys flying together down in chile too a little bit yeah yeah we oh we had to oh yeah we hiked up via vika we snuck up there for like five rules and flew down this is a worldwide podcast it's all right that's all right that's all right pilots
understand so one of the fun rules
is we got to fly down uh with my mom oh cool yeah yeah we were up there so my mom's been up uh via
rica volcano but um it was first time for martin to go up the
volcano and we just went up at night with crampons and the wind was perfect for flying a tandem off so we got to fly down with martin and my mom all off the volcano oh
that's very
cool i one of the most special flights i've ever had in my life was we were sailing up in scotland and my mom came in for a couple weeks and you know as the the we were out in the outer hebrides which is all basically just peat moss there's no trees and uh you know these crazy storms would come through and you're in these kind of locks with the boat they're you know they're salt
water locks but you can get really protected in these beautiful bays and we learned very quickly that you know on the right kind of wind you could fly you know just whatever aspect whatever wind whatever wind direction was blowing you could find an aspect at work and it was just ridge soaring you weren't country but it was just terrific and so i started taking the clients i had a tandem on board and i started because it wasn't really wasn't great kiting you know the boat thing's all about kite
surfing and so i would take the clients you know flying and it never gets dark you're up there in the summer and it's you know it's like being in alaska it never gets dark up there you know a couple hours a night kind of between one and three so you know you'd fly in the morning and come down and have breakfast and you'd fly in the middle of the day and you come have lunch you find the we were doing a lot of flying and you know i didn't have any on anybody on board that was a pilot you know it was all just tandem stuff and you know each day my mom would be standing on the boat and you know we'd come back for lunch and she was just you know she'd ask and she was
so curious and it just it never really occurred to me she you know she's got pretty bad knees and she was getting older and uh and finally you know i came down one day and i was like mom would you like to do this and she just clapped her hands oh i thought you'd never ask yes i'd love to do it so funny why did you ask me and so i brought her up and uh you know and she'd seen me fly around with these with the i'd been keeping it really mellow but she'd also seen me just fly and and so you know we start we started going and we're just doing these nice gentle passes back and forth and she kind of turned around at one point and she said okay gavin like you know i've seen you do that stuff i want to do some of that stuff you know what really mom you and so i started doing these little mini wing overs i come on i've seen you do that stuff like i want to do some of that stuff and and uh and so you know after a while i'm just wanging it around i'm practically looping
with my mom and she's just hooping and hollering and i you know and then i'd mellow it out and i because i was afraid she was
just going to start
vomiting mom are you okay
well stop asking me that of course i'm okay keep
doing that stuff she was just loving
it i could bless you and she still to this day talks about just how thrilling that was it was so special i was well no wonder i
got i got this from somebody i guess it was you oh yeah yeah no it's definitely i think i've got you know
the excel genes from my parents for sure i mean
they're still they're still hiking in their 70s pretty hard that's that's terrific well i hope you guys i really hope that uh this thing quiets down i i think i'm in your camp i think that's a bit of a reach right now but uh you know there's i think we're we're just sitting at the precipice it's going to get worse before it gets better but i hope it works out for you and uh and if it doesn't in june i hope something works out for you in the sierras or something
but thanks for sharing your story and i'll be tracking you guys uh in the future and i have no idea if i'll do another xops at this point but you always seem to be over about the same time so hopefully our paths will cross on one of those sounds good gavin thanks for thanks for giving us a chance to to tell their story yep yeah awesome thanks martin thanks hans i appreciate it if you find the cloud-based mayhem valuable you can support it in a lot of different ways you can give us a rating on itunes or stitcher or however you get your podcast that goes a long way and help spread the word you can blog about it on your own website or share it on social media you can talk about it on the way up to launch with your pilot friends i know a lot of interesting conversations have happened that way and of course you can support us financially this show does take a lot of time a lot of editing a lot of storage and music and all kinds of behind the scenes cost so if you can support us financially all we've ever asked for is a buck a show and you can do that through a one-time donation through paypal or you can set up a subscription service that charges for each show that comes out we put a new show out every two weeks so for example if you did a buck a show and every two weeks it'd be about 25 a year so way cheaper than a magazine subscription and it makes all of this possible i do not want to fund this show with advertising or sponsors we get asked about that pretty frequently but i for a whole bunch of different reasons which i've said many times on the show i don't want to do that i don't like having that stuff at the front of the show and i also want you to know that these are authentic conversations with real people and these are just our opinions and we're not going to do that for you but our opinions are not being skewed by sponsors or advertising dollars i think that's a pretty toxic business model so i hope you dig that um you can support us if you go to cloudbasedmayhem.com you can find the places to support you can do it through patreon.com forward slash cloudbased mayhem if you want a recurring subscription you can also do that directly through the website we've tried to make it really easy and that will give you access to all the bonus material little video casts that we do and extra little uh nuggets that we find and conversations that don't make it into the main show but we feel like you should hear we don't put any of that behind a paywall if you can't afford to support us then just let me know and i'll set you up with an account of course that'll be lifetime and hopefully and you're being in a position someday to be able to support us but you'll find all that on the website uh all of you who have supported us or even joined our newsletter or bought cloud based mayhem merchandise t-shirts or hats or anything you should be all set up you should have an account you should be able to access all that bonus material now thank you so much for listening i really
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you