Hi there everybody, welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Just about ready to get on a plane, get away from this house build for a few weeks and go cover the Red Bull X-Alps. Prologue starts on the 8th, race starts on the 11th, this is going to be a hoot. It's a really cool technology for me to be going live to you from the air, which will be fun. So stay tuned for that and I hope you'll all dial in the race, this is going to be cool. As always, we'll depend on the weather, see how fast these guys can do it in. So I'll be doing that and this episode is all about the Alps as well, but from a totally different perspective. We've got Hansa and his son Martin on the show again.
I just love these, incredible what these guys are doing. I don't know anybody doing anything to this extent with Bivy flying and tandem flying with their son or daughter. They have chosen a really cool style to do these, they decide on a mission and they give it three attempts and on this third attempt from Annecy to, I believe the original goal was to Zermatt, but they had such great weather they were able to carry on and get all the way to Davos. This went down last summer. They've done a trip every year of Martin's life since he was 8, he is now 14. And again... They got shut down obviously with their plans to go into Europe during COVID, but they still went up into the Sierras and did it on skis and went up in the kind of Whitney Portal Williams zone, the highest mountains in the Sierras and had a really cool mission out there.
Yeah, these are just precious. It's so cool hearing Hansa's perspective with his son and his son's perspective with dad and those guys just having these really cool adventures. I'm incredibly inspired by these. I can't wait to start doing this with Fallon. She's five and I think we'll be following in these guys' footsteps here very shortly. Before we get into the show, I've got some Patagonia t-shirts left. They are no longer allowing us to logo Patagonia t-shirts. So if you want one of those with the Cloudbase Mayhem logo and what do we say on there? Talk less, fly more.
But they're a lot of fun. Yeah. They're great. They're a great product. And so check out our store on cloudbasemayhem.com and grab one of those because once these are gone, we won't be able to replace them. Still got tons of the great recap hats with all the Cloudbase Mayhem logos and all the different various colors and ways. They're beautiful. So check those out. Thanks as always for your support of the show. Just blows me away that we can keep doing this as we approach 200 and possibly another book. I'll be talking to Ed. Hugh when I'm over in the Alps about that is the first one was based on the first hundred shows and we've already done another hundred. So this has been a blast. Keep doing it. Can't believe we've been doing this for almost 10 years now.
And thank you all. We've also got quite a bit of bonus stuff in the pipeline. I've been recording those and haven't released one in a while. So we've got some of those coming up. But in the meantime, please enjoy this very fun. Talk with Hansa and his son, Martin, cheers,
Hansa, Martin, welcome back to the mayhem. We've got a lot to talk about just as a refresher for the listeners. Uh, Hansa has done the ex-Alps five times and he retired after the 2015 race from that, but has been doing these amazing full bivvies with his son, Martin, who's here with us. And we had you guys on the show back. I think the last one. Was right when COVID hit. So it was spring 2020, it was a few years ago now. And I know that shook up plans for your bivvy that summer, but we're going to be talking about this amazing bivvy you guys did last year from Annecy to Davos, kind of the reverse of the route Hansa, you and I flew back in 2015.
So very, very cool. Obviously you had some, some great weather and we'll, we'll dive into that. But. You guys, what I think we should do to start off with is just recap what's happened since the 2020, uh, planned full biv in the Alps that didn't go down because of COVID and, and, and get us up to speed. Not to the, not all the way to this last bivvy last summer, but what did you do instead? And what have you been up to with the, uh, fly camping?
Well, Gavin, uh, thanks for having us on again. Yep. Uh, we. The summer, summer of 2020, uh, spring and summer of 2020, we're mostly.
At home. Yeah.
Backpacking. Yeah. A
lot of backpacking. About 35 days in.
35 days. Whoa. Really? Yeah. Yeah. The longest being an 11 day trip with, uh.
Yeah. My little brother and my grandma.
Wow. Was that down in Chile or was that here? Did you
just stay at home? No, because it was all COVID. So we couldn't be down in Chile. It was just in the Sierras. In the
Sierras. And then, and then had a good one in the Trinity's as well. Yeah. Yeah. So a lot of backpacking. And then COVID
was good for being outdoors. Yeah. Yes.
And then, uh, the spring of 21, uh, Martin, you want to tell. Yeah.
We went in the Owens Valley, my dad and I, we went on, uh, like sky camping, but with cross country skis. So you figured out how to Mount cross country skis to a paraglider kind of underneath us. Yeah. And. Well,
Martin would hold them. Yeah. I was holding for
takeoff and landing.
And then I would just dangle them on, on some. Yeah. The paraglider line underneath us for the flight.
Yeah. I saw pictures of this. It was hysterical. It's kind of like what Duragati's doing in Pakistan. It was. Yeah. But he's putting them on and off in the air. That's. I know. Pretty impressive. Yeah. That's next level. Yeah.
And so, and then we entered there, we just kind of flew around. We flew around from onions. Yeah. It
was onion, onion Valley up to a Valley. That's just North of Mount Williamson. Uh, there it's all in the mountain, kind of the mountain, the area of the. Owens on the Sierra side. And it was a low snow year. So even though it was just the end of March, we, uh, uh, had very little snow, but up at 10,000 feet, we kind of did a, you know, debt, slight downwind uphill landing and in a snow patch, just plowed it in and then, uh, found a really nice camp spot nearby there. And what did we have for dinner?
Um, steak, we flew up a steak and some cheese and yeah. Yeah.
Hansa back, back from the sun Valley days. I still hear about that around here. You'd go fly camping with a ribeye. Yeah.
So
always for the first night. Yes. And then we, uh, cross country skied up the next morning for, you know, like a hundred meters and then launched and, uh, flew, ended up flying back to the car. Cause it was, uh, we were going to fly towards Whitney, but conditions weren't that great. And we decided we'd better get back to the vehicle. And style. Yeah. Yeah. Then, uh, what was the, then, then we got to go back to the Alps that, uh. Hang on
before you go, before you go back to the Alps, Hansa, you just had a little bivy trip where I was hoping to join you. I didn't get to, but that same peak that you, you just spent the night last weekend on Williamson. I'd be curious to that. What was this? You know, this, this one you did with Martin was the end of March. You just did this one first week of may. What were the snow level differences? Like, is it, you know, the Sierras have gotten, uh, uh, epic historical snow pack. Was it totally different?
Totally different. There was 300, 300 % snow they're saying right now. So this, this one, you know, all the, uh, the road to up Whitney portal, as soon as you hit the mountains that was closed, obviously the one towards shoe Meadows was closed, but as there were a lot of people doing, um, you know, back country skiing and split snowboard stuff, there's, uh, there's the weekend. This was just before the start of may. So it was like the last days of April before you need any permits, um, in that area, or there's no quotas. So there were a lot of people. Uh, out and about, but, um, yeah, just the hiked up the first zigzag of the Whitney portal road and, um, uh, launched around one o 'clock. Um, and thermals were much stronger on the, out on the knolls rather than as you, it was kind of choose your own thermal strength, but the more you would move deeper in onto the snowy terrain, the weaker the lift got.
Cause there was just so much more terrain covered with snow. Um, and top of the lift was around. Around 13 grand, around the 4,000 meter mark, I was able to fly over to Mount Williamson, but not land at the top. There's a perfect saddle near the top, which was kind of the, that was the dream to land up in there. But, uh, after several attempts, just had to side hill it, but had, you know, that was only an hour and a half flight getting there, landing it, and then hiked up to the top, checked out the view from the top, spent the night in the saddle at 14 grand. And the next morning was, uh, um, a little tricky. Cause it was. There was a Southwest wind. The first day was great. Cause there's light East, almost no wind at all. And then there was a bit of a Southwest. So the saddle itself was a little bit in the Lee. Um, it was debating whether to wait for thermals to turn on or whether to just get off while I could and decided to get off while I could.
But that was already about nine 50. And to my surprise, thermals were on it before 10 o 'clock. So it was in spring. Yeah. Fluid fluid flew all the way back to waltz launch and then back towards Whitney got to check out the Whitney portal Valley. Really nice. Just got deep in there and could fly right back out and then landed by the car. It was kind of a really quick project cause I had to get back home, but it was a. Beautiful. It
must've been amazing to see those maps, seen all these satellite images and stuff. You know, they've done all those flyovers to try to get a, a gauge of how much water's going to be coming down now. And it's amazing. That's so, I mean, I grew up in Tahoe. It reminds me of 80, you know, the last big, big winter was 1980. It reminds me of that.
Yeah. They said there's 30 million acre feet and snow, uh, snow melt. I mean, that's, that's double the, the Colorado river allotment. Uh, you know, they get the, the, the water rights for Colorado river, 15 million acre feet. So this is, this is an insane amount of snow that's up there. Yeah. Wow. Special.
Okay. So a little distraction there, but that was, that was a good mission. But then the next, so the next year, so you weren't able to go to the Alps COVID year one. And then the next year you did, or you didn't 21,
21, we did. And that was our second attempt from
honest. Cedars are Mott. And it was, it was a good one. We got further than the first time, but still not choose or Mott. And we slept quite a bit more. We were thinking that maybe two more days we could have gotten there, but yeah.
Yeah. We had a good start. We had our best start of all. We got to the end of the RVs chain that first day. Um, but where did you
start? Did you start at Mott man or, or, uh, uh,
let's see. I don't see it. No, no. The, the, what's the higher one up at the higher ones. Mott man. Kola
Forkla. No, no, no, no. Kola
Forkla. Kola
Forkla. You, you,
you know, just get Kola Forkla and then you go up a little ways. Is that, is that one called Mott man?
Yeah. Mott man. Yeah. Yeah. That, that's below tour net. Yeah. Yeah. It was that cool. Okay. And so you got to the RV, the RV, the first day. And
the RV is the first day.
Yeah. That was our best day. Best, best
first day. So that was really good. Feeling pretty optimistic about it. Unfortunately, the forecast was not, not too good. Yeah. Um, so then the next day, so, so that evening, even into that evening, we hiked over the RVs through Chubb Bay. It was
a scary experience because you can't see steps in front of you due to the fog, but it was interesting. And
then, and then, yeah. And the trail
was slightly non-existent. Yeah,
it was kind of a sketchy hike over. And I think we hiked till almost 10 that evening to find a flat camp spot. Um, is this June? June?
Because you're kind of, you're usually doing this right around the race, right? Or no, actually it's after now. That one was during
the race. We ended up flying with one of the X-Alps pilots for a few minutes. Did we on that one? Yeah, we did. It was like the last day. And it was one of the French guys, like the, not the one right behind Maurer, but the one after.
But was that that race? It was that one. It was that one? Okay. Anyway. Yeah. Cause that would have been 21. Yeah. Yeah. So, so yeah, we barely, like there was one point where we intersected with them. But. But kind of long story short, once we got, um, had that really good flight, the next day was just two sled rides and a lot of hiking. Got into the Chamonix Valley.
Hiked all the way through the Chamonix Valley. Day
three, we hiked all the way through the Chamonix Valley, all the way up to Caldebal. Yeah,
but day three was nice because we got to stop and talk with.
Um, yeah, the, the, the, the folks from, owners of Absolute Chamonix, the tandem business. Yeah. Oh, they had, they had invited me to their house in, uh, back in the 09 X-Alps. Uh, it just. Oh, cool. Yeah, so kind of a trip down memory lane.
Yeah.
Hey, just go off on an adjunct here real quick. What are you carrying now? Cause I remember the last time, you know, Martin, you were really small and you're bigger now and, and dad was carrying most stuff. You had your little kind of day pack, but how does it divide up now? And what are you in, in 21, if you were doing this around the same time as the X ops was going on, the weather was atrocious. Uh, tons of overdevelopment, tons of wind, I think that audience would like to know. So, you know, what do you bring in, you know, is it full tent or you just Vivian in the wing or how does it go over your gear?
So for this last year we had, I don't know about the year before. That's kind of hard to remember, but for this last year we had a Dyneema 10, one of those Z packs, ultra light, 600 grand 10. So it uses the poles to build. Yep. Yep. That worked amazing. And then in there we have the pair of gliders or sleeping bag and the pair of gliders still the same. It's the UP sub thing, the
UPK two, three, the same one, two,
three, the one
we've had all the time. And how much is that on? So how much is that way? That's a full way. That's that's kind of way. Yeah. That's, that's an, um, nine close to eight, eight and a half, nine kilos. It's a heavy one. That, that one's okay. Okay. Martin's got a light harness, a thin red line from the nineties. That's a 300 gram harness. And I've got the same harness I've used on all these trips, which was, uh, I used in the Oh seven X ops. It was, it's. Um, it's
the one with enough space to put stuff when I
gave you, no, no, no, no. This was even before that way before this is Oh seven X ops. This was a, we still had a, you know, didn't even have a pod on it. Oh yeah. Nervous, big block. I think a nervous, big walk. It was called or something from nervous, but it's an Oh seven harness, but it's, it's got a lot of, a lot of space and it's actually not terribly heavy. I think it's in the 1.3, 1.5 kilo range. So that. Yeah. That works. Martin food. Oh, sorry. Okay.
Are you bringing any, um, uh, you bring crampons ice acts, that kind of thing, or are you just avoiding that kind of terrain?
Sometimes we do some, depending on how early we do it. If we do it like June or then we probably bring them. We've never had to really use them. Yeah,
we did it on one trip and we decided definitely
phased out the ice acts and the crampons. It's kind of a sometimes thing. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So you carry the food, Martin.
Yup. And my clothes and all of that.
Okay.
Gotcha. Getting
a lot better. It's getting, yeah. With Martin being able to carry more and I'm able to fit it into, uh, one of the super backpacks that I had for one of the ex-alps. So it used to be, I used to be carrying a big tandem bag and it was just overloaded. So it was a huge thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, so now we split the weight. Martin's got a normal little backpacking backpack, which carries 40
liters. Yeah. But
it's like a full load of food. So you're, you're a little heavier,
a little more, uh, on
the backpacks than you normally are. So, yeah. You can get a lot of food in that. Yeah. And then, and then, Hansa, what do you think your weight is now?
You know, I think, I, I think when it, when we start out, it's, I think it's under, it's under 25 kilos. It's getting very reasonable. it's actually like it things are carrying uh quite well so there's um the one place we decided we could shed weight is we still bring too much food like there is yeah it's so easy to restock on food sure that um it would be worth even even if we had to land in the valley one one afternoon where we could have landed up high to restock it might still be worth uh that hike up rather than starting the trip you know carrying we've always had at least five days of food yeah more and or maybe
i mean i guess if you're doing it in june it's maybe a little early they maybe aren't all open but what about huts you know it's pretty easy to get food from the huts too are you ever just stopping in a hut and having dinner there or grabbing sometimes we are
but i know it's like if if there would be a hut we'd always stop but it's never we
haven't touched the one that we've had which was we did twice this guy henry honoree
yeah at kolder kolderbaum kolderbaum okay
yeah on the back on the back end of chamonix yeah yeah back in the chamonix yeah so we we we we passed by his hut twice and he's always been very nice i think he's a he'd done a little bit of flying and he he bought and remodeled that whole yeah
yeah and
um so so yeah so but otherwise you know every town's got you know every town's got food every pass has got some it's it's we're realizing it's so easy to top off on yeah the alps it's that's the one place to if we wanted to get faster moving on the ground we could cut down yeah just cut down on food yeah yeah
and what about the wing would you go with one of the new lightweight tandem we don't aren't they making lightweight tandem wings too i'm not much of a they they are
some yeah that looked into that a little bit uh up was working on one but then they abandoned the project uh so we're a little bit of a standby um on that but as martin yeah and it's got a great stamina for hiking i think it's uh you know the we're pretty set right now i think yeah cool
okay so so keep going so that you you had the bad weather you leave the air v you kind of walk through sham and then what
then it's looking like the weather's getting better but unfortunately it's still too windy and cold at home when we woke up there so yeah this is
still 2021 and it was early that year yeah and so but it was extremely stable all of well
it was state it was a combination of things it was it was stable it was windy too yeah we weren't cold about them it was just it would have the the wind wasn't we
weren't able to take off yeah yeah
we thought of doing some kind of a wraparound fly around but even that was it'd be windy for that so we we just have a big hike day that was by then it was day four day day five we had a decent one where we got to verba yeah side hill landed just just on the hills yeah by verba
hiked up to the summit well not to quite the summit to 2900 meters
yeah that was a day and
it was pretty high yeah and we hiked to tell the the happiest pigs in the world yeah
we hiked by some pigs that were up in the high alps just enjoying they had
a perfect view yeah like they did a little shade little little food and just the most gorgeous view of the alps i mean the happiest happiest pigs in the world to
be a cow or a pig in switzerland is a okay you're you're living pretty good yeah cool i and the martin what how old are you now i
am currently 14 so
you were 12 that
when i was 12 yeah okay
and how much have you grown since the last time we had you on the show oh yeah fair bit are you as tall as your dad no
definitely not no just past my mom a couple weeks ago oh
and okay so you're yeah you're you're getting bigger you can't carry more weight is that how does that affect hansa how does that affect the flying and uh are you noticing that oh
yeah yeah it's i mean when we started when he was eight it was definitely kind of you know right on the
tandem yeah
it felt like you know you know when you fly a tandem solo it's just a little more than that i mean it felt like you're definitely still driving a you know big bus and you had to really be aware of wind like you really had to respect the wind because you just just didn't have that much right loading and now it's and now it feels great it flies yeah we're right a great weight range on it and we can punch against wind if we need it and it flies nice i
mean back then when when he was eight could you have flown a just a bigger solo wing would that have been a maybe a tool again i'm not a tandem guy or you just have to use a tandem wing no
no you could have yeah that's that would be an option if you if you got a big like an extra large solo wing um it might fly nicer um than a tandem yeah yeah so that would i think if you have really for that might be a consideration once i start doing with uh to call me yeah because i'm a six now so two more years more years will be kind of where martin was
so martin you've been doing this almost half your life i just added the map that's pretty impressive yeah you guys have done a trip every year since you were eight yeah amazing are you going to become a pilot as well i
hope to yeah well you've been making little yeah i've been yeah
he's been doing his first flight
longest is about 10 minutes just soaring on the dunes so yeah
awesome bitchin okay okay so you guys make you make verbier you go for a big hike to are you in the verbier
valley we're we're we're kind of yeah verbier at the top station not the very very summit station but there's a big place and then so the next day we get hiking once again too windy so we have to just kind of around you get
a big around loop to try to maintain height and hope so be able to fly but after we realize we're forced to then go down because it was it was starting to
rain it was
starting to rain and it was one of our last days and we didn't want to be trapped super high up in the rain knowing that we have a bus the next day yeah
and the last day was good but it didn't it didn't get good till pretty late in the day like we hiked to a great launch and we're actually in cloud base waiting for things to dry out a little bit so
with that loop we ended up just going super around to try to maintain height when we could have just gone down and up and saved so
you're touring you went out the back of verbier on the north side you're kind of going down the rhone yeah and you're contouring you're trying to get zermatt yeah
but we're basically at the at that point we're realizing it's extremely unlikely and then we launch kind of you know just above sion and try to skirt you know on the on the south edge of that airspace that last day we we covered a fair bit of distance in about an hour and a half once we got airborne because you know there's there's obviously that valley wind that's down there and it was coupled with a westerly wind but not not not too crazy but enough to really skip along and then topped off pretty high above sierra and then got a big flush all the way down to the bottom of the valley and landed by luke's which is near like halfway between sierra and wisp or something like that so so oh you made
it a fair distance
yeah made a fair distance got about another 10k over last time but yeah you know that's still still far from
yeah from
making it uh but uh this is definitely with a lot of ambition come back yeah which is what we did in uh this last summer in 22 okay
so before we get to that what i i think a lot of people i know i am curious about it when you guys are flying together is it decision by honza is it decision by consensus are you talking a lot about it honza are you ever you know martin are you ever getting kind of scared and going okay i'm done i don't i don't feel good i'm not liking this and then honza you just stick it in or how does that how do the how
well
it's definitely decision by consensus we definitely talk about it um if i'm not sure then my dad has full power because he has so much more experience than i do sure but there were definitely one of my favorite times when i had the better idea we ended up sticking out due to his decisions were when we were when there was a time it was entering the chamonix valley this is
the 2019 yeah
first time going at a citizen mott and the mountains in a little like curve in and then went back out kind of towards the valley and my dad wanted to cut through it and i was like wait but shouldn't we go around we ended up cutting through and sticking out yeah you were right yeah yeah you
know 2 30 p.m on the valley floor scratching my head and martin's like you should just fall ah you
got that that's unusual for you honza usually you're pretty patient but you got a little impatient there start racing
um martin again we'll we'll get to i know we're going to talk mostly about this last one you did because it was amazing yeah are you do you ever get scared are you pretty confident you're pretty chill in the air
i'd say i mean sometimes but there's no no events that i can really think of where i was really scared and
now honza what about you i'd be curious you know all my sailing years there's there's your game face and there's your real internal stuff going on you know you're in a storm that kind of thing i mean i always had to act like everything was totally fine but sometimes it wasn't what about from your perspective uh you know i don't want you to freak your son out but if there have been there have been times where it's it's pretty spooky because because you've got a passenger or are you just not flying in those conditions you
know i'm definitely trying to respect the conditions but yeah that's just by the sheer number of time and hours there's there's bound to be a few yeah the one that comes to mind is this was back in this our second one we were trying to you know we were trying to go uh tell mz to corvara and we'd made it and then we had another three days flying around in the dolomites and it was getting really ripe there it's pretty common that it starts to uh over develop and it was just uh we were we're heading for a small landing field and there was some wind and speaking he was still we were still quite light loading uh the tremors fall out and i did um it was a bit of a zigzag to make the tight landing field and when i zigged back into the wind it felt like almost no penetration a lot of sink and basically our our approach took us through through two treetops yeah uh into that field made that field really nice but uh that last final zigzag was all necessary so right so that felt you know for a moment i was like oh this would just be the worst to be stuck hanging yeah in trees on a tandem and having explained that to local
yeah that would be a little embarrassing you'd want to get down real quick before anybody saw you yeah
but
otherwise for conditions for the most i mean that you know the the tandem fly is really nice it's like it's yeah it's a it's a it's like a big maybe b minus a plus kind of wing in its behavior so it's it's got it's got a lot of passive safety and um i would say you know for the most part we're just trying to you know trying to fly smart and we're just trying to um yeah you know some landings have been a little faster yeah
that's true that when you're about to take off or about to land there's kind of that oh what if but it's always fine yeah they have faster landings but it's nothing that bad and
do you kind of have hansa a hard stop is there is there a wind amount that you just say we're walking period i mean obviously you've got to adjust a lot compared to your ex-alps days and what you were willing to fly in there on a totally different kind of weapon but now is there just a a number that says no or is it more just how things are how what you're seeing in the sky and i mean in other words how much are you looking at real-time wind data and forecast versus sticking your finger up in the air
it's a little bit of a combo because we do have there are a lot of stations when you pull up windy luckily you know the alps or you know got quite a few stations so it's definitely you know checking where the higher stations are getting or where some of the compressions are happening but a lot of it is just you know looking at the at the clouds feeling the feeling the conditions on launch um i mean a good example is what martin mentioned when we were at call the bum and just we had we wait around almost half a day to see if if we'd be able to fly out of there before we decided to make the hike uh and i haven't always had martin you wait here i'm gonna run up to this spot and check it out and you know it was one of those like do i can i soar up the west side enough to wrap around and and and go east and cut it's like you're saying gavin it's a move
that could be you know on a solo wing in the X-Alps it'd be a no-brainer it's kind of if you were going that direction that's what we would do uh but with the tandem and we're you know if if you were sinking out you with the tandem you really have to evaluate your landing areas a lot better as well um so it's uh yeah there's i mean yeah you just give it a you give it a lot more margin a lot more margin a lot more margin yeah to keep it safe because it's a you know it's one of those things it's obviously seen from the outside this is it can be seen as a very dangerous thing to be doing with your son so you just just want to make sure you do you know you got to do this right you can't you can't get it wrong
right okay yeah sure okay so you guys almost get to visp in 21 and then was it already on the map to come back the next season it's been kind of this entity to zermatt goal correct that's been kind of the route well
we have this rule where we set a goal and then we do it three times and if we can't get it in three times then we move on because it was too hard or something along that line ah
oh i didn't know that okay yeah that's the personal rule we made is basically we're going to try three attempts once we you know once we make a goal we change it up and then the new one gets three attempts so it can be up to three years trying it
yeah um
until uh until we until we get it and if we're not getting it after three attempts we let ourselves yeah basically choose a new one if if yeah but that luckily that hasn't been the case
yeah so
what happens when tomas gets to be eight do you do two a year yeah
i have to do might have a good reason to go back to back that
sounds okay i'll be 16 so not ah maybe you'll just be flying your own glider yeah you
you that'd be cool little family mission baby oh amazing okay so 2022 the weather's epic and you start again at montemain correct
yeah yeah yeah i said um so we got there at a decent time we took a bus train combo got there you know we were we started out of basically from prague took a bus to uh
munich then triniva then and whatnot just yeah
basically get to launch and then it was a good time of day but it was still it was kind of a stable day it was getting pretty hot it was yeah it was it was kind of one of those early periods in june but no july this was mid-july and it was getting really hot in europe i think that's when like england started sweltering under oh yeah
that was 40
celsius weather yeah
where everyone was having 40 celsius super hot we're freezing up at 4 000 but
yeah but that's yeah that's later we weren't we weren't the thing is we weren't able to get any higher than like tornet level so on that on
the first day yeah
we just put up a lot of scratch marks between the don de la i saw there i
saw your uh your track log i was checking out this morning well you worked really hard to get out there we just plan over to plan fey and got on the teeth and yeah yeah we're just as
recycled recycled recycled and every trying to get trying to get higher than the tornet and just just just basically level with tornet was more or less the best we were going to do so at a certain point we're like well we're just waste we're burning daylight let's huck it over the back and see how far we can get
yeah which
we promptly sunk out on the hills that yeah the hills that lead to um the rv yeah and we quickly packed it up we're very motivated hiked up
and then launched later in the day yeah
hiked up five same day first day same day first day yeah that was the that was that was a two flight day so we quickly hiked up 500 meters ate some raspberries along the way yeah and uh and then even we had this quick pack where we had just these these basically ikea duffel bag ikea duffel bag that we could throw everything in and just kind of strap it under the harness like a really quick deploy like that those are those are like let's not let's not worry about packing everything up for a long flight we just need to get off asap but
then there's always the risk because if you're gonna go if you know that it's just a short flight then you don't put on all the long pants the down pants and everything but then you find yourself at some altitude almost supposed to be a short flight and you're freezing up there so it's always the yeah i
think you had one of those right gavin oh
that that ended my 2019 race yeah that was that was brutal you know it was so stable and so hot i just never imagined i could get tall and then when i did i had it you know i had my sleeves on that was it yeah frozen i couldn't think i couldn't yeah it was that was that was brutal yeah
so we made it we got into the rvs but and um established on the rvs got too cold as rvs yeah and landed uh basically made one pass towards la cruza and it was sinky and figured our best spot is uh yeah rv for a landing nice big area up there
great because there was also a nice ike hut lodge with ice cream their restaurant
martin's learning french so i sent him over to get some ice cream while i packed up the glider
that's a beautiful chain
yeah it's so nice being in the air v and we figured good first day to
be we need to find a good east side spot but let's let's make the most distance so we hiked into the evening um on the east side uh there's a lot of like roads that access cabins all on the east side there so we found a little patch in the forest camped out next morning we just continued hiking on the east side for quite a ways and um really wanted to make sure that it turned on uh so we didn't i don't think we launched on day two until we
got to the east side and we were like oh we're
it might have been as late as as two o 'clock yeah and so it's stable it's stable at that but it's getting better we're getting deep into the deeper mountains like we're not in that same stable that we were the day before and it just took a little longer to get going but by the end of the rv's chain we're getting well over three grand which made the crossing over so much uh well
it was it was a good amount but it still wasn't like to be safe enough because we weren't gaining that much height and we knew that the other side was west facing so it wouldn't be good lift there that's right and so we weren't able to get enough height to be sure so we decided that we're just wasting time here just fly over and okay so we'll land then we'll hike up and so we flew over we're about to land like setting up for landing no
this this this this this that's okay
nevermind wrong day wrong day
yeah i noticed you got this right that the second day from the air v you took the south route around charm correct yeah
yeah yeah exactly we stayed we stayed well south because once we crossed the there's right so you get above so launch and then there's this like big rock fall that happened maybe 20 years ago but a very distinct face that had ripped off a long time ago got up above that and then then we were getting to 3600 meters almost 37 and you could cut over a wilderness and end up basically even east of uh the brevant launch um so so we basically cut yeah exactly we're north of north of chamonix uh and we were towards the east end of the valley by the time we're basically you know ready to to cross it so we crossed um you know we
crossed over gold about basically yeah
we we basically just just a little bit south of cold of balm is where we kind of left the chamonix valley but we were getting to 4000 meters i mean we're higher than uggy than the d it was a beautiful day it was it was just a spectacular day and that that type of top of lift suddenly made things you know much easier much easier much easier yeah even going through all that glaciated area on the uh far east end of the valley and south of cold of balm and yeah then it was interesting where we finally got low on terrain again when we get into a big flush because uh it was just just trying to figure out the local valley when
we got into a big flush yeah it was just just trying to figure out the local valley when
we got into
a big flush yeah it was just just trying to figure out the local valley when we got ourselves
onto a little bit of a crosswind side of something that seemed like oh this is going to work and it was nothing but flush so we had to
yeah to
wrap around um and then we went further south than course line but we were trying to get established because we did see good development there's probably like a middle ridge but we're not quite diverse yeah
yeah so towards the end of the day so about four or five maybe yeah
yeah
so we were kind of in the orciers zone i think yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah what
we did we ended up basically got to a spot and it would you kind of reach where you just can't get any higher you can sort of ridge soar maintain there but the little piece of terrain was a little too shallow to you know to really get you know it's just basically 6 30 in the afternoon and we're yeah we're we can maintain but we can't get any higher and we see this perfect cumulus above us on this mountain probably another 2 000 meters above but just there was no way to connect it was a little too late and we were kind of like oh we're not late in the day um and
style wise are you martin are you guys trying to land high so you're not having to do a big heaver in the morning are you trying to stay up
yes if possible then definitely yes yeah
because we have okay so you're trying to stick it in tall and yeah in a coal or something you know i launched from the same place the next day is that is that the kind of goal because i mean when i looked at the track logs they're pretty connected it didn't look like there was a ton of hiking in between each one i mean there's some but it was it looked like you were definitely kind of sticking with the with the high terrain yeah
i mean well it's the decision between do we land up here or do we hike up a thousand meters tomorrow morning so sure that's
an easy one yeah it was it was probably the laziest one on the hiking front for sure because the weather was was so good um this end of the second day where we stuck it we then had this river cross fat stream slash river crossing that we were well
that much of a problem it was that there were a ton of like willow bushes to try to down to it
yeah yeah it was like once you land you realize how difficult it is to progress on like we spent the next two hours just trying to figure out how we're going to get across this uh what kind of you know big stream finally decided to go to a bridge but yeah bushwhacking down the super steep kind of half muddy yeah hillside pushing through bushes it was just suddenly a whole different reality after after being in the air for four and a half
yeah
martin your your dad's kind of famously uh you know he's a meteorologist really good at weather but he's kind of famously pretty low tech in terms of you know apps and phones and all that kind of thing which i i dig but are you the navigator what are you guys using for i imagine you are so are you using gaia or what are you using for maps
maps we that we that year we still had like the garment outdoor active with like the little garment in each but then i think we're we just got gaia this year i think that's gonna be we
might start using gaia in the air in the air we don't have a we have
an old what is it 2000 it's not are
you kidding me you're still
using it
yeah yeah the power button the little thing you have to stick a piece of gravel or stick in there yeah
that's it that's my job i
can't believe you're still using it was
funny the week before i knew what was happening so i left one of my nails to grow really long and they like cut and had like an like a built-in little stick in my nail just to be able to hit it hit the power button
my
nail
looked really bad but it worked oh
like father like son then i guess i figured i figured you'd have all the tech all dialed you're
still using the e-tracks i love it yeah but martin's got it on his um he's got it on his leg and purposefully it's basically i'm just asking him for that info else you know yeah we've got four pieces of info on the what time of day glide ratio elevation and i'm just asking him for that info else you know we've got four pieces of
speed speed and yeah
and then the compass so it's got the compass setting so there's yeah there's so any uh i'll just call out for information as i need it and that the martin kind of it's kind of part of the i guess the teaching like he's seeing like i'm basically always vocalizing what i'm thinking yeah and and and getting that feedback information from the instrument that's martin giving me that vocally yeah gotcha
yeah and i think i think once you guys do the guy that'll make the ground stuff
yeah and i think once you guys do the guy that'll make the ground stuff
really nice too because it's just there's so many trails in the alps it's you know it's pretty easy to just sniff around and find one too but they're all in there that i used outdoor active for i think my first the 2015 race and the problem with that was that it's it's open source so if anybody's walked somewhere it could be in there and it's not necessarily a trail so that it got me pretty good and lost a few times just following what i thought was something and wasn't actually something it was just somebody cruising through the woods
yeah that's over the first year but then the garmin one is also quite good just in the app that you use with the inreach oh
yeah yeah yeah that inreach app yeah so that yes that's when
we used and that was also good with the trails and everything and it also had like the built-in satellite if you want it and it was downloadable so yeah
that's great yeah that's terrific okay okay so you guys get your uh i can't remember that you you may is this the next day you made it all the way to fish
so let's see uh we are let's see so this is just end of day two so we're just we just finished day two but now we're we've realized that even if we had to hike to zermatt we think in five days like even if the weather completely which would still forecast was stellar but if even if it had turned bad we were now finally within striking distance so that was inspiring and we just wanted to get it to a point where to an east-facing launch
towards verbier we were thinking we'd take an like a morning flight over side hill it and maybe hike up a little bit and then use the west slopes when they turned on so day three is basically kind of a traverse kind of going back northward getting into a position to launch a nice east face and launch about 11 30 yeah
the east wasn't really working that day yeah
it was surprising we weren't able we were able to maintain but not gain yeah huh so we decided
to just book it for the west face well yeah into
verbier so if you so you've left the massif now and you're you're flying towards verbier yeah yeah okay and
just
south of verbier and so
there was nothing on the west face we were just getting ready to land and then off the slightest beep beep well we just started passing we were already set up to land them just started passing and then we managed to go up what 1000 meters more right a lot
more yeah because basically there we were setting up to land on the same spot we'd side hill uh the year prior yeah where
the dream pigs were on day five happiest pigs in the world were exactly
yeah just just just around the area of the happiest pigs in the world and then this time it was in very light lift it was you know tons of circles but over over the next half hour we gained we gained the 1300 meters that took us all afternoon to hike the year prior so it was a trip down memory lane area and then we kept going and we got above the highest peaks of the five
i think
it was yeah and it was a good day yeah it was a good day yeah we had a good night
think was four
thousand well later in the day later in the day
yeah here
we're getting to about four thousand and it's looking perfect light light northwest wind so
you're you're probably you must be above ruinette or something above the top lift they're looking down yeah west facing stuff wow you're perfectly positioned it was interesting
to see how they're storing their they plow it and they cover it with white tarps exactly the
ukraine war they knew that electricity was going to be expensive the next winter for
snowmaking yeah all their snow
which was a cool idea actually because it saves a ton of energy and we
saw that a lot of places along the way that where they would just pile up their snow you know probably 20 meters high and 60 meters wide and cover it with wide white tarps up as high on the skiing slopes as they could yeah wow crazy
yeah i've run into that a couple times on the race now wow that's an expensive tarp these are huge tarps so
this is this is day three we're now making yeah you know it's something you know textbook flying and almost felt like cheating with such high top of lift uh going for the matterhorn became a straight line deal we're just just just you know really just basically yeah finding thermals where they should be and making it away and good and good you could see it yes right from leaving yeah see it magic holy smokes and there was other people too flying around there's some solo gliders flying around and we get to uh um mountain just to the north of the matterhorn and we're feeling a bit of a north now like there was a bit of a north maybe a little northwest in it uh so that we are drifting south with all the circles so
as we get around to this mount you know we topped off there that was probably 4400 meters yeah pretty good before we decided to make the final glide onto the matterhorn um then we get there and this is one of those discussion things where i i thought we could maybe try to soar up it or try to spend some more time there and
i was like no because i was looking down at the glaciers and thinking well if we suddenly get into a big big bad sink right then we're going down if we're landing on the glaciers it looks like fine and smooth from the top but in reality they never are huge rocks you don't want to be landing on that and
the crevasses yeah yeah it was it's i could see why they gave us a five kilometer radius in the X-Alps on the matterhorn yeah because it's it's it's deep in there i mean arriving at 4000 you're already feeling a little bit on the low side uh yeah yeah so what
time of day did you get to the matterhorn well
this i think it's been like 330 or so yeah yeah yeah it was pretty early on and then we we spent another almost three hours uh in the zermattia area just checking everything out and actually made a decision at one point where we didn't have to land in zermatt i mean that was our goal but we obviously had made it suddenly something we've been trying for you know twice now for a week some 50 hours and we made it yeah it's just amazing and day three you're in day three we're in yeah and we you know there was this candida i promised uh martin we would go to that had some just wonderful raspberry pastry i remember from two of the X-Alps so that was drawing a lot of attention to the zermattia area and then we we had a couple of days of the zermattia area and we had a couple of days of the zermattia area and then we down to land but also you know top of lift was so high a couple times we got back to 4 500
and at that point we're thinking well you know we could skip the pastry and just continue on our flight but with the combination of the zermatt valley wind and the north wind aloft every time we tried to punch out of that long it's like an upside down y that yeah trying to go towards wisp we would we would very quickly start you know we'd get sometimes two to one glide yeah yeah
but so it's funny because we would you thermal up to what 4 600 right and then you fly for a little bit and then it's two to one down and then you try again and again recycled
a free cold
yeah
very cold it
was cold i bet it was cold yeah i mean that once you get up in that i mean you're in the really high terrain all kinds of weird stuff can start happening with the weather i mean i imagine you're getting at 3 32 you're getting a pretty good pull up from from visp and what is it visp and rig yeah yeah coming up the valley there so you didn't try you were trying to get across to the sass but you didn't make it yeah so
we a couple times trying to just exit we realized okay it's not going to happen and then part of it was also trying to figure out where are they landing because i've never i've gone through zermatt a few times in the X-Alps but i never actually the
tandem lc is tiny
yeah yeah it's by the rail by the there's this this um but by the railroad track basically yeah yeah i don't even know if that's their official tandem lc but that's the place we saw the other paragliders landing so we figured okay we got to land there and it was that was a fast one that
was a fast one yeah because
it was already in the shade it was six o 'clock and it was uh there was no valley when at that point it backed off and it was almost almost starting to turn katabatic so yeah um landed in there looked for that kunditari yeah couldn't find it they must have closed it over covet oh no that particular one was not there we bought yeah walked back and forth through zermatt village about three times looking for this place that i swore was there but just wasn't oh yeah and uh hiked out of town found it found a nice place to sleep yeah
and then yeah the
next morning yeah
we hiked a little bit up well quite a bit up and a
thousand meters up yeah watch the watch the tandems kind of come across yeah the valley onto ours i was gonna
say did you go to the did you go to the launch that the tandems use that kind of east facing at the top of the lift okay no
so so we did see a lot of tandems come across onto our face so they're launching something they had a they had a lift which would have been on east of oh yeah i guess
that's i guess theirs is west isn't it then they come across they come across yes that was a
great indicator we'd watch them uh come across and see if they were maintaining or not and then i think it was about about 12 30 we got to a good spot we were a thousand feet over zermatt about 2 800 meters yeah um looks like the thermals were starting to turn on good the east face has been facing it you know all morning and there was a there was a solo guy who was climbing out above us so this was all all the all the check marks were good that it was time to go yeah and um we still hadn't quite made the decision what next yeah we were yeah you're you're you'd reached goal we'd reach goal yeah so what were the two options martin well
one of them was to go back to anisee and the other one i'm back keep on going um east but for for right there just that it was to get out of the zermatt valley yeah
just go somewhere yeah so just to get like to go north and get out to get more towards the the big rhone valley to see whether we and and as as we were approaching the end we would make that call so we uh we it was beautiful we thermaled right up i got a bunch of great pictures with the matterhorn and there was no wind at all which was uh which was awesome we could uh basically go over saddles super low just these glaciated saddles and i even suggested a top landing on some high snow patch to martin's which there's no reason to do that right keep going dad just
just the thought of not being able to get not being able to launch from there and being struck up there with cliffs below was was not really the most exciting factor
that can be hard to you know even after all these years that can be kind of hard to gauge too things look pretty good from the sky often aren't very good so yeah yeah you can get kind of stuck oh man i wish i hadn't landed here but
um yeah it was a great day there was i think that day there was a lot more pilots out and about and sailplanes and we basically crossed over just to the west of wisp that
was a nice warm-up yeah big from four thousand down to two thousand that was amazing yeah
down to maybe twenty five hundred and and then got up uh and at that point we decided to yeah that was just before crossing we made the call we're gonna keep going east like we know what's we know what's between here and anise we've we've spent like last few years in this area let's go to some new terrain especially for martin new train for martin and uh just continue east as far as possible and uh crossed over the i forgot the name of it um so no actually that longest glacier in europe there yeah oh the alice alice glacier yeah we got some nice pictures over that and at that point it was starting to get a little ripe there's some pretty big looking clouds uh so you know there's one we had to cross under it but to avoid any kind of cloud suck i decided to give it like a thousand vertical below it and then we started sinking out we got onto the terrain
and to my surprise we were getting a an east wind and when i we know we were getting now probably coming out of kilometers coming out of the
grimsel yeah
the grimsel snake yeah i forgot about the grimsel snake i remember here you know and when you get that heat low over the alps it starts to draw in these north winds through especially in the northern alps it'll draw in the winds through pretty high passes and wherever it can and so it it overcame this you know this this massive valley wind gets overcome at that point and uh yeah you suddenly hit get a wind reversal there so that uh that forced us to what we tried to establish it tries to re-establish and get like above valley wind layers but it couldn't and landed there hiked into oberwald yeah but it was nice on the way we got some ice cream and yeah got a few groceries and yeah the it was really interesting as we hiking through that valley just seeing what the wind was doing there like the way that you know as that brimsel snake kind of spills and down into oberwald it was
it was all over the past direction would you know some of you change gusts really strong and then be nothing for a while so it was yeah the more it's almost
like a mini fern isn't it
yeah yeah don't you
think i mean it just really dumps when it when the snake starts going i mean that's why it's so people respect it so much because it's just it's it is like a little localized fern effect it seems like yeah
and we were so we were glad we were actually on the ground i think it had we had we tried to push more into that area i think you know finding this i think we made 70 kilometers that day and so now we're just finishing day four um ended up camping out in in the woods just near oberwald and the next morning what was the next morning was kind of overcast yeah
it was quite overcast but knew that we had to get over the forka pass and
that was a long hike to get to the forka pass there's a lot of blueberries along the way which was nice yeah and got to the forka did you fly it or you see hiked over it we hiked yeah we hiked that was long yeah got to the forka pass uh and it would have been launchable um there was basically like an east wind at the pass and that was a tough call because yeah launch it but it i wasn't seeing any guarantee of getting up it was a very shallow valley that kind of leads out of yeah so if we'd launched it we were looking at maybe you know if we sunk out 300 meters we just have another big hike up which we've been doing all morning so we decided to traverse a bit and try looking for launches on the hillsides and we burnt a lot of time doing that and it was nothing was looking too ideal yeah and
then we had the scariest moment because i said i was gonna say to martin we
decided to continue on on the road yes we're hiking the road yeah we're
hiking the road and uh i was telling martin i was well i should have stated this way i should have said once you look uh to see if you're clear we can cross the road but i said we can i was i said it the wrong way i said we can we can cross the road and and then i was about to say once you look so martin martin heard that
you can cross
the road and there was a bicycle zipping down yeah and he just did that he luckily did a quick avoidance maneuver and just italian cursing like crazy
you mean
motorcycle or pedal bike a
pedal bike just like oh man cruising yeah yeah yeah and it was yeah i mean that was that could have gone terribly bad that
could have been that
was probably the most dangerous moment of the whole trip
yeah totally well that's usually the case the ground stuff that gets you wow but we finally found
a launch uh that made sense that we traversed so long that it you know now we had good elevation over the valley and we're trying to get to andermatt pass yeah at least uh just to save ourselves a bit of hiking and that was the shortest day that was i mean if we flew only 45 minutes that day but just shows how good it was yeah
it was a good 45 minutes and covered a good amount of distance we
kind of covered a good amount of distance and but it was it was it was basically when conditions speaking of kind of the limits it was is ripe you know turning towards rotten as far as the sky there's you know in the distance there were some big q names pretty far off and we got to andermatt pass and even though lift wise we could have kept going i said no we need we need to get on the ground it's just it's just we need to land with this ods um and set up for a really nice long grassy landing approach and i think that we hit a batch of sink behind us because suddenly what should have felt like would have been into a valley flow yeah
we had
tailwind we're just
yeah and just flared up onto this grassy patch and just together yeah
it's hard to coordinate four legs four
legs one two three roll
it was do you often just kind
of skid in yeah
no it was it was getting tumble kind of yeah but
it was
a lot of grass it was really nice grassy spot but
yeah
and then this were the uh were the windmills churning yeah they were yeah yeah yeah there were there was always that always freaks me out in there i don't know andermatt's just one of those places where i mean you've got four huge passes right there you've got the stuff coming up from belenzona and you've got this whatever that pass is going out to the north out to zurich and it's just yeah it's a complex place yeah it is yeah it
is but we're happy to be on the ground and took uh you know those are great there's a nice little stream there and just we really took our time right now about
45 minutes yeah
at least we took at least 45 minutes to pack up there was really nothing to do with it but we were able to get on the ground and we were able to get on the ground big hurry big push and it was we're you know seeing if it was going to start raining or not and it looked like it wasn't so we finally packed everything up
walked about 200 meters maybe
a kilometer maybe
a kilometer but not not much like you can still see a spot where we landed and then it started coming down yeah it
started raining so we quickly set up a tent and so we could have we could have just set up tent where we landed that would have been the most practical thing but right after all that packing up then we just had to unpack it all real quick
and then we had we were watching the uh you know on windy you can see the radar returns i mean we had some really big storms pass right over us through the night
yeah the the tents around it really well i slept through it so it was all theoretical for me
i remember yeah
fantastic quick
side you
have you have two bags two sleeping bags nope
no sleeping bags just the glider oh really yeah we have these two
super light um thermo rest pads that was after the first year where we didn't bring any uh there's
three-quarter lengths or okay
yeah three-quarter length just just air thermo rest like they're yeah that's in 200 grams each yeah but and then the tandem is our blanket so we basically have the tandem you know i fold old school half half half so then basically when you unroll it a little bit you get everybody get you know each one of us has half a there's a bit of tandem underneath us and then we get half a wing to work with for temperature control and then we have a little bit of a blanket and then we have
of the
everybody crazy yeah you have to you do have to get tired the first nights are kind of but yeah
melatonin yeah you
can take some melatonin yeah ah there you go yeah we'll sleep aid yeah and okay so you're you're well we're in andermatt day six now yeah yeah we wake up day six it's still a little rainy so there's no hurry to get out and we're in cloud we're basically in cloud and a little drizzly yeah um but the first good break we we pack up um hike just to the pass itself uh yeah
there there was like some restaurants and some stuff so we got an ice cream and i served as a travel agent figuring out all of our bus options back yes
because now we know we know then you know the we're on day six day seven it's done so the morning of day eight martin figures well we're definitely going to get to core so he got us a bus uh on flicks bus back from core to prague yeah
but it was uh it was a bet trying to figure out where we're gonna get to or from especially in the days where i was also looking at it and for even a minute i was considering what if we take the bus from it starts with the w the capital of luxembourg because so i was thinking what's the big city between her and one of the previous cities so yeah so
we we had we had a ticket we had a bus ticket for you know the morning of day eight uh yeah so we knew i'd finish by day seven and uh so we knew which all things considered we should be able to get to core but we at that point we're deciding our goal is davos davos looked like a really cool goal and i think we spoke and you said take a swim in the lake and it's funny in the exile i completely like even i spaced i don't remember remember the lake but there's definitely a nice big lake there yeah
so we landed no but
we're not there yet so so we're morning yeah we're morning of day five getting you know the kind of the weather's overcast we're getting certain logistics taken care of mine's really good about getting all you know we do have power banks with us but whenever we get to any place where there is a place to plug in we'll just charge up all power banks and all yeah in reaches and and
we also have solar panels and stuff
yeah we did yeah yeah okay and that's some ice cream and then it started to break up and we basically hiked to uh found a good launch and that day was really nice and easy once we got going around two o 'clock yeah it was it was just nice textbook flying kind of trip down memory lane from many many X-Alps ago um and really that was a really nice not not super challenging
but it was a really nice experience and it was a really nice experience
but just beautiful flying and around 4 30 uh i start to notice um a lower cloud coming over some of the passes uh to the north and they're pretty high passes they're passes that are like 2600 meters and that and remembering you know from the two days prior the brimsel snake and the whole experiences have been the x-ops where i've been on perfect south you know uh south facing southwest facing slopes in the late afternoon and been flushed completely all the way down to the valley i realized okay it's starting to come in and we need to our best bet is to top land high which yeah which we did we landed about 2300 meters and it was a hot one of those hot days too and really hot down in the valley and yeah um even though it felt like we were landing early i think it was a really it was yeah it was a good it was a
good move yeah so
you're not down to yet you're just flying down the rhine no
we're about halfway realistically we're halfway maybe a little past halfway between undermass undermass pass and and whore and it's only 4 30 but i decided to pull this didn't seem this top hill uh a top hill landing um and basically we i think it was a smart move because as we hiked uh then we hiked a little bit north to find a camp spot and we start to hit that wind towards afternoon and it was pretty yeah it was pretty strong there was a big you know it was a big flush so we yeah we we we sidehilled it before that got to our area but it would have affected i think even the next crossing yeah everything's really shallow in there and we would have risked being flushed in there so it was a good move to stay high and we found this really just really beautiful place to camp out found all these bullets that were you know probably a good you know probably fifth maybe maybe 10 centimeters yeah maybe two centimeters wide and they're rusty and they must be the swiss the swiss army must have had a lot of practice there yeah
yeah right yeah
i mean well
and core course has famously windy and that place gets crazy strong valley winds i've had some beautiful flights down the rhine to then just suddenly be whoa what is going on here but it can be you want to be high yeah
it's one of those arteries that feeds it and we knew we knew that the next day we would want to be crossing chorus as high as yeah so the next uh the next morning let's see so we we wake up in this beautiful place uh but it's not a launchable place so we had a bit of hiking around to do um and we got to a place we're scoping out launch you want to tell them that funny story oh
yeah we're scoping out launch and my dad goes to go to the bathroom and look at the wind conditions and while taking the number two his phone falls into it
what a crusher yeah
that
was a that was a bit of a cleanup yeah my phone
oh man that's a man maybe we should leave this behind oh man brutal bud yeah
but um finally get to a good launch even though we you know we were we probably could have launched a little earlier but once again we're being a little concerned
about the
don't want to lose that height don't want to lose today uh it's our last day and uh we got kind of one shot at davos yeah and uh so so we get flying uh and it is a windier day it's it's a it's a bit of a southwest which is fine because it's crossing you know we're trying to go east so
we're not you got a little bit of tailwind
yeah a little bit of tailwind but this whole terrain now this last bit of as you're getting to the end of the day we're getting to the end of the day we're getting close to whore it's um it's shallower and with very steep terrain only at the crest so with often we'd be stuck running to ridge soar the crest and then we would venture out venture out and you know try to find thermals and then sometimes run back to actually ridge soar back up on the on the steep crest mountains so it was a it was it
was not easy flying it was yeah no
it was not easy flying especially that part to whore was not easy because you know the crest was pretty deep in on on relatively shallow slope yeah uh with now some wind in the picture so it it definitely i think from you know tactics and you know it was the most challenging uh yeah day yeah but once we finally approached the mountain before whore we were able to top out just touch cloud base at 3300 meters and that was great every meter counted because we crossed whore onto some steep west facing cliffs but those were actually not quite working yet so it made for uh it made for a tough decision there do you sink out into the whore valley or do you jump over the back and hope to frisbee along yeah into the you know that valley that leads to the pass that'll go into dabos and we we went for it and there there was we could have found places certainly there was places to land but it would have been tight if you had to and luckily so
getting out of there was public transportation wouldn't have been i mean there probably would have been buses but it wasn't that big that yeah yeah
i think there's you know there was it was that initial part after crossing whore deciding to jump over the back frisbeeing along that was a little bit of a the last of the what i would call real challenging parts and then we finally got established in there and then it was then it was basically like uh clockwork again making our way towards whore i mean towards davos and uh got to davos isn't
that beautiful terrain yeah yeah it's just magnificent it's so amazing i mean it's hard to say i mean everywhere you've been has been amazing from anisee all the way but uh you know the rhine and the huge terrain around fiche and the alex glacier and the matterhorn and yeah mont blanc and everything else but that green it's just a it's just surreal that davos is one of my favorite legs it's just gorgeous in there yeah so cool
and it was it was it was interesting to fly in this direction because i've flown it twice the other way in in various ex-alps but this time flying it back up and um as we arrived in davos and got to got to the lake to the to the north of us was already a pretty good ripe looking uh you know not quite cunin yet but it was definitely a big cumulus congestus forming and so yeah we basically ended up basically doing a spiral dive down to the lake we weren't sure whether you're allowed to land by the lake or not but we said well land land by the big it's a big open grassy area yeah get up and so
it was a great spiral down and then we packed up jumped in the lake
jumped in the lake martin figure out what place to go yeah there's
a train station right there you guys nailed it it's just perfect yeah camped out
one more night we got our train tickets for the next morning because we had the bus out of core around 10 o 'clock so we we just you know one more one more rainy night but uh yeah like mission accomplished and then so i mean more than doubled the uh it was 120 i mean that's a
dream mission that really is i mean that that is the vol biv in the alps yeah and you pulled it off in a tandem amazing yeah
it ended up being even via that turn point right around the 300k mark uh and the original goal was only 120k which so so tough so yeah this was uh this was a dream to make it this far and yeah see all the southern southern yeah
so
what do you i mean what's how does it work now you've had the three attempts you made it what do you do you start in davos next and just keep going or what i can't wait to hear what the next one is so yeah
so we decided to make davos to start we could actually the by the way our rules go we could have chosen a completely random start totally new thing yeah but uh martin tell them what the goal
we decided from davos where we finished this time to corvara where we finished the goal before to where it's in the dolomites so
it's ah so you're gonna jump the spine yeah so we got 150k more at the south part of this goal like like it's less distance than what we just had this summer but as far as a but that's a big goal it's at least 150k away and uh it'll you know i know there's some some parks the swiss get kind of upset about yeah i remember through some of the we
still need to look at google earth for that one and figure out
yeah yeah
there is some there is some funky stuff i mean you could go you could go straight south to st moritz you know and remember honza we've went through there and in 2015 or you probably you know more course line would be more down towards morano i guess right and uh but yeah i think towards morano over the big stuff
yeah but that might hit you might hit some of those parks so we just have to you're gonna
hit the nash you're gonna hit the swiss national park which they definitely don't want you to land that that's where it gets tricky is right around aaron's place there there's there's a lot of there's a lot of the swiss parks there's a big one the big national park and um but you can fly over it yeah you just can't land it i
remember when uh my supporters it was i think uh uh louis and jesse in the 2013 uh and and they were supporting and one of the rangers was saying telling him that flying over his national parks is like walking naked in front of the pope
he was very yeah yeah no
i'm they're very particular about that
and i mean and we are too you know the gavin it's not just this one i mean you you no no no if you were to fly in and out of uh yosemite i bet you'd stir the hornet's nest i bet right now i mean yeah
and i mean that's the thing about the the flying over there too i mean it's you're not going to get away with it i mean there's there's you know there's there's a lot of people somebody's going to see you and that's yeah and they're we have to respect their rules too but but that's you know there's definitely there's a route through there that you can figure out that'll be that'll be pretty spectacular what a neat end and are you going next month again are you going in june no this
is gonna be
later it's uh
late july yeah
late july late
july yeah like mid mid to late july is when we'll be well that
should be fine i mean that should work because i i would have said that would be pretty hard to do what you just did because getting out of anisee that late's pretty
and and that should that should work pretty well and then you're getting the dolomites when it's starting to be nice yeah
so fingers crossed that we get some good weather i mean it's obviously as all of these things go that's it's the weather that plays a role i mean yeah looking back and we were just looking at the track logs that we emailed you and it's i think it's 90 85 90 was covered by air we had yeah a total of 26 hours uh over that week uh and our shortest or longest was uh six and a half hours so it's just we put a lot of air time in that's
amazing six and a half and martin do you ever get airsick nope luckily nothing no that's amazing six and a half hours oh man with dad in the sky okay so for both of you since 2008 to now best flight gotta
be the one getting into zermatt really
yeah just flying from runet over those huge tall peaks yeah and it's posting up on the matterhorn yeah that's hard to beat yeah that i would i would
agree and i would put number two as the second year when we made it almost to corvara there was a 50k flight that was just just a beautiful beautiful flight we'd had two days of rain so we actually did yeah we flew day one out of salamzee going west and then we had two days of hiking and then we had just a beautiful 50k flight that took us yeah you know right into the dolomites which was that was that was pretty sweet yeah
you you mentioned martin you mentioned at one point you guys kind of had this rule you know the three three attempts rule that kind of thing are there other rules are there are there guidelines are there uh you know philosophy is there a philosophy of the of the sky camp honda martin team that kind of guides the principles i'd
say not really though well self-support yeah self-support the only other rules also that we can't have we can't use any public transportation or any like non paraglider or foot transportation after we launch after we get up onto the starting spot yeah
so you can you can you know whatever the initial start launch you can take a bus whatever whatever it could get to the initial start but once we've begun our mission yeah no
gondolas no trams no cars no taxis no scooters you're you're on foot or you're flying yeah yeah love it love it do you think honda is is the years go by you start doing with tomas can you see this changing in any way would it be uh you know i i remember when i did the thing with with uh with will his his style was that we would we had to connect the line in other words you couldn't fill gaps with walking you could walk but you had to you had to basically if you were taking off 20k down you had to fly back and tag where you where you'd left off and then keep going you know you had to have a kind of a continuous track log do you guys talk about stuff like that or is it just self-support that's clean enough i
think self-support and i think you can tell by that that just having to go back because if you get a span of rainy days then it's better just not to move you'd
be yeah it would almost incentivize not moving the so i think just just getting there i think part of it's just whatever it takes to get there yeah yeah just get there yeah or attempt to get there but obviously with the with terrible weather you you quickly realize the con you know the can't do it how convoluted the alps are you know what seems like straight line distance to be not so big it it gets really hard to make progress if you're just stuck on yeah hansi
the i think i asked you about this in the last one but has this in a sense replaced what you've lost with the X-Alps or is it even better because you've got this incredible connection when you're doing something with your son i'm asking because i'm getting so fired up to do this with fallon it just seems like such a great way to spend time with your kid
yeah no it's that that is it's just a great way to connect without any of you know life's normal worries or chores or anything like that just to be on a mission where you're just trying to make distance towards the goal and and doing
it's you know it's it's it's it's it is apples and oranges i mean there's something about the race of the X-Alps and the sheer you know just like the live tracking and you know everybody's there's something about the X-Alps and the sheer tiredness and the mindset you don't you don't quite reach that and it's good you don't you wouldn't want to be that tired in this no in this adventure you need we need all the all the focus and the rest you can uh get but i do remember even in the X-Alps thinking wow this would be great to do this it's a great place it's a return to and just like check it out in a slightly less hectic fashion so yeah yeah in some ways this is it i mean the rules are really simple you don't have to show up for some prologue you don't have to you're not satisfying any sponsor you just kind of you keep the rules as simple as possible i think one other rule i would mention is you don't move forward at any cost i mean there was a point where we thought okay on the second or third one we could just hike the sea on valley uh and just make this and And just making endless distance down the road becomes pointless.
You're there to be in the mountains. So that's why we're trying to land high whenever possible or keep it on the mountain routes. But it does, yeah, I think it definitely fills the gap. And it's not the same, but it's in many ways just as good. It's a different kind of just as good. Yeah. And with Tomas, it's going to be a different, you know, we'll see how his patience is. Because we've had him on some flights, you know, after about half an hour at this age, he's ready to land. I mean, he's excited to get airborne, but then he's also happy to land. So a lot of things, we're talking with Martin, a lot of things have to come together to make these kind of trips. I mean, A, the other parent, usually mom, I guess, would have to agree.
Yeah. That's a big one. Yeah, it's not going to even, you don't consider BCD before that. Right. There's no getting around A. Yeah.
Then B is probably, you know, the dad or could be the mom or whatever. It has to be a good enough pilot to confidently and safely pull it off. The kid has to be wanting and willing and excited about doing it. And. They also cannot get airsick. So there's at least four things right there. Yeah, they got to come together. They got to come together.
Hansa, I'm asking this for a personal reason. I don't know if this would be totally interesting to everybody listening, but maybe to some. But, you know, as I'm thinking about this with Fallon, you know, I've obviously got a lot of pilot experience and solo experience and ex-Alps and that kind of thing. But I've never been a tandem pilot. Is that, would that worry you? I mean, is this something I can. Very easily figure out or should I go become a, you know, I've got tandem gear. I have flown people tandem, but I'm not a tandem pilot. I never have been. I don't have, you know, you've got thousands of hours of tandems and you did all those years of tandems. Is that, is that necessary?
You know, I don't, I don't, I wouldn't actually, I think the sheer piloting experience is more important than the tandem experience. Cause in this you'll be side hill landing. You'll be, you know, long, you're not doing the. The, you know, if you're working as a professional tandem pilot, you're often using the same launch and landing more or less. You're not, you're not taking people into in deep. You're not side hill landing somewhere with people. So, uh, I think, I think your idea of getting an extra large gliders probably a lot better than getting a full blown tandem, especially in the early years. I would, I would recommend that, uh, just to be like right in the proper weight range. And, uh, then, um. Yeah, then obviously it's all about just, you know, respecting what you're, that you're now with your daughter and, and giving yourself huge margins.
Um, but yeah, I don't, I honestly, I don't think, I don't think it's so much that the tandem pilot thing, I think it's the ex-Alps pilot that's going to play a much bigger role in this. Um, the pilot that's feels comfortable, you know, side hill landing a lot of places and it's just, you know, at that point. Just try to pick your days when it's, um, you know, wind, avoid wind, avoid wind as much as possible initially. Right. Right. And the rest will fall into place.
And I think you've also guys,
what a, oh, go ahead. And
I think you've also got to put into consideration that you're driving a big bus on a sports car and what that entails. Yeah.
Very, very different weapon, aren't you? It's maybe weapons, not a very good choice, but I like to think of these wings as. Yeah.
Sharp blades. And this is a very dull blade with a tan looser. Yeah. But guys, thanks so much. I've just been smiling ear to ear for the last hour and a half. I appreciate it. Always so fun to hear about these adventures. Hans, I appreciate the pictures that you send me when you guys are doing this and the stoke. And it's just a, it's pure joy to watch how much joy you are both having doing this. So have a great adventure this summer. We'll be following along. And maybe we could even put a link up to your shared page or something so other people can watch and send you messages and messages and stuff. That'd be a lot of fun, but good luck from Davos to the Dolomites. That sounds, that sounds terrific.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank
you, Gavin. Thanks for giving us the opportunity to share our story again. And it's amazing. Yeah. You're fast approaching number 200 on your podcast, right?
I know. I know we should actually, this is going to be real close to 200 because we've got a couple logged here in front of you. So we're going to be. Right on the cusp. Yeah. And this goes live, but yeah, I can't believe it. Right. Unbelievable. Yeah. Going on for a while now, as long as you guys have been doing these trips, actually. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, thanks again, Gavin. It's been, it's been great. And lots of luck as you start doing this with Fallon. I hope she enjoys it. And you know, I would start, you know, as simple as an overnight or somewhere just super chill. Definitely. Definitely. That's
how we'll start it. We've got a great place to do
it. We're going to do
that here in our backyard. Yeah. Yeah. I'm hoping that. Start there and come to the Alps and maybe we'll glom onto you guys one of these days. That'd be fun. Yeah.
One of these years we might, we'll try to make some time to get back out to Sun Valley. It's been a while. So. Please do. Please do. Thanks guys. Appreciate
it. All right. Thanks Gavin.
Yep. Bye. If
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