It must be your skin that I'm sinking in.
It must be for real, cause now I can feel. And I didn't mind. It's not my kind. It's not my
time to wonder why. Hi there
everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. I haven't talked about our subscription model and how that all works and supporting the show at the top of the show in quite some time. We have it at the end all the time, but I'm sure many of you get to that point and have heard it and move on. So I thought I'd drop this in at the top just as a reminder of how this all happens at the Cloudbase Mayhem. We rely on you rather than sponsors to make all this work. I think digital media these days is mostly supported through sponsors and ads and that kind of thing. And I'm finding that model more and more and more toxic. And I also don't want to fill the first 10 minutes of your listening time, which is valuable with trying to sell mattresses and that kind of stuff.
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He takes you through that whole platform. It is really powerful. They are doing some wonderful things there at SkySight. I think this will become, if it's not one of your go-tos right now for whether it will be after watching this. So. Yeah, reach out. Thank you so much for your support. It really does make this job a lot easier. It makes me smile and let me know if you've got suggestions for the show. Take those very seriously. We are quite backlogged with suggestions, of course, but I do get to them. I do reach out. We've got tons in the can right now. I've got shows that'll take us all the way through the X out. So we're well set up there, but I'm enjoying it. I, I enjoy your comments and your suggestions and your emails.
And I love, of course, hearing from all of you who tell me that the show is either saved your life or kept you from having an accident or just made you a better pilot. That's why we're doing it. That's very exciting. Top of the show tip this week comes from Josh Cohn. Enjoy.
So we've got two questions from Eric Bader. The first one is when thermaling, if you fall out the back, is it better to crank a steep turn, get back in the thermal quickly, or carbon? Nice turn. Would your B answer be different on the windward side? So the main thing I think it depends on is how steep the lift gradient is at the edge of the thermal. So if it's pretty smooth transition, then yeah, carbonized turn. And also if it's kind of light tropical sort of conditions, you'll often just need to do a really flat, smooth turn to not, to not, you know, to still be going up. Especially if you're low. Whereas if it's a, you know, well-defined tight, strong core, then then crank it around.
And then in terms of the windward side,
yeah, typically, typically if there's significant winds, the core on the windward side is more well-defined. You pretty much want to, like, as soon as you start hitting that windward edge, you want to turn pretty quickly to, to not totally fall out, but it's often not, it's often not super stiff, it's not super sinky on that side either. So whereas on the downwind side, it can often be more turbulent and sinky. So I don't know. You want to avoid falling out either side, I guess. All right. Second question. When a spiral dive is the drug shoot better than tucking feet under the harness and spreading the knees to use the pot as a drug shoot. If it is better, is it a lot better? Obviously the drug shoot does not freeze the crotch, but is it worth it? So I had a drug shoot for a bit and I just never got around to using it.
And then I asked the end, like was looking for a place to put it in my harness and ask the designer of it where he kept his. And he was like, Oh, I don't use one. So I don't know. It seems like they do a good job of making spirals more comfortable. I don't think using the pod probably works as well for that. Probably because you have to sit up, which changes your whole dynamics in the harness. Uh, but I haven't really tested that, so I don't know. Uh, thanks Eric.
Okay. Okay. Enjoyed that Josh. Some cool advice. My guest today is Rico Chandra, Swiss pilot who embarked on a thousand K solo bowl BIV last year. This was his first bivy. It all went swimmingly and just, uh, he reached out and said, Hey, I did this kind of cool thing. We should talk about it. And man, we had fun with this conversation, really interesting guy and, uh, had a blast with his bivy and his approach was great. And he also has a lot of, he had takeaways both from the bivy, but before then on just safety and how to approach things that I really found super useful, and has a bunch of kind of like guardrails and rules to keep it between the lines as Chris Santacroce says that I think are are great, and talks about having a super power that I loved.
And by the way, the music you heard in the opener here was, was produced by our guest today, Rico. Please enjoy this conversation with Rico Chandra.
Rico, uh, awesome to have you on the show. Thanks for reaching out this last week. And I'm excited. You, uh, got to hear that show with Tim and sounds like you've just been doing some really cool bivy as well. So I'm excited to hear about what you learned and what you're changing and how that all went. And I guess you're in quarantine. So we've got plenty of time for this one. You just got back from South, Africa. Tell me, let's start there. Tell me about what you're doing down in Cape town. Well,
thanks for having me, Gavin. Hi. Uh, I was, I was in Cape town for three weeks, almost four weeks, kiting, flying. It's, you know, from Europe, it's just a, you get on the plane in the evening and you wake up in this more or less same time zone in the summer. So I'm not, I don't really like the cold. So I was down there kiting and flying and enjoying, good food, not too much wine. They have a pretty serious lockdown, um,
absolute prohibition of alcohol. Oh,
that's interesting. I've heard that one. Yeah. Every it's, it's funny. I, this thing's just so different everywhere you go.
Yeah. It keeps their hospitals, um, less full cause they have a lot of alcohol related.
Oh, of course. Yeah. Right. How's the flying?
Um, I, you know, it's beautiful, but it, the Cape freaks me out in terms of flying. I've I've it's super strong and windy. I think, I think if you want to, I think what you have to do there is just go series cross country, try to do records, but like to go for small cross, like 50 Ks, a hundred Ks. That's, uh, it's just, you know, scary with, with the wind. There is a lot of wind, you know, sea breeze, that, that cuts in and it's I'm, I'm always sort of freaked out to fly down there.
Right. Yeah. And then you get in the water and you gotta be freaked out about the sharks. I've spent quite a bit of time. No, I've
I've I've I'm, I'm cool with that. But the shark anxiety sort of went away.
Nice. Nice. So, Hey, for those who are listening, who don't know you, uh, let's give a real brief of your background. When did you get into flying and what brought you to, to vol biv? And before we, you know, how much experience do you have? I
started flying 28 years ago and made it through these 28 years without, without injury. I dabbled in, in comps, gosh, uh, in the, in the late nineties, stop doing that. Cause I'm, I'm claustrophobic claustrophobic. I can't, I can't deal with other people getting close to me. It drives me nuts.
So I've been flying XC mainly since then I wasn't in the higher ranks of X contest until until 2020 I guess there was something to be said for the lockdown and all the other stuff going away. I had time to fly and didn't have to worry about do I go out tonight and have a few drinks with friends and get home late or do I go flying? It was sort of clear this year. So, so I 2020 was like the first year where I ended up in the higher ranks of the X contest. And
what do you, what wing do you fly and where's home?
I fly as you know, uh, and home is Zurich, Switzerland. I used to travel a lot for work to Washington DC, but I'm now Zurich mainly.
And what's your, what's your work?
Uh, I, I, we started together with a bunch of friends. We started, uh, a company 13 years ago in the security industry selling border monitoring systems to governments and been been doing that ever since.
It sounds like COVID has had some kind of unexpected benefits for you. What's it been like for you the last kind of nine, 10 months?
That's been great. I, um, I'm, I'm, I tend to be someone who's fidgety. And running all over the place and, and trying to do 10 things at once. And for me, I mean, I'm, I'm sorry for all the people who, you know, got sick and had serious consequences, but for me, uh, it was, you know, calm, a calm time. And that really had a, you know, a great 2020 and the flying has been absolutely fantastic. We had great weather here in Switzerland. And, and, um, had a couple of really nice flights. I had my vol biv trip in August. So this, this has been one of the better years for me.
Yeah. Tell me about this vol biv 1000 K or something. Where'd you start? Where'd you end? How long did it take? Let's get into that.
I took almost the, I, I took the month of August off, um, was on the, on the road or on the, on the track. It was for about 25 days started in Zurich, Switzerland. My plan was to go East Slovenia. Jubileana was the original goal. It didn't go exactly according to plan. Like when I started the weather was, you know, foul, uh, and, and, and one week into the trip, I was, you know, not, not, not very far from home. And at the same time, Slovenia put Switzerland on the, on the, on the quarantine list.
Like you couldn't enter the country. So I'm like, what do I do now? And, and, and instead of going East, I went West and made it to Fierce, had a great flight there, which sort of gave me the inspiration to head East again. And then, um, and then I didn't go all the way to, to Slovenia, to, to Jubileana more or less, or where the airspace of Jubileana starts.
Nice. What was the kind of style of the trip? Did you have any rules or did you have any, or was it just kind of winging it?
Um, I, I thought about the rules and, and, you know, I thought about, yeah, like, do I take, do I take cable cars? Do I, do I, do I hitchhike? Do I sleep in tents? Do I sleep in hotels? And I, I figure I'm going to do it, uh, mainly out of my own, you know, on my, you know, walking and flying. I'm not going to hitchhike. I'm not going to take the train, but if there's something, you know, a, a cable car or some trans means of transportation going up to that launch that I want to go anywhere. And anyway, I'm, I'm going to take it. And that's kind of how I did it in terms of.
Were you solo?
Yeah. I was solo. My, my girlfriend came to visit me on, on a couple of weekends, which was nice. Cool. Um, I, I took along a tent, uh, until I lost the tent poles. And, uh,
did you, did you leave them behind?
Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, one campsite one morning, I, I, I just, I guess I didn't pack them in and, and, and
then you had a nice tarp.
Well, that's kind of stupid, right? With a tent without tent poles. uh, and, uh, but, but, but I, I, I, I traded that against a bivy bag, but I didn't, you know, I, I, I found out pretty quickly that I sleep much better in hotels. I, I, I, the, the tent or the bivy bag was just to not have to worry about anything. I, I decided I'm going to fly the way I want to fly and, and, and not worry about where I'm going to sleep until I'm on the ground. And if I find a hotel or, you know, a farm or someplace where I can sleep, great.
And if not, I'll sleep outside. It's just more comfortable if you've got a hotel room and, and, and charging up your equipment as there is something to be set for that also, because I didn't take along any solar panels or, or, or the like, or quick chargers. So that was quite happy. And in the Alps, there's always someplace to stay.
So were you kind of, was your approach just launch, fly as far as you could and then deal, then figure it out. You know, you didn't, you didn't have any kind of, okay, I'm going to try to get here or there. It would just, you know, take advantage of the day.
Yeah. Take advantage of the day. Exactly. Cool. I had a sort of plan for the route, which I sometimes stuck to and mostly didn't.
Did you, had you done babies before this or this was this your first?
No, this was my first, this was my first baby like 20 years ago or 30 years ago. I spent, you know, maybe a night or two wrapped in my wing, but, but I haven't done both with before. And, and I, you know, when I was in my 20s, I certainly wasn't keen on doing hiking with my, uh, wing on my back.
Tell me about your kit. Were, were you flying the Zeno for the bivy too? Yeah, that
was definitely a mistake. Uh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that again.
Just cause of the weight.
The weight is the least of the problem. It's, you know, launching out of, launching out of launches where you don't want to get your line stuck, you know, you want you or, or when you don't have, you know, if you've got slight downwind tailwind, um, there's, uh, I, I guess the zeolite would have been the perfect wing. And I was, I tested one, but for some reason I had this, this philosophy of you have one wing, you do everything with that. So I took the Zeno. I didn't want to compromise on the flying and I took the Zeno, but you know, also in terms of packing, the Zeno doesn't pack down nicely like the zeolite does.
Then also landing the zeolite, you can really get into tight landing spots much better than with the Zeno. The Zeno is not bad. You can, you can flap down pretty good, but, uh, I, I wouldn't take the Zeno again. I'd go for a lighter hike and fly wing.
Yeah. So just lighter, easier to manage launch and landing, easier to pack. Yeah. What about, what about harness and other stuff? Like you said, you didn't take solar panels or charging. What was the, what was the thought there?
I just didn't want to be bothered. I, I, I always felt sorry for, you know, when I see pictures of solar panels hanging out on the front of the, on the, the cocoon, I thought, gosh, I don't want to have stuff dangling around. I, I'm not going to do that. I'm here for the flying. I'm not necessarily here to do, you know, prove to the world that I'm the world's greatest adventure sportsman. I, you know, I'll, I'll do great flying. And then, uh, but yeah, I didn't, I didn't want to mess with solar panels. The harness I had with a lightness too, which, which was good for that purpose. There's loads of space to, to pack stuff in, especially if you take out the protectors.
Hmm. And what were you using for instruments?
I just had my, my iPhone and the fly sky high app and the XC Racer mini two. Hmm. The solar. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great piece of kit. Yeah. It's, it's awesome. You never had to charge it. Uh, an in-reach with me and, uh, fly master, uh, sky. What's it called? Sky tracker. You know, one of these tracker things. Yeah.
Fly master. Yeah. Anything once you, well, tell me about the trip itself and then I'll ask you more about kind of what you learned on the way. But so, so you started at home and got down to fish and then turned around and started going east.
Exactly. Yeah. Got started from home, spent the first five days more or less walking with the occasional hop in between. Then, um, had the weather started getting better as I made it to fish, got in a, a decent sized triangle there and then headed east, um, via, you know, crossing from Switzerland into Austria. Then, um, across the Timelsjok into, into Italy. Then from Italy, back into, back into Austria, near Cillian. And then for just a second, Italy, back into Austria, near Cillian.
And then back into Italy, by Villach in Austria.
Yeah. Down the corner there.
Yeah. Then from, into, uh, into, into Slovenia, across the Gradil pass.
Is that down, is that right there at, uh, Triglav? It's, it's,
it's, it's not exactly where Triglav is. There's a mountain called Mongard, which is well known. It's, um, the first place, the, it's like north of Bovets and, uh, Tolmin.
Yeah. Uh, gotcha. Yeah. Okay. So a little bit, a little bit further east. So you kind of, you went as far as you could in, in Austria. Yeah. And then, and then dropped down into Slovenia. Yeah. Maybe we could get a, a track log or a picture or screenshot of, of your whole route. And we'll put it up in the show notes for, for those that aren't familiar with that area. Cause of course, those, all those names you just said, I know, cause we have spent so much time over there, but many, many don't. That's a nice route. Beautiful. Yeah. I mean, I,
I
talking about, I think the last
X-Alps, uh, went with my family and we stayed in there for about a month and Sorica and some of, I forget some of those launches, but we, you know, we'd fly down that ridge line and then into Italy and then keep going into Italy, which is pretty wild. And then back and it's just the most amazing out and back. It's gorgeous. I mean, the Soka river and, oh, just like, man, where, who dropped acid in my punch today? Cool. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, I found it really intimidating.
Slovenia, you know, coming in from the north, you know, high mountains, lots of wind, tight valleys. There's a stretch there where you can't land. And then also the last leg from Toman, from, I think, Kobala is the launch to where the airspace of Ljubljana starts, the place called Skofja Loka. That's just a stretch with, you know, Slovenian valleys with the heavily forested and not generously equipped with landing sites. That was... Yeah, there's some... It's
getting a
bit edgy. It's
very treed. It's one of these places, I don't know if you've flown, you know, when you leave Slovenia and go into Italy, when you're doing that kind of classic out and back, you cross Gemona and you get into a zone there where, you know, I was flying with a guy, Mike, who'd done it a bunch of times. If I hadn't been with somebody, I'd be like, what the hell are we doing? There's nowhere to land. You just keep going. You know it's going to work, you know, but you're just like, holy shit, this is deep. And I just... I don't think people expect that in Europe. You know, in the X-Ups, you get in this mindset where you just keep pushing no matter what because you know there's going to be an LZ. But man, in places like that, there's not. I mean, you could... There's those little lakes. You could, you know, there's trees all the way around them.
There's like these little dammed lakes where I guess you could probably burn it in and then, man, you're in for a shit of a hike. And there's no roads. There's nothing down there. There's no trails. There's no... There's no trails. There's no... There's no... There's no LZ from the air. But you... It's... Yeah, it's a little intimidating. It's weird because it's like the locals just know it's going to work. And if they have the right winds and the right sun and everything, you just keep going. But you're like, man, I hope this works.
Yeah, for me, it was the end of the trip. So I thought, well, you know, worse comes to worse. You know, I'll land in a tree and, you know, I don't need the glider anymore. I made it.
Oh, that's...
No, but... That's sort of the soft talk. Some of the soft talk I had in those...
Okay, we're going to leave that in. But I don't know if that's... It's like my thoughts about Monaco at the race. I hate Monaco so much. But, you know, Bruce, my supporter in the 2015 and 2017, he was like, you know, you've got to stop thinking like that. Because he hated it too. He hates Monaco. And he's like, you know, this isn't really the attitude we want to have. Because that's where you actually want to get.
No, but you can leave it in. Because my attitude, as you'll see, I'm super safety conscious. And that's, you know, that's some of the self-talk to deal with anxiety while flying. But I'm really, I'd say, safety conscious. And I wasn't gunning it. And I've given up on the rule of thumb. There's always a place to land. And if I don't see a landing, an LZ where I think I can get in, I don't go. I'll leave. I'll land and walk. That's one of the rules of thumb that I sort of, you know, that you can always, you'll always find a place to land. I've given up on that.
I'm too old for that.
Yeah. Well, let's get into that. Because that's a good one. I'm more inclined towards that as well. Since my days with Will Gadd and the Rockies, you know, it's like, ooh, this is a long ways. Will, are we sure we're going to make this? But you wrote when you reached out. You wrote to me about this, Bibi. You wrote that, you know, there were mistakes made, as there always is. And I think there is on just normal flights as well. So let's get into some of that. What did you learn? What were the takeaways?
So mistakes, I'm kind of analytic about this stuff. And so I grouped the mistakes into procedural mistakes and tactical mistakes. The procedural ones fall into two categories. The first, this is embarrassing. This is embarrassing. This is embarrassing stuff. But yeah, like losing my tent poles or losing my cap. But I noted pretty quickly, if I lose an essential piece of gear, that really sets me back or that's the end of the trip. So...
Yeah, it's not like you're taking extraneous things on a Bibi. No. You don't have extras, you know?
Yeah. So I got really pedantic about... Every time I... Got up, I, like, pedantically double-checked, did I left something... Like, consciously checked, did I leave something behind? Or I consciously make sure my, like, the zips of my pockets were closed, that I'm not losing stuff. And there's really only two ways to not lose stuff when you've unpacked somewhere and packing up and heading to the next place. And one... One is you have a checklist, and the other is you make sure you left nothing behind.
And the left nothing behind works pretty well. It's a fast one. But it means you have to, first of all, when you're unpacking, not... Be a bit mindful where you unpack and have it sort of in a confined zone and stuff. And then also consciously check. When I lost my tent poles, it was... I had already started walking, like, 10 meters and thought, Ah, should I just turn around and do a final check? And I just said to myself, No, I... You've got so little gear, what's there to lose?
The classic. You know, I had a... I had to learn this, the hardware, the very first day of the 2015 race. And we'd actually practiced this because my team knows that I'm a space cadet. And, you know, you can imagine. You're in a hurry, you're in a rush, you're trying to do everything really fast. And the first day, we had a big flight, landed, and I just dumped everything on the grass. And then later, of course, you know, there's a missing glove. My Bluetooth earpiece was gone because it's tiny. I didn't have it tied in. And, you know, so I've learned now with Bivy, my first thing that comes out of the pack is my little tarp. And I just put everything on the tarp. Everything on the... Yeah. And in the race, I don't have a tarp. So in the race, it's on my... The jacket. So the first thing is jacket comes off and all the stuff just gets stacked onto it.
Because like you said, you have to make it part of your procedure. You got to be pedantic about it or you just lose stuff. That's good with the
jacket. I like that.
Yeah. Just because, well, there's grass. You know, a lot of times in the Alps, especially, there's pretty tall grass. And it's so easy to just misplace something little. Even tent poles. They just, you know, they could disappear.
Also, I like made a point of, you know, carrying my... Like when I'm doing my pack and setting up to fly to carry my canopy up from where my stuff is dumped on the ground to not be covering up, you know, spreading my glider over stuff that I know I'm putting
on. Yeah. That's a big one. The glider covers all kinds of stuff. Another day, I think that's the first race. I think I took off one time and I dropped... I had the camera, some device. I had like three things under my wing that I left behind. I was like, sorry, Red Bull. Can you bring me new stuff? Yeah. Oops.
Yeah. So, losing stuff, that's one you can fix by having good procedures. The other procedural one where I was constantly messing up was resources management. So, under resources, I think of things like water, food, having your devices charged, hooking up your P-tube to fly, washing your... You know, I had two sets of boxer shorts, two sets of T-shirts, always, you know, sort of one clean and one blind from washing it, getting that stuff washed, but also stuff like downloading the maps and the apps before you actually run out of cell phone coverage or figuring out, you know, how this map app works before you get...
I was like somewhere in the... I remember I texted you, hey, Gavin, what was the app that you used for the map? Because I was, you know, my three map apps were not giving me what I wanted and I was in the middle of somewhere and so that's when I reached out to you on that and thanks for the recommendation. The right way to do it, obviously, is to practice with those apps and maps and download the stuff before getting going. It seems obvious, but it's just... I was constantly getting all sorts of resource management wrong.
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because I think it's so easy to, you know, have the checklist and check them off before you go, but, you know, like even the inReach, you know, it's one thing to turn it on and turn on tracking. It's another thing to use it effectively. Oh, yeah. In an emergency situation, I mean, how many people turn those on and just can't even find their Latin long to, you know, and is it in the right format to tell someone? Somebody on the other end and just little things like that. And with the mapping, we always actually have training days for me before the race, even though I've used them a million times and I've used them on all the expeditions and stuff, like I'm really familiar with Gaia and some of the other things we use, but it takes, you just got to always reorient to it unless you're using it all the time. So if you have even a little fake, you know, bivy in your backyard and just fake it for a couple hours and set yourself little tasks just on foot.
Then it really helps.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And also like the charging sequence, when you get to, to a, a place where I can charge your stuff and what sequence do you charge your stuff? Yeah. And then, then, you know, you spent the rest of the day editing your GoPro footage and stuff like that. And there is a sequence, like the resource management is figure out what the right sequence is to, to doing stuff. Yeah. And there's so much you can do wrong on that.
Yeah. And I would agree with you. I mean, I think that there's, you know, when you have the solar panels hanging off your cocoon stuff, you know, Ben Jordan style, I, you know, there's, there's a place for that, but there's also, you know, with a, with a decent external battery and, you know, if you're doing a bivy in a place like the Alps and assuming you're going to get to a hut or something every three or four days, you really don't need a panel. And the other thing is, you know, just with an extra battery. Yeah. I think you do need the extra battery and the, you know, appropriate cables. Um, but I've never on, on even the longest of my bivvies, have I ever needed to charge while I'm flying? You know, there's always in a bivvy, there's so much time in a day where you're sitting around in the morning, making coffee, whatever, where, you know, a little seven or nine watt panel can go, can do a lot of good.
But then if I was doing one in the Alps, I don't think I'd bring one. I just don't think it'd be necessary.
Yeah. You wouldn't bring a battery or no
solar panel. I bring a, I bring a battery always need a battery, like
a power bank bank. And oh, by the way, you mentioned food, uh, or you mentioned like making coffee. I didn't even, I didn't take a stove. I didn't take stuff to cook. Cause in the Alps, there's always some place to get. I had like enough food for one meal and water and a couple of like, um, power boards or whatever, but there's, there's in the Alps, you'll always, you'll always find a restaurant or a farm or something and they'll give you food. So I didn't, I didn't want to mess with, with, with cooking by the way, in the show notes, we can also link to that. I did. I did like a video diary and we can link to that on YouTube and there's the entire list of stuff I took.
Oh, great. Um, tell me, let's, let's move on to, so you've got this kind of procedural stuff in resources, which is great. Yeah.
Yeah. The procedural mistakes, the tactical mistakes there, there were sort of four, four kinds that I made and, and I mean, there's obviously a lot more, but those I, you know, makes no sense reviewing them without a map, but there was four sort of general ones which are independent of topography. One is giving up, you know, often I, I did give up, uh, due to fear or discomfort. And that probably applies to XC flying in general, where you've, you've had enough and you give up.
So, so you, you classify that in this, in these instances as a mistake. In other words, you were, you were kinda just over it, but it was probably definitely good enough to keep going. It's
a slippery slope. Um, yeah, sure. Uh, I mean, it is a mistake if it's due to discomfort, like if you're giving up due to discomfort because, uh, you didn't. Yeah. You didn't attach your P-tube or you've got cold fingers or you're freezing. Copy. Yeah. Fear. Fear can also be mistake. You know, sometimes when you're on a law, when you're on your own, you get scared just because the, the, the, the rocks around you look very intimidating and you're alone. And, and, and if there were other pair gliders there, you wouldn't be, you won't be afraid. So. It's kind of a mistake, but I, I'd be careful. I, it's a, it isn't a bad mistake to make, but the consequences of, of, of landing too early are, you know, I sort, I sort of thought, well, that that's not gonna tell me that I might lose time or I might look stupid, but that's not, that's not a big deal.
Height management, height management was like, um, landing, landing high. Taking off launching high landing highs, sort of a no brainer, but, but oftentimes I realized I could have landed higher, but went, you know, um, didn't think I'd make the glide, but then I had already started gliding for the lower landings and launching. I have this, this rule of thumb, like, you know, when you're vol biving, how, or hike and fly. How high do you hike up before you launch? When, when, when are you high enough to, to hook a thermal and fly? My rule of thumb for that was th this wouldn't be applicable for, for, for the X-Alps, but for, for myself, if you were like recreationally flying, then my rule of thumb is I want to hike up high enough that if I bomb out, at least I can walk up another mountain and don't have to walk up the same mountain.
And that. That, that for motivational purposes, that's like, I think that's a really good rule of thumb. Oh, I like that. So
you, so you would get to a place where you're like, okay, I can see that if I don't hook anything, I'm going to be able to glide to there. And that's going to get me to a different launch down my course line a little ways. And it's going to be manageable energy wise.
Exactly. Cause there's, there's launches you, you walk up to, and then you launch and you land. And you know, and, and the only option you have left is to walk right up to where you want to be. And that, that, that's not good for motivation.
Then other tactical mistakes were map reading, uh, trusting the GPS reading, um, you know, of my, of my iPhone, that's not always correct or not reading the elevate misjudging the, uh, the differences in elevation on the map. That's I did that a couple of times. Are
you talking while you're flying? Yeah. No. No. While
hiking while hiking. Actually. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The, the other, the last bullet of like tactical mistakes is went to rest, you know, since this wasn't right or race therapy, you know, I think there were three, three days, um, every week or so. I'd say. Whether it's not so great, I'll rest. And I think I, I regretted it all three times because the next day was even worse weather and, and, and so, yeah, resting the decision to rest. I think if you can, if you can, if it's good enough to make distance, then make distance.
Okay. So maybe, maybe better self-assessment, you know, okay, well, you know, rest would be nice, but I don't really need it right now. I think, I think we just do have to be tuned in to how switched on are we, because rest is important for sure. And Bivvy takes, you know, it can take a lot out of you.
Yeah. Although, you know, if you, if you put in a rest day, then like by three o'clock in the afternoon, you've caught up on your blogs and emails and, and, and, and you've charged all your equipment, wash your clothes and you're like, what am I doing here? You know? So yeah.
Let's move to your higher hierarchy thing and it's this cool, five types of outcomes of bad decisions. Talk about that.
So bad decisions, like some of them, some of the stuff we talked about, it's, it's got different outcomes and I, I grouped those into five categories, the, the worst being getting hurt. Then one step below getting hurt. Is losing or breaking equipment. Then one step below that is discomfort, which can be like cold or rain or, or hiking blisters, blisters, that stuff. Then the second lowest was losing time. And the lowest on the hierarchy is like looking bad.
I mean, this is we're human. I. And I'm not, you know, I, I, I did feel pressure, you know, having, having blogging about this and having people follow me on live tracking. It's nowhere near the pressure you must have during X-Alps, but it, you know, bombing out isn't a feeling of I'm so awesome. And, and, and so, but, but sort of, I, I, I, he, you know, decisions happen. I have consequences and those consequences fall into these five categories and the way, the way I, the way I dealt with those categories as well. Like I absolutely don't want to get hurt.
And I I'm really going to try to avoid losing or breaking equipment and the rest of the stuff I'm not going to worry about. I'm not going to worry about discomfort or hiking because if I, if I was worried about discomfort. Well, you shouldn't go on a bull biv anyway. I wasn't gonna worry about losing time because I, one of the reasons I was doing this, is sort of to to face up to my own fear of missing out and and chill. So I'm not gonna worry about losing time and looking bad like, or or looking like a fool or feeling like a fool. Like, I decided to completely let go of that, and one thing that helps with that is is blogging, because then you're, you feel more like a journalist and you can write about your feelings, which makes the blog more interesting for those reading it, and it gives you an excuse to, you know, to you know, it improves your content if you're not doing well.
So, so that's how I dealt with those, how I sort of grouped those things. So all I wanted to prevent was getting hurt or breaking or losing equipment and
Did you have—is this a good segue? Is that—is that where the rules of thumb come in? Yeah,
So, the rules of thumb that I have, they applied to to flying more generally, so so it applies very much to bull, but some of it just applies to XC flying in general. And, you know, there is a lot of questions that you don't know when you don't know when you were learning to fly, like, "When can I jump into the lee of a mountain?" or or, you know, "How long can I edge out? How long can I remain in the air when there is a a storm brewing? When do I need to go land?" And you just don't know these things. Nobody teaches you, and and and so I I guess I started out, oh
Years ago, I guess, with with just setting up, so a couple of rules of thumb like hypothesis and and then I I wasn't necessarily pushing all the way to to to the border, but just testing those hypotheses. So, for example, when you're one of the most common added dangers I think vol biv brings is edging out storms, like how long do you how long does it take you for you to say, "Now, this is this is that cloud's too dark. I'm I'm gonna go land." And and the rule of thumb that I that I use there is so
So take this. I, I gotta, I feel I have to put a disclaimer on this because I don't think you can just apply this to your own flying without having, you know, tested it as a hypothesis for a long time before applying it. But the rule of thumb with storms is, as long as there is blue sky above me, I'm still good. So I think, I think I even learned that from someone, uh, but you know, I picked it up and have it as a hypothesis for the last 15 years. And for the last 15 years, I've been, every time I fly or see others fly, I've been testing whether that hypothesis is true.
Can you? Is it, is it okay to have the rule of thumb? You can fly as long as there, as long as there is still blue sky above you, you're good. And for all I've seen so far, that rule for me works pretty well when it comes to, you know, the clouds are getting big or getting tall, how long do I remain in the air before I go land? So I'm not suggesting people follow these rules, but I'm suggesting it's, it's, it's worked out for me to set up rules of thumb and and observe over years whether those make sense. And and one of them I had to give up, which was, there's always going to be a place to land.
I, I decided that is not true for me. There's not always a place to land. I'm gonna, I'm not gonna, I, I want to see where I land before committing to a valley that I fly into. Yeah,
I would, I guess I would put the disclaimer on the blue part with, uh, you know, every, you know, every single one of those things. I would put the disclaimer on the blue part with "situation is different," and you said that, but you know, I can think of a few times, you know, certainly in the, in a desert environment, which is very, very different from the Alps, you know, we can get massive cells a long ways away and still be in
cold air exactly
well it's just if you can stay in the air you might be okay but if you decide There's no landing, you know, that you need to land and you get hit in that gust front. It could be very blue where you are, but you're suddenly the one, the one experience I've had. Alps, that was similar to this was, um, we were flying from Fiche, uh, in down to kind of Cour, and then we actually made it over and we were heading into Davos and, yep, so down the Rhine basically, and we were on the, I think we were on the north side of the Rhine, heading, heading east, and all day there was a huge, huge on the Italian side, uh, that would have been kind of down towards Saint Maritz, but on the, on the Italian side, and really, really big.
You know, this was one of these where it, you know, it went up into the upper atmosphere and started spreading out, and where we were was just brilliant. It was really beautiful, but we kept, it was, I was with Bruce and we kept talking to one another, going, "What do you think of that thing, man?" "I don't know, it's getting, it's really vertical." "Well, yeah, but it's at least 40, 50 miles away, and it's really big, and it's really big, and it's really big, and it's really, which is unusual to be able to even see in, in the Alps. You don't get that tall most of the time, and so often these cells are, are, you know, you don't even see them, you know, they might be on the other side of the, of the, of the main spine of the Alps, and you don't even see, but this one we could see because it was so big and it was so tall, and, but it was just brilliant." So at Cour, okay, let's keep going, and we got over the range and, you know, Davos is down below us and we were both like, okay.
That's enough. We've, we've pressed this far enough, and we've got to get to the top of the Alps, and both spiraled to the ground really fast and touched down literally about 30 seconds before the gust front hit. So this thing had finally exploded and and started running down the valleys, and we found, we got on the train and we were heading back to Fish, and we found out there was, I think, the Swiss Open or some some pretty Big comp was, had been, you know, going that day and two people, I believe, I think one died and another one, uh, ended in. trees because they got hit in that gust front, and so just again, you know, anecdotal, but it's, you know, one of these kind of, you know, there's always a, there's always an exception, I think.
If there's big stuff around, you got to be thinking like, how much time, how far can I press this? We certainly press it a lot in the X-Alps, and there's been a bunch of times where you're like, boy, that was close, but
To be, to be clear, when I'm saying blue sky, I mean blue sky. And oftentimes, when you have that kind of storm like you're talking about, the anvil, yeah, really extends out far. And, and you know, the cirrus clouds from the anvil, that is not blue sky. So, okay.
Oh, good. Okay, good, good difference, yeah.
That's, that's important to mention, if, if, and, and yeah, I, I, I believe there are probably exceptions to the rule, but the rule has worked pretty well for me, and oftentimes it's the, you know, with big storms, it's the anvil that, that takes away the blue, yeah.
No, good point. And it was probably, I bet, by the time we landed—well, I remember this because it started raining pretty quick, you know? So, by the time we, by the time we were dialing down out of the sky, it was getting gray. So, no, it's a good one. I like that. Do you have any other of these kind of? Yeah, I
have one, which is a prize mainly to fly as you mentioned, like flatland flying. One, one that works for me very well in, in, in the flatlands, like in, in Piedra Hita, or in, in, uh, in the northeast of Brazil, is like the, the two zones. Like, if I'm higher than 800 meters above ground, I'm in, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm gunning it; and if I'm lower than 800 meters above ground, I'm in survival mode. And, um, in survival mode, they're the rule of thumb that's, you know, that's a well-known one that I follow, which is never leave lift to search for a lift.
So, if I'm, and, and for me, you know, the survival mode, the border is strict 800 meters above ground. I'm not gonna leave lift to look for better lift; I'm gonna wait until I'm higher than 800 meters above ground. And if I'm above 800 meters above ground, I'm, I'm gonna snob anything That is slower than the day's average. I'm, I'm not gonna turn in anything that's, that's lower than two meters, you know that? Uh, that's, that's going up slower than two meters or whatever the average is. Yeah, that's great. That's sort of two gears that works really well for me in the flatlands, also being disciplined on, on the survival mode to not, not be optimistic but be pessimistic.
And when I'm in the, the, the upper layer, I'm, I'm optimistic. And the Alps, it doesn't work out that well because you can't set a, a height above ground or an altitude that doesn't work so well, but in flatland, but I
think you can still have, I think you can still have that rule. I like that. I think in the, in you know, when you're in the mountainous terrain, you just have a nice clean cut off between survival and and gunning it. And you know, because I've often, we wouldn't have that age, but I think it's because we're right on the terrain, but we're still really high. You know, we're right over the peaks or something. You know, if we went out over the valley, we'd have two thousand meters or something. Yeah, yeah, I like that. You
Can still, I think you can still do it, but it takes, it takes more fine-tuning. Am I in, which zone am I now in? And it's, it's very tempting to not admit that you're already in survival zone, or, or very tempting to remain in survival mode where you should be gunning it. I find it more difficult to, to set a clear dividing line between the two.
Let's return real quickly, Rico, to your your your fifth, uh, one in the list of, you know, from bad to not so bad. The the last one was, you know, not looking like a doofus, and I mean, I, you know, it makes you laugh, but I think we all struggle. We don't mean we're—we all have egos, and it's an important one. And, you know, I think it's—I've been reading a ton of sports psychology books in the kind of run-up to this race because I've, you know, obviously the mind is the thing that is the most important. Uh, you know, there's all, you know, there's the physical and everything else, which is obviously, and skills and all that, but the mind is is the big one. And I'm wondering if you had any other tools to help you drop the importance of those kind of last couple, you know, you don't want to—you don't want to trash your gear, you don't want to lose your gear, you don't want to get hurt, but, you know, we don't want to really want to care what we look like.
Who gives a shit? You're the one out there having one, and and everybody else is watching you on live tracking, you know? Yeah, but it's easier said than done. no
I but I think I have a a real advantage here, and that probably comes from from flying for a long time. I I think I'd even call it a superpower that I have, which is I think it I I don't really mind bombing out, or I do mind, but I think it bothers me much much much less than most people I know. And and it really is a superpower, and to to have that, because if you think about it, without bombing out, this sport would not be interesting. We'd not be we'd not be doing it. No one would. I mean, that's that's what makes us appreciate the good flights.
And for me, that sort of developed, I honestly think that's a superpower of mine. I'm not. concerned about about that and and to see it that way, then even enforces that, you know, to think of it that way enforces, enforces it to be a superpower and and, you know, you can even think of it, you know, as as, you know, actually I'm here to have fun while everyone else is competing and, for me, for me that works really well. it's also a sort of luxury I have because I'm not working in this business. I'm not, you know, my livelihood doesn't come from this business.
I'm not, I'm not an instructor, I'm not, I'm not, I'm, I'm not sponsored, um, in a big way. I'm not, I don't owe anyone anything, so I can just, I can just be the recreational pilot I am. I
Think there's, you know, we've talked about this on on recent shows, but you know, when I look at the look at the really consistent World Cup pilots, you know, that you kind of very often see in the top 10, uh, there there's one thing they have in common, and that's that they don't freak out when they bomb out. They they've been there enough, they've done it enough where they know that you're gonna bomb out. We all bomb out, we all screw this up, and you know, they just, it's just another day, another experience to put in your experience bag and move on. And and uh, I, you know, I've been one of these books I've been reading lately, I've been actually just reading it cover to cover over and over again because I love it. It's called the champion's mind, and it... it talked about, you know, that that people that really excel and succeed in...
in sport or anything else, they dump mistakes immediately. You know, they don't... they don't, you know, you think about like a football player or a basketball player, you know, it talks about Michael Jordan. You know, he, he was given the opportunity to make the game-winning shot. I don't know how many times, you know, lots, but he missed it like 28 times, you know, a bunch. And you know, if he let that get him down, how could he ever try to make another game-winning shot in the future? You know, you just can't, you just gotta let it go and and and get on to the next thing. You're gonna drop a pass, you're gonna throw an interception, and if you if you let that bug you, how can you play the rest of the game?
Exactly, and and our sport is one which, thankfully, humbles all of us so often. Um, as soon as we get cocky, or even if we don't, it humbles us. So, yeah, I'm I'm really good at bombing out and then enjoying the rest of the day, you know, enjoying the hike or whatever. In fact, one of the in in Alps Free Ride, I I I don't know, you've heard of Alps Free Ride? It's a it's a it's it's our team here. In a couple of the really good XC pilots are in it, just in the Swiss cross country cup, and and there's a lot of excellent pilots there, but especially one of the uh Serena Ronkey, she's she's a young um, you know, she's been flying for two years or so.
Like, her attitude is just really amazing. I've, you know, when when we go flying in the Alps, when we go cross country flying, usually for me, it used to be Um, you get up early, you get to launch, you fly, and if you bomb out after 30, 50, 80, 100 kilometers, you go home. But no, she, she walks up the next mountain and continues. If it's a good flying day, why would you go home? Why, why would you go home? You came to fly, so it's a good flying day, so make the most out of it. I, I found, you know, that that attitude to be super inspiring.
Rika, before we move on to kind of the the next thing, is there anything we haven't tapped into yet in terms of what you learned from the bivy? Any other stuff you want to pass on, let
Me, give you my take on why vol biv carries some extra risk compared to just regular xc flying. Number one is flying into lee situations, uh, that just your, you need to get, you know, your, your path that you're trying to follow, or the place you're trying to go will invariably take you through lee situations almost every day. Then, strong wind, coping with strong wind, landing in strong wind, flying on days where you, you know, usually when you go fly, you pick the day according to the weather, but on a longer trip, well, you know, very well from x X-Alps, so strong wind slope landings is something that, an additional sort of danger that comes with vol biv, edging out storms and
The last one is sort of on on like when you when you decide to launch somewhere, it's very easy to not see those couple of boulders that you think you'll easily clear. But if there's, you know, if it's not lifty and and and you come out much lower, you can really underestimate how quickly you can you can crash into those because you're just a couple of meters lower coming in with, you know, trying to go out with with tailwind and not clearing those boulders. So those are some of the added added dangers I compiled, and there's, you know, the one about flying into lees.
Is that a word that's used in English? Yes, I think so. I I try to, I don't have a rule of thumb for that because these are, there are so many different lees and there's
what I... what I sort of tend to, the way I deal with those is: first step, gather all data I can. So, is it, how strong is the wind? And and that includes even while flying, looking up wind data from other wind station... How stable is the day? If the day is stable, the lee is going to be nastier. How much ground clearance do I have? Super important, you know, in a trajectory and through the lee, especially the worst possible trajectory through the lee, assuming a lot of sink. How much, how much ground clearance do I have? And, and, and can I sneak out of there? Is there a way to get out of there?
So, so, analyze all the data that is possible and, you know, is it while approaching the lee, is it, is it bumpy or smooth? Is it, is it sucking or, or is it washing? Is it, is it washing? And then, once you've analyzed, when, when you think you've taken in every source of data that you have, sort of try to plan out what's the worst possible outcome if I fly where I'm intending to fly, what what trajectory is that going to be? And and then, if you're willing to, you know, if you map it out and say, even in the worst possible case, my trajectory will be more or less safe, and and I won't get stuck in a tree or slam into rocks, then sort of go with the flow, you know, go with the flow and be on the bees and and
try to try to go fast, yeah.
What I found with lee is there's often this you get into, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine, and then you get into the wash zone or something, something that you know obviously you can't see, and and the the tendency right then is nasty, I'm gonna run, and it's usually just a matter of pressing a little bit farther, and again, this is not, this is scary to make this as a generalization, you know, every every situation is totally different, but usually, usually, if you just keep going a little bit and press it a little bit further and hang on to the wing, and then, then it's going to turn into the lee climb, and and that will, you know, but you've got to have, again, not always, you've got to have enough sucking, enough climbing to get you through the, you know, because you're going to hit it again, you know, when you get up, if you start climbing and get up above it, you're going to hit that wind shear layer, and so it needs to be strong enough to punch you through that, but I
Think, I think the most important question for, for Lees, and also other potentially dangerous situations, is, is it worth it? Is it, is it worth it? I mean, is it
Like, in if I'm just flying on an afternoon at a site, I'm not going to take that kind of risk because it's not worth it. I'm not going to take that risk even for an XC flight unless it's going to be one of the best flights I've done. It's usually not worth it, but there are situations where it's worth it because because you're, you know, because it's going to be a 200 kilometer triangle or so. Then then then I'm willing to take a slightly greater risk than I would, yeah.
And in those cases, like, like Will Gadd says, when you do that and if you crash or screw it up, then you know we shouldn't have any sympathy for that. You know, that's it. We're knowledgeably making that decision with, with full knowledge of what we're doing, and that's, that's important. And there are times where that, that is what you want to do and needs to be done.
Yeah, I mean, I'm—I'm super proud of myself that I've—I've not hurt myself ever flying, and I—I wanted to stay that way. So I—I tend to err on the side of caution. I try to detect when I'm compensating skills with courage. I—I really try to avoid that because the—the fact of the—I mean, the truth is, if you—if you chase this, if you chase it hard for a decade, you're likely to break your back in the sport, and that's just something I'm super aware of. I've seen it happen, or it's happened to a lot of friends, and I don't want to be one of them.
And I'm—I mean, flying is really awesome, it's given me so much, but it's not worth it. It's not that good that I would, you know, risk my back for it. And—and the fact that back injuries are likely if you chase it hard is—is just something I don't want to put up with. So you'll see me—you'll see me flying taking, you know, more at—adding—adding an extra safety margin compared to most pilots, just because I don't want to—I don't want to accept that risk, yeah.
Think anybody would you know after breaking the back, go, wow, that was worth it. Yeah, yeah, you know, I mean, that just, no way. So yeah, that's a good thing to, you know, kind of always have in your mind, you know, is it worth it? Rico, as we get here close to an hour, do you mind if we switch over? You know, we did this survey that we put out some weeks ago now, and I got all these fun questions, and I've been kind of pinging people with, with various ones. You mind if I just ask you some random go for a quick response? Okay. Uh, what was the biggest aha moment you've had with flying in the last year? I
think, I think probably to let the glider fly to to it's made it's more than a year, it's it's one and a half years, but I guess that counts also. Um, it's, you know, early morning in in um in Caico in Brazil, you launch at six in the morning, and yet there was really not much out there and and no way to figure out where the thermals are, just just following your intuition and letting the glider fly, and you don't really know. I think letting the glider fly to to sniff out thermals is like a an aha that's been uh it's taken me 27 years to get to that point.
What's
the funniest thing you've ever seen flying, either recently or ever?
In Geneva, um, I, I used to live in Geneva, and there was an awesome flying club there. The the LZ is sort of next to a farm, and there's there's there's chickens there, and on a strong thermal day, someone said, "Oh, let's let's take a chicken up to launch and then and then and then let go of it," and the thermals and and uh, and imagine all the other pilots thinking, "You know, her or coring the thermal," and a chicken comes their way like centering next to them. And it's the kind of day where I swear, I swear to you, I saw a chicken.
No one did it, of course, no, no one took the chicken up to launch, but that that's what comes to mind. That's a
Great one. What are your goals this next year? You know, you had some big flights down in the Sertau, and you did this cool bivy. Where do you want to take your flying now? I've
Been wondering if I should try to
learn like the sort of X-Alps landing techniques, you know, the fly on the wall stuff. Chrigel has a tutorial on that, although it's possible that those sort of landings are reserved for people who do, you know, 300 hours a year, you know, shouldn't be tried by, by people who aren't really professionals. That's, but that's something I would, I would really like. Then the, what I strongly want to do is learn more about, from, from other pilots. I've been, most of my flying life, I've been, I've been flying alone, and now, these, these last few years, I've been flying a lot with, with, with my buddies in Alps Freeway, and I've been flying a lot with my buddies in Alps Freeway, and I've been flying a lot with, with my buddies in Alps Freeway, and they are just amazing pilots, and I'm learning so much from them, learning so much about topographies and, and different valleys, and, and how to do certain stuff.
Speaking with other pilots also, in, in the Swiss League, they're doing a great job to sort of share information. There's really so much where I'm, I still want to work on. Then, in terms of, uh, accelerate, you know, speed bar technique, I think I can get much better in efficiently flying on my Bui series versus
pushing and pulling the the speed bar, you know, with the with the two line. I I I've been flying two line wings for two and a half years and I I think there's still so much for me to learn there. Hmm, yeah, that's
A, that's almost never-ending. I find this always get more efficient. Um, last one, Rico, if if you could only make one more flight in your life, where would you go? What flight would it be? Oh,
I don't know. Right now, there's there's a whole lot of them, there's a whole lot of them, but right now we're in the midst of winter and and and they're not, they're not taunting me. So I I I I asked me something else that's did
You did? You enjoy flying in the oh?
Yeah, yeah, it's um, it's great flying. I, I um, I'm not good at the team flying bit. I, I, I'm, I, I don't tend to get into a flow as a team; I just like to fly alone. But it's, it's magnificent, and uh, such good flying there, and such good vibes when you land somewhere in the middle of nowhere and, and uh, chill with the locals and wait to get picked up. Uh, yeah, that's really
Awesome, okay. So this will be the final one, and this is even harder, so I'm ramping it up for you. Uh, why? Why do you fly? I've
thought about that quite a bit. There is a couple of reasons. One is, it's nice to have a mission, and flying gives you a mission, and it's a nice mission because you're every minute, or every spare afternoon, you're trying to get out into nature and spending time with nature, and and trying to do something that is not really intended for humans to do, and trying to do it as best as you possibly can. I think flying is one of the best best sports you could practice because, you know, if you want to have that sort of thing because it's, you know, it ages well, uh, where you're a couple of years older than me, not much, but you're among the world's best pilots.
Which sports is that? Possible, you know, you could, you can, and you're doing adventure racing XC flying. There's no reason why you can't be an excellent XC pilot. You'd be 50 years old or 60 years old, so that, that it was a good choice. It wasn't why I started flying, but it's definitely why I'm gonna stick with it for a long time. That's great, Rico.
What a joy, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for reaching out to me and and sharing with all of us your your adventure and very good. Cool, we'll put some stuff up in the show notes about that, I'm sure. And but thanks, man. I I appreciate it. That was a lot of fun. Very
Welcome, good, good to see you again, and hope next time, uh, we see each other, it'll be somewhere at a, at a launch and ready to take off. Absolutely,
Let's do it. Cheers, thanks.
gavin bye-bye
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