197. Honza and Son strike gold in the Alps - Honza Rejmanek & Martin Rejmanek

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, overdevelop, 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 4,000 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 winds, we got ourselves onto a little bit of a crosswind side of something that seemed like, oh, this is going to work, and 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,

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 Outdooractive 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 4,400 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 3:30 or so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was pretty early on. And then we, we spent another almost three hours, uh, in the Zermatt 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 us down to land, but also, you know, top of lift was so high, a couple times we got back to 4500.

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 Annecy, 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, 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 no 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 kilometers.

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 3,300 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 Annecy 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 Annecy 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

you find the Cloudbase Mayhem valuable, you can support it in a lot of different ways. You can give us a rating on iTunes or Stitcher or however you get your podcast. That goes a long ways and helps spread the word. You can blog about it on your own website. Or share it on social media. You can talk about it on the way out to launch with your pilot friends. I know a lot of interesting conversations have happened that way. And of course you can support us financially. This show does take a lot of time, a lot of editing, a lot of storage and music and all kinds of behind the scenes costs. So if you can support us financially, all we've ever asked for is a buck a show. And you can do that through a one-time donation through PayPal, or you can set up a subscription service that charges you for each show that comes out. We put a new show out every two weeks. So for example, if you did a buck a show and every two weeks, it'd be about $25 a year.

So way cheaper than a magazine subscription and it makes all of this possible. I do not want to fund this show with advertising or sponsors. We get asked about that pretty frequently, but I, for a whole bunch of different reasons, which I've said many times on the show, I don't want to do that. I don't like having that stuff at the front of the show. And I also want you to know that these are authentic conversations with real people. And these are just our opinions, but our opinions are not being skewed by sponsors. They're advertising dollars. I think that's a pretty toxic business model. So I hope you dig that. Um, you can support us. If you go to cloudbasemayhem.com, you can find the places to support. You can do it through patreon.com forward slash Cloudbase Mayhem. If you want a recurring subscription, you can also do that directly through the website. We've tried to make it really easy and that will give you access to all the bonus material, a little video cast that we do and extra little, uh, Nuggets that we find in conversations that don't make it into the main show.

But we feel like. You should hear, we don't put any of that behind a paywall. If you can't afford to support us, then just let me know. And I'll set you up with an account. Of course, that'll be lifetime. And hopefully you're being in a position someday to be able to support us, but you'll find all that on the website, uh, all of you who have supported us or even joined our newsletter or bought Cloudbase Mayhem, merchandise, t-shirts or hats or anything. You should be all set up. You should have an account and you should be able to access all that bonus material. Now. Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate your support and we'll see you on the next show. Thank you.