Hi there, everybody. Welcome to the 200th episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. It's a bicentennial, I think you would call that. We've been at this for 10 years, give or take a couple months, and it is all because of you. I have you to thank and you to be grateful for. Thank you for making it happen. Thank you for supporting the show in whatever way you can. And thanks for the education to all the amazing guests we've had on the show and the amazing guests yet to be on the show. It has been a ball, it has been a joy, it has been a pleasure, and I'm excited to really put a lot more energy into it going forward. I've been wrapped up in this house build in the kind of last year and a half, and I always feel like these are kind of, oh, we've got to get another show out.
And I haven't been able to put the energy I like to. I've got a whole huge folder of suggestions from those of you who have reached out over the months and years, and I promise to bring those shows to you. We have a lot of legends out there to interview, and a lot of hang gliders and hot air balloon people that I don't typically have on the show and should. It's been one of those I need to do for a long time, and I promise I will. But what I can say about this show... I'm kind of happy that it just happened to fall on the 200th, is this one is very special. One, it's the first time we've ever had so many people in a single recording. I had three of the Expeditions Five on this one.
We've done live shows with more than that, but I had to get these guys in South Africa and London to come on the show, and that was all thanks to Barb's, Richard Barber. Thank you, sir. But this was a real treat to talk. We talked to a climbing legend, Andy DeClercq, and we didn't have Pierre Carter and Jeremy Holdcroft. We were two of the Expedition members on this one. You all know, you probably recognize those names, but certainly Pierre Carter. He flew off Everest last year and partook in the Red Bull X-Alps back in the day. We had a couple of those and some great stories from that, and I will get him on just independently on the show as soon as we can.
We'll make those two things a line, but in this show, I talked to Scott Baker and Andy DeClercq and Richard Barber. Andy DeClercq, you all might recognize those of you with a mountaineering background. Legendary climber. He's climbed with Alex Lowe and Conrad Anker and many others. He was on Everest and the fateful John Krakauer story and has many hundreds of first descents in his home of South Africa. Many around the world, he's been at it a long time. He's also a skydiver and a base jumper and a true pioneer in flight. He's been paragliding since it started and hang gliding before that, but it was just fantastic to have him on my screen and get to share in his joy of the mountains.
These five guys went off to Pakistan this summer to try to break the altitude record. They have been inspired by all the amazing stuff that's gone on in Pakistan. Of course, Brad Sander was one of the first out there who I've been some flying with and haven't seen him in an awful long time, but he was one of the original pioneers. And then in the last few years, we've seen some amazing things by Antoine Girard and Damien Lacaze and Fabi Buhl and Aaron Durogati incredible huge triangles out there last summer. And then most more recently Horacio Lorenz and Tom de Dorladeau. We've both been out there several times, but they made their incredible film of flying out to K2 along the Baltoro Glacier this last year, and that film is absolutely amazing.
I'm sure many of you have seen it. If you haven't, make sure to do so. The link to that film will be in the show notes, but these guys are more humble, I think, and they're flying endeavors. And certainly, Andy is the best. I'm sure everybody out there has seen the BMF when it comes to mountaineering and climbing experience, but they'd seen this stuff and thought, why can't a group of just blokes from South Africa get out there and go big as well? So they did. They went out there and soon after arrival, they did their acclimatization in the Hunza and then made their way up to the kind of the launch point to get out to K2 and fly out on the Baltoro. You hear all about that.
But on the first flight of that series, things went epically sideways, and this is their story of what went right, what went wrong (which was quite a bit), and the learning and the education that came out of it. They are all, as you will hear, still very good friends, and they have plans for the future, but this was a lot of fun and sometimes pretty riotous, and but a great education for all of us, especially when heading off to remote big places like Pakistan. It's the highest mountains in the world, so enjoy this bicentennial episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem with all these fine gentlemen, and enjoy their story.
Cheers, all.
Right, well, gentlemen, we've never interviewed this many people at one point, and you're spread all across the world—South Africa and Cape Town, and in Barb's here in London. I guess that's a good thing. That's, that's, well...
I'm in Nottingham today, but ah
You're in Nottingham today, all right? And I'm over here in Sun Valley, so welcome to the mayhem. It's, it's cool to have you guys on the show. Barb's, I appreciate you keeping me updated both before and after. Why don't we start by just a very quick, quick introduction from the three of you on who you are and you're climbing and and flying background, and then I'll ask you about the mission. But why don't we, why don't we start, Barb's, once you start? And then we'll go around my clock here, and then we'll go to Andy, and then we'll go to Scott, okay?
Cool. Um, so Richard Barber, I've been flying since 2004. Before that, I did my pipes license um in 2008. Um, within a year, I lied about my hours, went to South Africa, to the Northern Cape, to a place called R, um, flew uh over 100 Ks, um, quite quickly, went back in the year, um, flew 100k in a little over two hours, um, using half breaks most of the time and sort of scaring myself stupid. Um, gave up for a little while while I was married, then got divorced, so I didn't have any responsibilities, so I took up the sport again, um, and then since then, it's just been a continuous rise with paragliding taking over more of my life.
Nice.
and
Andy oh that's great cool so I've in South Africa be known as an Obali, which is an old man, an old guy. I started flying in 1984, actually,
in the very early days, you know, prior to actual paragliders being made. We used to take the pilot shoots off our skydiving canopies and then run off hills.
Started in the early days, sort of up to about 1990 was sort of part of the early wave of flying in South Africa. And then I stopped and went off to pursue my alpinism and the sort of rock climbing. I actually lived in Seattle for 10 years. I've climbed all over the world, Denali, Patagonia, a few trips to the Himalayas before. And while this was going on, I was always, you know, busy with the second sport of skydiving and then later base jumping. So I've kind of been around the block climbing.
And then about five or six years ago, I decided I was going to get back into paragliding. I probably had about 300 hours up till 2017, and that's when I got back into it properly. And I'm really enjoying the aviation aspect. So in a way, with the rise of paragliding, I got off just when all the experimental stuff happened and then joined the game when it was nice and safe and well as tablet. Married in Cape Town.
Oh my God. We got to do three podcasts just with you, but go ahead. There's a lot of history there I would just die to dig into, but yeah. Okay. Go ahead. Sorry.
Yeah. Yeah. And then basically, basically married with four kids in Cape Town. And then, you know, I started my own business and run a cabin and making business. So that's me. Do your kids fly? My youngest son does. Yeah. He just started about a year ago.
And the others
don't like paragliding.
Probably better.
And Scott?
So I've been flying far less of a lustrous career, I suppose, in flying in aviation terms. I've been flying since 2019.
I've come from a bit of an outdoor business. I've been flying in a lot of different things. So the, my background. I did a lot of freestyle and whitewater kayaking was my thing for many years, kind of in my youth, a little bit of rally biking. So used to being, to a degree, out in the exposure thing, but not, not as wild as Andy's. Andy's previous career. And also living in Cape Town. I work in the film and media production industry and service, strangely, mostly fashion and luxury brand. Yeah. but I, I organize things for a living. It's my and and make make good tea, um, that's my yeah, that's my life
I always find it really interesting, the kayaking, flying connection, and there seems to be a very much similar mindset in the in those groups of people that was, you know, certainly my background was was in paddling before flying, and it seems to really connect. A different one is is you, Andy, you know, Will Gadd always told me that it made him nervous when climbers would would go to flying because it was, you know, flying is very much a gravity sport, uh, it's a flow sport, you know, so he's, he finds that kayaking, skateboarding, mountain biking, these kind of sports where you're dealing with a lot of gravity, you're dealing with gravity, obviously climbing, but climbing is more precision, slow.
It's not so much a flow sport, you can get in the flow state of mind, of course, which we talk about a lot on the show, but it interesting that you, you actually sounds like you went the other way, you started with flying and then you went to climbing, is that right, um
Not exactly. I've been, I've basically been climbing since I was a very young kid and um...
Uh, the um, how should I say, the, you know, the combination of um, base jumping and climbing works very well together, and that was something I always wanted to do. So I started skydiving first, and and and then in the early days, paragliding, but it was mostly to get into base jumping so we could climb things and then jump off them, and that's kind of what we did, so
You were the original Dean Potter; you probably gave him the idea, pretty
much and
Your, your, your partner were no strangers to the the alpine world, Alex Lowe and Conrad, and uh, you're, you're being quite humble. You've climbed a lot of big stuff, yeah.
Well, very interestingly, I met Conrad at the, uh, at the 7,000-foot Kiltner base camp in Alaska on his very first season. He was a youngster with a huge crop of blonde hair, and then, more sadly enough, we were in Piu in 1999. We were trying
to find a place to camp, and he was in a... um, he was on an expedition to Shipton Spire, and he came out for a few days, I think he had—he was sick or something. And that was, sadly, the last time I saw him, because later that year he was killed in that avalanche in Shishapang. So it's... it's, I have... I've met a lot of interesting people I've always kept under the radar and not sort of sprouted about it, but, uh, both the paragliders and the, you know, and the climbers are amazing tribe, really.
Speaking of the tribe of the two, you know, you're—you're—you've pushed into two sports who take a lot of us. Uh, you know, mountaineering certainly uh has enormous risk, usually not so much dependent on the people, but the, you know, the the mountains themselves. Same with flying, often it's not, you know, it's not the gear, it's—it's off, it's sometimes the decisions. But we get in the problem with paddling and flying and climbing is you can get into places where you can't stop, you can't just hit the eject button, I guess, unless you've got a base rig on your back and then you can. But, uh, which one? This is a hard question, but which one has taken more friends?
I
would say on balance, um, more people get taken paragliding, um, than climbing, but I've just been climbing a lot longer and so there's been a lot of people from climbing, yeah, most more, especially from alpinism, you know, in the mountains, not so much rock climbing, but again, it's just got to do with numbers. Um, I mean, there's—I mean, there's a lot more people that basically paraglide, I think, and and I think paragliding is a far more dangerous, uh, sport or activity than mountaineering and climbing, as you said. It's—it's—it's a lot more dynamic.
it's a
lot it's very
dynamic yeah
It's a, it's a difficult question to answer, but uh, balance, I'd say. Paragliding, interesting.
Hadn't planned on going there. Just caught me as an interesting question, Barbs. You reached out before you guys went and, uh, you and I had—you'd said, "Hey, we got to get Pierre on the show," which I still need to do, and I was hoping he could join us for this. But, those of you listening, that's Pierre Carter, who competed in the X-Alps a couple times and a legendary South African pilot and animal. And so, tell me, the original expedition, I assume, was a bit inspired by Tom de Dorlodot and what those guys did in the Baltoro? Or no, was this something you had dreamed up and then they went in there and got into it? But tell us what was planned and, and the team, a little bit about the team and, and what, what the mission was.
Sure.
So, um, I'm never good when I'm bored, um, and Kovid was rubbish, um, particularly to start with, um, I, I was, I was furloughed for a little while, um, and, uh, that was June 2020, um, and so I started looking for, and I'd sort of started in May even just looking for, um, uh, convergence lines and high cloud bases around the world. So, I, I played on Windy, um, just looking, looking for convergence, and then also looking at cloud base, and so the two which I found were the, um, uh, the convergence that sets up over the Atlas, um, and also then I found sort of, um,
the uh, the the Caracorum from that um, I was also already aware of the Caracorum because of John Sylvester, like you. I went with um, Sky Safaris, um, Jim, um, Eddie Colfox, who I think at some point you've just got to get on
Oh, for sure, yeah, um...
And uh, and obviously John Sylvester as well, and then sort, and I'd watch Birdmen of the Caracorum, and so I had a sort of bit of it, and you know, having seen this thing for Pakistan, I then contacted Andy. Um, it was like, "Hey Andy, um, I've, I've seen the Caracorum, and I also watched a program with um, a David Attenborough program at the same time, just happened happenstance where it talked about Concordia, and Concordia, you've got the, the view of, well, you've got K2, you've got the Gasha Rooms, and you've got Masha Rooms South, and he called it, I think, the Valley of the Gods, and I was like, okay, gotta do this." So got in touch with Andy, I was like, "Hey Andy," and he chuckled and sent me his goals in paragliding, and his ultimate goal in paragliding was to fly the Baltore.
Um, so, so that was 2020, um, and then 21, I sort of started, started really sort of looking at it a bit more. Um, then in 2021,
I started planning for 2022, but couldn't get it organized. And actually, thank goodness, because I would have got nowhere because I didn't have the right contacts. I didn't realize quite how difficult trying to organize the logistics of something in Pakistan would be. So that was where it all came from, I guess. Can you give
us a couple minutes on what is involved? I just had four buddies take off and go there to fly, and I don't know that they did anything. I think they're just going out there and seeing what happens. I don't think they have necessarily a mission. They just want to be in the Karakoram and fly, and they know that there's oxygen. That's kind of it.
Oxygen is a hard one. Oxygen. That was my portfolio. Make sure we have oxygen.
Ah, okay.
All right. I offloaded
that particular one to Scott.
Yeah, I offloaded that pretty fast. When Scott joined the trip, I was like, Scott, I'd been in touch with Brad Sander, and I was like, Scott, you can look after oxygen. So that was that problem. But no, I think, first of all, you've got to get permits. Now, you've had Aaron on the show in the past who talked about ending up in jail in Hunza because he hadn't got that bit. So you've got to sort it out in advance. Now, all these things can be sorted out with time. If you've got the time, it's not a problem. You can speak to the right people. You get when you get there, people, the Pakistani people are the most friendly, helpful people anywhere on Earth. As far as I'm concerned, I've been to a lot of places, but they really were outstandingly, brilliantly helpful and wonderful.
But you've got the in the for the Baltory specifically, it's it's a military, it's a militarized zone. And the only helicopters that can fly there are military helicopters. So you've got to get a bunch of different permits. You've got to get a tracking permit, first of all, from the from the government. But actually, do you get a tracking permit or do you get a tracking and mountaineering permit? And if you don't have that, you can't go in there. If you don't have an expedition partner, that's a local partner. You can't go in there.
If and then on top of that, you then need to have a permit to go flying now. Now, fortunately, Tom and Horatio and Tom, we spoke to through XC mag. They put me in touch with Tom and Tom. He was moving from Belgium to the Azores. And he's like, OK, I'm going to have an hour on this day at this time. I can talk to you guys.
Yeah, he's a busy man.
Yeah. But he gave he gave that full hour and gave us total undivided attention. Well, he didn't tell us. It was that he was moving house from from Belgium to the Azores. He was editing the Flying Between Giants movie, which anyone who hasn't seen is an absolute must for anyone. That's amazing. The cinematography is excellent. He and Horatio just awesome. The when Morales got caught up at base camp and seeing his face sort of having walked for two days back. It's the whole thing's priceless. So there was just. And Tom put us in touch with Jasmine tours, which, to be honest, was probably the most important thing out of everything, because they they are.
They've been established for over 20 years. They know everyone. They know the commissioners. They know sort of everyone that's needed. They know the military people. They even have a deal with the military for the helicopters so that everyone, any other group that goes there, they have to put down a ten thousand pound deposit or ten thousand dollars. And that's a lot of people's money beforehand to say if they're going to get a helicopter. Now, We, we didn't have to do any of that because Jasmine's so well established, and Jasmine does all the checks to make sure that we had the appropriate insurance and stuff, and that the military wasn't going to be sort of left, left short if they did things, so, so that, that was super important.
But I also. WhatsApp to Antoine Girard, because I found this number somewhere and had a WhatsApp conversation with him. I found out that a guy called Sajid Shah was the head of the Pakistani Paragliding Association, got in touch with him. And he said to me, look, if you want to go to the Valtoria Glacier, you need to have a what's your mission going to be? And so it's like, OK, we need a mission. Oh, well, I guess we're going to go for the record then. And so that's how it went from just wanting to go and fly in the Valtoria Glacier. And fly in amongst the Trango Towers and fly to Broughtby to actually let's see if we can break a record.
OK, so the mission was to just break the record, go higher than anybody else. The record
was to fly onto K2 ideally and to break the altitude record. And so all the preparation really from something from my side was to make sure I was in the best possible condition to enable me to do that safely.
And how was the team chosen? And we've got a couple of people missing here. So fill in quickly, who's the team? How is that chosen? What was what were the different roles?
Sure. So Andy and I had been talking about this for a couple of years. And one of the things I've been doing was looking at weather. I've always been a bit of a weather geek because I don't have that much lead. So I'm forever and I've got access to staff travel. So I. I bounce for day trips to the Alps and not desperately unusual for me, because if if it's good, then I'm very happily spend twice as much on a plane ticket than I would on a train in the U.K. And so so Andy and I were absolutely down for it. And at the same time, Pierre Carter and so I guess his his other his sidekick.
The chap called Jeremy Holcroft up in Joburg, who and he flew off Everest last year, he was the first person to do it legally. They were also looking at Pakistan and what could they do? And so so we had a call between us. I didn't really I'd never met Pierre at this stage. And it was like, look, do we think we can we can muddle along and that we're going to keep each other safe? And it seemed like, yeah, this this this could work and it was sort of going to be Andy. And I. I as buddies and then Pierre and Jeremy as buddies.
And then the autumn I was in South Africa and I got to know Scott a bit and then at Christmas spent more time with Scott and and Scott was like, I'd really like to come on this experience.
So slightly unsure. And then we had had more chats and then Scott proved incredibly useful when, sadly, a pilot in South Africa crashed. He didn't end up making it. But Scott. Did a hell of a lot in terms of trying to do logistics to try to give him the best possible chance.
And and then we sort of we had another discussion that we think Scott could could be good. And Andy sort of broached that with Pierre and Jeremy. And they said, yeah, yeah, he's welcome. And I
got in under the under the guise of organizing things for a living is what I do. So I can. I can organize, I can organize, I can organize.
You need that. You need that person on a team. I can fix.
I can. Yeah, I can. I can fix. It's my that's my gig.
You're a fixer.
I'm a fixer. Yeah,
I'm a fixer.
So so I so I threw oxygen at Scott. Then the everyone else decided they would go to Hunza for two weeks before going to the Baltory. I just simply couldn't do that with work. So I got an altitude tent. Instead. So so every morning the Daily Stand Up would start with. So what altitude were you sleeping at last night? Did you get any sleep? My very first night. I may not have read the instructions quite as well as I should have done. And I woke up after two hours going, holy, I feel I don't feel very well. So I sort of opened open the tent. And.
And. And I discovered that I'd gone straight to 6,000 meters. Perfect. So.
So. So while. So while Bob's was sitting in an altitude tent in London, Andy, myself, Pierre and Jeremy went to Hunza for 12 days was our major acclimatization time was 12 days prior in Hunza. Andy. And. And we coined the house thermal, Andy's thermal, because from pretty much the first day Andy used to would launch, go straight into the thermal and be close on 6,000 meters, sort of 20 minutes later, all in one climb. Whoa. It is. How high is Hunza? So, I mean. 3
,000 meters. Yeah. 3,000 meters. Yeah. Okay. Wow. Take off 3
,000 meters. Andy, what was the floor? The floor was the bottom floor. The bottom of the designated landing was about 2,200, I think. And the mountains up the back of Hunza, who topped out there the most was a Jeremy. But well over 6,000. Yeah.
We were
only up to
about 6,500. So. 6,500.
You just take a house thermal to 6,500. That's not bad. Yeah. Wow.
So Andy's. Yeah. Andy's. We named it Andy's thermal, and it was the day's mission was to try and chase Andy in his first thermal of the day up to the top.
Some quick math there. That's 11, 12,000 feet over the valley floor, no more, 13, 14,000 feet over the valley floor. That's spectacular.
That's good. That's pretty neat.
It's quite
something. Yeah. It's quite something. Yeah. Amazing. So on these kind of altitude, getting adjusted flights, were you pushing into the big terrain? Were you kind of, okay, let's go for some little XC, or were you guys literally just taking what you could and getting some altitude and getting some time under your belts?
Well, I'll answer that. The flying in Hunza is really good. We did in all those acclimatizing and training flights there, I mean, pretty much every day we did triangles. So anything from a 60K triangle to a 100K triangle. We found that it was pretty good. But when we got there, there was a lot of snow from the winter, which hadn't cleared off earlier. When did you get there? In the beginning of June, the beginning of June. And so we found on the snowy side of things, on the Rakipashi side, there was a lot of downdraft, katabatic winds, so we pretty much stayed on the other side, which would be the southeast side.
And we found that we could still get pretty good, pretty decent climbs there. So it was basically 12 days of just really nice cross country flying, big triangles.
And just testing out all the warm gear and the oxygen and all that sort of stuff.
What would be involved in going from that? 60, 100K? 60, 100K triangles to the mission? What needed to happen? For those like me, who haven't looked very closely at maps of this area in a while, what needed to happen on the day, on the day that you're going to try to do it?
You mean on the record-breaking day?
Yeah. What would be involved in making that, obviously good weather, but what does that route look like? How long is it? How much time would it take?
Well, I mean, flying. Flying from, in the Baltoro, flying from where you take off in Paiu to up to K2 isn't very far. It's about 50Ks.
Oh, okay.
So it's 50Ks there, 50Ks back. But it's, in that entire flight, there's nowhere to land. It's as, you know, as Tom said, the Baltoro Glacier, you've got to think of it as lava. I mean, you could land there, but you'll crash and you will get injured badly. So it's, so it's highly committing. Basically, you're flying over this river of ice with boulders and rocks and lakes and all sorts of things. So the transition from Hunza to the Baltoro, the flying is very similar. I mean, it's, you know, you find a nice, it's a rocky, tiny face and there'll be a climb there and you, you know, you just bounce from thermal to thermal and peak to peak and so on and so on. But the difference between Hunza and the Baltoro is the level of commitment.
Okay. I mean, in Hunza, there's, there's fields to land on anyway, you just one glide away from a landing. In the Baltoro, there's no way to land.
Yeah. Okay. Barb, you look like you want to talk. You keep putting your hand up. Yeah.
No, just, it was just, I think. So obviously Hunza is about 130 kilometers away from the Baltoro Glacier. Okay. So, so, so the, the, those guys spent two weeks in the Baltoro Glacier. In, in Hunza, then they spent a day in a sort of, in, in the back of Land Rover's sort of being driven from Hunza to Skardu, which is sort of the staging post, if you like, the city that's closest to the Baltoro. Okay. And, and then you have a day's drive up to a place called Ascoli and on that journey, depending when you go.
Okay. How, how sketchy that drive is. On the way up, it was still early enough that there wasn't that much water coming down. But by the time I came out in a vehicle, there was a few landslides that had been down. There was so much water coming down the fordable rivers that they were no longer fordable. So you had sort of one Land Rover and then another Land Rover, you'd walk over a dodgy little. A couple of pieces of wood to get across the, across this raging torrent, over the top of the raging torrent. And then you get into a different Land Rover and then go down the next bit across another one and then down the next bit. And so, and so what a company like Jasmine Doors does is they organize to have these cars, which are doing shuttles between unportable rivers.
Wow. And then once you've got to Ascoli. Yeah. You then have a two day walk into, uh, to get to pay you, um, you can do it in the day, but even if you can do it in the day, your kit and everything else isn't going to do it in a day. Cause that's what the port is. And there's only so far when they can walk, when they're carrying all this kit at 2,800 meters, um, it's 25 degrees in the Valley. Absolutely scorching. Um, it's amazing how strong the sun is. Yeah. And these, these guys are carrying
50, 50 kilograms, they're carrying 50 kilograms per person. So they'll, they'll carry two, two glider bags, for example, quite comfortably, um, when they walk in. I think the logistics smoothed over by someone like Jasmine Doors is, is, uh, is quite substantial. It's quite rough logistics. Um, but I think Gavin, your actual question was, it was, was towards what were the weather conditions like? As in, when would you call it was not yet.
Let's let's get to that. No, I w I'm trying to understand the logistics. So the, the, you can't, then you can't start at Hunza and do this mission. You've got to, you've got to do these overland things to get into a better zone. You can't fly from Hunza and, and fly to Schooley, for example, or Pai, you, what was the other one? The Pai you, and you can't, you can't do it by air.
Yes. And no, I mean, you, well, it's all driven. It's all driven. So you fly from, so our, Andy and my logistics were, we flying to, we flew into Islamabad. We flew from Islamabad to Gilgit, um, which is a commercial flight, beautiful through the mountains. Um, and then from Gilgit, you take what was at a two hour, um, car drive, um, to Hunza. Then we were based in Hunza, the logistics in Hunza are amazingly easy. It's a little town. You can get oxygen at the local welding shop. Um. Um, and, uh, it, it all takes a little bit longer than you would expect, or then you might hope, but it's all manageable and it's all, it all happens. Um, we stayed in, in a really nice hotel, um, called the hard rock hotel, which is a 20 minute walk from launch, which was absolutely amazing, um, as well, a 20 minute walk up to launch.
They've got a nice set of five flags outside. You can see all the wind direction. Absolutely perfect. And then flying in Hunza. As Andy was saying. It's relatively easy. You've got plenty of places to land and there's plenty of big flying there. Um, we then drove with Pierre and Jeremy up the Karakoram highway, which is spectacular in itself. Um, and that we did in a minivan, perfectly comfortable, um, lots of rock falls along the way. And then we got through to Skardu, um, and Skardu is that town. That's like the base of operations for all of the mountaineering and all of the big, big treks of people going to, going into, um, the Baltoro K2 and all of the peaks you were talking about earlier. And then it's a day's Jeep drive on the scariest road I've ever been on.
It's carved into the side of scree slopes. Like you just like the, the ground that the road is on is the same as the ground that's, that's down the mountain. It's like, it's yeah. But they, they're again, they're amazing. And. The driver that must've been in his sixties, maybe mid to late sixties, maybe the early seventies. And the guy drove the hell out of his Toyota Land Cruiser, like old school Land Cruiser felt, didn't feel overly safe in the beginning, but then realized that actually how good he was. Um, and then you get to, as Bob said, Escoli, and that's a camp in a village, the most yeah, that's a camp in a village.
Okay. And then you walk. And then you walk from there. And that's where, so you are, you, the, the last part of it, you can't fly to Bob's flew into Skardu. So he didn't do the whole roundabout trip. He had one day's Jeep drive in. Um, and then we all started, so we all did the Jeep drive in together and the walk into the Baltoria.
And from, from, from there, what are you looking at to get to launch what's, what's required for the day? Now, now I'm asking the question. So,
um, the, the weather we worked out that, uh, I've been a fan of soaring meteo for years because it's super simple, really easy to see what's what. And actually I found a really quite good interpretation of how soaring meteo. So what that was saying and what that meant for the conditions in the Baltoria, um, basically if there was any sort of big lines of cloud, then it was going to be overdeveloped and hell. Um, and, uh, if there were little, if it was saying little clouds and the cloud base was saying five and a half, you could probably basically add somewhere between 500 meters to a thousand meters to whatever it was saying, but within the Baltoria, um, so that, that, that was, that was quite helpful.
That was quite helpful. Um, so on any given day, when we're going to fly, we walk up from base camp at pay you, which is at 3,300 and it's the last camp before the glass itself starts. We walk up to 4,000 meters. Um, we, we use porters to carry our bags up, um, because, well, why wouldn't you, um, at nine euros, um, it's, uh, and I, I slightly messed up with kit. So I ended up having to have a very heavy kit. Um, so, uh, so I had an impress for, uh, uh, and so I was carrying 28, well, my kit was total was 28 kilos, but port would carry the kit. And then I carried the warm kit. And then the oxygen and that stuff up and a little day back. Um, so you get up to launch for about around 11, um, by which time the, it would be starting to come up the hill in the valley, the caspatic would be still, still glowing, but not hard.
Um, but that's sort of almost helped with an Easterly to be coming down, down the glacier, which is running sort of, uh, east west. So it'd be coming down, down the, uh, down the glass here. Um, and then it's then actually the flying itself. It's pretty simple. Um, you know, it's, uh, at 4,000 meters and it's hot, uh, it, you, uh, there isn't a lot of that. Um, so, so, so takeoff is fast, um, and it's, it's scree and it's steep. Um, you know, it's, if you mess up the takeoff there, it's going to hurt a lot. Um, you're probably going to be okay, but being a scree slope, you'll sort of bounce and slide. Yeah. You're going to bounce and slide a long way.
It's going to, you're going to smart for a while. Um, but, uh, but yeah, once you take off, then there was a thermal to the left, a thermal to the right. And, and you kind of just pretty much suddenly while we were there, we just sort of pinged up pretty fast after that. And then you'd sort of kind of,
is a lot of the, is a lot of the forecasting you said soaring media worked pretty well, but it's a lot of the forecasting just, you know, licking your finger and sticking it out in the weather or, or they're pretty reliable. Models. Is it? Is it?
So sorry. Messier model worked really, really well. The big problem is once you go into the belt or a, there is no mobile reception at all. Yeah. Even the satellite reception at pay base camp is almost non-existent. You have to kind of, it takes 15, 20 minutes for an in-reach message to get out a lot of the time because it's going to wait for a heli for a satellite to be in just the right place. Cause it's got a bloody great steep mountain behind you. So, so, so that meant that although I had absolutely learned how to interpret the weather, I was then having to ask sort of people on, on via the in-reach saying, Hey, can you give me the weather forecast for tomorrow? This is what I'm interested in.
And I get some, I get these different messages back. And then it was a case of trying to imagine what soaring media was actually saying from that. To then work out what the weather was going to be. Um, and that was a sort of, so, so a learning point was you need to really have a fully briefed person who absolutely understands what it is you want from a weather forecast. And the other problem was the people providing the weather forecast did not want to say it looks great. If there's any risk at all, cause they don't want to feel responsible if you then crash and smash yourself up on the belt or a once you take off, as Andy says, you go up about all tour, there are no landing options. You have to make it back.
So you've got to make 50 K. You got to make a hundred K 50 K out 50 K back. Uh, and you, you've got to make it. There's no where you're, you're not slow planning in the scree. You're not, you're not landing on the glacier. That's just game over it. You got to make it.
Pretty much. And, and certainly that should be the attitude of anyone flying there. Yeah. Um, what is this? That, that, that, you know, um, Tom described it as his own. It's lava. And that for me was a really good description cause it just said, Hey, you don't land on lava. Um, and, and that was certainly the mindset that I went there with. Not that I really got to fly very far up the glacier just cause of circumstances. But for me, that was something I never wanted to, to get into a risk of. Yeah. I mean, I certainly know that Andy felt the same about that. And
Andy, you've got obviously the most glacier experience I'm sure of anyone here, but that there were a couple of glacier crossings I had to undertake in, in Alaska when I did the thing up there with Dave Turner. And luckily, you know, after the first one, I flew over the rest because walking across this thing was just mind-bendingly difficult, uh, and, and, and incredibly dangerous, but it was just, uh, they, they present things that you can't see from the air and it's just a maze. I don't know how the Baltoro is. But I imagine if it's somewhere. Similar. Uh, that was not something I ever wanted to repeat.
Yeah, no, for sure. I mean, glacier basically, basically glacier travel is, um, time consuming, shall we say? And it's just the worst maze problem ever. Exactly. It's much easier to fly over them. The Baltoro, um, doesn't have snow on it until, you know, much higher up on the Gashabrim side and, and just underneath K2. It's basically just, um, ice. And, uh, gravel and pebble and rocks and, uh. Rivers. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sort of rivulets. So it looks brown. It doesn't look white, but it's, it, but it's not. It's, it's convoluted, jumbled, um, and not somewhere that you could land safely. Um, last year Ramos did land in the middle of Broad Peak Base Camp.
He sunk out there. Um, and also something to consider. I mean, the Baltoro starts at 3,300 and goes up to 5,200. And, and I mean, just for the air density, you're flying much, much faster. So you, you know, you can't just sink it into a little hot spot anymore. You need a proper runway because you're going to come in fast and hard.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. That, that does catch a lot of people out, you know, places like Peru and that kind of thing. Your, your speeds are, I remember John Sylvester always talking about the, that, you know, he, he really liked flying. He liked flying a much lower end glider in the really big terrain just because of the speeds. You know, you, you don't want the ENZO speed anymore. You want something that you can manage when you're trying to stick it in.
Yeah, for sure. That's why, um, all of us on our trip, we all had sea gliders. Um, you know, we thought about it. Um, um, basically, basically Bob's and Jeremy had, had the new Proton. I had an Alpina and, um, um, um, and then Scott had a Niviuk. Pierre had a, um, Pierre had another Zeno, but it was an older one there to be, but it was four years old. So I've been sort of thought it flew about the same as a sea. Y
'all had pretty similar, pretty similar machines. So, so when you get, you know, quote unquote the day, it looks, looks pretty good. I'm, I'm imagining, I've been told that flying in Pakistan is in, in a lot of ways, pretty straightforward. It's kind of like beer. There's, there's, there's not a lot of wind. I mean, obviously you, you, you've got to deal with the capital. You've got to deal with things. It's big terrain, but on good days, it's pretty straight, pretty straightforward. But I would imagine there's a little pucker factor here doing this thing, flying over all this terrain. That's unlandable. Or is it that straightforward? Is it the kind of thing you, you launch, you get in the thermal and okay, this is going to work. This is straightforward. We can do this.
So I'm going to, as the, as the most junior of the pilots, I will say, um, there's definitely a pucker factor. Um, from my point of view, I suppose for, from everyone, you've got to wrap your head around it. Um, it's why Windsor was quite important because it is such big terrain I've flown prior to this a couple of times in the Alps, but not flown any really big mountains. And then suddenly when you're looking at, as we discussed earlier, when you're sitting at six, like Andy got to six and a half thousand in Hunza and you're looking down at the floor, it's a 2000, it's four, it's over four kilometers in that, uh, in that distance. Um, so definitely a case of buck up and hack it, um, as well as, uh, obviously all the, the planning and the right conditions to, um, to boot, but one of the big, one of the big warnings that, uh, about flying in the area that Antoine actually, um, said to us was.
It's one thing when you have overdevelopment, when you have a cloud, a slightly lower cloud base, so, um, five to 7,000 and you start having overdevelopment, but he really warned that he's, he's flown a lot in the, in the area. He like strongly warned. He was like, when you have cloud base between seven and 8,000 and you have overdevelopment in, at that height, he, he said it happens much quicker. Yeah. So much, much quicker than, than, than anything lower. The overdevelopment happens much quicker. So his big, one of his big warnings was, yeah, if you, if you start to see it overdeveloping or developing, um, between seven and 8,000, then you need to go home.
Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron, Aaron talked about that too. You know, he had those huge triangles there last year, but talked about if there was any sign of overdevelopment, it's game over. You do, you know, your, your exits. Uh, start shrinking really fast because you've, you're high takes, takes some time to get on the ground. And I would imagine, you know, with this, with this flight out to K2, out the Baltoro, if you're high enough is, are there places to run? Can you get over into another Valley? Could you, are there escape routes or you're, you're trapped? This you're, this is the mission you got to get in. You got to get out. This is, you got to make it work.
So, so with the Baltoro, it being this one Valley that comes in. It goes basically East, West, and then you go, as you head East, um, you get to a place called looking at Tom's tracks. And to send Tom and Horatio have done all the hard work and to, and, uh, Antoine as well, in terms of highlighting, you can even see on, um, some of the apps, you can see the, where the thermals are and they are, they are beautifully predictable, but then you have to hop over to K2. But before that, literally you can just run down. Back down the, uh, the Baltoro to the end of it, which is at the end of it is pay you camp. So as long as you're in the main Valley, you can get there in theory. The only problem is that, you know, Mashabrum is still over 7,000 meters.
You've got even pay you, which no one really bothers climbing that 6,400 meters. And behind that is Churicho, which is, um, 6,500 meters. Um, you've got the triangle towers next door, which are the triangle towers. Yeah. It's just, it's just the scale of the mountains that are everywhere. So if it's OD 'ing in one place, the chances are it's OD 'ing everywhere. So, so you just don't play with OD. You just got, you're just getting home. Yeah. Um, but of course you're going fast. I mean, our trim speed was on the hottest day. I think it was actually on the first day. Um, we, we were sort of turning around saying, okay, when it's gotta be that way. Cause I'm doing 49 Ks an hour at trim.
Um, and then you turn around and you're doing 49 Ks back the other way. It's like, okay, this is going to be a fast landing. Um, and then you try pressing the speed bar and you can do over set. You can do over 70 in both directions. Um, just, just, and cause you've got the height to play with when you're going out, you can, and it's quite, it's quite normal.
I mean, so in a perfect world, you're out 50 K you, you, you're out at the end and you're tall, assuming you're, you know, you picked a good day and you're trying to break the record. You're tall. You turn around and you're, you're a glide from being back. You don't have to work very hard. Yeah. Wow. That's amazing. Okay. So what happened? Are we, are we at that point yet? Can we talk about that? Yeah. I think probably beyond
it, to be honest. Um, but, uh, um, so let, let's, uh, let's throw this to Andy, I think. Yeah. I think Andy should start on this. And then. Um, let's do this. Cause really it's his, it's his story combined with a bit of. Um, what I normally describe as fuckwittery. I'm not sure whether that can make it on to the, the, uh, oh yeah,
totally. Totally. We're, we're, we're actually, let's go for it.
All right. So after being in Windsor we, um, we had, um, um, we made our way to the bell tourer and we had a really nice, um, takeoff flight the first day. Um, then. Then the next day we went up and we had allowed ourselves two weeks in the bell toilet. So on the second day, we started the 700-meter walk up. It was quite steep and I had a very tight neck and I thought, you know, it's just a respiratory infection that we would get. And actually Pierre had one of those as well because Pai is not a very clean place.
There's, you know, there's donkeys and porters and all these mountaineering expeditions come through. So it's incredibly dusty and dirty. So then anyway, we walked up. Chest pain started getting worse and worse. And so I thought, let me just put some oxygen on. Then the chest pain's lowered. And I mean, the wind's perfect. I've got this chest pain. I didn't think that I thought it was going to go away. We all took off. And about an hour later, the Triangle Towers, it got really bad. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd say about 8. Just in terms of pain? In terms of pain. And I was like, shit, I'm having a heart attack in midair above the Triangle Towers, which is not a nice place to have a heart attack.
Oh, no.
I mean, the heart's pumping.
I'm going
to back it up there a little bit and just say, I suppose, add a bit of the humorous side to that. But Andy is saying that, I mean, he's saying that he was at pain level 8. On the radio comms, he's like calm as a cucumber.
So as Andy climbed up and obviously started to have the chest pains, he flew out at about 5 '5", I think, Andy. You flew out about 5,500 meters. He flew out from the... From the gaggle. We were in a nice gaggle flying. Andy flew out. And I think I radioed him. He was like, hey, Andy, where are you going? Because we were all kind of flying together. And he was like, no, I'm not feeling so good. I'm just going to put on my oxygen. So he flew out of the kind of more busy air and put on his oxygen and came back and joined us. And we flew for a bit longer. And I think that was when we were in Triangle Towers. And Andy flew out.
And as you heard him say, he was at pain 8. And I said to him again, hey, Andy, where are you going? Like, all OK. I'd seen him knocking his chest while walking up, which was when he was... It didn't really register at the time. But, you know, and he'd said that he'd not been feeling great. That's why he went to put the oxygen on. So I said, hey, Andy, everything OK? And he was like, yeah. Guys, I'm not feeling so good. I'm going to head back to camp. I'm going to go land. But don't worry about me. You guys just stay and do your thing. Enjoy your flight. And off he started.
But this wasn't the flight you were going to try this on. This is just a checkout flight. You guys are just goofing around in the air, having fun. Or are you kind of playing with it? Oh, maybe we got the day.
Well, what we were doing, we were basically just exploring all the thermals on the way up. The Balthora. The day was pretty stable. Beautiful blue sky and everything. But, I mean, the top of the climbs would have been about 6,500, no more than that. That's the forecast we had. So it wasn't a day to get very high, about 8,000 meters. I think you need slightly different weather conditions. You need a heat low. Or you need a little more instability. Or you need a little more wind. You need different factors.
So, Andy, you're experiencing this pretty severe chest pain. Is this something you had experienced on previous climbing expeditions? Or was this something totally new? Were any red flags going off other than heart attack? Were you thinking, hey, pace? Were you thinking something along those lines? Or were you pretty clear what was going on?
Well, I didn't. I've never had any medical problems like that before, ever. And, you know, my family's got no history of heart attacks or anything. But there was just this incredibly tight chest. I didn't think of it as a heart attack at the time. I thought, well, I've just got massive angina, which is very tight chest. As I said, you know, I've never, in all my prior mountaineering, I've climatized easily. I've never had any heart attacks. I've never had any problems. So, it came as a bolt out of the blue. And funnily enough, it was one of those things. Afterwards, you can see, okay, prime risk factor, you know, basically middle-aged man,
not acclimatized, up high, there's not enough oxygen getting to the heart. I mean, it's clear as daylight. And we can talk about, you know, the mitigating factors that we could have taken. Beyond that, but the point was, here I found myself at 5,500 meters. And it was a mortal feeling. It's like, this is not right, guys. I can die from this. So, all I wanted to do was get down on the ground. So, that's what happened. It was a long 30-minute glide from 5,000, 6,000 meters down to 3,300.
And it's one of those instinctual things. I need to get down on the ground. I need to sort out the chest pain. So, I landed okay.
Bob's also landed next to me okay. And then, because we were buddy flying, the five of us would basically fly together and not, you know, from a safety point of view. When I said I'm going to turn around, Bob and Scott both joined me. So, that, you know, after an hour and a half, that sort of cut short their flight. But this. As I said, it was a mortal feeling. I needed to get down. So, we all landed. Scott, unfortunately, had, I guess the word would be. Slightly harder landing than. Yeah. Yeah. Landing fixation. Slightly harder landing
than I needed to. But I. Yeah, I mean, we were chatting. So, in that half an hour where Andy kind of left Trango. And I think we left there just under 6,000. And in the in the ends and the long glide home, we, Bob's and I, obviously, there's like this all this time. So, it's all this. There was half and half an hour glide or close on half an hour glide and obviously checked in on Andy a couple of times. Again, the radio comms is on some of our camera footage. Andy always like, Andy, just checking in on you. And he'd be like, yeah, chest pains still there. I'm just going to go. I want to land quickly.
It was like quite a very calm and collected. We all, I suppose, knew that it was quite serious because no one would have landed before. And I, I was watching to see where Andy and it was my, my, my saying to myself is the classic airline saying with it's put your own mask on first. Like when the air, when the, when the oxygen mask come down, put your own mask. On first and then help the situation worse. Yeah. And, um, I was watching Andy because I was like, I wasn't, I wasn't totally sure how he was going to land or where he was going to land or if he was still up for landing. Um, but I fixated on watching Andy and made the cardinal error of not putting my mask on first.
And I landed, um, a little bit quicker than what I had then than what I should have. But, um, I, I rolled my, I rolled my leg over, over a boulder. My, my actual injury is not that bad. Um, it's just a broken fibula and I tore the ligaments off. But, um, the, what made it worse is the fact that I landed the other side. Andy landed a hundred, 200 meters from camp. I landed a hundred meters from Andy. Um, but I landed the other side of the river. Um, so it earned me a four hour. Four hour walk home, um, on a broken ankle, which I took, I took some, uh, we had some, our med kit was really well organized.
Um, and we all had little flying med kits as well. I had some Tramazol in there, which is like Oxycontin, um, which from when I did rally biking stuff. Also, you make sure you carry a bunch of really hardcore painkillers just to get you through the first part. Um, so I. I ate two of those and they make you a little bit funny. Um, so I did a video. I did like a video interview with myself where I did a splint on my leg. Um, Andy sorted out the med, all the med kits for us. We had an expedition doctor put a list together and he did all the ordering. So we had like a nice leg splints. Um, I bandaged myself and I took, I took my four hour walk home. Um, all the time chatting to the guys again, Andy.
In. Such. Tough nut, uh, uh, spirit that we had a little negotiation with the porters as to what they were going to charge us, um, to come and pick me up. And, uh, Andy, in the middle of his scenario was still, um, yeah, holding it again together enough to organize, to, to send them my way. And by then Bob's had landed, he took a bit of a tumble on landing as well. And then Bob's, I mean, you, you had, yeah, you, you, you kind of took over the. The, um, you, you rolled with things from there and, and that's, I suppose, where the crux of this is.
So, so, so, yeah, so, um, I was the last to land by about, um, we actually all landed within 45 seconds of each other. Um, Scott landed, landed, um, first, um, it was all on, on video. Then Andy landed about, um, 15, 20 seconds later, um, but in the perfect spot and actually it was the best landing. Um, the day before we had agreed that one of the things I'm always keen on is that everyone focuses on spot landings. So we'd agreed that he who lands the furthest from the, uh, um, from the windsock would have to pump the water. Um, because, and that's a way of just sort of getting everyone to be focused on, on something that matters.
Um, so Pierre. You're trying to nicely
say that Scott really messed this up.
Well. Well, and Bob's, and Bob's not shy
of random little competitions. I would put it
differently to that,
um, but I'll come to that in a second. And, uh, Scott may want to come back at me. Um, so, so, uh, Pierre and, um, Jeremy put the windsock up and I'd said, look, closest to the windsock is the key thing. What they didn't tell me was they put it on the edge of a boulder field.
So, so I'm trying to get,
I'm trying to get a spot landing. You weren't meant to land in the boulder field. It was to land. I
was landing with it. I landed within 20 feet. You misinterpreted
it. You misinterpreted it. I landed within 20 feet. It's
a
good thing you
guys are all a long ways apart in South Africa. Yeah. Yeah. I can see the punches are coming out.
Yeah. So anyway, I did my little roadie pony down the, uh, which is on video with my 360 camera underneath me. Cause I had it dangling down. So that gets a nice picture of me doing a roadie pony. Um, anyway. Yeah. Then sort of was that, okay, yeah, I'm all good. And I'd asked Scott if he was okay. And initially he said he was fine. Then he was like, I twisted my ankle quite badly. And then sort of later on then. So I went over and looked at Andy and he was like, yeah, no, I'm not feeling great. I'm just going to chill for a bit. Can you help pack up my kit? So I help him pack up his kit, pack up my kit. Um, I give him my oxygen, give him my water. Then I'm like, I run up to camp to go and get, uh, the med, the big med kit, um, which was meant to have some, um, the special heart attack spray. Stuff, the thing you put under your tongue.
Um, but couldn't find that, but got back down to Andy. We've got him to some shade and Scott comes on the radio and say, guys, um, I'm kind of cooking out here. Um, in the, uh, in, in the heat and I'm starting to
burn. Can you, I'm starting to burn in the pain, starting to sit in and
I was like, and I give it shit. Not at all.
Bob's. You were. Very sweet. You, you, you've landed in the, you were very sweet at the time. I really wasn't. You should have heard me to Andy.
I was furious.
Um, and, uh, even Andy was like, what was he thinking? Landing on the wrong side of the river site. Don't ask me. Um, so, so anyway, um, a couple of immediate lessons were when I went up to camp. I didn't actually know exactly where the medikit was. Um, and okay. I, there are only, only five tents and, um, to, to go through and, um, it was in Scott's tent, but actually it was at the back underneath two other bags and it's a big medikit. So I was, I found it, but it wasn't a case of just going and grabbing the med kit. Um, and that was a really stupid mistake to start with. Let's let's
stop there for one second. You. You gave me a list yesterday, what you guys did right. And what you did wrong. Can you pull that out? You got it in front of you.
Yeah, I do. Yeah. Can
you just take us through that? Because it's, it's fantastic. And you know, if, if certain things need elaboration, go for it. I, you know, they all seem pretty self-explanatory, but I think in terms of the takeaways here, uh, because I want to ask more about Andy's injury and Andy, how you felt and all those kinds of things. But this is a good segue. I think it's a great chance for you, for you all to review this as well, but also the listeners, because it's, uh, you know, again, we always learn everything too late. We learn it afterwards, but this, you know, hopefully this can help all of us listening to learn from your mistakes. And in a sense, it wasn't a tragedy, but, uh, it was, but it was, you know, things went wrong. And of course we, we learned from that.
So take us through that first. What, what did you do? Right. Yeah.
So I think one of the things we did right was we spoke to everyone, um, you know, I reached out, reaching out to Antoine, Tom, Jake Holland, um, other people who, who, who flown, flown there as well, um, logistics wise, speaking to the head of the Pakistani paragliding association, advanced, um, Jasmine tours, Brad Sander, um, who was super helpful as well. Um, I also. Spent a bit of time talking to Fabian Blanco, um, just about the mental side and, you know, what, what did he see as the, the biggest potential gotchas for us. And he particularly talked about the exposure aspect, um, and that you needed to be, you may not be able to get the same exposure, but make sure you have some exposure, put yourself in situations which are uncomfortable because you don't want the first uncomfortable situation you have to be, um, over the Baltoro, um, at 6,000 something meters.
Yeah. Things going a bit wrong and you having no, no, um, capacity to deal with that because you've never had to deal with it before. Um, then the next one we did right was from medical perspective. Um, I, uh, reached out to Matt Wilkes and he nearly joined us, but work meant that he couldn't, um, but he put together a comprehensive list of what we should have. Um, and Andy's wife's actually a former expedition doctor as well. And she sort of helped too. So, so, you know, we. We covered that, the logistics, the flying, the mental side of things. Um, we also made sure that we all had appropriate, adequate insurance, global re we all had global rescue. We all had good travel insurance. We all had paid the garment bid as well.
We, and we were, we all knew that we all had that. That was something that was super important. Um, we all did a lot of prep. Um, although, you know, it was quite different, um, in terms of what we did. Um, and then equipment. We had, uh, we had an Excel spreadsheet running, um, on Google docs. So everyone could compare, we could see what everyone had. Um, I think we made pretty good choices on wings and reserves. Uh, one thing I would recommend though, is check your reserves going to fit into your harness before you buy the really expensive, really large reserve, because you're not going to be able to sell it back again. Um, so that was a bit of an error. Um, then, uh, um, I.
I think, you know, I was very lucky. I managed to get some sponsorship from Virgin for my wing. Um, the, the few connections to, uh, in terms of Richard Branson went to the same school as me, he did all sorts of aviation stuff, which is pretty crazy. Um, and I managed to get it to someone. We used to be hot there and they just loved the idea. And they were like, yeah, we'd love to support this. Um, and for them, I wasn't asking for, for the trip to be sponsored. It was something that I was doing anyway. So, so they were. I'm happy to, and, you know, I'm hoping to get that next year, um, acclimatization wise. And this also goes to the exposure thing. The other guys went to, to Hunza. Um, I did a whole bunch of SIV on my own, which doing SIV with someone on the radio is very different from just going out and pulling stools on your own.
Um, also then mountain flying and with Scott and with Andy flying in the, in the Northern Cape, sort of pushing it and putting it yourself somewhere where if things go. Wrong, it's going to be consequential very quickly. Um, then I would say the buddy flying, um, we, we did, uh, we did it in the, even when Andy said, ah, you don't need to bother. You're only we're within gliding distance of, uh, of landing. We, we, we actually still stood by the, the buddy flying rules. And I think that ultimately was very important. Um, we then with the in reaches, um, in reach comms are not that easy. If you don't get it set up properly in advance, um, and that getting that right and having the right message in the admin section.
So including your health insurance details, your travel insurance details, your credit card details, um, that with paraglider pilots, if we've crashed it serious, we're going to need immediate help. Um, and you know, we, we survived, we're all alive. We're all still friends. Um, and that's, uh, that's not always a given. Um, so those, those. I think the things that I would say we did, right. I don't know if anyone has anything they want to add to that.
I
think we did the, I, I, sorry, I'm going to be a little bit more esoteric and say the, the first thing we did right was to, to, uh, dream big enough to go and do this because that's also, it's, it's, it's, I mean, Bob's is going to go through a very, um, well put together list of things that we could have done better. Um, or that we did wrong. Um, but going, putting the effort into, to doing something like this, going to everybody seems to think that Pakistan is this really far off place that is, is dangerous and hard to get to. Like these things are a possibility with the right things in place with the right suppliers. I mean, we've mentioned Jasmine tours a number of times, but also because they were so good with the organization on the front end, but when things went wrong, they were very good with things on the back end.
Um, and these things are like, these trips are, are, are more possible than, um, what people think. So one thing, so, so back to big thing we did right is all actually put the time aside and have, have, and, and yeah, like actually have a crack at it. Yeah. Yeah.
We've only got this one, one, uh, one time on this rock. We might as well go for it. Might as well crack, have a crack at things, but yeah, absolutely. Sure. Okay. So what, what did you, what, what things that you could have improved?
Yeah. So to the extent I've already touched on it, we had numerous protocols in place like buddy flying and stuff, but in reality we should have had more. And there are elements where we should have had more robust agreements in advance. Um, and it's something I discussed with Matt Wilkes, um, yesterday as well, um, just to get his take because, you know, he, he's been an expedition doctor on a lot of things. He's been a lot of expeditions and he flies and he's, he was just, I thought he'd be a useful person to bounce things off in advance. And overall his view is we did well, um, you know, when, when, when things went wrong, we, we did a pretty decent job between us in terms of getting, getting everyone, everyone got out alive. Um, and you know, but things we didn't do, which we should have done, we didn't all have medicals.
Um, you know, in some ways I'm probably aside from Jeremy, probably. I'm younger than, uh, Andy and Pierre and probably you're middle-aged Bob's you're middle-aged middle-aged, but I do a lot. Um, but, but we didn't have an agreed fitness standard that we needed to be at and we didn't have medicals done or all of us. And we really should have done my
medicals. You mean going to have a cardiac test and that kind of thing? Like this kind of stuff you do for the X house.
Okay. So, so when I, when I did a expedition race adventure race a few years ago, we all had to. To go and do a VO two max test, sort of, you know, where, where they did the whole ECG, the ECG, and they had proper cardiologists to, to actually do the analysis of that, to make sure that there wasn't anything funky that was going on with your heart. Um, as, because that's obviously, if you're doing anything like that, that that's kind of an important thing. Um, so, so that, that was something which was, was really a big miss. Um, but it's still possible that had we done. That Andy's one might not have been picked up if, if, if he had really pushed it hard on the treadmill, it probably would have been particularly if a cardiologist had, had, had done the review and they'd been able to, to look at this ischemia.
Um, according to that's what Matt said, then yeah, it would probably have been picked up, but as if that hadn't been done, if it had just been a go for a medical, yeah, you're fit and healthy. It would have, he would have come out, he would have come out clean.
Yeah. And from what I, from what I know, I mean, Matt would know a lot more than this. I'm sure you guys talked about it, but from what I know about altitude is it's, it's a really fickle beast as well. You know, I mean, like you said, uh, you know, Andy's had all this experience at altitude, spent so much time, never had any trouble. You know, I've, I've had friends that have gotten really hypoxic at 13 grand, you know, where they, where you wouldn't even have usually turned on your oxygen, just a little bit too much coffee the night before, not very good sleep. Maybe. A beer too many, you know, there's a lot of things that can affect our physiology on the day. You know, the next day could have been totally fine at eight from what I understand. It's, it's just, yeah, things are really
thicker because you've got extra hemoglobin, um, you've got extra red blood cells. So your blood becomes naturally more stodgy. Um, and so hydration, you need to stay extra hydrated to keep your blood thin enough. Yeah. And one of the things. Andy did really well was he stuffed a aspirin down his neck when, when, when he found the aspirin in the thing, didn't have the spray, but we had, we had aspirin and he nailed, um, eight aspirin. And that was, that was pretty damn important to, uh, saving his life. Um, so, so, but yeah, then, you know, we, uh, we probably, we did all have, um, we had the right equipment, the terrain.
Um, but everyone should have equipment, terrain, and exposure, um, experience. Um, and I think you can't necessarily get the terrain, but the exposure can always be done in a different way. Um, and then acclimatization, I would acclimatize in a tent. I'd done my reading on it and I was comfortable that, um, I was happy that that was a, that was a valid, proper acclimatization that I'd have done. But I never actually checked in with Andy. And with Scott and Pierre and Jeremy is, are you guys happy with me doing that as the acclimatization? And, and actually that's something that, you know, the checking in with each other and making sure that everyone is happy with it.
Each of the protocols in advance is super important because it can take a small thing that can, can really derail an expedition. Um, and yeah, that was, then that brings us onto the first aid kit. Um, we didn't actually know what was and was not in it. Um, we, we had an original list, um, and then it was, it was pared down to make, make the, the, um, uh, to make it more manageable in terms of just, you know, there's only so much stuff you can take. Um, but, uh, we probably was a mistake not to just have one person absolutely in charge of the medical side of things.
Um, talking to Matt last night, had he been the expedition doctor for us, he would have insisted that we all had medicals in advance. That's something you just would have done, but he wasn't, he was providing ad hoc advice, which was super helpful, but actually probably not the best, you know, not what he would have done if he was engaged in a, in a more professional capacity. If that makes
sense. If you do this again, it sounds like you are, you're planning on doing this next year. Would you have an expedition doctor on scene?
I'm going with Matt.
No, I know you are, but, but I'm saying, I'm saying, yeah, no, I know, but I'm saying, I'm saying, you know, just in the future, let's say you didn't have access to Matt. Would that be somebody you would, would pay for? Would that just be, is that, is that a mandatory or is that, you know?
No, no, not for me. Uh, I think if you've done, if you've done the right things in advance and you've agreed all the protocols. In advance, and you have an evacuation plan organized and you, in effect, you've done a lot of the stuff that they say an expedition doctor would do. And, and a lot of this is just an awful lot of this is just admin and protocols and making sure that you've done the work in advance. Um, and, and that's, we did quite a lot of it. We just didn't do all of it. And, and the point is, it's just making sure that you've done enough and I don't think, you know, in a lot of instances, um, would, would an expedition doctor make it, make a difference where if you've got the right pills there, that's going to help, um, if you should, you have a, a defect in that sort of situation.
Well, in reality, defense is going to help for a little bit, but it might, it might help, but is the deep end going to be with you?
Yeah, gotcha. Um, the, the, I mean, when we take our woofer training. Yeah. And paramedic training and, you know, even, even first aid, you know, simple CPR at the YMCA, you know, it's always scenario based, right? They always, they don't talk about it and then you're done and you go to the next thing you talk about it and then you do it and you have a victim and you go through it. You know, it seems to me the, the one, the thing I hear over and over and over again in incidents like the ones that you guys had are things like. You can't buy the in-reach and get the plan and assume it's all going to work. You know, you've got to go through it. You've got to make sure that you've got the check marks in your social thing.
So everybody that knows where you are can also message you and you've got to have the contact set up and you've got to have it paired with your phone. And they're brilliant, amazing devices that are, you know, we had, we had these cat phones for the X-Alps two weeks ago that, you know, have satellite technology. So in theory, you don't need the in-reach, but in the reality, they didn't work like that. You know, they, they, you know, the in-reach is still the de facto device that we all need to have, but you've also got to know how to use them. And, you know, these are, these are little things that can get swept under the rug when you've got a big expedition, because there's so many things that have to go that, you know, your, your groups, when you're flying, just a way to contact somebody.
If Andy, you know, if it hadn't gone out and gone as well as it did, and, you know, who to contact, you know, who, who are, you know, you've got to have a list, like you said. And so it sounds like you guys did a lot of that, right. But it's just, there's always these little things that are, you know, when I, when I'm getting at is it's nice to play through. Okay. What if let's actually go through the, what if, and get to the end and, and, you know, what's in the medical kit, let's open it up. And, you know, what, what if somebody, somebody has a heart attack? Do we know how to deal with that?
Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think, you know, one of the things, the first time Andy actually said heart attack was in his message to, to Garmin when, when he pressed the SOS button, at which point, because after he landed and I said, look, do we need to press the SOS? He said, no, I don't think so. And I was like, okay, I'm going to outsource this. I'm going to ask my brother, who's a doctor, and I'm going to ask Matt Wills. Now, the fact that I had those as potential contacts meant that I sort of... kind of took that responsibility away from myself to an extent, which was, which was something that makes me very glad that Andy's okay. Because, yeah, I know enough in terms of having done enough different first aid kit courses, stuff that I should have known.
And I should have just been like, no, we're pressing the bloody button. The fact that I was like, I'm not sure about this. I want to check with a doctor is really me saying, no, I want to press the button. But I'm. Because I respect you and you're a bit of a legend. I'm going to. But he didn't ever tell me my pain level in the air was eight. I thought I was going to die. Those things came out, but they didn't come out to the next day. And so the other part is being really. We all have egos.
Being really honest about what's happened. Scott, you know, initially is that I think of spray my ankle and it's like, yeah, I'm in a lot of pain. But actually, realistically, he was never walking out of that. There was no way he was going to be able to walk out. That and and he was never going to be walking out of that. We should have been pressed. We should have pressed those buttons straight away. And I think we didn't have any protocols of who makes that decision. What are the circumstances? What needs to be true? And had we done that, it may have meant that he got to hospital a day earlier. It might not have done, but it could have done. And that could, in a different scenario, have made the difference between life and death. And, you know, it was a pretty uncomfortable life.
That's that's Tom. To door the door. Those that's Tom, the door, the door saying that I rely on all the time. If there is doubt, there is no doubt. And especially I think and I know I'm just adding, you know, you guys did an amazing job. But, you know, especially everybody's got global rescue. Why the hell not? You know, press the damn button.
Absolutely. And, you know, that that night is not a night I'll ever forget waking up every hour. Hey, Andy, you still with us? Yes.
We took shifts.
Yeah. Took shifts
every hour. One of us would shout across to Andy or go knock on his tent. Andy, you OK over there? I'm fine.
So, Andy, let's let's switch to you here for a second. Well, Rich, we'll come back to the list because there's a lot more learning there. But I'm just wondering what what's your frame of mind as this is going on? How are you feeling? How scared were you? Are you feeling like you're going to pull through? Are you really kind of? I mean, obviously, you've got the face that you're showing to your friends and you're being brave. But how are you actually feeling?
OK, so I've just landed. You know, the heart's thumping away, chest pains and everything like that. I'm very good at centering and staying calm. And that's what I needed to do. So I basically put my hat on and I told Bob I'm just going to calm down. And I lay there. I'm in the blazing sun and just try to relax myself because I thought that's what it would take. And it did the you know, the the chest pains and the and the breathlessness and everything came in waves and it stopped and it started and stopped and started because everything's internal.
I was still trying to control it. I still didn't believe it was a heart attack at the time. I mean, it was dawning on me, but I but I never felt like I was going to drop dead with a catastrophic heart failure. So I was just trying to calm down, you know, slow the breathing, slow the heart rate down. What actually helped was not the oxygen. It was taking all the aspirin. You know, that's the that's that is the platelets. And then, you know, subsequent to all of this, I found out that the type of heart attack, I had was called the end stomach, which is it's still life threatening, but it's not catastrophic.
So it's a blockage of the one of the arterial veins. So not enough blood and oxygen is getting into your heart, but it doesn't cause muscular damage of the heart. So while I'm lying there, I'm thinking I can do this. It's going to be OK, you know, looking at the faces of my family and, you know, just trying to get myself calm. Now, so I knew at the time that, you know, this was a serious medical emergency and I needed to get out of the sun, up to the tent with a cup of hot tea inside me and then to discuss when to push the SOS button. So as it turned out, we could have pushed it an hour earlier, but as it turned out, it wasn't it wasn't a major issue delaying that hour.
I think if I was unconscious. So with, you know, greater and more severe symptoms, Bob's would definitely have come to the aid and, you know, called for rescue immediately. But I think it worked out OK. Anyway, so then once you press that SOS button, you can't unpress it. It's like, you know, it should happen around the world. And it's the second time I've been rescued. The first time was when I broke my knee based jumping in a remote place landing. And it's. It's quite humbling, actually, knowing that it's not out of your control. You can't get I mean, there's no way I could have walked out for two days and thirty five degree heat with an unstable heart.
So it was really humbling to be able to let go and let global rescue, let my friends come and help me. And that's exactly what happened. So the next day I was chopped out in a military helicopter, which is actually quite cool talking to the Pakistani pilot.
And I went to a military hospital in Skardu where they stabilized me, put me on blood thinning drugs and made it so that I was out of danger, you know, with ECGs and echo scans and things. And they enabled it such that I'd be able to travel back to South Africa, which happened a few days later. And I went to see a cardiologist here in Cape Town. And the next day they put a stent in one of the veins in my heart. And it's a pretty common thing. For middle aged men and the prognosis is looking good in about two weeks time. I'm going to do a stress test on the treadmill and they're going to put the electrodes on and see and I'll be able to see what I can do after that.
But pretty much the outcome was great.
And I'm still around. We're all still friends. There was a lot that we could have done better, which Bob's is going through.
I see it as a very successful expedition, actually. Funnily enough, after my heart attack and the whole heliopathy, there were two more days of flying and then it started raining. So I actually didn't blow the rest of the holiday too badly.
Yeah. Nice. Awesome. And Andy, you know, prognosis sounds pretty good. What does your future expeditioning look like? Is it? Is it less? Is it the same? Can you go back? Would you want to go back? You know, I imagine the mountains are still calling just as strongly as they always have in a lifetime full of alpine.
Yeah, I would definitely like to go back. I would plan things differently and make the camping in Paiu a lot more comfortable. It's really dusty and really dirty. And if you've got a nice, comfortable base, then it's quite nice to do that. I would do things differently. Definitely with a physical and I would acclimatize better and that would entail spending a lot longer and acclimatizing a lot more slowly, like in a mountaineering sense. That's what Antoine and Jake and Vesso were doing in Hunza. They were in Hunza for a month when we were there and now they're in the Baltoro right now, also for another month. I think that for a person my age, I think you need to be a lot more focused and a lot more clued up on your acclimatization.
We thought we could just wing it with oxygen, but it didn't really work. The heart attack was caused by not really being acclimatized.
There weren't that many contributing factors. Smoking was one of them. I used to smoke a lot, but ultimately it was the altitude, so acclimatization becomes very important.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Sure. Okay, Barb, back to your list. Let's take us through that.
Yeah, I'll try and run through it a bit quicker. So one of the other things we didn't do was really agree what is not acceptable and that was a bit of a mistake. So for example, on the first day, I actually, because I hadn't been there, I wanted to test out my setup and I wanted to make sure I didn't suffer from altitude. So I had my oxygen on full blast from the start because we had these two massive systems, and it wasn't really running that low. It was just that the angle that it was in my jacket meant that it looked like it was running low. But we went back and Jeremy and Pierre carried on, and they said they got pretty close to landing on the Baltoro.
They got super low, which wasn't something I was desperately happy about. Yeah. Yeah. about, um, when they told told us that, um, because that for me was with what we'd said, with what we knew about it, in fact that, you know, landing there should be almost in itself just be perceived as a major incident, um, but we never actually had that conversation in advance, you
know what
Would our views be really clear?
directives, and yeah, it's
That, yeah, it's up to it was kind of everything was kind of still up to each other, even though obviously it would potentially have a massive impact on the whole expedition, um, and to the same extent, um, there was, uh, um, how far away if we're buddy flying, how far is too far? Uh, you know, when, when I've buddy flown in South Africa with, with Andy, I'm sure it's the same. In some valley, you stay super close because it is amazing how quickly you can lose someone, uh, and you stay on the radio. And, and again, we didn't have those agreed, wasn't really a problem, but we probably should have had. Look, you, you, we kind of stay in the same thermal. If we're going, we say we're going, the other person, it's agreed that they're coming with, or if they're not happy, then they say they're not happy.
We didn't have that done, um, so that, that was how much did you guys
The five of you, how much had you flown together before this trip, uh?
Never, I thought I'd flown with Andy a lot. Um, I'd flown with Scott quite a lot. Um, but I hadn't really flown with the other two. Have flown a lot together, so, so sort of there, there was that. They, they kind of knew how they flew together, but
Then we'd all those, so four of us had all flown in in 12 days together, so that's again, that's one of those, that's one of those things as well. Is is um, yeah, it would be good to spend spend that little bit more time time together before you push for the for the big one, um, you
you guys are all you guys are all all still friends. I don't want to throw a question that would put a knife in that, but you know, what I thought about the first thing I thought about, uh, Richard, when you, when you told me about the expedition and the number of the first, the first red flag for me was that's too many people. Um, would you, did you find too many, too little, uh, you know, just for me managing more than one other person gets really tricky. You know, the, the, the, the odds of an accident of something going wrong, you know, the, like you said, the medical kit, uh, what if the one person that knows the medical kit, what if he's the one that has the, it's just, there's, there's just, there's, uh, there's difficulty in numbers. Would you, did that present itself as a problem during this?
It doesn't seem like it, but I'm just wondering,
I think the fact that to its extent, we were sort of almost two buddy pairs. Plus then Scott was sort of Andy and I, in, in, in a way is, was my perception. So it was kind of
two pairs. It was the three of you and the two of them. Yeah. Okay. It was kind
of two pairs with, with, with Scott sort of, um, there, there as well was my take. I don't know if you would agree with that guys. That's, that's, but I think just
to Gavin's points actually to the contrary, I think the five of us as five people were, everybody had valid input. Everybody had, um, had a piece to play in the organization and the prep. Um, and, um, you know, equipment lists and all of that, that, that was very much, uh, um, from my perspective, easier as a group of five. Um, I think the flying thing, I mean, we, we agreed that we'd split, always split into two or two, three, and we agreed, um, you know, and, and we'd always split into two pairs and then the third could choose depending on the circumstance who they, um, who they spun off with.
Okay. So, so, so
it worked
and you guys kind of had a, had a protocol and. Yeah. I don't think the numbers
thing. I think, I think, I think the numbers thing was, was part of our, this, our success to this whole thing. Um, cool. Yeah.
Yeah. So, so then, you know, one of the, the things and spoke to Matt about this last night was smoking. Um, I, I gave up alcohol for six months before going. Um, and for me, going alcohol for a day is quite, quite thing. I don't like going out. I love it. Um, so, so, so when, when, when, uh, when, when, when Andy, when, when Andy and Scott was smoking, I was not, I was not happy. So that was, that was an issue that, that for me was just something that I wasn't very happy with. Um, but we hadn't agreed in advance and because we hadn't agreed in advance, I couldn't say, no, don't smoke. Um, you know, but that was something I felt we should have done. Um, then, uh, the next one, obviously don't become a casualty and then be realistic about the pro about your, um, injuries and symptoms.
Um, and, that's super important. And actually one of the weird ones is speak to Garmin and global rescue in advance. Garmin started calling, um, loved ones before they actually started getting onto global rescue. I have no idea why they were doing that. And they did this when I went rescued a mate from Nepal last year. Um, they, they, they, they spoke, they, they spent to the, the casualties family before they went to the insurance company. And I'm like, why would you do that? Just get, get on with getting the evacuation. The last thing people don't need to know the first, by the way, your husband's having a heart attack. He's stuck in the middle of nowhere. What they want to hear is your husband's, uh, being evacuated. It would be far more useful. So wait, this is Garmin
did this. Yeah. Holy crap. I got to talk to them. I was just talking to Garmin this morning. I will let them know. That's not how you triage.
That's crazy. It's, it's, it's nuts. And, you know, and, and there was a whole process that went through and then it gets to global rescue and what have you. And it, it, it just certainly that was what we understood happened. And it certainly seems to have been what happened on the two incidents I've been involved in. Yeah. Wow. And that
Garmin, Garmin phoned, Garmin phoned and Andy, um, Andy's button got pushed. Garmin phoned Andy's wife. She wasn't in the signal. She, they then phoned second down the line, Andy's son. Um, who gave them my wife's number. They phoned my wife and all they could say was somebody's had a heart attack. Um, so they didn't actually, so all they did was create a little bit of panic amongst everyone. Okay. Now,
now I'm, now I'm thinking about this. Okay. So we put in who to contact in an emergency. Uh, and so that's obviously what they're doing. So their protocol is to, you know, if you press the SOS, you know, you have the two emergency numbers, your primary, your secondary, that must just be their protocol to do that automatically. That's interesting. Uh, not, we are not
the one which did your notes saying, cool, here's my insurance details. Here's the insurance number.
Oh boy. That'd be a big thing to straighten out because there's, you know, that's, that's how they have it set up, but this is an interesting, God, that is their protocol though. Uh, that's an interesting thing to, and
this, I actually said to Bob's yesterday, I said, it may be that that's their protocol because they need the next of the next of kin, the listed person to, to, they need to talk to somebody that can make decisions. Um, and that is, that would normally be your second listed person. This
is a fascinating subject.
Would be my interpretation of why they always phone the next of kin. They do the same in a medical, um, in standard, in, in other medical things. You know, if you go cold on the operating theater, the first thing they do is they phone the next of kin and they, they open discussions with them. But as Bob's is saying, it would be preferable that they've phoned the, you know, that they've phoned the insurance people first and get on the rescue side before they get on the alerting everyone. So
I, I think there's, there's two really good things here for all of us. And for the listeners, the first thing, and that's how Richard, that's how you, but the, the, the first thing we should think about as a community is who, who are the two people we want on there? You know, for example, right now I've got my wife as the primary after hearing this story, that's the last person I want to know that be told if something severe happens to me, I want my buddy, Nate scales, who's a paramedic, who's a pilot. He knows everything about me. He knows my risk tolerance and he knows how to get into action. And he was part of the whole Kiwi incident here. You know, I, you want people, like that to know that something has happened and can put it into, you know, when I threw my reserve here before the last X-Alps, you know, I, that was the person I contacted.
So maybe we as a community need to think about, okay, who do we put on as the primary and secondary? Secondly, I will call Garmin and give them this feedback, but I don't think that's going to change. I think that that's probably their, you know, higher up protocol. That's probably a legal thing or something, but it's, but it is interesting. I mean, the first thing they should do obviously is, and I think they do do is it goes to the call. Garmin doesn't do the rescue. It's the IERCC. It goes to them, you know, they take over. So it's probably for them. It's just, it's just protocol. They're just following the ABC.
Yes. So one of the other things from that was actually, you know, having the, we would have been better off just calling Jasmine, messaging Jasmine tours who would have contacted the military immediately and they'd have sent a helicopter. Yeah. Now that, that actually, yeah.
It would
have been far more effective than anything else. So this is
a good one. I want to stall on this, you know, that, you know, rescues, we, we had an incident here in Sun Valley a few years back where a buddy went in hard, broke his leg and, you know, there were 15 of us in the sky that day and all but a couple knew that it was going on and we landed and we organized our own rescue. I mean, that was what the article on the website is built on was, was, was this incident that goes into the insurance and the whole thing, because if we had just hit the SOS relied on, on standard authorities to, to save this guy, it was the same thing with Kiwi. Our community is way more resourced or the paragliding community and the flying community in general is, is way more resourced than outsourcing it.
You know, we've got the skills, we've all been there. We've, we have the contacts, we can do it much, much, much faster within our own community. So that is something to, you know, depending on where you are, most of the time it's hit the SOS. If there's doubt, there is no doubt, but depending on where you are, you may very well be able to organize and handle the rescue in the, especially if there's a search involved way faster through your own community. So that's, yeah, good point.
Yeah. So, so, so interconnected with that is, you know, after, a couple of stories, I've got my, in, in the notes, I have my credit card number. So if in doubt, get a helicopter, I'll deal with it later. Here's my credit card. So the problem with that is that they don't seem to really read those notes. That seems to be the last thing that, that, that happens. And I also now have connected to that, a Google, I have a Bitly link, which goes to a Google spreadsheet of, of useful contacts,
which, which is just my way of trying to, trying to make sure that, that, that, that can happen.
It's just, just, but it only works if it gets the right person. And, you know, in South Africa, I know people who press the in reach and it's not worked because they've, they've contacted the wrong, the wrong people. And because in different regions, different people and do Garmin or the IRC or whoever it is, does it get to the right person? So, so now when I go there, I have a, I have the local numbers. It's like, right, here are the helicopter numbers, but actually, should I be putting those in my emergency contact? I don't know. And that's if, if you can help the community with that, that would be something that would be epically useful. And it would make this thing feel like
we've done the right thing. Your point is that actually that first person of contact, especially for a trip like this might be a trusted, a trusted friend, a friend with who's already had a basic brief of, if you get this call, please, will you, will you execute these, these instructions accordingly? Yeah. The mayhem that ensues.
I, I, I, well, I like both these things. I mean, one, you know, Richard, the, the, the, the more information you could put out there to someone potentially helping that's not in your community, the better, you know, the bitly, the credit card number, all those kinds of things. I had never even thought of that. So that's fantastic information that we can definitely put in the SOS notes. You know, when Kiwi disappeared in Nevada, they looked at his SOS notes. When I, when I got global, it was global rescue. When I got them on the phone, they had, they'd seen all that stuff. So that was useful. The other thing, you know, to your point, Scott, I I'm just thinking about this in my personal case, I've got Maddie, my wife is the first one. She wouldn't know how to do anything, but she would call my buddy, Nate.
But I, so I think what I need to do is first thing she'd think of is I got to call Nate, you know, he would know how to deal with this. So I think
just having my wife did the same thing. She phoned my mate, Aiden, who was sailing down the front face of table mountain at the time. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. That's the risk. Our buddies are out doing something cool. Well, he looked at the phone and he was like, Sonia doesn't normally call me. There must be a problem. And he answered the phone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's just important.
It's important for us to know that as a community. Okay. Hey, hey, Garmin's going to call first and then second, they're going to call your primary and secondary. Who do you want that to be? That may not be your wife. It may be, but it may be somebody who's, you know, used to dealing with these kinds of incidents on a regular basis. Might it be
the insurance company? That would be my question to them. Should we put our insurance company in there or should we put global rescue actually in that?
Yeah. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Global rescue, but then, you know, you, you want, you want to have the, you know, your policy number and all those kinds of, that's a really good question because in my experience, it really depends on who you get on the other line. Now, the, the protocol, the very, very important thing, which I'm sure you guys learn from an insurance perspective, from a reimbursing perspective is when an incident happens, I've got a one pager now that we're going to distribute to everybody here shortly because of these kinds of things. And it needs to be more on triaging, but the, the one pager is basically, buddy goes down, something has happened. The insurance needs to know as soon as possible, you know, they need to be notified as soon as possible, whether this should be the primary or secondary.
I'm not, I have to think about that more. I don't know. That's a good, that's a really good question. I'd never thought about that. It's a really good question, but for sure, you know, someone, I think that's more of a, from your group. You know, the, the spread. The spreadsheet that you created that has all the information of everybody, you know, basically it starts to get very risky. If you start taking helicopter flights and having things happen in the, in the hospital after that, and that actually that, that all has happened before you've contacted the insurance company, you know, the earlier they are aware of what's going on, the better it is for you to be reimbursed. That's what it comes down to with insurance.
Yeah. Yeah. But I just want. I wonder whether, you know, if you've got the policy, because you have all that detail in the admin section, but if you have, it's just, if that means it's the first people they contact.
It's a good, it's a good question. I just don't know. I don't know if you want them involved in that kind of a thing because it's insurance. I'm always a little wary of that, but it's a great question that I need to get a better answer to.
Cool. And I think really that's, you know, we've got, it's also just, just having that key information in there, which is just.
You know,
just,
just so they, just so they know that I think that that's important. Well, guys, great stuff. I'm glad everybody's still friends. And although it looks like fists are going to be thrown across the pond there, maybe a little bit in the future, but I'm glad y 'all made it back. And, you know, a great end to a pretty scary situation. Andy, I'm glad you're to hear you're still going to be chasing it in the mountains. The world deserves that. And you're all stellar. I look forward to talking to Pierre and Jeremy, but especially Pierre about his ex-alps campaigns. Yeah. And some other stuff. So thanks for reaching out in terms of suggestions for that. But Scott, heal up quick. It looks like you're, you're way more hurt than Andy. So if y 'all could see the little scooter that Scott's riding around on and in his wrist.
And so better landings to you, my friend and in the future, but thanks for sharing your story and for all these terrific lessons. And thanks for sharing your time, guys. I appreciate it.
Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Gavin. Thank you, Andy. And I'm going. I'm going to, I'm going out to fly with them in November, December. So, so we are still friends. I'm sure, I'm sure I might get a dead arm from Scott, but that's fine. It's a bit of a beating.
Thanks very much, Gavin. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. Thanks a lot. 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. You can post 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. They're not being skewed by sponsors or 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, and 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. 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.