148. Red Bull X-Alps 2021, Gavin answers your questions!

Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloud-Based Mayhem. I am home in Sun Valley, Idaho, and we're camping the rest of the summer. We rented our house, and so I'm sitting in the library, so the sound might be not exactly what you're used to, but it should be pretty good. The show was planning to release last Wednesday, which would have been on time, so I apologize for the delay here. It was with Dylan Benedetti, who I'm speaking to actually in a little bit here today, because when we submitted all the sound to Miles for editing, it wasn't good enough, and I didn't realize that when we were recording it, so we're having to redo that. So again, I apologize for the delay. We were able to put out a couple posts about an Ask Me Anything show about this year's race while it's still really fresh and got a ton of great questions, so that's what we're going to fill this week with.

And then we'll get back to our regularly scheduled programming as soon as we get this Dylan show done. Before we get to that, a little bit of housekeeping. My friend, Stacey Whitmore, and their whole amazing team who runs the Monroe-Richfield Fly-In, the Red Rocks Fly-In, that has become the biggest event in North America by far. I think they had over 500 participants last year during COVID, and just an awesome place to fly at the end of September, early October. And this year... This year, we're adding a hike and fly event, kind of based around the Veraco Fly and Iger Tour races. Of course, we don't have huts here in the States, except a few in Colorado, so we can't do that, but we've got all the waypoints insured through USHPA and ready to go, and we will set the course like they do on the Iger the morning of the event.

And we've got two categories, the pro category and the adventure category. That time of year is still really good for XC flying in that part of the world. It's absolutely beautiful. All the fall colors are out, and this promises to be a really cool race. The adventure race, there are really no qualifications except to be a licensed pilot and be pretty fit and be capable solo in the mountains. These are all unsupported, so there's no support teams. You can have a support team, but you don't need it. We'll have supply stations at various waypoints and should be able to just do it on your own. It's a two-night, three-day race. And for the pro category, and to be... The pro category is going to have as many as 30. But to be in the pro category, you've got to have some pretty serious experience.

So either you have raced in one of the big events like the Born to Fly or Berco or Iger or Dolomiti or, of course, the X-Alps. Or you've got to have really solid top-landing skills, and you could submit video to me. And we've got a little race committee that will go over that. And the prize money, first time there's ever been real prize money, especially on this side of the pond, is $5,000. For the winner. So Nick Nanens is coming, and Kriegel's hopefully coming, and a bunch of others from the X-Alps. So we're working on that. I'll keep updating on that. Pretty fun. There will be a lot more information available soon. We're working on a new website, hopefully. But some information is available now on cuasa.com.

So check it out and reach out to me if you want more information. It should be a blast. This show, yeah, it's an Ask Me Anything. Anything with yours truly. Just got home. This race was properly scary. Oftentimes, it was pretty wild. I know a lot of that was picked up on with the live tracking, but a lot of it wasn't. We were dealing with a lot of fern winds that were similar to what we had in 2015, which was my first. But even scarier because a lot of it was fern wind and a lot of thunderstorms. Unbelievable hail, the kind that breaks windshields on cars. And a lot of lightning and several fear injuries that took people out of the race. And just, yeah, it was intense.

And so let me get into these. And again, while it's still fresh, got some great questions. And I'll be happy to answer more as they come in. We just put this up a few days ago. And I'm going to try to answer everybody that sent me a message either through Facebook or through the email. Let's dig in. This was a crazy race. Alon. Platinum. He said, actually, this is a long one. I apologize. My question is about the race format. It looks as if a number of pilots got injured or had close calls because of bad flying conditions. But it seems having no fly days makes no sense when the athletes are spread all over the Alps. So I wanted to ask your opinion on changing the race format. For example, the route could be split into five two-day segments. The start of each segment is the end of the previous segment.

At the end of each, these two-day periods, all athletes are taken to the start of the next segment. Athletes who don't make it to the finish of a segment. They'll get negative miles. Athletes who go beyond the finish would get positive miles. At the beginning of the last fifth segment, athletes would start based on their mile balance. The advantage would be the athletes stay closer together. So no fly days would make more sense. Also, it could be more exciting for the athletes and the fans to have everyone fly close together. So let me take this piece by piece. The first is, you know, can they close it down? And the answer really is no. And because of that, we're just too spread out. And the abilities are pretty close. But, you know, what might be totally flyable. Uh, for one person isn't for, and might not be for another. And that's just a personal decision. So in this rate, this was the first time I've ever seen a possible race closure.

And that was at the Geisberg when we were down in the Mozart Platz. Uh, it was gusting over 50 up on the Geisberg and Kristoff came to the athlete committee, which is myself and Tom DeDorladeau and Chrigel and said, what are we going to do about this? We get 32 athletes up there. And actually it wasn't 32 because several people weren't able to make the start of this one due to COVID. But, um, I think there was 28 or 29 and he said, there's going to be so much pressure and everybody's going to launch and it's not safe up there. And we agreed, Chrigel came up with an answer that if the five minute average was over 30 K an hour, uh, they'd close the launch. And if it was below that, then they'd open it. By the time we got to the Geisberg, it was the wind had really backed off and it was a non-issue. But from then on, uh, we very, very frequently flew in conditions way over 50 K an hour.

Um, way, way beyond recreational and obviously very dangerous. And it did take a few people out of the race for sure, mostly with fear injuries, but yeah, you just wouldn't be able to mandate any kind of thing like that. It really has to be up to the, the athlete and the pilot and what they're feeling at the time and their own personal decisions and their own personal training. So I don't think you can mandate that as for switching the, the format of the race. Uh, this is actually something zoom. It has been discussing for years. Uh, they've, they've also talked about this, you know, until this year, Kriegel's always so far out in front that they've definitely talked about having it in stages, which would keep everybody together, make it a lot more exciting for the fans. This one was obviously pretty exciting because until day seven, until his breakout magic move, it was really tight when the top 10, it kind of looked like it was anybody's game until he had that amazing flight in that really strong South Fern and, uh, covered a lot of ground.

When. And Maxine and some of the others hardly went anywhere that day. So, uh, we'll get into that. So there's more questions about that later on in the show, but the problem is, is, you know, forever and ever until 2013, I believe this race was whoever got there, they'd leave it open for 48 hours. And then they changed it because that, you know, the race could potentially take 17, 18 days to get there. And that's just impossible from the organizational standpoint. And it's impossible from the team standpoint. You know, maybe. Many people have to get back to work, so they changed it to just 12 days. Now there are some weird rules. If nobody gets there in 12 days, they leave it open for another 24 hours. Or if somebody gets there late on the 12th day, they leave it open for 24 hours. I'm not sure exactly how that goes.

That's all in the rules on the website, but basically it's a 12 day race. And if they do it in stages, they'd have to knock off a bunch of distance, which for various reasons, they don't want to do that. Uh, they like to kind of keep. It harder and longer every time because the teams get better and faster. So we're not sure that, you know, that has been presented to them. Uh, the athlete committee is presented to them and, you know, it's kind of up in the air, but for, as for now, I don't really see that changing, but it's a great idea. Next question is from my friend, Philip Bethke. Uh, what happened in the first two days? Yeah. Team USA had a really terrifically bad start and that was new for us. We've always had good starts in the other three races.

I'd like to blame it on my physical condition, although I certainly didn't feel that, uh, I was fine in the prologue the day before the prologue, I was still kind of having a hard time walking from the crash that I had at the end of the May. And it was kind of looking like, yeah, I don't know, but I felt fine in the prologue and I was fast at the top and it flew pretty well. I kind of blew it. I was in fourth, leaving the start, uh, in the gaggle, but yeah, it made it kind of a quick move with Luca and ended up eighth in the prologue, which was fine. That was great. Uh, it was kind of the only decent day of flying we had in the entire race, actually. Yeah. Felt fine from that standpoint in the beginning of the race, up until about day six, until I started taking antibiotics, I was still really fighting this bad flu that I had when I went over there.

And I can't say that it really affected me physically. I just was coughing up lung cookies, like you wouldn't believe all day and all night. So that couldn't have been good. And it's certainly once the antibiotics kicked in. And it was kind of, oh, this is how you feel when you feel good. So, but I didn't notice that that was affecting anything. It was basically just that nothing we did worked and it wasn't bad decision-making necessarily. It was just, I just wasn't making the moves in the air and every time we'd get to a launch, you know, it, it just didn't work. I was just totally out of cycle with the sky and the sun and the aspect. And, uh, from the very beginning, you know, when I launched, I think I launched seventh or eighth off the Geisberg and everybody was. And,

you know, when the first fleet left, I was with, I was right with Chrigel, you know, just cruising around at the, at the start there. And when the first fleet left, I was, you know, 15 meters lower than everybody else. And I just, you know, it was going to be a really slow, struggling day and I didn't want to be impatient. So I waited. And then when the second fleet left, same thing, I was a little bit low. And then the. And then there wasn't many of us left. It was Manu and Theo and a few others, some of them top landed and waited for better conditions. Theo and I almost bombed out, which would have been terrible, but we survived. And then we all, Manu and Theo and I, and Michael Latcher and a few others left. And, uh, it was just a struggle by then there was more clouds.

So we kind of missed our best window, made it about 20 K down course line. Most of us landed and then Michael squeaked through and, uh, and then. And we, and we, should we fly? Should we not fly? Should we not, you know, some of the people in front of us had bombed out in this kind of pretty tree canyon. Anyway, it just didn't work. You know, by the time that Theo and Manu and I got to another launch, it was really windy. We made it work. We launched Manu, chose a totally different route, which ended up working better for him. Um, I, you know, Theo and I got a decent glide down to the valley. He decided to walk and that was a much better decision. I decided to race up. And try to launch again before 9 PM and launched in a ton of headwind and almost went backwards on a course line.

So that didn't work out and nothing did the next day either. I think the next day I did eight flights and almost 5,000 meters of ascent and it was over a hundred degrees. And, uh, and most of them were just sliders or just trying to survive. And so, yeah, it just didn't work for us in the beginning. We slid way back. Uh, that of course makes it harder because you're working a lot harder. And. The third day was again, pretty hot. And then we started getting the thunderstorms that afternoon, um, getting into Ockentall, did make up a bunch of ground that day as we did in the subsequent days. But, you know, by then the damage had been done. So it was, you know, it was disappointing at the same time. You know, we knew it was long race. We knew other people would hit airspace and make mistakes and bow out of the race.

And to some extent we were able to really claw back. You know, I think we made, made up ground. I'm pretty much everybody at Chrigel for most of the rest of the race, you know, some days were better than others, but I was super proud of the effort and incredibly proud of the team. Everybody stayed wicked optimistic. We had a blast. That was always the goal was just to have fun and come home safe and stick with the process and stick with our plan, which we always did. And sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. Uh, Alejandro said so many things to comment on. Can you talk about airspace? And all the mess that went on with the pilots, infringing it or not, and also about the issues with some pilots and turn points on the prologue. Let me tackle that first.

Yeah. Airspace has really become a problem in this race. In the beginning, they only really cared about the big ones, the CTRs and that kind of thing, but complaints, but because this, the race is so public, they've really got to adhere to airspace. And then now they just care about more and more and more all the parks and the no landing areas. And I mean, there was just hundreds. There's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of airspaces and they were switching them on us right up until the start. And this makes it really tough. You know, you got to update the fly master. You're going to update your phone. You got to stay on top of it. Some summer open some days and closed other days. You know, like when I went through, uh, the Rhone Valley, the wings of the CTR at C on airspace were open. You could fly through them. Other days they were closed for others. That's what Theo had.

I'm not sure if he had the CTR or one of the wings, but yeah, it's just something you really got to be on top of. And you really need someone on your team. If you're not really good at airspace, like I'm not, you need somebody on your team, like Revis, who's really good. And he could update my stuff on the fly. He was constantly sending me new files before I'd take off about stuff that I needed to worry about and others that I didn't need removed. So if you don't have that makes it pretty tricky. The other thing is having a great setting on your phone. If you use something like fly sky high, if you have, you can have a side view, which shows the airspace in front of you. And if you could be over it or under it. Um, so I've never had trouble with airspace. I I've, I've never had, I've never hit it on any of the races. Um, but many people did and yeah, it's just, it's a huge bummer and it's a real mess and it's becoming harder and harder for the organization to handle and also deliver to us in a timely fashion, what we have to worry about and what we don't.

So it gets people every time and yeah, it's a bummer for sure, but yeah, I don't see that really changing.

Uh, the. The turn points in the prologue, what they continue to do, and the athlete committee has been incredibly vocal about this, and hopefully this will not be the case in the future, but they give us 50 meter cylinders and you know, at the third turn point, I spent 1500 feet going up in a five meter climb, trying to hit the damn thing and 50 Miller cylinder. I don't know why they do that. It's ridiculous. I'm assuming they just aren't race pilots and, uh, we've asked them to change that. We've asked them to give us an end of speed section. For the prologue, which they don't do. And so the landing was just chaos because you got all these pilots that are really good that are trying to land as close as they can to the red bull, uh, 10 thing that you got to go through when the clock stops. So if you had an end of speed, like they do in world cups, it'd be way safer and you wouldn't have a gallery of people all over the place.

And I was, it was mayhem. So hopefully that will change. There's no point in having 50. I mean, we had a 50 meter cylinder in the 2017 race and tree glove. And it took me. Maybe 30 passes to try to hit it sounds easy, but you know, when you're really struggling on a super stable day and you're barely surviving and you're trying to hit this thing in the air, uh, and your instruments are obviously there's lag time there. Um, yeah, it's ridiculous. That's all I can say. It just, it doesn't work and it needs to change. How did you keep motivation the first days with the bad weather, the wrong decisions and finding yourself so much back? Could you also comment on the gear? Has the super light been taken too far with pilots having issues? We're flying a wet glider and should there be a minimum parachute size? So, you know, a whole bunch of stuff here.

Let me take these one by one motivation. I didn't struggle with too much. I mean, for sure, it wasn't the start that we wanted, but like I said, it was, it's a long race. You know, things are going to happen. You just have to stay optimistic. You've put a year and a training into it and way too early to bow out. And I knew from previous editions that I think it would have been really tough if this was my first race, but I knew from previous editions that. You know, we know how to make moves and we would make moves and we just had to kind of keep our head in the grindstone. And, you know, we had this kind of motivational sign. Thomas Thirlo actually helped me with working with him this winter, upright in the van. And, you know, one of the things on it is love the grind. And so we just, that just became what we did. Love the grind, keep grinding and it'll work out.

And, uh, you know, we knew in the first couple of days that we were no longer going to be in contention for anything great, but, you know, look at what man. Who did, uh, he was way back with me and he ended up sixth. So, you know, and, uh, you know, I beat Manu back in 2015. So, I mean, we all have similar skills. A lot of the guys that beat me this time I've beaten in the past. It's just, you know, that's how the race goes. And, uh, the cookie crumbles in a lot of different ways that rate ways, and you just gotta stay positive. And so to be honest, I don't feel like I had a lot of trouble with that. Um, you know, for sure. It was really hot first two and a half, three days. And I struggled. With the heat. And that was probably more of a hard thing, especially when you're just walking down the road and really busy roads that, you know, one, one huge bridge.

I had to actually walk on the railing and, you know, it was 300 foot drop-off spring. One of those dangerous things that race wasn't even flying, just walking on this thing with tons of traffic going by. So that kind of thing kind of sucks, but motivation wise, we never really lost it.

The super light side of things. Yes. Of course. Of course it has, um, you know, we're all flying with tiny reserves, you know, the, the really high end, the new harnesses this year, we're all less than a kilo. Mine was 1.3, that Colibri pro, which I really liked, but they don't have much protection and they're super flimsy and they're not very good when you're flying two liners, which we all are now. So yeah, for sure. It's been taken too far, but it adds up to metric tons when you add it over the course of the 12, 13 days. So it makes a huge difference.

I think it's a warning to most pilots out there that, you know, you need a, you should definitely be flying. You should carry an extra 200 grams and have a bigger reserve. I proved that when I crashed in the end of May, I had, you know, one of my tiny little X house reserves and had that been bigger, I probably wouldn't have hit nearly so hard. So, yeah, I mean, you just have to choose what's right for you. And maybe not, maybe not push that envelope too far. Cause you know, I think what is important is that it's all a compromise and you're definitely compromising on, on passive safety when you go to the super light stuff, the wet glider thing. Yeah.

This would be a bit of advice for someone going into a race like this. I had a second set of gear, a complete set of gear. So an extra backpack, an extra wing, all, you know, all I had to do was switch the instruments. My helmet and I had a, uh, you know, a legitimate race kit. Now I wasn't flying that second wing cause it wasn't all logoed up, but very often I was landing either in really wet grass or landing after I'd gotten some rain in the sky. Luckily I was never in the sky in a real proper deluge, which some of the pilots were, you know, I could just switch it out. As long as the van could get to me, I could switch it out and have light, have dry gear that I could carry that was legitimate. And had all the stuff in it, you know, the flare and everything else.

And, uh, but it didn't have all the weight of my wet glider and then my team could try it all out. So, uh, that was really key. I had backups, everything, XC Racer, fly master, flare, wing, harness, everything. I had backups for everything, so I could just switch it out. And that was, that was really advantageous. Reserve size I've, I've commented on. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you just don't want to push that. Yeah. Too much. It's better to carry the extra weight and have a proper reserve all in the photos from you. It seems your backpack is too big to be comfortable way too far away from your back. That backpack, it was the core tells a prototype. It was too big. Uh, and that was my fault. I just, I like to be able to not have to be completely anal about packing my gear.

So, but they, but it definitely could have been smaller, but it was incredibly comfortable. It's an awesome pack. And I really, really loved it from Nadine Weiss. Um, I would be interested in how you perceive the risks of these, the risk of these events. It seems as if more and more pilots are in spite of the challenge, the no flying conditions and think that anything is possible, but it seems that most of the athletes take a very calculated risk where, and what is the difference to a recreational pilot?

Yes, I think we do take a calculated risk, but you also get in a crazy mind frame in this race and this race more than any of the others I've been in with the exception of 2015. We did fly in a ton of wind and it took a lot of people out, you know, and it, they don't report. I'll get into this later. They don't really report on the bad side of things. It's just a red bull dictate, but the, you know, Toma almost died in 2015. Tom, the door little was helicoptered out. I don't know, six or seven people went down to injuries. Um, 2017 was also another bad year. So it seems to be, we lose kind of 20 to 30 % every time, but this one was proper. And I had a number of crashes.

There's a film that will be out probably by the time this goes live that has a bunch of those, uh, and, um, proper scary flying in a ton of wind. This is just way, I can't emphasize this enough, way, way, way beyond anything recreational and, and in my opinion, beyond anything that most of us should be doing. Even X-Alps pilots, you know, maybe with the exception of Chrigel. Maxine, but Paul, he doesn't seem to mind Aaron. You know, they don't seem to mind really extreme conditions, but it's vastly extreme. And the, some of the stuff we were flying, I mean, I was regularly flying in 50 K an hour winds and pretty okay with it.

And, uh, and some of the phone days were just terrifying and again, pretty okay with it. You know, just laughing it off the whole day I had flying down from fish down the road. You know, I had a monstrous tailwind and way too much wind for the thermals to even be a thing. Even it was totally gray anyway. And I basically ridged sword down the room. Uh, you know, I just plant myself onto one of the kind of North, South facing ridges and I wouldn't even need to turn. I just sit there and just take the elevator up and at full bar until I couldn't hang on anymore and huck over the back and do it again and again and again. Slow planted when it was about to. Dump rain and hit out under a cow thing, uh, high and an hour later I was back in the air and it wasn't sunny, but it was just wasn't raining anymore and kept going.

And, you know, I would never certainly comfortably fly on a day like that at home and most days were like that. And so, you know, it's going around Mont Blanc was even worse in a strong North for a day. And so, yeah, it's extreme and it's definitely. I don't think, you know, that one day that Chrigel had the big flight and then he was asked how his flight was and he just said it was bad or something. I mean, it was like, it was one word. It was just the hardest flight he'd ever had in his life. I'm sure he was pretty scared. Sounded like he was catching a lot of collapses. That's Chrigel. And, you know, he regularly trains and 60 K an hour wind and stuff in the snow. So, uh, I, I just can't emphasize enough that this race, you know, on a year like that, you know, 2019, we had no wind.

You can launch anywhere. And there was, there was quite a few thunderstorms and stuff, but hardly any gust fronts, no wind, no fern. And I think for many that that was their first year, we're just blown away by the difference that you can have from one, one race to the next, you know, for those who are contemplating doing the X helps and competing in something like this, you just have to know that that's what you're taking on and you have to be pretty good at judging. Is this, do I have this move? Do I, can I fly? Why in these conditions? And like I said, you do get in this crazy confident head space where you can handle it, um, or you don't, and you lost a few people. I'll talk about that here in a bit to, to fear injuries. And they're, you know, they're very real as

far as calculated risk. I don't know how calculated it is. I, you know, I'd like to think we're all taking calculated risk, but at the end of the day, you know, you huck or you don't. And, you know, I know Tom to door Lido got to a few places. Really tall and decided it just wasn't flyable and walked down and, you know, maybe some of the other pilots would have decided it was okay. Certainly there have been quite a few times where it probably wasn't okay. And I launched and, and, you know, it made it work. So yeah, carnage, there was definitely a lot of carnage in this one, like there has been in other hike and fly races. And again, I think that's just what you've got, you know, that there hasn't been worse carnage is just, it's almost a miracle. And knock on wood, that'll keep happening, but it doesn't seem like that's likely.

Secondly, she said, what did you do for nutrition, nutrition in this race? Mainly fat and proteins again. Yes, to an extent, I really tried to stay with the OFM protocol, which is the optimized fat metabolism. And I did for about the first five days, uh, real heavy on, on protein, real heavy on fat and not a lot of food, you know, letting my body be the fuel instead of glycogen and carbs. And for some reason, this race. That just wound down. I found that my brain wasn't working very well. And when I switched that to, I didn't really switch it consciously. I just started craving more, uh, started eating these huge bowls of oatmeal with lots of nuts and butter and milk in the mornings and adding quite a bit more carbs, more pasta and that kind of thing in the evenings and just started eating a ton more food.

We didn't go that route in 2019. I kind of stayed with the OFM throughout. And this one, it just didn't seem to work as well. And so we started adding more carbs and my brain started working better. I definitely started racing better. And, um, a lot of the issues I was having went away and I wasn't, I wasn't having like GI issues, that kind of thing, but it was definitely suffering a little bit with brain fog and that, that cleared up. And so it was basically a combo and that worked, that worked great. The big difference in this race. From the previous ones were my. Feet. I didn't have any feet problems. I used the Njiji toe socks with smart wool outers, and it was really wet this year. So the dozen or so shoes I had paid off because we were constantly switching them.

And there were times where all of them were wet, but I was really very anal about keeping my feet dry and had one bad blister on one toe early on, didn't even hurt. And then that popped and kind of went away and just dried up and the rest of the race, I was totally fine. So that worked. Great. That was, that was a huge, a positive change from previous events, Jim Furman and Chris Brent, both asked pretty similar questions. So I've kind of combined them. What were some of the fear injuries that were encountered? I heard Lori Genovese had some sort of incident and I know Theo did, but I missed the breakdown. Um, and were you disappointed that Cody withdrew when it looked like you might be eliminated when you could have just waited out the clock? So, yeah, I've commented on that, uh, about Cody. Well, again, I know he's put out a post on Facebook.

I haven't seen it yet. But yeah, I can comment on all this. So yeah, the, the, the physical injuries, the first was Kaneguma, uh, well, first the, the reporting. So like I said before, the Red Bull, there's a dictate, which I didn't understand until actually after this race, cause I had the same question. Why aren't we seeing that stuff? It just seems so interesting. And the fans would appreciate it. I mean, if you weren't following the actual athlete on their Instagram, you didn't get any of that. And it's actually a dictate from Red Bull. They don't, they don't want anything. Bad, quote, unquote, bad out there. Why? I don't know. I can't really understand that. So it just seems totally wrong to me. Uh, but that's what they do. So I encourage you in the future to just follow the people you like on their Instagram or Facebook, and you'll get more information.

But the first major injury was Kaneguma, the Japanese pilot. We noticed that because suddenly his, his little guy went way north and it ended at a hospital. So. So I'm not sure if he was flown there or if he was driven there, but he had a leg injury and that's all I know. I didn't get to see him at the awards afterwards. Uh, Luca and Theo hit the, well, Luca didn't hit it, but he spun his glider and pounded hard, um, to miss a cable up in the Klausen pass. Theo actually hit his and destroyed his glider and luckily was able to have another glider, uh, for him put together real quick and he was able to continue on. I can't comment if he had a fear injury or not. Probably not knowing Theo, but he'd, he'd been a really good post about it. He said it was the scariest thing that had ever happened in his flying career.

This is, you know, if not the best acro pilot in the world, certainly one of the best. Luca, incredibly good pilot, uh, spun his glider and hit pretty hard. He was helicoptered out, but then, uh, just to be safe and he was okay. And then he did the honor code thing, which we all should do if we're at the back, he just sat down and waited. And so that was the day that Cody. And I walked by him and, and, uh, Ogie was, had made a flight a little ways up the Rhine. And so we were all kind of in contention for being eliminated next. So he very kindly did what you're supposed to do, which is just sit down. Cause he was, he wasn't hurt enough that he wanted to keep going, but he wasn't hurt enough that he, um, that he wanted to continue.

So he was eliminated. And the next elimination was between Cody, myself, Lori, and Ogie. We were all. I had a really pretty good day in that South Fern where Chrigel made his big move going the other way, uh, flying in an absolute ton of wind, probably the most wind I'd ever flown in. And I had texted Cody who we were up on the Klausen pass together, but I chose a, I think a little better decision that morning doing a couple little glides. And then I top landed in your bend to get, uh, water and some more stuff and just check in with him. And I top landed near a pilot who, another pilot, recreational pilot who wasn't going to fly, but he was just out there. And I saw him. So I flew over, landed there. And there was, there was a road that the land Rover could get up to us on.

And, uh, and he was looking at all the wind knobs, live wind knobs in, in the area. And, you know, it was gusting over 50 at the peak tops and you could see it. South Fern was just dumping in and I'm really quite a bit more terrified of South Fern than North Fern because of previous experiences, not in the race, but just training in the Alps. And, uh, and I had to get up to the Rome to, to get to feed. And that exposes me to the Andermatt pass where Lori was and where she sat most of the day. And also the Arolo pass, which is one of the major breaks that the South Fern can come through. So we really struggled with, okay, how do we get through here? Should we just walk? Should I try to fly? Should I stay more North, which is what we ended up doing. And you'll see in the film that I top landed on the snow field up above 3000 meters, kind of near Engelberg and near Titlis, which is where we were in the previous race.

So I knew that area. And, uh, it was insanely rowdy, uh, but very beautiful and kind of cool. And we made some great ground until I got to the pass above, um, the Grimsel, which leads down to the Marine and airspace. And I couldn't get over the peaks there to dump into the Rome, which is what I was really hoping to do. Every time I got to about 2,500, the South Fern would slam me and lose the glider. And, and, uh, I tried and tried and tried. And every time I got my head up high, it just slammed me. And so I had to land in the pass. And relaunch and then fly down, um, towards the Marine and airspace, which is really low and kind of gut went underneath it as far as I could and land. And then I had to walk, I think from there, almost 30 K and about 7,500 feet to get up to the Grimsel pass where Ogie and Lori flew later that afternoon and got a little bit of a jump on me heading down to feast.

So it ended up working in terms of making a lot of ground, but it also meant I was still in last and was going to be. Next on the chopping block. And that's when we got the news that, uh, that Cody just DNF. And yeah, so Cody, uh, I was that morning when I learned about the 50 K an hour winds, I texted him and just said, Hey buddy, heads up. It's going to be really rowdy today. And, you know, we're, we're kind of going the wrong way for this, for this kind of condition and, uh, just be careful. And he just texted back and he said, I'm, I'm over it. I'm done. And I didn't think to remind him that, you know, we, don't don't DNF just sit and hang out or just walk or, you know, just be safe. And he'd had some pretty rowdy flights and just definitely was game over.

He would just, he wasn't into it. I'd caught up with him at Santas the day before and we had a nice flight together and you could just tell he just, his head wasn't in the game anymore. And which is totally understandable, especially considering the, some of the stuff that he'd been flying in, he'd been having a really good race, but yeah, he was just kind of over it. And I think he just lost the plot. You know, that's kind of the honor code. That's what you do. You just sit down and you become the next one eliminated. If he hadn't done what he did, then Theo wouldn't have been eliminated in a couple of days. And in the end it didn't affect me, but I certainly thought at the time it would. And I was pretty bummed and very vocal with him. I think I put out something on Instagram that probably wasn't very polite. Um, but yeah, we were all bummed. And then it turned out that Lori, uh, to answer the rest of this question, Lori, a few days earlier going,

into their moose, she signed the board and she was having a really good race, went up, launched in a, sounds like pretty proper thunderstorm and, uh, a lot of rain in her wing went parachutal and she was right over big, high tension power lines and through a reserve. And luckily that worked. It put her in the trees instead of the power lines, but then it took quite a while to get her out and get her rescued. She went back up. I, I heard three times. I never got to ask her this personally. I don't know. I don't know if it was twice or three times and bombed out and just didn't get anywhere. And so had about the roughest day you possibly could. Lori's an insanely good pilot, really good world cup pilot. And like I said, was having a great race and super inspiring and just, um, yeah, freaked her out as it did with Cody.

And so when I was kind of on the chopping block, a couple of days later, going into fish, it was going to be the next morning was the elimination, or maybe it was that morning. I can't remember. She and Ogie were a little bit ahead of me and she sent me a text as I was taking these little glides down the goms down to get down to fish early, early in the morning, uh, that I didn't have to race anymore, that she was just going to sit and wait it out. So she did the, what you're supposed to do, the kind of the honor code thing, which we all know to do. And that was very kind of her. I caught up with her and fish. I was a couple of K behind her at that point and signed the board. We had a nice hug and, um. Yeah, I think that was a very good decision that she made. It was, it didn't get any better.

It got a lot more rowdy. And so, yeah, she had a great race hats off to her and everybody else, but yeah, that's, that's what happened to Lori and to Cody. I don't know. You know, Theo certainly had a really bad day when he got the dead to Osh. He'd hit airspace the day before, maybe the same day. And, uh, so that was going to hit him hard with the 48 hour penalty. But he, he. Also stayed stationary for a long time. I think also the weather was terrible where he was even worse than it was for some others. And so I'm not sure if it was just a weather thing or if he was just over it as well. I never got to ask Theo about that. Livia asks, I would like to hear more of the breakdown of the incidents, the reserve throw, the power lines. Yes. So I've just covered that with, with Lori, some of the other incidents.

Uh, I don't, yeah, I don't actually know more about those. I can certainly comment on mine and I will do here and just. David Straub, uh, it seemed like the race commentary was a bunch of happy talk, but then Chrigel just mentioned a bit about how dangerous things were, rotor and collapses, please link to where the real reporting was going on for the, was it the Red Bull X-Alps addicts? Yeah. Like I said, this is disappointing and I I've taken it up with some of the journalists and, you know, cross country magazine had this thing, you know, uh, Red, Red Bull X-Alps unvarnished, you know, I was doing calls with him in the first few days of the race, but it didn't really work that well. So I'm, I don't know if they kept that going. I know they did one with Tom to Dora Ladeau as well. Tom just put up a podcast, uh, on Red Bull adventure, about 30 minutes that I listened to yesterday.

That was great. It kind of had audio from most of the days of his race. So you can get some more from that, but the best commentary, honestly, was from everybody's Instagram. You know, some people do that a lot, like Paul and Chrigel and myself and Tom and some others, Manu, you know, he had, he had some videos on there. They're landing backwards and a lot of wind, a lot of Valley wind and stuff. So that's the best place I have critiqued this and talk to the race organization. Many times I find most of the reporting to be pretty puff PC type stuff. That's centered on the sponsors and not on what's really going on. And I can say that now, cause I'm not doing it again, but yeah, I think a lot of the reporting, frankly, is pretty weak and certainly could be a lot better and a lot more real.

And that's, that's a bummer. What about the training that Chrigel does prepare for this race flies in high wind? Does anyone else do that? Yes, I certainly do a lot of it. I know many of the others do a ton of it. He's obviously the best and he's, he was the one that introduced all that, you know, flying behind cornices to find out how much wind you can actually fly in and the Lee, um, you know, like Kelly Farina talks about his book, anything over 15 K an hour in the Lee is way too rowdy. Well, I can promise you that we're flying very often in 50 K an hour in Lee. It's not recommended. It's absolutely gnarly. It's incredibly dangerous, but it's what many of us had to do, or if not, all of us had to do over and over and over again. So I think many train for it and, uh, but sometimes you just have to stick your nose in and see how it goes.

Uh, it can be pretty scary. Any thoughts on official wind speed limits? I mean, to me, 30 K an hour in the mountains is still really top end. And incredibly dangerous. And in this race, we were flying in way more than that on almost every day. So there you go. I don't, you know, it's hang glider speeds. It's hang glider winds and we're doing it on paragliders. Is it safe? No, it's not. Landing on roads. Really? This is okay. Sort of taken as normal. Yeah, we all land on roads. You know, there was, there's video of me kind of crashing into a little small tree and people asked why I didn't land on the road. What you can't see from the video is until that moment, it had been really busy and there was no shoulder whatsoever.

And then there's train tracks and power lines on one side. And so I just chose what I felt like was the safer option of landing in these trees. And there was a little bit of grass and it wasn't too bad the way I did it. Maybe I think I could have helicoptered in there better just by, you know, doing really controlled deep stalls, uh, really almost fly back and then letting the wing snap back into position, which the climber does incredibly well. You can almost just take it straight down like a helicopter, but I chose the way I did. Uh, and it worked out, but it could have been certainly worse spun it because I had to rip for just to not hit a tree, caught that and then landed. So, but very often I landed on roads four or five times in this race. And, you know, you just have to judge that from the air many, many, many times.

That's literally to get two or 300 more meters. And that kind of risk is, you know, I actually. Crashed pretty hard coming into fish. I mean, I didn't make it into fish, but a couple few K short of fish, literally, I had a huge field that I could have landed in and I was trying to get another 200 meters and ended up coming in pretty hard on my butt on a rock that I didn't see trying to clear this fence. My whole swoop thing didn't work as well as I did. And I kind of stalled the wing right before I landed. And that kind of risk is I was really hard on myself about that. That's just unnecessary. So I think oftentimes it's literally just because. There's nowhere else to put it in, or you've just passed up a pretty decent launch or sorry, LZ, and you just want the extra distance and everything we can do in the sky is easier.

So sometimes, yeah, I think it's pretty, pretty silly. What about the great dividing point? When, as I vaguely recall, I don't seem to be able to use a way back machine to go to the previous day on live tracking Maurer Pino Patrick canal and outers Benoit were all very close in front and then Maurer just blew them away by taking. A different route to the north. Yeah. I've got some pretty funny thoughts on this, although I wasn't able to confirm this with Chrigel. So the day Davis is talking about, I think it was day seven, uh, Maxine was ahead about 20 K, but they both landed near VISP almost in the same spot. Um, but actually, obviously Maxine landed first and the huge question is why would you take a different line when you're literally in Kregel's backyard and you know, that he's capable of making.

Huge magic moves. I asked the guys at Quartel this, cause they caught up with me when I flew over so launch on getting around, um, uh, Mont Blanc and, you know, I just said, you know, did he just fake them out? Did he do what Chrigel often does, which is, you know, probably kind of walked slowly and let Maxine go. Cause he knew Maxine would, and Maxine had it up to the simple on and Chrigel stayed north, stayed in the room and the next. Day just had that massive breakout flight. So on that strong south Fern day. So, you know, if it's south Fern, you know, the weather's going to be strong, better in the north, but it's also going to be pretty rowdy and he stayed on the north side, which is going to give them the best chance.

So you're not totally in the lee, of course, stay on the south side, but had a huge day. And why didn't the others do that? I, you know, obviously everybody's looking at their own weather stuff and, you know, it's, it's. It's all a gamble in some ways. It's a coin toss. And, uh, I'm sure the thought there was that if you're, if you could stay on the south side, you're going to be in a better place to make distance more safely. But of course you're going to have lower base and maybe more rain and that kind of thing. And that's exactly what those guys got. They got a lot more wind. It was pretty unlaunchable. Most of them walked and Chrigel had the huge day. You know, I think in retrospect, I'm sure Maxine wonders why he didn't follow Chrigel, just wait, slow down. It's just not in our DNA, you know, you hit the ground, you pack up fast and you start moving and I'm sure Maxine thought that he could make a better move there, but yeah, I'm sure he'll be kicking himself for years on that one.

Uh, I think that this race enforced yet again, you know, the talk at the beginning is always, is this going to be the year that Chrigel gets taken down? Certainly this was closer than any, I mean, he's never been in under this kind of pressure. He's always been. He's always got now in front, stays there the whole race. Uh, this one was really tight until that day. And in fact, most of the time he wasn't even in the lead. And so, you know, but you know, he's going to make a magic move and he wants to get improved it and to, for him to get in there in nine days, just absurd or any of those guys, all the top five that made it just unbelievable performances and hats off to him. That's incredible. I, the weather that we were battling was unbelievable.

And that those guys made it is just so, man, so epic, Terry Hansen, uh, what are the athletes think of not ending in Monaco? And do you think the future of the race will also not end there? Definitely. I think the future of the race will not end there. That's been a real pain for the organization. Uh, it sucks for the athletes. It is neat to get to the sea. Luckily I did it in 2015, but so I got to see what that was like, you know, the principle of the race was always to cross the entire out Alps. And so we've lost that. And I know that's definitely disappointing to the rookies, definitely disappointing to anyone who never got there for sure. But as I've said, many times, Monaco does suck. It's incredibly hot. It's incredibly dangerous down there. It's been, that's when you're really tired in the race.

It's just brutal. And so I think for everyone who has gotten there, this was hugely refreshing change and much safer. There's no fans down there and it's really hard for the race organization. Cause the. The roads are tough down there. They always had a very hard time getting permission and nobody cared in Monaco. That's more an F1 thing and big boats and big money. So nobody cared that the ex Alps ended down there. So I definitely don't think that that's going to be the future. I think the future will be more like the race we saw this year. And it was awesome. You know, it was, it was great to do that. It was awesome to have an out and back. It was great to not have to be constantly battling. Headwinds like we normally do.

And I think it's, I think it's pretty exciting. I know that there were some disappointment, especially among the rookies that we weren't going to Monaco. Cause that's kind of what it's all about. But in the end, I think for the most part, everybody really enjoyed the, enjoyed the change. Andy Reid. One thing I'd like to know is why the reporting consistently ignores the support team. Every competitor will tell you how important their team is. And yet year after year, the support teams are totally overlooked. Yeah. They all have incredible stories to tell, but Red Bull just wants films of the pilots. Are they not interested in the human interest side of it? Can't comment on that. I wasn't able to put that question to the reporting teams. I know it's certainly something that everybody thinks about. And certainly, you know, they, I have seen stories about, you know, how important the support teams are, but they don't, you're right.

They don't do a ton of reporting on it. I think a lot of it's just bandwidth to, to. Put it, you know, I, it's just, I asked TARC one, for example, afterwards, you know, why wasn't this reported on that reported on and they just, there's not enough people. There's not enough budget to do it, you know, like it, you know, could be done. I'm sure that, you know, they try to do the best they can. They have video teams and reporting teams all over the place, but in the end, it's really hard to keep up with the teams. They're moving insanely fast, faster and faster every race. And, you know, I'm sure a lot of it's just, you know, what can we cover? What can't we? Again, a lot of the reporting has to keep going back to the sponsors. I think that's really unfortunate, but yeah, that's a big hole for sure. And hopefully that the race will listen to this and, and maybe that'll be a bigger thing in the future.

The, the, the support teams are just insanely critical. I, you know, we have a blast. I can't imagine doing this without the team that I have. In fact, I wouldn't. And many times more fascinating what's going on there than what's going on with the athletes. So you're, you're totally right. I don't have a good answer for you there, Andy. Thomas related question. Would you consider being a supporter for another pilot? Your knowledge and experience is surely invaluable. What do you think about the new format and could it be improved for 2023? By the new format, I'm sure he's talking about the course. I think the course is great. That was a huge refreshing comment on that, but I love it. I have always hated Monaco. How could it be improved?

We just provided a whole bunch of feedback. I think. I think the one major thing is just to extend the rest period, at least a half an hour. I think it is truly dangerous how little sleep we get. And these days with very rare exception, you know, I think twice in the race, we shut it down early the night before, just because we were in position to be on a perfect launch at 6am the next morning, which is when we're allowed to fly. You're allowed to move between five and 1030 at night. Um, and you're allowed to fly between 6am and 9pm. And it just didn't make any sense to keep walking. Cause then I would be in a Valley or something at 6am. So, you know, we, we tried every day to have a flight somewhere around six or seven o 'clock in the morning to just get a glide, get six to 10 or 12 K, or hopefully if it was katabatic and we got really lucky, you could get more than that.

But, um, that was just the style that we wanted to do. It's the style that most of the teams, I did this massive study of Avery of the last few races this whole winter. And most of the really exceptional teams in the top 10 are all flying once in the morning, at least before the big part of the day. And then again, in the evening, you know, that kind of last little flight between eight and 9pm. And so we really tried to emulate that for the most part. It worked. Sometimes it was a big win. Sometimes it was, would have been better just to walk, but I think it's important to do. And so those were the twice, I think in the race, we shut it down before 1030. And otherwise, because we were in position like that, otherwise it was start at five, go to 1030 as, as a lot of the, especially the teams at the front did.

So if you lengthen that rest period a half an hour, I just think it'd be a lot safer. Other than that, you know, there's a lot of things that they could do that I think would make it more entertaining, like having the stage race, that kind of thing, more like the tour of France. But, you know, as I mentioned earlier, there's, there's challenges with that. And I'm not sure that's going to really happen. Would I be a supporter for another pilot? I would, of course, I'm going to support, I was planning on supporting Ben for the Owens thing that Logan was running. Although I heard that he's just canceled that for lack of interest. If Ben or if Ben ever decided to do something like the X-Pyr, I would support him in that. My hesitancy is that I wouldn't be great. I wouldn't be like Revis or Ben or the other members of my team, just because I'm, I'm not very technical.

So I'm not very good at the computer and the weather stuff. Like Revis is, and I'm not very just military in terms of diligence and organization like Ben is. I mean, I'm up at 440 in the morning. I have a quick bite to eat that Revis has made me and I grab my stuff and I go and all my instruments are on. They've been charged all night. My watch has been charged, my instrument, everything's ready to roll. And Ben is doing that on no sleep. He gets, those guys get less sleep than I do. And so I'm just not very pedantic. I'm not very thorough. It's not my personality. So I'd have to really work at that. I think my experience would be helpful, but from the pilot side, and those are skills that, you know, that are very easy to pass along.

The person I'd be supporting has to have those skills ingrained and have them anyway. So I'm not sure I'd be great at it, but of course, if somebody asked me, I would, but only my team. It's, it's, it's insanely hard endeavor. It's very, very time consuming. There's a particular style that team USA has that I would want to have. And so I wouldn't certainly wouldn't take it lightly, but I would consider it for, for someone who has supported me. Of course, Ben Netterfield asked, did you find it hard to switch on and off at the end of the day and actually get rest or something's playing around in your head, especially once the fatigue set in? Yeah, I had a hard time sleeping, especially the first few days. I used things to help with that. Nothing like ambient, but you know.

Various supplements and I use this stuff from on it called new mood and I use fin a bit that Revis would give me and I use melatonin and just things to kind of quiet down for the first few days, especially day two is you're kind of, or sorry, night number two, cause you're not the night right before the race, but the second one, uh, I try to bank as much sleep as I can in the weeks before the race. And that might just be lying down. You don't, they've proved that you don't necessarily need to sleep, but just lying down, relaxing, meditating. I do that as much as I can. As much as I possibly can before the race starts. And I've sailed around the world a couple of times, so I'm pretty good at sleep deprivation. Um, this whole race, usually those guys have to like shake me awake and this whole race, you know, they wake up and 10 minutes later, I'd be up and out of bed working on my feet, having some food and be ready to roll.

I was just excited. I was excited. I was stoked. I was really excited to catch up and just keep grinding and I was kind of in it the whole time. So I don't think I had too much. I don't think I had too much trouble with that. Uh, yeah, it is an issue after day five or six. I mean, when I have dinner, I would just fall asleep in my bed. In fact, well, one of the questions here that we're going to get to is one of the funniest things that happened. And one of those was I fell asleep when those, when Revis was making dinner. This was one of the times where we were able to shut it down early because we were in a good position for the next day. And, uh, and Revis kind of shook me awake and he said, okay, it's time to go again. And I thought it was the morning. They were just playing a joke on me. And, uh, you know, I'd slept for 20 minutes and I thought it was morning. Oh man, really?

Jeez. That didn't seem like a very long sleep. And I kind of rustled out of bed to get going again. And they were just cracking up here, buddy. Have a beer. Dinner's ready. After a while you get so exhausted. It's pretty easy to sleep. I actually had really good rest in this one. Next question from Ben, having had the crash not long prior to the race, when coupled with some brain fog, did you notice any moments or days of decision-making were a bit haphazard? No. Yes. Uh, several times in this race, I literally got completely lost in the air and that was just totally brain fog. You never feel it. You feel like you're okay. But there were a few times in the race where Ben actually asked me, you know, Hey man, how are you doing? I'm fine. What's going on? And he would say, well, yeah, you don't, you seem pretty spaced out.

And there was the day, probably the best, most fun I had in the race was, uh, we were in the Valley. Behind Laramoose. It's where Firebird used to be. And Robbie Whittall used to have Firebird and it's supposedly the hardest, most difficult, sketchiest place to fly in the Alps. I can't remember the name of that Valley. It's the one that leads up to the Wharf Pass. We were between the Laramoose and, uh, Santa's turnpoints. And I had this really cool flight the night before off the castle. I'm sure many or all of you saw that. That was insane. It was so cool. And I had this 71. To one glide down the Valley is completely dark, lightly raining and this epic glide down the Valley made, you know, 15, 20 K and then a hike the rest of that night.

And then the next morning was got caught up with, I actually had a glide in the morning and then I got caught up with Addy, the photographer and Robert Bloom, who is the current German FAI world champion, sorry, German champion for FAI. Really, really, really good pilot. And I knew who he was and they caught up with me and, you know, we're not allowed to team fly at all, but we're allowed to fly with recreational pilots. And, um, it was just to be in a place that I didn't know at all with the German champion and Addy was a really good pilot. You know, we hiked up to this launch and I just said, Robert, I'm following you, you know, and he basically took me up to the Wharf Pass. We weren't able to get over it. The cloud base was too low. And I came into this ridge with a bunch of wind with just slightly less height than he was able to kind of dig out.

And I wasn't landed. He came down, landed with me. And we raced up to the pass and, you know, so we flew, I don't know that 25 K, but it was insane to just be able to unload my brain and follow someone. And suddenly I was climbing really well and everything was clicking and I was keeping up and, um, we were just having a blast. And then we were hiking up to the pass and I thought I was going to get to fly with him. This next section, which is really difficult down to Feldkirk, down to this big gap that you've got to make it across the flats over to the Santa. And, uh, he just, he said, oh, I'm sorry. I just got the call from Addie. Uh, I'm going to have to switch to Marcus. I'm gonna have to leave you. And I should've just said, dude, I'll pay a thousand bucks. Stay with me, but, oh, shoot.

And so he came into the race van and showed Revis, you know, exactly what I needed to do to get through this next section, which was really complicated and a bunch of different moves. Okay. Now around this corner, try to get some, uh, you know, try to get a Lee climb and there's no sun, but try to get a Lee climb. And then. Across the valley, across to the ski area, top land, hike over to the top. There's a hut up there. Keep flying, you know, keep going down to, I can't remember, uh, I can't remember the name of the town, but anyway, towards, towards Santa's and, and we mapped it all out and we put it in my phone and I took off and I got this cool climb exactly where he said I would. And, and I just kept flying down that same Valley, looking at my instrument going, why is it telling me to go over? I don't understand it. I just, nothing in the sky made sense.

And I totally blew it and, um, ended up slow planning and climbing another 1500 meters up into the clouds and flew again and landed. And I mean, it took me three flights to get out of there when it was, should have taken me one, maybe. And, uh, who knows, it's hard to say, and Revis really thought it ended up working out pretty well, but just got completely lost, just totally blew it. And that happened several times where I, I just couldn't read my phone and yeah. Yeah, pretty funny. Um, so yeah, there was, there's, uh, stuff's pretty interesting. So the, yes, it definitely was been pretty haphazard. Uh, what was the funniest moment human team had together? There was two, uh, one of the last days when I was rounding Mont Blanc had this very special flight across Solange and Passy in total darkness.

It was not from dark, from being dark at night, but just no sun. And you just kept finding these cool. Convergence lines and milk and every little bit of lift. And then it did one of these where I had a very easy landing and, or I could fly another 200 meters into this kind of unlandable Canyon flew back in there. Of course, as we do, and there's little tiny field, huge trees, and I just had to arc it up on a wing tip and come in with a ton of energy. Thought I had the camera on and had it off. And so when I landed, I turned it on and just as a couple of horses approached me and you got to watch the film. It's after the. Credits. This is a little seven minute film. We'll put up here very shortly and it'll crack you up. I'm not real big fan horses and they were really a big fan of me. And the other ones, when I just told you, they woke me up in what I thought was, you know, four 40 in the morning to get going.

And it was just because I'd fallen asleep while, while, uh, Revis was making dinner, but we had a lot of very fun, funny moments. Most of them, I can't, uh, repeat on a podcast because they involved a lot of language and a lot of pretty funny stuff. But it was. It was, we had a blast a to Z. It was always fun. Those guys are really good at laughing at me and making fun of me and that keeps everything pretty light. So yeah, it was, it was great. Stanislav asked, is it still fun or when it went to the stage of only professional teams with huge number of people behind them can compete? Is it, in other words, it's still fun that the teams are getting so professional with so many supporters. I love following it, but it seems like even more ridiculously hard and impossible than before. That last bit is totally true.

I think the top 10, at least teams, not more are insanely good, insanely fast. It's just a totally different game than it was in my first year in 2015. I keep saying this every time, but you know, we'll get asked a question here shortly that covers some of this too. Most of the top 10 pilots are all professional pilots. That's all they do. Uh, they're test pilots. They easily over 300 hours. A year. Somebody like Patrick is 500. Yeah. It's still a blast. It's still an amazing adventure. I still love it. This was very clearly going to be the last, even before this one started, I just, at my age and the amount of training I have to do, it's, it is ridiculous.

And even when I did all that, I had a really hard time hanging with those guys and those teams. And so, yeah, think about that long and hard before you apply to this. I think, you know, those of us that are on the other side of the pond, we're at a massive disadvantage, just, you know, unless you spend so much time over there training as I have in my did before the 2015 race, but it's still nothing compared to those guys and those teams. And so it's still a blast. It's still the craziest adventure in the world. You still, the grace brings you to the most amazing places and you find yourself doing the most incredible and at times stupid things. Yeah. But it's magnificent. It's the most fun I know how to have.

And, you know, if you have a good team, like, like we do, it's a blast, but yes, it is ridiculous. Trey asks, Trey Hackney, my friend, Wyoming asks, I'd like to hear some stories about your top highlights and the flip side, some scary moments for the most challenging situations, flying outside of the standard reasonable conditions. What that was like in the physical reality of managing the glider when conditions are pushing all the limits. Yeah. I talked about this a little bit, but top highlights for sure. Uh, the flights, I got these little, really cool flights between the Ockentall turn point, the Kimsey turn point, and yeah, let's see the Laramoose turn point when it just looked totally unflyable Luca and I had this crazy flight out of the clouds, leaving the Kimsey and, uh, then, you know, just, just went hundreds and hundreds of meters where you couldn't see anything.

And, uh, then we both popped out and followed each other on this Ridgeline. It's just beautiful. It just shouldn't be working, but it was. And then the next flight, I didn't let the sun come out long enough and made it across the end Valley landed in a bunch of wind. And then Luca flew over my head and had a really big day. And I ended up having to hike up to a launch with Ben and, uh, and then kind of making it work. I mean, I lost a couple hours on Luca there, but we're a lot of people. We're on the ground and fighting a ton of wind. You know, I was able to piece together these kind of short, really cool, very fun flights through the lakes and the Northern Bavarian Alps and, uh, make, made a lot of ground that day on Nick.

Cause he and I were both kind of on the ax on the chopping block for the next elimination the next morning. So that kind of, that gave me some breathing room. And then another huge highlight was landing on that snow field, which is in the film on that. And, uh, it was, it was, it was a proper South Fern day and, and luckily the snow wasn't isothermic and it was just beautiful, amazing up there was scary, but really cool. Uh, and then two huge highlights, one was the big day leaving fish and when, um, Ogie bombed out and I just made massive distance that day in the weirdest, just, you know, we had a massive tailwind, which I'd never seen in the room. You never get East winds there. Yeah. Yeah.

I was flying over. I was proper in the big Alps there flying over glaciers and frozen lakes and flying in a ton of wind, but it was working and I just, that was one of those days where I was screaming in my glider. Yeah, babe, we got this. And, and, uh, you know, just massive air, huge air. And, you know, I don't think I had much more than tip collapses that day. I would just, you know, just felt like I was really on it using a ton of bar. My wing and I were one. I knew how to use it. I just would never fly like that on any, I just be no point to go out on a day like that. And, but it ended up being, the timing was on a slope, landed high before a rainstorm. There was luckily this little cow thing I could tip over my head and stay dry during the rainstorm.

And then got another good flight after that landed near this, um, cheese maker shop and bought some cheese and some sausage off on when it just unleashed huge hail and mudslides. And I was able to kind of hide under the roof and eat cheese and eat sausage and then get another couple of flights that night. Some of that's in the film, crazy clouds and made up a bunch of distance. Got way ahead of Ogie. So I didn't have to worry about being eliminated anymore. Um, made up a bunch of ground on Theo. I actually made a bunch of ground on everybody that day. So that was, that was very, very special. And then the last really special one was two flights, uh, going around Mont Blanc. And this combines with the scary part of it. Actually the Dent d 'Auche day. None of this is on film, unfortunately, but launched one day.

We were just trying to do these little valley, these little kind of ridge to ridge crossings. And there was really strong headwind. But if you kept your head down, you could stay underneath it. It was blowing like 50 K an hour, just above my head. And every time you get to a coal or something, it was just, geez, this is on fly. This is scary. And you'd go down, get underneath it a little bit and go, oh, it's going to be hairy, but I think we can do it. And I took off. I sat there with Ben for about 20 minutes. And, you know, there were times where I was like, oh, this is scary. There were times where it was swirling. There were times when it was really strong down. We were just very clearly just totally in the rotor. But there were times where it seemed manageable. And I waited for it to, you know, get some kind of upslope wind. Launched immediately, 20 feet off the ground, lost over half the glider. And just immediately spun me right in towards the hill.

And looking at Ben, just thought, okay, I'm dead. And spun the glider hard the other way and landed. And, you know, it was nice, soft grass. Luckily, I didn't hit any rocks. The glider came down hard. Packed it away and walked. And walked to the next ridge and then flew again. Same kind of conditions. I mean, it was just, you know, Ben said his heart rate didn't even go up. I kind of went around the corner so he didn't see anywhere I landed. And he thought, well, he's either dead, but he's not screaming. So he's either dead or he's okay. You know, he's probably okay because you usually are in this race. So, I mean, it's just weird. It's just unreasonable. And then at the end of the day. That night had the great flight across Solange up into the Coteens Valley. And then the next day, epic hike with Ben up into the pass.

You know, we were skiing on our feet and blowing so hard. It was just, this is totally unreasonable. But I got kind of a round away from the wind. Again, launching in total rotor. And just to save myself 20K to fly from one cold to the next. And, you know, as rowdy as it gets. This is in the film. Some of this, the launch was at least. Ben caught it on film. And, you know, had a really scary 20K flight over this big deep valley across to this next cold. And there were people down the cold. There were hikers. This is a day. It was really strong North Fern. And cleared the cold with 300 feet. And literally went 300 feet straight to the ground. Just 10 down, 12 down.

The glider was flying. It wasn't parachutal. But I had no control of it. And right before I hit the ground, the only thing I was trying to do was land in the snow. There was all this snow. And then there was rocks and dirt. And I couldn't get it onto the snow. I landed about three feet off the edge of the snow in the dirt. And I thought, oh, my God, I'm going to break my legs. And it was the softest ground. It was just totally soft mud. And as soon as I landed, the wind, the wing just ripped out of my hands. It was blowing 50 miles an hour. And I was able to pull it in and just sit there for a second. And go, jeez, dude, I mean, how many times are you going to keep doing this? And walked over to another coal. And walked down a little bit. Got out of the wind. And judged it to just be unflyable.

Sat there for an hour. And then Revis suggested that I keep moving around. Get away from the road or more. He thought it would be potentially flyable. He was reporting some pretty scary conditions down in the valleys. But thought that the uppers would be okay. And launched in maybe the strongest winds I've ever launched in. And just got plucked and went straight up. And flew 50 or 60K in lovely air. It was, you know, rowdy and very strong. But I could just, again, I could plant myself onto these west-facing slopes that also had sun on them. And just and get to where I couldn't hang on anymore and go to the next one. And that worked.

Until I got to one place that was kind of sticky. Slope landed. Walked over a little coal. It was 100 meters of climbing. Relaunched. At this point, the wind was really easing off. And flew another, I don't know, 40K or so. And got to where the valley right before the Mackinac Valley. So right underneath Monterosa. I'd cleared the Matterhorn. And everything was going really well. I'd picked off at that point Yael. And Michael. And because they had taken different routes. And Michael was kind of stuck at that point. He was, I don't know. I never got to talk to him. I'm not sure what was happening. But he wasn't really moving. And the next valley had had this big cell blow up in it.

So it had no sun. And the cloud base was way below where I was. I was about 3,200 at the top of the peaks. And I could easily lob into there. And I briefly discussed with Revis if I should fly down into the Aosta instead. And avoid that valley. But we had the airspace to deal with there. And anyway, lobbed into the valley before Mackinac. And predictably, because it had been cloudy for I don't know how long. But at least as long as I had been able to see it over an hour. There was no thermals and no wind. So nothing I could surf. And so I slow planted really quick. And did the calculation really quick. And they did as well. And said, hey, if you book it, you can get up there about 840. And get one last final glide into the Matterhorn. And you'll be up there at 2,500 meters. And you'll get a nice glide.

Got up to the top where other athletes had been. And it was totally isothermic, deep snow. And there was no wind at all. And so my first two attempts at a forward failed. And then I plucked a line on a rock. And was just scrambling to get off. I was like, God, I got to go. I got to go. I got to go. And finally did 10 minutes before the cutoff. And Revis called and said, you need a two to one. Or you got to get on the ground. And I was getting this epic glide. Way beyond pulley to pulley. Just full bar as fast as I could fly. And pulled up my maps. And it's been my dream to stay at a refuge. A hut high in one of these. And I read the maps. I could see this kind of hut. This building off to my left on top of this ridge line.

And it looked like I could make it. And I said, hey, I'm going to go to this hut. And he said, great. And the hut was actually below me now in the bottom of the valley. And so I did this fly on the wall killer slope landing in this little teeny tiny field below the hut. And landed and looked at my maps and realized that that wasn't a hut. It was just an abandoned building. The hut was down below. And I had already blown the opportunity to just spiral down. And so soul crushing. But I had to walk down 1,500 feet. It wasn't a big deal. But I basically walked down, spent the night at the van, and then walked back to the exact same place. And flew the next morning. So that was the only problem in an otherwise. Really, really epic day. So yeah, lots of highlights. You have them every day.

Lots of big downers too. And a lot of really scary ones for sure. The beginning of the race, of course, was not scary. It was just that didn't really work. How common were collapses? I heard from many others that they had a lot. Even Chrigel. I flew the climber 2P. It's an epic wing. I didn't have many. For the most part, I had the one on that launch. Which ended up in a crash. That went well. But other than that, in the air, in the really rowdy conditions, I don't remember ever losing the wing actually. It's an amazing wing. Yeah, any situations you might not get out of that you might need to throw, several. Definitely had looked at the reserve handle many times in this race. But luckily never did.

But the worst was that one at the coal when clearing Mont Blanc. That was definitely pretty dicey. I'm not sure the reserve would have helped. In fact, it would have been really scary because the wind was so vicious on the ground. I would have gotten total over the place without having to cut it. Would be cool to hear more and learn secondhand about the reality of flying in fully extreme conditions like this year presented with such high wind. Hopefully I've covered that. Any valuable lessons or insight you learned this time around about flying in strong rotor? Yeah, I don't know that this needs to be shared necessarily. But you could fly in a lot more wind than you think you can. But man, you're taking a lot of risk. And one thing I learned from Will on the Rockies Traverse is, of course, the safest place to be is right up in the terrain.

Like right on the terrain. Right behind the rotor. This is what Kregel's learned flying in the cornices and stuff. So yeah, you got to be right on the terrain. And that's scary. And so very often pushing into the lee is pretty hardcore. And you take a bunch of hits. And you'd get in these huge flushes. And you just got to stick with it and keep going. And then, of course, you're going to be tighter on the terrain. So I'm just not sure it's reasonable. I'm not sure that kind of risk is definitely not worth it if something happens. But you can handle way more than I thought you can. But I certainly don't look forward to it. Gunner Freeze asks, what's the biggest takeaway from the race? What did you learn?

God, I certainly learned that we could be stupid. The risk is too much. And that was... I've known that from previous events. I don't know if that's changed because I have a daughter and family now. But like Will Gad's experience, we're going to get to Will Gad's question, which is the final one here next. But he felt like the race was just too much. It pushes the envelope too much beyond what should be comfortable. And that's certainly true in this one, in the 21 race. And it's too much. And it's certainly beyond what is reasonable for me. It certainly seemed like that was the case for many others, even Chrigel on that flight.

I know many of the athletes I spoke to are pretty excited about doing it again. This for me was it. And that's more my age. Ogie's insanely inspiring. God, what a dude. But I learned in this one, I think, of course, there are people that I've beaten in the past that I think I could still be competitive with if things had just rolled a different way for us. I'm not sure that 17th is really where the preparation and the training and stuff puts us. But this is a crazy race. Things happen good and bad. And so that's where we ended up, which I didn't really care about, honestly. When we went into this race, the goal was to just stick with the process and have a lot of fun and be safe.

And I'm not sure that third one was. I'm not sure we held to that. You know, I know I scared my team several times. There were some couple of things I did that were just flat out stupid that I kind of did in a brain fog that could have been really way, way worse. And I'm just not sure I've got the youth and the reaction time and to deal with that stuff safely. And I don't think that I don't think the training that I did, the training that I do, I know that, you know, some people can get away with doing a lot less. But, you know, I like being able to do 50,000 meters in 12 days, which is what I did. You know, that's six times up Everest.

You know, I know that I'm not as good a pilot and I know I don't know the Alps nearly as well as most of the teams do. And so I've got to make up for it in other ways. And to do that just requires an insane amount of time. And hats off to Ben. My supporter, Ben Abruzzo, who's trained me and also been my supporter in all the races. His training is incredible. He also trained Eduardo, who had an amazing race, who also felt better at the end than he did in the beginning. And, you know, hopefully we'll see him doing it again. But yes, hats off to Ben for the training. But it's just become too unreasonable, just requires too much time. I hope that answers what did I learn. Will Gadd, really enjoy your emphasis on battling well rather than just the results.

Question. Almost every pilot in the top 10 is a full-time competition test-sponsored pilot. Is it necessary to have test pilot 300 hours plus a year level skills to hit the podium in the X-Alps? I'll tackle that one first. Yeah, I think it is. In 2015, my first one, you could make big mistakes and make huge comebacks. And it was a very different race. It was still a little bit more of an adventure then. Now, you know, I think Chrigel said after the prologue that when he did the prologue, that there were five, six French pilots who applied to the X-Alps who didn't get in. You know, the French are that deep, who would have beaten everybody but the top three potentially and been in the top three in the prologue.

In other words, in the prologue, we had great flying conditions. And, you know, I think I was eighth and I was 20 minutes behind Chrigel and Maxime and Tommy, you know, for a very short race. You know. Some of the teams that were in the borns to fly are exceptionally better pilots, according to Chrigel, than many who are in the X-Alps. So, I mean, I think the X-Alps definitely attracts some of the best pilots in the world. But there are many, especially in the French and Swiss, who don't even make the cut because they're so deep as nations. And certainly the top ten are totally professional. And at a completely different level.

And, you know, those of us who are 49 are just never going to catch up. You know, I get 300 hours a year, but I'm never going to catch up to it. I'm never going to be the pilot that Maxime is and Chrigel is and Patrick is and Benoit. And, you know, and Benoit can do 100K on the ground every day. And he's always running. And, you know, that's just unbelievable. And so, yeah. I think that this year we really got it. We saw in that top ten, you know, the skill level is remarkable. And if you don't live in Europe and you don't train in Europe and you don't race a ton, I think racing is really important, and you don't have that local knowledge of every little piece, or at least most of those little pieces of the course,

you've got a hard road to get in the top ten. It's nearly impossible.

From what I saw, the launches, landings, and lines flown, it should look like pilots better be very comfortable operating way, way outside normal flying conditions. I'm okay with that. But I think this year's tough conditions really emphasize very specialized and high-level skills, or maybe not. What do you think? Yeah. And I've tapped on this in some of the other questions. Obviously, many of you saw that. And that's why you're asking about it.

It's extraordinarily extreme. And what more can I say about it? I just – I think that – every pilot in this race – I mean, look at Cody. He's maybe our best acro pilot in the U.S. right now. He's very regularly in the top ten in the World Cups. He's a very safe and capable, talented, hardworking pilot. And it was just – the extreme of this was too much. And I totally get it. And Laurie, same thing. Top ten in the Superfinal last year.

She's an awesome pilot. Really knows how to race well. Had an incredibly talented team. Yael, same thing. Michael Vichy was her supporter. One of the best in the world. You're going up against the best of the best. And the conditions, I think, really challenged everybody, even Chrigel in this one. And I guess that's just not to be taken lightly. And so, I don't – I don't think it's reasonable to tackle something like this unless you have a mindset of totally be willing to walk and not racing the others unless you're a totally professional pilot. And the other big one is that most of these guys that are certainly in the top ten are also doing all the other races.

Chrigel went from this one to, what, five days later, competing in the Eiger. But he's had really bad weather. And he still won it. So, you know, most of these teams are over there competing in hike and fly year-round. You know, they're doing one after the other after the other. And that experience really adds up.

That's it, folks. I hope I answered those well enough. I'm still a little bit in a brain fog. Thank you all for your awesome questions. And if you've got more, send more. I'll do what I can about answering them in future shows. Thanks, everybody. And I hope you enjoyed the epic race. And the big show. And our efforts. And I hope you watch the film. Take a look out for that. We'll post it up everywhere. It's a lot of fun. And Ben Horton shot all of it except some of my POV. And he's a real pro. It was awesome having him on the team and handling a lot of the content this year. Thanks, everybody. Appreciate it. See you on the next one. If

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