Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. I am back and feeling better, and my voice is back, so good to be back on the horn here making podcasts. My guest today is a good buddy of mine who I don't see nearly enough, Debbie Chaudhry. He is a pilot from, he hails from Manali, just on the other backside of Beer, and you all know him from putting up big flights out there for years and years. He's been flying almost 30 years, and was part of the team with Eddie Colfax and Jim Mallinson and John Sylvester and Antoine and all those guys guiding out there. That's where I met them the first time back in 2009, doing a trip with those guys, and then back again in 2009.
I met him in 2011, and Debbie now lives in France with his family and guides and instructs and does tandems. Just got back from Columbia guiding down there, and I've been wanting to talk to him for a long time because of these awesome, huge flights he's been putting up the last few years out in Beer, and had the record, lost the record, and had the record, got the record again and lost it again, but he's been putting up some really cool, bivvy flights and out and backs and just flying in that big, magnificent, incredible terrain. So, yeah, we sat down and chatted bivvy and flying and passion and guiding and more bivvy and more flying and had a blast. So I hope you enjoy this talk with Debu, the legend of the skies in India.
Cheers.
Debu, that took us several months to put together, but it's good to finally have you on the show. I'm actually, that's encouraging that we're both so hard to track down. I think that means we're having a good time.
Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. It's been a while, but like you say, I guess we're both having a good time and busy, but I'm really happy that we got it together and glad to be here with you.
You know, I was laying in bed last night trying to remember. The last time we saw each other, was it when I was in Bir or we've seen each other since, I hope, right? That was 2011. It's been a minute. I
think it was in Switzerland, wasn't it? In the bus, in that bus.
Yes, that's right. I was thinking the
same last night. It was funny. I was like, when did I see Gavin? He was like, in the bus in Visb. I remember we had the evening together.
That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gotcha. In the Niviuk mobile. Okay, there we go. Yeah, cool, man. Cool. Cool. Cool. I mean, it's so fun to just think about you because it just puts all these memories into my mind from those early days. I mean, I still chalk up all the madness that has happened since. I mean, those were my very early days, you know, with the trip to Bir in 2009, the first one, and then the second one in 2011. You know, I still had the boat thing going very much. I mean, that was my business. I didn't have a lot of time to fly. Yeah. And just hanging out with you and Jim and Eddie. And John. And, you know, I did my first bivy ever with John. We flew back over the back to Manali and Topland and slept around a fire and got encased in the ice.
And he was just happy as Larry. I was completely frozen. And I thought, I got to toughen up. And, you know, yeah, here's some tea. You'll be good. But you've been doing some amazing routes and lines and stuff out there. And before we get to that, I just thought we should catch the audience up a little bit. With you. You just got back from Columbia. I know you're doing some guiding. You're living in France now. But give us the background of, you know, the quick hit resume of your flying history, how you got connected with the boys, you know, where you're from and what you're doing these days.
Yeah. Okay. So I guess I start at the beginning. Well, you've been to Manali. That's where I grew up in North India.
And my mom's Italian. My dad was Indian. And I was born in Manali. And I think I first the first paragliders I saw there must have been about 91 or 92. And already I was like, fuck, that looks cool.
And in 94, I got the chance to have a go on the school slope with one of the local guys who started it there. And, well, that was it. You know, that was the beginning of the I haven't stopped since.
Wow. And yeah. Yeah. Till about 2000.
We flew quite a bit, but not that much because I would work in the summers in Europe. I mean, I quit school in the meantime, which to go work to make enough money to buy to buy wings and shit. And then we had a nice community in beer. I mean, like, you know, beer is not quite what it used to be 25 years ago. But I remember the first season, I think it was 96 that I was there. And there was maybe. Six of us. and we spent the month flying there and it was very chilled you know we just fly in top land we didn't really know about cross country and we kind of teach ourselves and uh from there the big change actually came in 2001 when they had a pre-world cup there and uh Xavier Murillo turned up with a whole bunch of hotshot pilots and we were like aha okay there's a lot more to learn
uh cool which kind of motivated me to start doing comps which uh opened up a whole new new page and uh and progression I guess um after that I spent summers working in Europe and doing comps uh mainly uh and then I think I started guiding in about 2006 I think when uh Jim and Eddie and all asked me to give him a hand and uh so that was the beginning of the kind of guiding thing and we had quite a few years that's where we met uh I think was it 2009 you said you came yeah
and Antoine was there in one of them I think Antoine was there in 09 and I flew with him quite a bit and John and yeah I was it was just magic and then we came back in 2011 and we did that outside tandem thing do you remember that uh
that's right yeah yeah we
brought a guy who did a lot of things and we did a lot of things and we did a lot of things and we did a lot of things did an article and because you guys were kind of you were contemplating getting up you know a kind of a business almost going where you were Sky Camping with tandem passengers which I thought was really neat yeah
that was the tandem Safari idea I think yeah that's when yeah I did that I forgot the name of the guy but I remember from outside magazine and I think John and Eddie and all did actually run one trip I don't think I was there I'm not sure why I wasn't there but they did actually try it once uh but I think the the logistics and all was quite complicated in the end so I think they just went back to yeah back to guiding after that I
don't know if you remember it I had a crazy crash there flying with John where I just totally walked away it was a miracle and but you guys had you had it set up where donkeys or burrows or something would bring up it was there it was that place we we camped there that night where I crashed and uh and they had you know everything got brought up to us it was amazing it's quite neat I mean it wasn't that far from the beer launch as I remember it was 25k or so down the Ridge but it was yeah that
spot's become quite famous now it's called 360. I bet and uh yeah like when we were there that time we'd have the Colonel he'd come up remember with all his staff and we got like a full Maharaja kind of treatment and tents and that was quite fun but um since then I think around I'm not sure which year but a French guy called Robinson has built a super nice house up there and uh and then he's hung he's got together with the locals and uh they've built like a campsite and you can fly there and spend the night and you know rent a tent or whatever and get food and yeah it's super cool place 360.
wow sounds very sounds very Alps-esque
yeah exactly it's kind of like a like a Indian version of a Swiss hut yeah
well you've been I mean before before we get into some of the crazy awesome flights you've been doing out there uh I just you mentioned a couple things I wanted to get into are you still flying comps or how how does your how does your year get used up flying wise these days uh I know covid disrupted everything but let's pretend it was a normal year
uh so um basically I stopped flying comps seriously in 2012 when I had a child or my wife had a child changes things as you know yes and then we had another one so I didn't really do many comps uh between 2012 and then 2018 I moved back I moved to France and I thought okay let's give it a try again in 2019 I think I did two or three comps which went pretty well and I was like oh I could get back into this and I booked like six comps for 2020 when we all know what happened then
yes so
uh and then I did one last year uh I did a pre-world cup in Gourdon which again went pretty well and uh I'm looking at doing the worlds this year in May so yeah one or two here just to see friends and and have fun and yeah just you know you know the vibe I do miss it sometimes yeah yeah
it's a good time isn't it yeah I I interestingly because you're you're ahead of me with the kids you know my daughter's five now so you you've got more experience with this but one of the things that I'm you know just personally struggling with I'd like to get into is the the the the the the the the the the the the that that that that that that that
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integral to the whole thing but now you know she's skiing and she's awesome and fun and they change so fast and so you know i was just uh yeah i did the Superfinal this year and boy that's a long time to be away you know it's a it's a i don't know just i'm struggling with that what's what the right balance is there
it's a pretty tough one i i struggle with that as well i mean the last the covid years in a way it was a mess but in a way it was quite nice because i didn't have the choice i stayed at home so you know i was i was home for like two and a half years with not not much traveling and since last year i've been traveling again quite a bit and yeah like you say it's hard finding the right balance i mean i was in india for over a month and a half last october and that was definitely too long for everyone you know even even me by the end i was like oh you
yeah you didn't have the family there then because they they usually go with you don't they uh no
we went in april last year the whole family and then i went back in october to work and fly and yeah the kids have got school and uh and and we've got chickens so someone needs to be home
and
what about flow how how what's her approach to flying these days uh
flow since we had kids flow kind of stopped flying she carried on for a while after the first one and she wasn't into it and she was not really enjoying it so much and having some fears so she kind of just slowly stopped and and i think that's a good thing i think that's a good thing i think that's a good thing i think that's a good thing i think that's a good thing she'll occasionally come and do a hike and fly with me these days and you know she hasn't flown for five years but she can walk up a mountain and take off don't crush it and fly off no problem so but yeah she's not so into it anymore at the moment but she might come back let's see okay how
old are your kids now 12 and 7 12 and 7 okay yeah seven still pretty young yeah gotcha okay ah yeah so debbie you've been you've been putting up some pretty wild stuff on on x contest for the last couple of years i've been doing a lot of last bunch of years and and you you know this is this is your place out there but some huge lines over the back and big triangles and there was you were posting some videos this was this was that fall was it this fall that you were posting some videos of you know sky camping out there and man you look lit up you look like a pilot that had been flying for a couple years you were having so much fun you were you were obviously having a good time so i i'd love to hear some stories from from beer and what you guys are doing out there these days because like i said i was a newbie out there i think i did my first 100k ever and yeah in beer and i haven't been back so uh that's all just kind of dreamy for me i got to get out there and tap into it
yeah um basically in you know flying i've been flying in beer since 1995 i think so many many years and we always knew that the potential was big and we always knew that the potential was big and we always knew that the potential was big and we always knew that the potential was big and we always knew that the i mean we didn't go over the back for quite a few years because we were so scared of you know just looking at it and uh and i was sure that you could do 200k there and i think in 2009 i did the first 200 i did 210 or something and that was uh kind of an eye-opener and we were like aha okay we can keep pushing this and uh that motivated me for a lot of years to go in spring for a few days and try and push make it bigger and bigger and then obviously the years that you know when you were there 2006-7 when we started exploring into the back uh thanks to people like john and people like honza who was there he just threw himself straight into the back we're like aha okay this can be done and he was like oh it's great back there you should go we're like okay um so yeah uh and then pushing each year and uh trying to get trying to get the record bigger i mean for me you know i've been flying almost 20 29 years now and i've been flying for about 20 years now and i've been flying over that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that that good time finding new spots and new lines in there uh and then obviously uh with the record we had uh i don't know if you've met kubo and uh yeah kubo you know kubo so it was a big ding-dong between me and kubo and uh i've forgotten his friend's name and each year you know we'd break it by 1k and then he'd break it by half a k and i get another k but uh all of that's over this year i don't know you must have seen philip's flight he just uh blew us all out of the water by doing a line that i would i would have even thought that line i'm like you do it you can keep the record i'm not going there yes
let's let's paint the picture for the listeners who haven't been there because it's it's it's worth describing a bit i mean i remember my still one of my most fondest memories was maybe the first flight i ever took there where we didn't go over the but i was following john and he just kept going to places where you know i had been you know a newbie mountain pilot but in other parts of the world and you just don't go to those places in other parts of the world you know it was there was no wind you just kept going i mean it was the first place that i had ever flown where you just fly where it makes sense with the sun you know and you just kind of forget everything else you just okay that face is getting sun we
have to get out of that face and regardless of how buried and deep and you know and convoluted uh it was just oh so fun it was amazing to just dive into places where you'd usually be pretty puckered in the beginning you are puckered and then then you're then you get used to the place yeah yeah that's totally reasonable that completely works but you've got the front range which is what is about 4 000 meters and then the next one back is five and then the big ones right then you get into
more or less yeah
that's that's kind of right i mean that's that's the beauty of uh beer for me it's you know it's definitely on one of the top places to fly because the menu is so big you know you can uh you can play safe out front on the front ridge you can go into the back just a little bit or you can go like you say really deep in into the six thousands and basically the the front ridge which tops out at about four four two and you've got about i would say 40k and 70k it's about 120k of ridge which like you said there's no real wind because it's the first big hills big mountains before the flats so there's no real valley wind and um i think the mountains behind are so big that you don't have you know even when there's a strong north wind up high it doesn't affect that and which makes it a great playground because you can yeah like you said you can fly all over the place there's no real lee side and it works super well and it's predictable and it's super easy to fly cross country there as as you know yeah
so the the the flight that philip did describe that a little bit well i'll put that up in the show notes i know what you're talking about we'll we'll but what what did he do uh
so basically before all the big flights that we've been doing like you know the record 256 or 57 i think i did i think 2018 that was the record till philip blew it out the water this year and basically we'd be running on the front range uh past taramsala so going west as but we before we used to go about 90k west but there's an army base and kubo started getting in trouble so we we there's a there's a there's a limit of airspace which is about 80 83k and then we turn around and race back and then go to prussia lake which is on the east side and try and push a point as far there and get back to beer so kind of you know the second half is a little bit in the back but it's mainly a big ridge run but philip
how far down is that getting pretty close to the nepal border or is that still a long ways out okay
like when we go east from beer it's only about 45k east prussia lake or something yeah ah yeah okay yeah okay okay but what philip did was uh he went uh instead of going just west he went northwest so he jumped in the back and then jumped into the valley behind the main
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that's it is it is quite cool isn't it when uh you know strangers come to your home place and kind of show you you know i've had this dream of you know creagle coming here and just showing us what's possible because you get in your this is how you do it you know and and somebody can come along and go no there's a whole bunch of ways to do it
exactly yeah well that's the very cool that's the beauty of it isn't it that you know you think you think one thing but then someone's like actually there's a lot more yeah
right right um so is your is your push there now you know the kind of keeping the passion lit is more the bivy stuff or is it still you're going to change it chase philip
uh no i think philip can keep that one i'm not going where he went i got two kids i saw some of the i saw i saw some of the footage of that day and he's like oh this is just a little cold he's at five five and he's on full bar and he just squeaks through i'm like dude
oh it's just big just big terrain that's another thing that we should probably describe you know on the four thousand meter you know you're totally in civilization you're totally in civilization the whole way that civilization is just right in front you know that's why they have comps or everything else it it uh that rapidly deteriorates as i remember as you go back yeah
exactly start
to get into there's not a lot back there in terms of villages and people and stuff
i mean when you do the first jump back from beer you've got you know you've got a while where there's villages and you can land and then there comes a point where you decide to go in further like you know even if you just fly to manali which is not very far but you know you're going to be able to get to manali but it's still quite a committing flight uh you're in some big terrain where you don't really want to go down if you do you know hopefully you're fine and you've got a long walk out uh there was yeah there's obviously been quite a few stories over the years years in beer of people landing in the back and uh walking for a couple of days to get out and stuff like that but uh yeah it's it gets pretty wild once the deeper you go the more committing it gets obviously for sure
what's what's uh what's a line that you've flown or a bivy that you've done that that you uh you dream about at night still is something that you're really proud of you really you still think gosh i'd love to do that again or something similar uh
i did i did quite a nice line this year we all went for a bivy together actually it was 14 of us bivying together it was quite fun it was a party whoa
wow that's a sky party yeah
that's exactly what it was and uh we bivied at this new spot i found on the back ridge which is great spot really nice and uh the next day um everyone was flying back to beer and i kind of thought ah maybe i'll fly to manali i wanted to go and see my mom and i knew the weather was bad for a few days and um i took uh quite a deep line inside and there's a peak uh the head of the manali valley which is about 6 000 meters and my goal was to try and fly above it i didn't quite get it you know i got to five eight so i almost got over the peak but that was uh quite a spectacular flight yeah yeah that was pretty nice
that's up there yeah are you flying with are you flying with o's when you're doing that type of stuff or no is that too hard to get no it's
a bit complicated in india to get and i mean yeah i've been up to six a few times i've never never had had too much of an issue with that so i say that you do you know been very happy sometimes too happy
when i look back at some of the footage i'm like you're not quite right there
right yeah yeah you it and it's funny how it affects people in different ways you know i i tend to get really goofy and silly and laughing and exactly then i if i get on the radio i people say i can't understand the thing you're saying but in my mind i sound fine you know it's a it's a weird yeah hypoxia strange it's a funny one yeah yeah i guess you guys deal with that quite a bit
or do you
really do not not so much maybe you get to kind of adjust it to the altitude yeah i mean personally
i've never really had a problem with it and uh i mean when we're guiding clients and stuff we we yeah we avoid taking them super super high or or going super deep i mean i did one flight with a couple of clients this year which was uh uh fairly deep inside and it was it was quite stressful at points you know it was very rewarding for all of us at the end but at points uh i think i think they said you have quite a squeaky voice at points you should
just do what john did you no one could understand him it was just i just i just i just learned after a while that you just had to follow him because he was so happy and excited yeah no matter what he was doing that he didn't make any sense it was just yeah he's just
yeah buzzing john was definitely squeaky all the time so yeah when he was buzzing he's like i remember couldn't get much of what he was saying i
i have to ask you debbie what's your approach to how do you guys tackle bivy in that area because i remember john telling me when he did the not the group big flight all the way to nepal with antoine and everybody that the film but didn't he do he did a huge solo thing right where he talked about you know basically he just packed an extra pair of underwear that was it you know you relied on the communities for milk and food you know you just said everywhere i'd land they'd come to me and you know they'd they'd ask me to share their little house and and they'd take care of them and i mean he didn't have anything i'm sure he had some tea because he's yeah no brick goes anywhere without no self-respecting brick because they were without tea but is that how you guys kind of approach it now too or do you do you go pretty light no we got
the bivvies we were doing we were pretty kitted out yeah we were pretty kitted out too uh especially as well i mean the last uh the bivvies i was doing this year was mainly more in the back kind of deep in and high up so obviously no villages and no fresh milk coming up there so uh so yeah we were pretty equipped with uh with food and stoves and you know the usual all the usual gear and
what's the status with inreach there now because there's always been you know i get a call every once in a while uh you know somebody disappeared in beer and they're trying to figure things out and you know i i'm quite handy with the inreach and you know the folks at garmin quite well so i i try to help if i can but there's there's always been this weird thing with india and inreach yeah i mean
everyone's using them in which is great i mean they've saved more than a few lives as you know uh but it's still kind of illegal to have any satellite device i think i recently heard they were doing something to legalize it but obviously the word hasn't gotten around and people have got in trouble when they have their inreach in their hand baggage for example going out um so they're still kind of illegal but we still recommend all our clients to bring one yeah just pack it deep in your bag and uh and hopefully right
yeah yeah yeah gotcha so 20 i think you mentioned you've been flying 29 years and you know things changed a little bit when you had kids and then changed again when you had covid but you just got back from colombia so you're obviously still doing quite a bit of guiding is it if you had any periods in that almost 30 years of flying where it hasn't really had the zing for you or you've thought about doing something else or how have you been able to maintain the the kind of passion over all these years for it
yeah that's um that's a good question i think the most i think for the last quite a few years i've managed to keep the zing as you say there was a point like i was saying before uh before i started doing comps i kind of got to a plateau where you know i thought you know in beer we were flying to darm salem back and here and there and we're like we got this way cool and then like i said a whole bunch of comp pilots turned up and we're like aha we're actually really slow
maybe not so good right
so i mean the comps kept me going for uh for quite a long time with the with the motivation and just you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you know you do comps and you see some of these pilots you're like there's still so much to learn and uh lately i mean i did quite a few years of acro as well uh so in the beginning till about 2007 i used to compete so that was quite motivating as well and then uh yeah trying to break the record and make a big flight uh a new glider or a new harness always helps that keeps you that keeps you going for a while here and there and uh yeah right now it's probably bv flying and uh trying to do different lines uh big lines and also what i like doing in india or in the himalayas is um kind of trying to get above a peak like not even not even trying to not even bothered about the k's or the distance or whatever but just trying to you know soar up a 6 000 meter peak or something which is so yeah things like that i always try and keep you know find something to to keep the motivation up not always easy do you
do you fly yeah you're you're in the grenoble area in france amazing area to fly is do you fly quite a bit at home as well uh
when i can yeah yeah i mean uh i work quite a lot as well when i'm here so in the you know it's quite frustrating working in a paragliding school at times when you're on the school slope and it's an amazing day and you know all your friends are doing 200k and but uh yeah i still get to fly quite a lot uh whenever i can you know uh what have i got i've got a zen o2 that keeps me quite motivated these days that's a lot of fun to fly uh and also what's uh what's great here is what you know in india when i was living in india a lot of the flights the big flights i was doing i was doing on my own and a lot of the big lines in manali when i was living there uh whereas here there's a whole whole bunch of friends who were really good and really keen so the group you know the group effect is great as well so i've got a
lot of friends who are really good at that so whenever it's the big day everyone's super excited and everyone's messaging each other okay tomorrow's a big day we're gonna go here we're gonna so yeah stuff like that yeah
how would you say you know if you could carve up your year the flying portion and in percent how much is guiding how much is teaching how much is just personal and are you guiding and are you you're still guiding in beer like with eddie and those guys or that's more just for fun when you're out to beer
after the i think i did the
and then i missed 2021 obviously like most people and then last year i was guiding in beer uh i was guiding a vol biv trip actually which was uh which was a lot of fun i just had two clients and we had a great time we discovered new spots and uh yeah i did some big lines with them um i do a lot of tandems as well in france you know okay i think i did about 400 400 450 tandems last year so that takes up a bit of time whoa
yeah that's plenty yeah
so uh yeah and then in between whenever i can uh i do quite a lot of hike and fly at home which is great as well you know that you know and it's where there's not amazing for flying at least you get to go hiking and uh and fly down so are you
competing at all in hike and fly no
no i thought about it for a while and i'm like ah yeah sounds uh it sounds like because
there's so many yeah there's so many in europe now they're just i mean every little site's got a a new hike and fly race it's really cool yeah yeah that's a very burgeoning thing over here but it's
it's getting very it's very popular in europe i mean i thought about it for a while and uh i haven't maybe one day you never know but i haven't got around to it yet um
for those listening who are thinking about maybe coming to beer and and doing some bivy what are some guidelines what what do they need to know what's what should they show up with anything different than how they would do it in the alps no
not really but just you know just uh obviously have an in reach or you know if you are going to go out maybe obviously let people know what your plan is or where you're going and uh have in mind that uh yeah you're not in the alps i mean we've we've managed to get helicopters out in beer for incidents in the recent years but you know it's usually the next day it's not 10 minutes like in in the french alps so yeah i suppose just uh just really look at it and see what's going on and then we'll see what happens but i think it's looking at the risk versus reward over there and taking that more into account and uh yeah maybe playing it a little bit extra safe and uh yeah i think just uh yeah letting people know or doing it as a group or with friends you know i think that's that's important how
do how does it work with water there are you carrying all your water are you are you able to top land places and there's enough snow and snow melt i guess in the spring there'd be plenty of snow but is there in the fall yeah
there's not i mean this year i i think i i i found three or four new spots and i found it quite amusing to actually pick a spot and then fly around for a while and check it out and say okay yeah i can see the water there i can see firewood there okay this looks like a good spot let's you know it looks landable let's try that i mean i usually try and fly with at least two or three liters of water on me in case you you you know you can still you can spend enough time to fly with with with that uh obviously finding a spot with water makes it much more comfortable uh so yeah i thought i was i was having quite a lot of fun looking at little streams and this and that and and figuring out a few of the times i got you know i was like oh that looks easy and then when you're down there and you're walking to it you're like actually this is like an hour and a half away but uh yeah i guess that's all part of part of the fun huh
yeah that is part of the fun kind of figuring that out and i i often i like flying around a lot because uh it usually looks so much better on first pass than it ends up being and you you realize oh i can't fly out of this place you know you've landed and those trees are a lot higher than i obviously
that's one other point you know you want to be able to take off again i mean we did end up this year landing and like you say afterwards we're like okay i think we're gonna have to walk over there you know it's a lot closer when when you're in the air but you know we ended up walking a couple of hours to find a launch and stuff like that how
do you uh i would imagine guiding people on full bibs got to be a little stressful especially in big terrain like that how do you um how do you what am i trying to say how do you make sure how do you screen people before doing something like that are these always clients that you've flown with before
or i mean i just kind of
look at their yeah
i've done two two of these before uh in beer and uh the first obviously i mean we spent the first day top landing all over the place and just watching them and getting getting a feel for their skills for that because that's a big part of it uh top landing checking all the equipment and then we'd go out for one night uh to a easy spot like i think hobbiton in beer i don't know if you know you can't you know nice easy ridge yeah so you know do an easy night and
then we'd go out for one night
out see how it all goes then we fly back to beer spend a night at the hotel and then we then we go out for two nights you know and just build it up slowly slowly uh and obviously a little bit stressful getting people to toplan uh and taking off again uh but yeah we kind of screened the guys and uh two of the guys who i had before came back this year so i knew them so you know it was once you know the clients then you know what their skills are then it gets a little bit more of a it's easier and you can push it a little bit more but obviously yeah keeping keeping the risk versus reward thing reasonable you know then sometimes they're like oh we want to do this we want to do that i'm like actually no no we're going to keep it safe you can come back and do this on your own if you want but right
yeah right right right keep it between the lines exactly that's what san always says uh you must have a good story or two from over the years of something crazy that went down anything you remember from just that was a wild one either either that pulled you pulled it off or maybe that didn't go so well but either way uh
story about me or about someone else yeah
any either one
i've got i've got a good one from uh from last year
actually uh i'm not going to mention names let's keep it
oh this is exciting all right here we go um
so um i was in manali in spring and a good friend of mine uh was in beer and uh we were supposed to meet and i was like oh why don't you fly to manali you can come and see me so he says yeah sure that'd be fun and uh so i was following him on the inreach and um i can see you know and i was out hiking that day or something and i was you know occasionally checking and i'm like oh looks like he's going for it today i'm like doesn't look like he's going for it today and i'm like the best day you know the clouds are quite big it's uh and then at one point i see his track go off course completely i'm like that's no good that's no good and then i see him you know he's still at four grand but the mountains around are at five and a half i'm like he's fucked
uh and i see the track go deeper and deeper and then i see the track stop and so yeah i'm shitting myself and i'm like oh and uh half an hour later i get a message on the inreach because he had me on his inreach he's like uh i'm fine uh landed on a glacier uh but i'm okay but i don't know where i am so i'm like okay uh i know where you are um there's a village 7k down from where you are the only village in the whole place uh you might be able to walk there uh are you okay and then i get message back he's saying oh yeah by the way i landed on a glacier and then i fell in the river uh uh all my gliders in the river, but I'm fine.
And I'm like, okay, can you walk out of there? And he says, okay, I'll try. And then 10 minutes later, I get a message. He says, I tried to walk out. It's very slippery. I fell back in the river. I'm all wet again. I'm outside. I'm like, don't move, dude.
I'm like, don't move. You know, this is wild terrain back there. We can see what we can do. And so I spent the whole afternoon trying to organize a chopper, which we got the chopper together, but it only picked him up the next morning at 10 o 'clock. So he spent the night wet at 3.8 in the bottom of Glacial Valley and with lots of bears and shit around. So, yeah, it was full on. And basically what had happened was that he tried to get over a cold, but the base. It was low. So he thought I'll go in the cloud. So he went in the cloud, got disorientated, ended up in this tight glacial Valley and was trying to fly out of the Valley.
And obviously when he got, then he thought, okay, I'm going to land. There was places to land before, but he tried pushing it. And obviously when he got near the, it was kind of snow bridges over the river and bits of river open. And I think he got near the place where he wanted to land, but the wind was coming down the Valley with the cold, with all the, you know, it was a calabatic. So he landed on the edge of this snow bridge and got pulled into the river drift. Oh God. Yeah. And the river took him like a hundred meters down where the,
holy smokes,
where the river went back under the glacier. It was like a black hole. And he managed to get on the last rock just before going back. You know, it was just a horror story.
Oh my God. That's just the worst case scenario. He's amazing. He got out of that.
Yeah. Very lucky man. Uh, he's a great guy. I hope he doesn't mind me telling this.
No names. Who's going to know? He knows lots of people though. Anyway, it's a, yeah, but it was a very good lesson for, you know, yeah. Don't go in the clouds at five grand and try and get over calls. Yeah. Super, super lucky. So he left his, uh, wing and his harness in the river, obviously. And the. Hell. He got to got him out and it was all fine. And a week later, Philip, Philip decided to go and pick up the harness because it was a nice harness. He said, Oh, can I keep it? If I go and get it?
Sounds like Philip. So he flew, he flew BV landed at four, four, five, walk down with ropes, went into the river, picked up the harness, climbed back up again, spent the night and flew out with the harness.
No way. What? Are you serious? That's unbelievable. Oh my gosh. I love that dude. Hey, that, but the wings still there? The
wings still there? Yeah. It was that Anybody
listening? You want to go get away?
Phillip was like, oh, it was in the river. It was fun.
Yeah. Yeah. Toast that.
Oh my gosh. Yeah. And, and then Phillip, as he's walking up, he showed me a video. He sent me a video. He's like, oh, I saw a bird that jumped over that thing that we've been walking bear it was really cute and he showed me the videos big huge brown bear like 20 meters away from him and he's like oh look at his cute ears i'm like dude you're insane
when
we were doing when we were doing a bivy with antoine in the sierras all those years ago uh orio fernandez was with us and bombed out one day we all had our days you know as you do and he bombed out one day and came across a couple of pretty good sized bears and it freaked him out so bad that was the end of his trip he
didn't think they were very cute he's like we
don't we don't get these in spain i'm done with this okay well that was a good one how about do you got any more that's that's what i wanted i want to hear stories from beer or other places
that's a good one i can't i can't i can't come up with one off the top of my head that was the i'm
visualizing getting pulled off a snow drift going in the river and going into a you know getting it was flushed underground that'd be terrifying yeah
that was uh that was pretty scary i mean uh yeah over the years i mean beer has i mean you know a lot of them are horror stories which i don't really want to get into
there are a lot of horror stories but
uh yeah it's getting it's gotten really popular beer i mean like you know in october there's five six seven hundred pilots coming through uh so yeah not quite like what it was in 2009 super busy yeah um even
even then i mean i the the i i have distinct memories of just the the launch i thought was terrifying you know you had you had these you know pilots that you know i i we don't want to name a country but we
flying you know open class gliders prototypes and stuff and they had 10 hours you know was the rumor i don't know if that was true but you know they barely knew how to launch and flying comp gliders and you know one instructor for 40 pilots and stuff like this i mean i don't know again that these are i don't know if any of this was true but it was it certainly looked true on launch where you're just going oh my god i gotta get out of here so i don't see any more of this stuff it was terrifying yeah
it was really
tough and i've never seen that before and that's why i've never
kind of like that again this year it's a little bit better the the quality of pilots gone up a bit but yeah it's super busy because i guess it's uh one of the best places to fly in october in the world there's not many places like colombia i was i was pretty shocked in colombia that was pretty full-on on launch yes yes so yeah i mean uh there's been over the years lots of uh interesting rescue stories in beer some uh some some good ones some not so good ones but uh yeah i i can't i can't come up with one right off the top of my head the one i just told that was the best one so far i think yeah
yeah yeah um yeah i mean it must be interesting to do this with with clients and stuff too i mean i i still remember flying around with you guys and for some reason i got put on to john and just following him around in that terrain was was really you know i would just have to encourage listeners you know if you haven't done it's not really part of our culture in the states to get guided you know we don't it's really much more of a european thing you know when you climb when you go climbing you get a guide when you go skiing you get a guide and because i have friends who are guides i i really i love that i i just love going with a guide that you know they they know the terrain it's just they they bring you to the best places and that was the first time i had done it in flying and again i was i was i was pretty new but uh just following you around and i was like oh my god i'm gonna fly i'm gonna you guys around and and having the stoke and and also just having that little bit of uh care and concern you just felt like you were in good hands but quite an eclectic group you and antoine and john and eddie and uh jim my goodness i mean you couldn't ask for a more eclectic group i think you know i heard the evenings were more exciting than the days yeah
they were good times oh
man yeah we lost john recently how is that uh how has that affected the dynamics there obviously legend um yeah
but john always was and always will be one of you know one of the legends not just there kind of all over the world really um i mean he he'd stopped coming for quite a you know at least three three seasons before before he passed away last year or the year before uh so yeah and it was it was a shame because i would have i'd have loved to have seen john once before you know he left us uh but uh yeah obviously everyone around there still talks about john and uh you know and and some of the lines and some of the flights and his style of flying obviously you know it's still still legendary and seat of the pants yeah and uh yeah we definitely missed the squeaky voice yes
oh yes yeah totally totally but jim and eddie are they still spending quite a bit of time there uh i mean since i
haven't seen jim since 2019 i recently eddie came out this year in october um i mean they stopped doing the guiding thing jim stopped quite a few years ago uh and eddie kind of was doing a little bit but now he's he did some again with us this year and i think he's back into it so uh cool yeah i haven't seen jim for a couple of years i'm quite looking forward to seeing him again he's cut off his dreads by the way so it's gonna look like it
oh my gosh i can't imagine i haven't
seen him for a couple of years i haven't seen him for a couple of years i'm
actually getting him on the show here soon yeah i haven't
seen him without dreads so yeah you'll see that'll
be weird i don't know if i'll recognize him
yeah but uh but yeah i've been working a lot uh the last few years with uh with stefan you know stefan stefan bernard yeah yeah he's great yeah as well we we get along really well and uh it's been fun guiding with wicked comp pilot yeah he's fast
yeah he's really good very he has a lot more discipline than i do man i could like i gotta learn that from him yeah that's really that i'll see you still got a cool crew going there yeah yeah we
got a good good team so still so fun what
after all these years what are your kind of you know do you do you think it's important to kind of keep having personal goals do you have personal goals with your flying and how you approach your year or is it mostly just works to kind of sapping it up and yeah when you can
yeah kind of uh i think it's important to have have some personal goals with your flying like we talked about before to keep motivated and i mean what the thing i really love about flying is that you know you never you never stop learning you know you're always getting better i mean i still feel that each year i learn new shit and you know i improve on certain things or you find one aspect of your flying that you you think you know you can work on that and improve that or the efficiency or the lines so it's just yeah it's never-ending game isn't it which is which is what i love about it yeah do
you find you get more conservative as the years go by and and if so do you weight that to any particular thing is it the kids is it your wife is it age uh sometimes
yes or
do you not
sometimes yes sometimes no sometimes you're like oh actually i'm gonna just take it a little bit easy here and sometimes you do shit and you're like maybe i shouldn't have done that what am i doing yeah but again again that that's the beauty of it you know that's where that's where you get the kick so yeah i guess i guess we're all addicted to it and you know we get our hits different ways
uh where will you be guiding this year
uh this year i'm going back to beer in october um i haven't got i've got a pretty busy summer actually so i don't think i don't think i'll be doing any guiding i think i'll be doing mainly some teaching and a bunch of tandems i've got my family coming out from india so uh yeah pretty busy with that and then uh back to beer in autumn and i think i'll be going to colombia again i like that that was a lot of fun so yeah not not as much guiding as before but uh yeah i try and mix and match it with the professional side of it because i think because i've got friends who just do tandems all year round and they just burn out you know they don't want to fly anymore which is understandable sure so i try and mix and match it a little bit which keeps me motivated to you know do a bit of teaching a bit of tandems a bit of guiding keeps it fun
you know the the the time that most people go to beer is in the fall you know this kind of last couple weeks of october and usually the first week or so of november and then the monsoon starts but the it seems to me i've never done it but it seems to me like the real season is the spring that seems to be when you guys are grabbing the big stuff spring
is is the time i like flying in beer it's you know it's when you get the big big days uh obviously it's it's a bit less reliable than october i mean you know mid october through to mid november you can fly pretty much every day and it's good whereas in spring you might get a front come through or it might storm quickly for a few days so you know you but when you get the big days more
downtime yeah
when you get the big days you know the days are obviously longer you can take off at nine and fly to six which gives you nine hours of flying whereas in october you know it's maybe 10 10 30 to to four so less the the thing that's better in october though is it's better for going in deep because in spring all the back mountains are covered in snow so it's obviously working a lot you know it's a lot slower and uh difficult to maybe get as high and obviously more uh committing with all the snow around than uh than in autumn so there's there's you know plus and minus points for both both seasons but personally i i like april april end of april is uh yeah
yeah it looks pretty magic then the uh how about some hints for warmth you know when you're flying at that kind of altitude and uh obviously it can be really cold i remember how cold it is there when you get tall uh yeah how are you how are you keeping your hands warm how are you keeping your body warm what are you guys using uh
well body body and you know i have a good pod obviously for the bottom half and uh yeah big down jackets you know for the body i've been using one of those you know like a big expedition jacket that does the job makes a nice pillow as well when you're busy and for the hands it's a yeah lifelong mission i guess trying to find the right solution but uh last year i used those um you know the monchon things the things that you put the over sleeves which are
over mitts over
mitts which are really kind of annoying because they flap around and do this and that but i found they're actually the most efficient you know they they do actually work and keep your hands warm so once you figure out a technique to make friends with them uh then they do work so i've been using that yeah
yeah yeah i find that that's kind of the best of it you know Chrigel put me on to he just uses his small gloves and then they have those uh bassist roush however you say it's a swiss company they have the over mitts that are really more you know they're not the kind that you tie up yeah you know the down sleeves that you tie up and so they're not as gangly on long sleeves and everything but but then you're it's kind of hard to use your hands because when you take it out you've still got the smaller gloves on so you can't you know it's pretty hard to go to your instruments or to
yeah to
use anything but it's but they're warm i
mean i've been i've been taken off with the over mitts on your on your forearms you know when you fly and fly with normal with normal bassist roush gloves and then when you get cold you bring them up and close them and that was doing the job pretty well
that works pretty well huh cool debu uh always terrific it's good to see you man it's been it's it's nice to nice to see you here it's been too long yeah since the bus in switzerland so we'll we'll have to catch up in in real time here and and do some flying together and congratulations on the big flights that's been a hoot to watch man i've been i've been building a house i've been flying that much so i get my kicks off watching guys like you go and have some
great yeah yeah maybe see you in may you're coming for the worlds in france you
know what i i completely hammered my spot man i had a spot on the team and in monarca i got a little too hungry in the end i was leading through day four you were winning a really good comp yeah and then i blew it i had two days in a row where i got a little too hungry and uh thought oh i'm really gonna stomp and and so and i i missed the world's team by a couple points so i was uh yeah so not that's not the plan right now but i
had a really good time and i had a really good time and i had a really good
I'm going to go to the Brazil World Cup and the Spain World Cup right now. And there's still a chance for World if we get another slot or somebody doesn't go. You know, maybe. But
I'd love to see you. But yeah, anytime you're in France, hit me up. You can come and stay. We've got a nice place, plenty of space. You're welcome.
I'd love to. I'd love to. Hi to the crew. Hi to Flo and the kids. Nice one. Thanks, bud. Nice chatting with you. It's been a pleasure. Cheers, Kevin.
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Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.