207. Behind the Scenes of the Red Bull X-Alps - Tarquin Cooper

Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. I've got a fun show for you today. Tarquin Cooper reached out a couple weeks ago. You know him from the color for the Red Bull X-Alps. He's been doing that for the last few years, the kind of main commentating. He was commentating in this year's film as well, and he and I have been friends for a long time. He's a budding pilot. I think that would be the right word, but he's super into it. But, and chasing it now a bit, and had a really cool adventure right after the race this year. He went and sailed in the Fastnet, and it was a massive storm, kind of compared to the 1979 craziness where all those boats went down and lots of loss of life in the 79 one, not this time around.

But I think over, he talks about that in this episode, over 100 boats pulled out because it was pretty wild out there. They had a pretty wild experience and adventure as well. But he reached out because he wanted to, he thought it'd be really fun to talk about the kind of behind the scenes. As you all know, I was invited over to cover the race this year as well with him. We were kind of partnering on the color and I was meant to be in the air every day and doing a lot of live broadcasting, which I was in the air every day. We were mostly successful with getting it live, but many times not just because the cell coverage and the equipment, and we were all learning very new gear. I also had a pretty wild incident, I'm landing in a tree, very, very high tree.

So we cover that, pretty amusing story, although it was a little scary actually at the time, but that all worked out pretty well. And yeah, we just thought it'd be fun to talk about the behind the scenes stuff, who was really impressive this year. The speed of the race, of course, was crazy. I know I talk a lot about the Red Bull X-Alps because it's a favorite topic of mine. So we just had Paul Gushabower on the show. So hopefully this will keep you entertained, even if you aren't into the Red Bull X-Alps. And I wanted to mention, we just put out another bonus episode. This is kind of 201, the second version for the pilots. The first one with Calef was the first bonus episode we did was really meant for pilots that were just leaving the nest. This is after a few hundred hours, so more, maybe almost at the level of what my book is aimed at.

So kind of intermediate and advanced pilots. Who are figuring it out, trying to decode the invisible. And he has a lot of really fantastic ways of teaching and articulating this level of flying. We had a lot of fun with this. Everyone has access to the bonus material. You automatically do when you're a subscriber and you contribute to the show. But if you don't or you can't, then just let me know and I'll set you up with a lifetime subscription. All we've ever asked for is a buck a show. But I know many of you, that's a stretch. And that's totally fine. This will always be ad free and it will always be free. And for those of you who do support the show, thank you very much. Appreciate that. But you can find that on the website, that bonus stuff.

And if you don't have access, like I said, just shoot me an email and we'll make it all so you do forever. Enjoy this really fun talk with Tarquin Cooper. And we will be banded together for the 25 event, most likely. Unless I get...

I'm still thinking about racing. But right now, this is the plan is to do that again. And I've got much better equipment this time around. I've got it all sorted. So, A, I don't land in trees because the camera gear is messing me up. And B, it should all work really well in terms of bringing you a lot more coverage from kind of behind the scenes. And especially from the air. It should be a lot of fun. Cheers. Enjoy the show.

Tarquin, look at us looking at each other again like we were on the race. How are you doing, man?

Awesome, Gavin. It's great to see you. How are you doing?

Yeah. Yeah, good. Things have been a little frantic. You know, it was frantic for the race. And it's been a little frantic. But, you know, in the house now. And I went for my first little hike and fly in ages the other day. And we've had a really nice fall. But it was good to catch up with you via email. And I'm glad you suggested we do this. You had a different experience than most do after the X-Alps. Absolutely. Most people just go to relax. And you went on a boat and got slammed in a storm. What happened there?

Yeah. So I kind of jumped from the frying pan into the fire. So I had this big thing on the diary, which was to do the Fastnet race, which is a really iconic offshore race. 700 nautical miles from England all the way out the channel to the southern tip of Ireland around a rock there. And so that was a few weeks after the race. And I was crewing for a friend's yacht. And on the opening night, it was pretty spicy. It was a Force 8 gale. And at one point, I was below deck. It was about, I don't know, 1 o'clock in the morning. And I'm bailing. We're taking on a lot of water. I'm bailing. At the same time, I'm being sick. Because everyone was sick. There were seven of us. And everyone was throwing up. I mean, it was just…

And then a fire breaks out. What? Suddenly smoke just starts spilling in

my face. I was swimming

out of this cupboard. And what had happened was we were taking on water. And that was getting to the batteries. And then I remembered I'd done my sea survival course. But I couldn't remember which fire extinguisher you're supposed to use for electrics. I was like, wait, is this the right fire extinguisher? But in the end, we solved it because we tacked. So, we were healing quite over. So, we were on one side. And so, by changing direction, changing our direction against the wind, we were able to lift the other side out of the water. So, meanwhile, also…

Didn't 100 boats or something cancel before it even got going or something? Yeah. What happened?

82 boats pulled out that night. Yeah. So… So, I mean,

isn't this… Was this the most comparable race to the famous one? I mean, there's legend stories. Wasn't it 79, the Fastnet, where they had all the boats go down? Yeah. I mean, Fastnet,

it's a little bit like, you know, the North Face of the iGirl. You know, it's got a kind of legendary cult status, partly because of this terrible tragedy that happened. In 1979, where I think 20 or so sailors died. I mean, but everything has changed so much since then. I mean, you know, back then they had, you know, some boats didn't even have any communications equipment. They just had a long wave radio at best. You know, a weather forecast was something you got once every 12 hours. And, you know, the kind of rescue, your lifeboat that you got into wasn't much better than a kind of kid's rubber dinghy. Yeah. Now, you know, everything's so much more advanced now. You know, technology, the weather forecasting is so much better.

I mean, it's now mandatory that you have to do a sea survival course. So you actually have to learn, you know, how to get into one of these life rafts. And the one thing that you learn on that is that you step up into your life raft. In other words, you get into it at the very, very last minute when your boat… You stay on your boat as long as is possible. As long as it's floating, you stay on it. And you only get in that life raft when it's the only option.

Yeah. You don't want to leave where you got all your food and all your stuff and the water maker and, you know, all the… Yeah. Boats, even when sinking, are better than a life raft. Life raft is the last ditch. It's like our reserve, isn't it? You know? Yeah. Absolutely. It's the last ditch effort.

But it was a fun… Well, cool. It

was a

wild adventure.

I bet. And you've been into sailing for a while? Or is this a… Is this a passion of yours? Not

really. This was a classic kind of conversation with my neighbor. And I sort of mentioned that I was into sailing. And he sort of said, oh, great. I need crew. So, I kind of be winging it slightly. It's going to be gnarly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm kind of winging it a little bit. But no, it's all good. All good. And you guys finished? Yeah. We finished. Yeah. It went well. We did pretty okay in our class. You know, we weren't out to win. Yeah. And what's amazing, you know, after this massive, you know, storm. Yeah. You

know, big,

big sort of four or five-meter swells. Two days later, we were in the middle of the Irish Sea. And it was flat calm. Absolutely flat calm. Wow. And of course, at that point, you're praying for wind. And then, you know, the phrase, you know, be careful what you wish for because another storm rolled through. So, yeah. It was an exciting time. But I was glad to make it on to terra firma, actually, when I got off the boat.

Oh, I'm sure. Yeah. Fires are never fun. And storms aren't fun. You know. It's interesting. All the sailing I've done, you know, I've been around the world twice. You get more. I was a lot less worried about storms early on. I got more and more and more humble and more and more and more afraid as time went on, which is the opposite of, say, paraglider or something. As you get more experience, you get better. It all becomes more manageable. And with sailing, I just got more and more scared all the time of the seas because when you start fighting that stuff. In the beginning, it's novel. This is a storm. I've read the books. And, you know, it's kind of this fight to survive. And as time goes on, even with like you're talking about GPS, you know, when I back when I got into the day, it was, you know, when I worked on fishing boats up in Alaska in my late teens, it was all Lorraine.

We didn't have GPS. My my captain lost a ship the year before I got up there in the in the Bering Sea. And it was still no joke. But anyway, the the storms are just, you know, it's just scary. And and you feel very, very, very small at sea, regardless of the boat you're on. And yeah, I just I just got more intimidated. Of course, I got more experience. And so I knew how to deal with it better and how to reef and how to understand and basically not go out there. If I could, if something was coming rather than, yeah, let's go out and battle the storm. But, you know, sometimes you still just get caught out. The funny thing about sailing is it's way harder. Typically to do something like the fast net when you're coastal, it's it's the same as paragliding.

The weather changes constantly and really fast and sometimes really violently, whereas when you're being offshore is is way more cruisy. Typically, if you're if you're doing it right and you're going in the right season, you've got the current working with you and the wind working with you. And the only nightmare really is a squall. And they're very brief and very fast. And so it's really more, you know, circumnavigating New Zealand. Or circumnavigating Ireland or going around in the English Channel. That's much more difficult because you've got traffic and storms and things change really fast. And it's much more demanding sailing than being offshore. Being offshore is actually pretty easy.

Yeah. I mean, that's a big thing in the in the channel. It's a major shipping lane. And you're seeing these these huge tankers. You're looking at the green light and the red light. And you're trying to think to remember which which one means it's gone past me. You know, and the eyes play tricks with you. And it's quite funny when we finish the race. We had a little bit of a penalty because the the Coast Guard had tried to get a hold of us during the race and our radio wasn't working. And we the reason for that is someone's AIS device there. You know, emergency thing was was was going off. We didn't realize it. And so we got our knuckles wrapped. The Coast Guard, while I was trying to put out the fire, were also trying to call us. And I tried to get back to them and say, you know, no, all's well. But they couldn't hear me. So we nearly got a penalty for for being out of contact.

But in the end, it was OK. But it reminded me of during the rebel exiles when when Kinga got her yellow card for being out of contact. So that used me a lot. Yeah. Yeah. She was upset about

that, too. I didn't realize that until kind of after. But she's you know, sounds like she had a good night and kind of bivvied. And but yeah, I think I think on the show. But yeah, I

think something got lost in traffic. I don't know the translation on that one. I don't really know exactly, you know, what happened. But but, you know, she was just out there. I spoke to her the other day. She just had a really great adventure. And I think, yeah, just just went off grid for a little bit.

Well, it's good. It's good timing that we're talking because the film just came out, which I enjoyed. It was done quite a bit differently than in the past. I mean, it's still really mostly showed the leaders, which is always been tricky to be going to show. And. But I like the talking heads. I like the explanation. And that's really what we were trying to do. I was so thankful that you put me on the team this year. And the feedback I got from the fans were that this is great. Now we understand what's going on. And, you know, we're going to pair this, I think, into future editions in twenty twenty five. What a lot of people were telling me is that they want to know why Tarquin is in this position. Why Gavin is this position? What's what's going on? And it was it was interesting.

I'm sure way more frantic than in past episodes because, you know, I don't know about you, but I was driving all night every night. It was it was impossible to keep up with these guys and and girls. And it was just frantic. It was I thought the race was really frantic. I have experience with that. But God, it's frantic what we do as well. And I'm sure that was driven a lot by the just the speed of things this year. But I think next time we'll have to almost have a side. Show of what we're doing, because, you know, it was we would just pop up and we'd be in Tracy Mayer. We'd pop up and and be at one of the at the turn points. People, why are you there? What are you doing there? What's going on?

Yeah, there would be a lot of swearing in in my back.

You know what? Where am I going to go now? You know, and sometimes going taking a wrong turn and I'd end up completely in the wrong direction. I mean, you had this great idea, Gavin, that, yeah, we should have a little GPS unit on us. So that the fans can see where we are. And I'm a little part of me is like, yeah, maybe because like my worst during during the last race. I think it was after Lemus where we plugged it in for the, you know, into the Google, into the sat nav. And I plan to go into the Alberg Valley to follow the next phase of the race. But in the end, I kind of then buried myself in the laptop to try and follow the stuff. And then we ended up driving into the Autobahn. The long way round via, you know, into, you know, burn.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Basically, we were on the highway. And then suddenly I realized I got to go live. And then I'm in the middle of some random farmer's field trying to make it look as hilly as possible. It's just completely in the wrong place. But, you know, that happens from time to time. There's a lot

of that, isn't there? I mean, there was a time on the Col du Petit Saint Bernard. You know, I was up there most of the day. Paul Gucherbauer got in the night before. That was, you know, right after Damien Lacaze had his epic flight around Dent d 'Oche and made it all the way around in one go. And the next day, I basically spent the day there just capturing the athletes coming in and leaving. And Tom de Dourladeau was one of the last in that day. I think he was 16th at the time. But he was having a heck of a race. He was in really good spirits. And because I could see that he was probably going to be the last one in, he was really racing to get in and get up off the hill. And he said, well, hey, where'd everybody else go? And I said, well, everybody else went, you know, this aspect, which was, I guess, to the west. But, you know, then it was late in the day.

So it was where they were taking off earlier in the day to get the east aspect sun. And so, but he said, well, I'm going to go there. That's the fastest one. And as we were hiking up together, I thought, I don't know if this is going to work. You know, the sun's really the other angle now. But we were committed at that point. And so we launched. And immediately, it looked like we were just going to land literally back where he'd started. We were barely going to make the climb. And we were going to make the climb. And we were going to have to get some coal, because it's quite flat up there for quite a long ways. We sort of start diving down to the Aosta Valley. But we both saved it. You know, I was above him and filming him. And I was live. And, oh, this is amazing. This is amazing. But I was doing the live Facebook thing. And I had to be live with you at 5 p.m. You know, that was our daily deal for the evening show. And so, you know, we're digging out. And it's rowdy.

And it's leaside. And I'm, you know, I'm with Tom.

But I know he's happy to have another pilot in the air, because it was really quite rowdy. And we were really low. I mean, we just had to kind of keep squirting off the pass to get to where we'd have more terrain to work. And we finally got to the bottom where there's the intersection of the Aosta and the stuff going up towards, you know, the Dufour Spits and Monte Rosa and all that. And we're digging out. And I'm looking at my watch going, I got to be on the ground. I got to be on the ground. I got to do a show with Tarquin. I can't be doing this. I can't just be flying. It's just it's so funny how often that happens where you're just, oh, no, I have to land and do a show. Oh, but I want to fly.

It's quite

an hysterical bouncing around.

So just rewind a bit. I mean, what were your perceptions going into the race? You must have had like a preconceived idea of how the race was done. And what kind of changed in your mind? Was it what, you know, what was it like on the other side?

Well, one, it was really it was a lot of fun. You know what I mean? You have to be honest. I think the athletes often have a view of the race organization that's maybe not totally positive. I guess I should say, you know, there's there's just there's a lot of marketing and there's the there's the sponsorship and there's there's all the things that make the race go. And as an athlete, we all understand that. We all understand that you have to have all that to make such a big operation operate. Right. But, you know, I think there's often a viewpoint. That there's just too much emphasis on the marketing side and the filming side and the cameras and all the things. And working from the other side, it gave me I

love the whole race even more. I guess, you know, to see how hard everybody on now this side, you know, now that I'm on the Zoom side of the race is working and how much they care and how much passion there is and and how fucking hard it is. It's just it's hard. There's I was amazed with how hard it was. And and and again, I guess a lot of that's maybe the pace. But I don't I don't know. Maybe that doesn't back off. I mean, you know, the easy out would just be, OK, I'm not going to race off to that. I'm just going to cover what we you know what I'm here doing. But nobody does that from the Zoom side. Everybody's just we got to get more. We got to work. We got to get it. There's there's all this exciting stuff going on.

And so it was. Yeah. It was very eye opening for me. And yeah, like I said, it just makes me love the race even more. It was you know, it was very cool to be part of the the talks before the race even started. You know, how is this going to work and how are we going to handle the safety and how are we going to handle the communications? And I guess I knew already that it was complicated and it was big and it was a lot of moving parts. But I didn't really understand the team. I didn't really understand the depth of it and how how really, truly complicated it is. You know, they always say I used to work in media for NBC and we covered this big golf race in Tahoe every year. And they always this sounds crazy.

But apparently from a media perspective, golf is one of the hardest things to cover because there's 18 holes. There's a ton of different cameras and color. In other words, you and I are the squawk box into our ear. While we're trying to go live and talk, you know, so that's Esteban for you and I is 18 different. You know, there's all these different cameras and there's all these different things and they're trying to make it look very natural. And the guy running the camera, you know, OK, we're going to go to green. We're going to purple. We're going to find camera number five. You know, the live show. So Esteban for us is is one of the highest paid positions in NBC because it's so complicated. That's golf. Can you imagine? I mean, so now let's take twelve hundred kilometers in a straight line with thirty two different athletes spread all over the joint.

And, you know, it's amazing how complicated it is. So to try to keep up with all that was really fun and really hard and really complicated. And I'm just really excited. You know, my camera gear, all that stuff we were dealing with, you know, that was a system we learned literally right before the prologue. And we were we learned. We didn't really figure it out until day seven. And so that'll be really cool to use that stuff properly. And I think we hear more and report on it.

I think this this was a you know, we really tried to do things differently this year. And I think much more focus on on kind of on on live output on the social media stuff. Also, you know, it's nice to hear your comments on the documentary. I think that's gone gone down quite well. We really tried to do things, you know, do things a bit just a bit more. You know, in a new way. And but, you know, what a lot of people think is, you know, they just there's an assumption because it's Red Bull. There's just tons of money and we can do the hell we want. And and actually, you know, Red Bull is effectively just the title sponsor. You know, there isn't you know, there's not so much flexibility that you would imagine. So, yeah, it's just I think some people would be surprised. It's basically you and me and a guy back in the office trying to pull it all together with a little bit of helpfulness.

And

I think that's what we've seen. And we're seeing that from

maybe one or two other people. And but definitely I think we've proved that it works. And I think the idea of getting you up in the air filming live, I mean, looking ahead to the future. I mean, it would be amazing if we could put live cameras on on the athletes themselves. Now let's go and see where Damian is. Let's see where Chrigel is or. But I think this is definitely the way forward. And we've proved that this is that this works. Yeah,

I think so. I mean, I think what we're still missing in a sense is just the weather. You know, if we could somehow have, and we capture that when I'm up in the air, but there was a lot of PTSD for me in this one because the four events, the four races I've done, there was always some pretty hairy weather. Not so much in 2019, that was just stability and the heat and stuff. But to see what those guys were flying in from Col du Petit Saint Bernard through kind of the Italian side of the Alps going through the lakes, you know, on the live weather cams that day, it was gusting over 60K an hour.

You know, it's just so far from recreational flying that I still don't know that we're... able to show that to the audience, you know, to be... In my position that day, flying from the Dufour Spits towards Domodossola, you know, it was just starting to ramp up and get... And that was the day I landed in the tree. And that was not because of the weather. That was because wing damage, which maybe we'll talk about. But the, you know, it was really, really gnarly conditions. You know, it was... Maxime was practically in tears at the end of that day. You know, it was... And he and I talked about that after the race in Zell am See, just the ridiculous amount of exposure and risk that the pilots are taking, but making it look really good.

Damien Lacoste flew 11 hours and 20 minutes that day, you know, but it's only really experienced pilots that understand that, you know, to be in the air for 11 hours and 20 minutes and only go 267K says something. It, you know, it's, it was brutal and, and really rowdy. And so, you know, I think if, if there's some way to overlay and show some of that is, I think would just, my mom wouldn't understand, but the pilots who watched the race would understand. And it's funny. That's what's really exciting about it.

I had, I had a very similar conversation with, with Damien Lacoste just a couple of days ago, and he was talking about that. Just if there was a way to... You know, like, like it to go back to sailing in the, in the Vendee Globe race, you know, you, as, as a viewer, you know, you can put the overlays on there, on the, on the weather map. So you can see exactly the storm as it's rolling in, you know, or, or to have airspaces, for example, on, on live tracking. I mean, that would be an amazing feature so that you could see why, you know, you might not understand why, you know, as an athlete approached Innsbruck, why they've gone off in a really bizarre direction, you know, and, and the airspace might explain that. But yeah, Damien, interestingly, he, he actually said. That, you know, that big 11 hour flight wasn't, wasn't that big a deal for him. That's not the moment that, that, that he's most proud of.

It was kind of, for him, it was more the case. Well, of course I was in the air for 11 hours because there weren't any turn points that day. You know, it was a big, so I just stayed flying. Um, it's not his longest flight he's ever done. I think he's done over 300 kilometers, but he, he said his, his proudest flight, I think was from the, um, uh, up towards Mont Blanc. He, he took it. Yeah. Nice into Mont Blanc. He did a, he did. Interesting line that, that really worked out. But again, to go back to what you were saying about when things are getting rowdy towards the end of the race, he was saying he got completely pinned and, and, you know, to, to have any kind of penetration, he had to go on full bar, but then he started sinking and he was, you know, and that wasn't working out. So he'd come off the bar to, to, to climb and then get, you know, pinned again.

And, and he just said it, and a Chrigel meanwhile was just in his, this is the kind of stuff where Chrigel's in his element, but in the end. And Damien said that he, he came and landed and, and he was lucky that the wind actually was at ground level was, was, was pretty okay. But, and, and I think Maxime also landed and that was, you know, where he really had a, had a rethink about his priorities, but it does seem in those, in those situations, Chrigel just enters a different zone. He, he's just, just find some, just comes into his own really, doesn't he? And, and if there was a way to tell that the problem is, is if you interview Chrigel, he just sort of say, he'd talk about it like it's just a normal. I mean, it was,

we, we saw that, we saw that in the 2021 race too, where, you know, he and Maxime landed within feet of one another down in the Volus and, and Maxime took the Southern route and he went North and we all went, what the hell is Chrigel doing? And then the next day, you know, those were, he talks about, I don't think it was that ferny. I mean, the fern was just dumping. I was there going the other way into the Fiche Valley. It was just crazy. And, and for him, it's just, you know, this is, this is what you got to do. And, you know, to, to pull these leads off and get ahead of that kind of talent, just, he's really in, in different stratosphere.

I mean, I've never really seen the emotion on, on Chrigel's face, but I did see it that day at the end of that day, meeting up with his supporter, who's Thomas, Thomas Theurillat. And he was very, very stressed. He had not had a, had a good day because, you know, he's trying to drive. He's trying to keep up with Chrigel, which on these roads, as you know, it's a nightmare. Chrigel's calling up all the time saying, what's the wind? What's the wind? What's the wind doing? And, and, and Thomas, at the end of the day, he was just like, no, no media, no media. I don't, I don't want anyone, you know, cut. And he was, he was really, he was freaked out. I think at the end of that day, much more than Chrigel was. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's

really the, you were asking me, you know, what, what the, some of the differences from you, what the, the, the really interesting was for me, just kind of inside in my, in my being was the, the number of times I was standing on launch with these guys, you know, shooting and, and thinking, wow, I'm really not in their mindset. It's, you know, knowing the conditions are going to be windy today, that kind of thing. And they're just, they're not even thinking about it. Versus, you know, when you're not racing, I just kept thinking, I'm really grateful. I don't have to go battle this. You know, whereas if I'd been in the race, it would have been a non-issue. You just, you're just in that mindset and you're, you're, you're there, but I never got in that mindset.

The only time was maybe close was flying with Ellie. That was the longest flight I had in the race. I flew about 70 K with her from in the end Valley, uh, just, just outside of Innsbruck to. To the Laramos turn point. It was beautiful fly. It was great. We, it was, it got a little rowdy around, uh, around the Zugspitze cause we were, we were in the Lee. It was quite a strong North day, but she made an incredible move the night before leaving the turn point in, in Kimsey. And it was the only one, I believe of all the athletes that flew the end Valley. And she passed a ton of people that night. And then the next day it was a really good move by her team. And, and I had never flown. The in Valley because of that airspace, it always just made me really nervous.

So I had always gone North and Oliver to Laramos was what everybody else did, but they had a great game plan and it really worked and she stayed in the air and she flew really well, but that was, you know, the only time that I, when it was kind of rowdy near the Zugspitze, I thought, yeah, I'm not in the X-Alps mindset. You know, I don't like this. Whereas for her, I'm sure it was just nothing. It was nothing, but it's interesting how that you snap into it and you're, you know, you're you're in it and you're fine, but yeah, I wasn't, I didn't feel that way. And that is a camera guy.

Yeah. That's really interesting. You say that because for the first time I did my first ever hike and fly race a month ago. And, and I got to experience that, that mindset, even, even a little bit. So it was, um, Paul and Aaron's new, um, it's their new hike and fly race series, Wonderbird, uh, they got one in Marano. Uh, there's one in Salzburg, uh, and this one was the, the one in the Stubaitau and, um, it's a really fun, great event and it, and it's really there for, for kind of everyday, um, you know, pilots like myself. Um, but there was a, there was a crossing that you had to do from one side of the, of the valley to the other. And, uh, I was a little bit gung-ho and I was going across and I, and I came, I had a, I came to a crossroads. Either I, I saw a little patch where I could, I could land high. That was my goal was to just land as high as possible and then continue on foot or, um, I was going to bottom out.

And, um, I thought maybe I could scratch around a little bit. That's probably what a, a more. Experienced pilot would have done. And eventually patients would have paid off. I'm not a very patient person and I knew that I w I would've just ended up, you know, on, on the valley floor. But so, you know, what happened was this little clear, it was a clearing in a, in a forest. And, uh, I just thought, you know, fuck it, I'm going for it. And I went in and landed in there, which is something that I would never do in normal recreation flying, but like it's race mode, you know, the red mist has come down. I'm thinking, you know, someone's going to overtake me. I don't want to end up in the bottom and have to. Like another 700 meters. So I was just like, hell, let's go in here. It'll be okay. And it was, you know, there was branches everywhere. There were tree strumps. It was really not an ideal place to land, but it was okay.

I landed bunched up, carried on the race. And that's the kind of mindset, isn't it? Of, of something just on a much bigger scale on the rebel X-Alps where you just, you just keep going. You just, you just launch your wing and you fly in whatever conditions there are.

Yeah. One, one of my favorite days of the whole race was I was up on the Nissan, uh, the morning. That Chrigel came up, you know, he pulled his night pass that night before and got down into fruit again. And we all kind of thought he'd made a mistake and cause he didn't really cover much ground with the night pass, but it ended up putting him in perfect position. Although he had to climb the Nissan where most of the other pilots just climbed up a little ways out of fruit again, and then flew up there, but watching everybody come in that day, you know, it's day God was it only three, but they'd already covered so much ground and watching just one. The tightness of the gaggle still at that point in the race. And then watching most of them at one point, Tim Malongi, Simon Oberauer,

Toby Groeser Badger. There was one or two others. They, they landed on the top of the Nissan. I mean, it's blown 20 K. It wasn't really necessarily rowdy, you know, but stiff enough wind and it's blowing from the South side, you know, so it's, it's the opposite side that they'd come up from. So they have to kind of wing it off. They're across to the very cliff side and you know, the top of the Nissan is, it's not a place you land a paraglider ever. It's just rocks. And there's no, there's this tiny little flat area. And then there's the sign board and all the people, you don't land a paraglider there. And they all did, they just come in and they'd swoop in big wing overs. I mean, Tim along, he's doing helicopters. It was amazing. And, you know, but they're, they just boink right next to the sign board on the top of the 3000 foot mountain.

That's completely, it's a knife edge up there and, and sign the board, pull up their wing and take off. You know, it was seconds for all of them seconds, just none of them were up there for more than a minute.

And don't forget some of the athletes didn't even bother hiking. You know, Pál Takáts just walked a little bit up, launched from the hillside, fumbled his way up and then landed. And he did that in a few places. He did it near Davos as well, you know, cause he knew that was his weakness. Yeah. He couldn't keep up with the guys. So, and, and also people are now doing that outside of Lemus. I remember when I first, you know, uh, followed rebel ex-alps on the road, 2017, you know, everyone would hike up, you know, do these big hour, two hour hikes all the way to the, the official launch, wherever it was at the top of the mountain. And I can't remember who it was who first did it, but it was maybe 2019 when someone just thought, you know what, just, just, just try, try launching off the ski slope, just this grass field, just behind, you know, just, just. Just like a few hundred meters up.

Yeah. Behind this. And, and Chrigel also did that as well on the tip this year, which was 2019. He did it after Davos. Yeah. He just, just launched. And that was the, that was actually one of the funniest things was, was, um, so Chrigel, you know, he's racing against the clock and, uh, you know, some little old lady stops him and says, uh, oh, can you, can you take a selfie of me? You know, can we, can I do a selfie? And she gets a phone out and she doesn't know how to do it. And she says, you know, you know, like a little old lady. And Chrigel in the end just grabs it,

takes the

phone, says he takes it, gives it back to her, then carries on and then ends up, you know, it being the only person to, uh, to land at Titlis. Um, that was quite a, that was actually quite a special highlight for me covering the race actually to be up there and, and get him there and then, and then spend the night on, on the mountain. Um, and they kind of did a lock-in and I probably shouldn't say this, but some, not me, but, uh, some people did do a little, uh, recce of the, uh, the ski stuff. I went to a ski station and found some beers and a few other goodies. So we had quite a good night, you

know, there's, there's always these moments in the race where you can go. That's where he got it. Of course, it's all the little things and they really add up, but there's, you know, that day. And I had him on the podcast about this because he and Maxime the night before leaving Laramouse were 5k difference one another. And he pulled a really interesting move that night too, where he said they're thermally. together, huge overdevelopment, big storm. And, and, and Maxine's thinking we can't be in the air anymore. Chrigel just top lands real quick. And Maxine's going, wow, why would you do that right now? We could just get another 10 K and fly it out of the bottom of the Valley, which is what Maxine did. Well, Chrigel hikes up another a hundred meters, relaunches, gets 5k on him, you know?

And that was, and I, I'm convinced, I don't know if Chrigel said that, but I'm convinced that he, because he worked out the math for the next day. I got to get to Davos by this time in the morning. I got to get off the hill by this time to give me a chance to get to Titlis in this time. That's good. You know, he knows that, that route better than anybody. And he knows he's got to get up there by a certain time, or it's going to be the snow storm, which it was. And, you know, so he gets to Davos and looks at his watch. I don't have time to hike any higher. I got to make this work from down here. You know, he always talks about that sporting risk and he's the only one that pulled that off to, to top land on, on Titlis. And he won the race that day. And so none of the, none of the, none of us, none of the rest of the rest of us had to do 5,000 meters to get up there. And, you know, it was, that's going to wear you out.

And he just, he saved 5,000 meters of hiking and that was it. Race was over.

That reminds me of something that Aaron said. So as you know, everyone was coming up the glacier to the top of Titlis, hiking up through the snow, but not Aaron. Aaron just kind of clung to the, to the rock. And he just took a sort of direct line up this sort of rocky ridge line. And when I said to Aaron, Hey, why not hike up the snow where everyone else, when I came in, he said, snow is for skiing.

Of course. Classic, classic Aaron. Yeah.

Classic Aaron. And also a beast. God, he just, he was just out here for the global rescue X Red Rocks, the hike and fly race. I do host and organize and he won it last year and he came back to defend his title and he was sick as a dog. It was just, there was green stuff coming out of his nose and his mouth. And he was really sick and he really had to fight harder this year than year one. He had some, some pretty good talent chasing him hard, including Peltz Hackett's, but yeah, these, these guys are animals that the whole point of that thing with the Nissan, the Nissan was just, it was really cool to see it from that other perspective. You know, I would have been one of those guys flying up and landing hopefully at the top, like those guys did, but you know, just to see the talent and the skill and the, you know, to watch it from the bird's eye view was, was very cool.

That was, you know, I'd never, when you're in the race, you just, you see you and you see your team and you know what you're doing, but it was very cool. It was neat homework to, to see how other teams operate. It's fascinating.

What would be Gavin's top three moves? Who most impressed you?

Tim Malonghi impressed me throughout. You know, I thought that he, you know, to a, to have broken his back in January and to have that comeback. I mean, that must have been a moment where you go, I mean, I can see keeping it, you know, Paul had that injury going into the 20, was it the 19 race where he broke his leg or was it 21? Yeah. I mean, I can see keeping the race on the docket because it keeps you motivated, but I mean, to be in a clamshell and, you know, to know, okay, I'm not going to be able to train at all. Like what I was planning on training and coming in as a rookie. And I mean, he's obviously got, amazing piloting skills, you know, with his acro background, but I mean, what an incredible comeback.

And then the consistency for a rookie, often rookies go out pretty hard. They can do well for the first few days, but they, they make too many mistakes and they just, they don't pace themselves very well often. And Tim was just consistent. I don't think he He was ever out of the top 10 all the way through the race and their team made really good decisions and they were just, they seemed emotionally very stable. I loved their strategy. I love that he was having a lot of fun, which you can see in Powell, you know, Powell was having a lot of fun. Powell would be in my mind, I loved his approach. It was radically bold, you know, from the first day when he took off Kitzbühel, that's bold to take off before you really even know if it's working.

Uh, you know, to risk bombing out the first day and, and then to leave before everybody else did. I mean, I flew with the whole gaggle almost all the way to our grind that first day. And, and it was a gaggle. I mean, everybody was together except Powell. And I didn't know he wasn't with us. It was because of what I was hearing on the radio, you know, Powell's 10K ahead. And I thought, what? That's not true. We're all together. There's Chrigel and there's Tim and there's Paul and there's Aaron. And we're all together. And I thought, well, I'm going to hear what Paul's, that must be a mistake. Cause I wasn't watching live tracking, but I went back and watched the replay and he was, and he kept doing it. And he kept making these moves that were, uh, you know, I, I know from being in the race that I would not have personally been able to do that because you're the risk reward is massive.

And to, to leave the gaggle and to do your own thing, especially early like that. I mean, you've got the gaggle to work with and he's a really good comp pilot. He knows that that's the fast way to fly is to stay together. And, and he just kept doing that. He kept just going for it. And I, that was really cool to see because I know how hard that is to do. It's not competition flying where, you know, you bomb out, who cares? You've just blown a day. You get to, you get to maybe make it back the next day. It's the X-Alps is, is punishing when you make mistakes. And especially when the pace is, as fast as it was this year, where you can't afford to be on the ground for two hours in the middle of the day, you know, that's the difference between second and 20th in this race.

And so, you know, for him to just keep rolling the dice like that was awesome to see. I asked him about it and, you know, we put him on stage at the X Red Rocks and, you know, I asked him about that, you know, how did you get, why, where'd that come from? And I don't know that he really gave us an answer. He was just, he was just in that mindset. It was great to see.

Andy seemed like he was having the most fun. I mean, he was, he was just, he was just hollering and screaming and you could always, you could always, you know, point a pal out. Cause he was just, you know, he could hear him a mile off. Um, what was my, I

mean, I think his, I think his approach too, was that, you know, I mean, he, he wasn't as fit, although he is pretty fit. He's underselling that quite a bit, but you know, that, that whole thing, it was kind of like Aaron in the, in the race in 2019, when he said, I think at the end, he said he walked 19, 19 kilometers on pavement, the whole race, you know, he made it to Monaco. He had a really good race, but his approach was just, I'm going to take this as a pilot. I don't have the knee. I can't walk. So I have to fly this race. And so he just, he had that approach that I'm going to, I'm going to fly it. I'm going to stay in the air. And that's what Paul, Paul did, which was really cool. It's hard to do.

Yeah, no, definitely. Powell, Powell is up there. I think with the, the, the, if you were to have like a pop, an athlete of the, uh, of the, I think he would definitely be up there. Um, who else? I mean, it could anyone else. That's the interesting thing about this race is that every single athlete who took part has, will have had epic, epic moves and has got incredible stories and low saves and close calls and all these kinds of things. And, and, uh, if there's a way to try and, you know, it's always the joke, isn't it? At the end, I remember Simon O 'Brien is saying that, you know, he could write a book after every rebel ex-alps and probably every athlete could, could write a book after every over each edition because just, there's always so much kind of, you know, going on. I mean, Paul, Paul had that amazing day where he went from, I think he was like 12th or 13th straight up into, to fourth place.

He tagged five or six turn points in a day from Fiche, you know, Fiche up to, you know, and all the way to, to Col de Petit-Saint-Bernard. Yeah. Yeah. He came in that

night. He, you're right. He was back up in the top five. It was incredible. Uh, yeah. I mean, I think that the, the personal stories, it would be so fascinating to have that. I mean, that was why John Chambers book was so fascinating for me because it's the only book that's ever been written about the ex-alps, but the it's, and it sounds like Chrigel maybe just put out one, but that'll be fun to read, but it's, there's so much going on and it was, you know, I spent one of my favorite days was up at the, at the hut at the Cimitosa turn point, which was really nostalgic for me. Cause that was, it was a turn point in 2015 and for me, and it was, I got to see a whole, but I got there just as Paul was launching and climbing out. And, and so everybody else, so Michal and, uh, Rito and

that whole gaggle that had left the Dufour Spitz the day before Tom to door of the dough. And it was, it was really cool to see them come through. And it was also just interesting to see, gosh, these guys are in 15th, 16th place. 17th place that are the last year they were in the top six. And, but they were only in some cases minutes behind at that point in the race, which is a lot, you know, if they're only a couple more days to go only minutes behind fifth place, it was just, it was remarkable to see how tight it was and how little mistakes, you know, Michal launched from the Cimitosa that night. He had to run up the

wrong way. It started getting catabatic at the wrong time of day. It was three o'clock in the afternoon. It should have been really pumping up from the West and coming in and everything reversed. In fact, uh, Nicola and who was with him, Rito, I think, you know, there's that little church kind of thing up above the, above, above the, uh, hut there above the refugio. And they had to launch the wind was coming down the Canyon. This is hard to describe unless you've been up in there, but it's coming completely the wrong way. So they've got a launch going uphill and then wing it downwind down, you know, and let the terrain fall away from them so they don't crash. And then it was working and then they would get these climbs out. But Michal was just, he'd come in there 10 minutes behind those guys.

Uh, Marcus Anders had just left and he was, and he was going, how do I launch? And I said, well, these guys did it from here, but at that point it was way too strong. He couldn't even do that. So he had to ground handle for about 20 minutes going up the Canyon and then winged it off this cliff. And, you know, with, it just didn't look like it was going to work. It looked like this was going to be catabatic all the way to the ground. And luckily he was able, you know, as soon as it was, you know, as soon as he launched, he's just getting pummeled down. And then eventually the, the, the correct wind came in and, you know, that kind of stuff is just what's happening here. You know, no, no forecast is predicting it. You wouldn't see it. It's way too early in the day to be catabatic. There's not ice and snow above us. So where's this coming from?

And, and, you know, these guys have to deal with that constantly, but anyway, he got up high and went on glide and apparently, you know, took a bad line and it was 10 spots, you know, in his eventual ranking, it was 10 spots from where he bent, you know, that just the tiniest of little mistakes and oh, what a penalty.

So Gavin, a question I've been meaning to ask you since the end of the race is what happened with the tree? You mentioned it earlier, but what, what, what really happened that day?

You know, I've had, I've had a lot of hairy experiences in the, in the X-Alps, but this was probably the worst, actually. It was so bizarre. So I, I hiked up over in the snow to get up to this crazy cool position right underneath the, the turn point at the Dew Force spin. So we were just outside of the cylinder and I caught, uh, Rito and Nicola launching and the video was incredible. It was beautiful. They had to do this kind of forward launch and run on flat snow. And then there was this totally vertical cliff, about 400, you know, 150 meter cliff, 400 foot, absolutely vertical cliff. And, you know, their wing was up and then they launched and, and, you know, they, they did it perfectly.

And I'm supposed to go live at nine. So this was about eight o'clock. You were live and the service up there was terrible. And I'm running around trying to find better than one bar. And as you know, my camera setup is, was basically this arm. It was about a foot and a half long with the iPhone out at the end of it. And it wasn't really full to wayable. So I had a bunch of trouble with this actually in the first day at Kitzbühel, I blew a launch because it would, you really had to be careful doing a reverse launch because it's sticking out in front of your gear. And when you turn to go into launch position, it would, if you weren't paying attention to it, it could wrap up in the opposite riser. And so now I have all this sorted, but at the time I was still kind of dealing with how to do this. But I'm, I'm hurrying because I really want to be in the air for the nine o'clock show.

And I'm right. And I can still see these guys. They're right there. And I want to get in the air because I can potentially fly with them for a whole bunch of kilometers towards the next turn point and into the lakes district and all that stuff. And so I'm kind of rushing, but soon enough, I realized like, okay, I'm not going to be able to go live. I don't have the coverage. So I've, I've texted the team. Listen, I'm just going to record. I'll use the GoPro on my helmet. I'll use the iPhone on my hip. And I'll just record, but the live's not going to work. There's, there was no service back in there. And Tarquin, it was a class one launch at that point. I didn't have to do the whole run and forward thing. The, at the top of the lift, there was this flat area and there was this very gentle, it was ice and snow, but it wasn't that slippery.

And it was, it was very gradual and there's nice air coming up perfectly. It wasn't cross wind. It wasn't too strong. It was just, I could just pull the wing up, check everything, turn, fly off. So the cliff now, I don't have to run off the cliff. The cliff is to my left side and my ditch. In other words, my, if something goes wrong, I've got a nice ditch to the right, you know, so this, this snow field is all flat to my right. So I pulled the wing up and the first time doesn't work out and I put it back down and the wind is just coming in perfectly. So I pulled the wing up again, check everything looks great turn. Turn. And now I'm kind of, and it's only about 20 feet before the cliff. And, and I've, you know, I'm doing my, you know, shoulders nice down.

I'm doing a nice kind of torpedo launch. And as soon as I get airborne, it's pulling me hard to the left and I'm going, and I'm going, whoa, whoa, whoa. And I'm, I'm hitting to the right. So I know I've got something wrong in my left wing. So I slammed the brakes, which makes me pull harder that way. And now I don't have my ditch. My ditch is to the right and my I'm flying hard to the left. And I look up and oh, and there's something and I didn't, I don't notice that it's actually down in front of me. It's my, the camera is through the risers on the left side. And so it's got that side of the wing all messed up, but I'm flying and my, my it's pulling me into this cliff wall. And it's like I said, it's 400 feet, totally vertical. I don't have, I can't spin it and get back to the snow.

I can't fly to the right. It's pulling me. I already got as much right break as I can possibly have without spinning the glider to just fly sort of straight, but I'm flying into this cliff. And right before I hit the cliff, I just think, oh no. And I crack the right break and it's just enough to kind of move me enough away from the cliff that I don't slap directly into it. But the cliff tears my stabilo right out of the wing. So the, the wing hits the cliff and the stabilo line just pulls right out of it. And it's just hanging down below, but that gives me, that's kind of released a lot of the pull of the wing. So at least now with a lot of right break, I can fly straight and real what's going on here.

And I mean, it was really close to just pummeling down this cliff. It was as close as I've ever come to really, really sketchy outcome. And so, but now I'm flying straight. The wing is just kind of, you know, that side of the wing has no stabilo. So the wing is just kind of, but it's not cravatted. It's okay. And I see my, my camera gears in here so I can start pulling all that out of the riser. And in doing so I break the end of the camera unit. So I can't use that phone. I just put it in my pocket and, uh, and think, okay, I'll just go land. And, but then I realized actually the wing is flyable. It's not great, but it's still, it's just soft on that side. So it's hard to turn to the left.

It, it, it makes thermaling to the right weird, but I'm safe. The, the wing is, the wing is flyable. And so then I think, okay, well, I'm going to fly. My driver was driving around to Domodossola. So he's down in the Aosta Valley. He's driving around to Domodossola. Domodossola is 40K. The conditions are really good. And I think, okay, I'll just, I'll fly to Domodossola. I'll land there. Maybe I can catch up with these guys. I couldn't see them anymore, but maybe I'll catch up with them and I'll get some footage. And so I start flying and it's not great, but it's okay. And I get to the ridge above the Makagnaga Valley. So Mono Rosa is up on my right. I'm well past the Dew Force bits now, and it's really turning on. It's 11 o'clock in the morning now and it's, it's gangbusters and there's quite a bit of North wind.

And so as I'm flying along the ridge down into the Makagnaga Valley, and I'd had this really interesting experience there in the 2021 race, that's where, where Bramfitt did, you know, pummeled his leg. He had that terrible landing there. And I had a really interesting, really fun. I didn't have a bad experience there, but it was really fun. That was my last night of the race in 2021. So, you know, I'm kind of nostalgic and, and, uh, still thinking I can maybe catch these guys, but now it's really on. And now I'm not enjoying flying this wing nearly as much. And I think, okay, forget it. I'm not going to make it into the Domodossola Valley. I should just go land. There was a Valley off to my right. That was one of the feeders down to the Aosta. And so I call my, my support, my supporter, my driver, this guy, Jack and say, Hey, you know, don't go around the corner, start coming up this Valley.

I'll send you a pen. Uh, but I'm going to, I'm going to try to land down here and, you know, I'm kind of thermaling and I'm getting down and I get to this area where a beginner pilot could have landed a wing. It just was, you know, it was quite a tight Valley, but there's big fields and no problem, but I'm, it's, you know, a little X-Alps mode. I think, Oh, you know what? I should fly down this Canyon as far as I can, because that's going to make it a shorter drive for Jack. And I can get going. Faster and go chase these guys. And so I'm, but there's, it's super narrow Valley and it's all tree. And I've never been in this. I've never flown in this area and I'm looking at my maps and going, Oh, that's probably 20 K to get to a place where this looks like it's not such a windy road. And there might be a landing, but you learn in the X-Alps that there's always a landing.

There's always a place you can put it down. So I just keep pressing. And now the wind is getting stronger. I'm basically flying into a Venturi and the wind is getting stronger and stronger and stronger. And so I'm, I'm, my glides getting worse and worse and worse. And it's all trees. It's just a river and trees. And now, okay, I don't need to, why, what am I doing? I should go land in a field. And so I turn around and start flying downwind and I'm covering ground really fast, but I'm not going to make it back to where these good fields, it's a very steep Canyon. And so I'm looking around a little bit desperately to find a decent landing. And there's one place that's, there's all these, it's kind of a village that's up on a hill. That's got all these tiers with a lot of rock walls and a lot of power lines and in an X-Alps mode.

Yeah, that's, that's a landing, but I don't know. That's not great. But while I'm flying over that, just back down the Canyon, you know, lower is a field that looks pretty good. It looks quite steep, but it looks pretty good. Okay. That's my LZ. So I fly back down, you know, back into the wind towards that. And as I get in there, I had completely misjudged it. The decent looking field is a 45 degree slope. It's really steep and it's grass. It's nice, but it's really street steep and it's facing away from the road. So the road's at the top of that and it's steep like that. And the it's surrounded by huge trees, really, really big, tall trees. And no problem.

All I've got to do is do a big wing over and a big wing over and let the, let the, let the wing, go and fly up this hill, do the fly on the wall thing that you're seeing Maxime and Patrick von Kindle and Chrigel do all the time. And I've practiced this a lot. I've got that move. It's fine. So I do a big wing over to the right and I go to do the big wing over to the left. And I have completely forgotten that I don't have a left wing. I don't have any authority on that side whatsoever. I mean, this whole flying down the Canyon, I'm completely, my, my, my bandwidth taken up by finding an LZ and landing safely. And I forget that I've got a completely crippled wing. I do this huge wing over to the right, which of course is going to give a lot of power and energy to the wing. As I come down through the pendulum and come up to the other side, and I've got to have authority to bring that back now and do the whole fly on the wall bit.

And I go to hit the left break and lean, and there's nothing there. I'm flying dead straight. And right in front of me is this huge tree is about 80 feet off the ground. And I don't even, I don't have a chance at doing anything else. I'm not going to stall the wing. Cause then I'm going to have to do the deck. And so my only hope then is, Oh, I hope this tree grabs me. I hope that the wing hangs in the tree. And luckily I had the momentum as I'm kind of coming down through the pendulum for the wing to get in the tree. And, and I just pendulum through the bottom. I don't, I don't hit anything, but the tree, the tree makes a terrible sound with the wing. So obviously I've done some damage to the wing, but I pendulum through and it was so lucky. I pendulum back the other way. Think, Oh no, no.

I hope the wing holds. And as I pendulum through, I kind of turn around and there's another tree that's about 50 feet up and I'm, and I'm able to grab the top of that. That's literally just, you know, the, the cartoon character that grabs at the top of a tree and it just sways back all over the place. And I'm in the very top of this thing and just, Whoa, you know, do this whole row, the tree kind of bends all the way down and comes back. It's, you know, being on the end of a bungee cord type of deal. And, and eventually it, it, it kind of solidifies out and I'm fine. Harness is fine. Wings up in the tree. And I call 112, you know, our version of 911 in Europe and immediately get this very nice lady on the call and, you know, tell her the situation and, Hey, I think I'm going to need a tree kit, you know, or somebody to come help me out of this tree.

And that is hysterical because they don't speak English and I put me on hold and this all takes 15 minutes. And while this is happening, I've got her on speakerphone while this is happening. I start getting out of my jacket and throwing it down and taking off my, I left my helmet on, but take off my buff. Cause it's really hot. It's, and I'm sweating profusely and I'm kind of assessing the whole situation. And I'm barely able to stay in the tree because the, my wing is the riser on one side, especially it's really tight. And so I can't get out of the harness and, and they're telling me, you know, don't move. We need to come to you. Don't try to be a hero. Don't try to climb down. And I'm going, yeah, but I'm hot. And this is really uncomfortable because I'm hanging in the harness weird. And long story short, they, I was able to hang up the phone eventually.

And they said, you know, emergency services are coming and I'm talking to Jack, my driver, and I've given him the pin and told him what's going on. And it takes a long time, but eventually I'm able to kind of get enough slack on the harness to unclip the one side. And I'm thinking, Oh, I don't know if this is the safe thing to do because, you know, I'm, I'm in this tree, I'm way off the ground. Still. I mean, you know, if I fall, I'm in trouble, but the tree doesn't feel very stable and I'm afraid it's my may break the top of it off or something. But anyway, I was able to get the harness off, throw the harness down, basically unclip it from the wing, throw the harness down to the ground. And eventually I'm able to climb down out of the tree on my own. And the rest of the day was pretty hysterical. We waited for this Italian, the, the, the, the emergency services eventually do come and they're adamant that I got to go to the hospital.

There's no way I can be okay. No, listen, I'm totally fine. And so they put me in the ambulance and they do, you know, a blood, they don't, I don't think they did a blood draw, but they did, uh, uh, you know, they did the whole blood pressure thing on me. And she said, wow, your blood pressure is perfect. You should be much higher because you should have adrenaline and be, Oh no, you don't know me. I bet I go through this stuff all the time. This is just another day of, this is just another day of Gavin. I'm totally fine. It was like one 20 over 80 years. And so, so they signed me off and it's all fine. I had, I signed a bunch of paperwork that they could leave and they leave and a, and a proper tree guy comes, he really knew what he was doing. And he goes to the top of this 80 foot tree and starts cutting stuff out and everything else. And then eventually I get my wing, but we're there all day.

And I think I did another report with you. At one point I went down, I found good internet in another little village, you know, halfway down the road or 30 minutes down the road and did a, did a show and it all worked out. And I was quite sheepish about the whole thing, you know, so I didn't, I didn't want the organization to know, I didn't want them to know about, you know, I didn't want them to worry about me, but everything was fine. I was given another wing by a Nivea dealer the next day. And I was able to get to the Tracy May and tie in with Ellie when she came through and, and fly with her basically all the way to the raft. So it was, it was a little hiccup, but it was, I was happy with how it worked out. It was actually really scary. It was, it was not a nice situation. And, you know, now I have all the gear now that my, my, my kit this time will be a lot tighter for, for fly.

It'll be much easier to deal with.

Yeah. Wow. What a, what a story, Gavin. I mean, I remember you saying something that, that day, you know, or you'd had a little bit of an epic, um, you'd had a little bit of a situation with a tree and I was like, can you still make the live? You know, that's the only thing I cared about. Cause I was in my own, my own world of battling stuff. And you were like, yeah, I can make the last, we're on the live. Okay. Right. What are the, what are our top three stories? Let's go, you know, Krieger or the lead or whatever, but you know, Ellie's here. We'll talk about the tree later. Wow. I mean, yeah, that's, that's, uh, but that's always the big fear, isn't it? With, with, with anything to do with filming. I mean, I lost a friend, um, last year is, is he was a, um, a paramotoring filmer and he, he died in a, in a midair is called, uh, Dan Burton is great guy and people it's so dangerous.

If you, if you've got any kind of camera equipment, that's, that's so often the times when people get hurt. Yeah. You

have to be, you have to be really careful about it. I mean, it's, it's, I feel much, I felt pretty stupid that day. I have to be honest, you know, just, I learned from Will Gadd, my first really big film project was a Red Bull deal. You know, the very first day walking up with him to launch was just, Hey, you have to pretend. And for the next, however long this expedition is going to take, it ended up taking 18 days was just, we're doing the stuff we're doing is dangerous enough. You have to forget that these cameras are here. Just do your thing and don't, don't do anything. For the cameras. And he basically was saying, I will not do this project with you. If I see you do something for the cameras at any point, whether that's just an interview on the side of a glacier or anything, just, you have to pretend that they're not here because it gives you, they help you do things that aren't, you know, you wouldn't normally do.

And so you have to be in it from the filming perspective. You know, I kept telling myself going that into this race, you know, Hey, this is way better than anything we've ever gotten. And so don't risk your life. You don't have to risk your life to get footage of anybody. And, you know, so this was one of those where it was so tame. It was such a nice launch. It was, you know, I just, none of my hackles were standing up on my back that, you know, that I was doing something risky. And so going to the next one, I'll just, I'll have really nice gear and that won't, it won't be an issue. Cause I've done a ton of that kind of filming where it's just get off the hill, be safe, get a lot of margin, then film.

And so. It

Reminds me of a

funny story. I had a job a few years ago to film a, um, a Red Bull Ironman athlete and I won't mention his name. I've sworn to secrecy, but I was filming him. He was, he was doing these repeats. He was on the bike and he was going up and down this hill and he was doing it like 10 times. And on the last one, he decided to do like a Superman maneuver where you, you put your arms, you know, in front and then you're on the tri bars and then your legs are kind of flat out behind you horizontal. So you're basically horizontal coming down, lying. And of course he, uh, it was for the camera. He lost control and, and T-boned into the side of the road and ended up with concussion. And I don't know if you've ever dealt with a, a concussion victim. They're a nightmare. It's like, it's like someone who's really, really drunk.

He keeps repeating himself confused. Where am I? Who are you again? What am I doing here? I need, and a kind of real stubbornness. I'm fine. I'm fine.

Oh no. Yeah,

exactly. Yeah. I was trying to take him to the hospital. No, no, no. Cool. Yeah. I'm fine. Let's, let's go. No, no, dude, get in the car. And in the end I had to get his phone and call his wife or just say, you need to speak to this guy and tell him to do as he was told. He was, he was fine in the end. He didn't do so well in Kona a couple of weeks later, but, uh, uh, it's, it's been, uh, it's been a blast, uh, reminiscing and, and, you know, I hope, uh, I I'm really already psyched for 2025 and, and hope that we can really improve on the learnings that we've, um, that we, that we had this year. And, and, and I think really up our game with the live you in the air, maybe who knows, maybe I'll go and go live in the air as well at some stage.

There you go. Keep training, buddy. Keep training. Hey, we're up against our hour, our hour here, but I do want to ask you before we go this bear grills thing. It sounds fascinating. What's that all about?

Okay. I knew you'd ask me about that. So back in the day, okay. We're up against a time, but I used to be, I used to write for a newspaper called the Telegraph here in London. And I used to be one of those journalists. I was writing a lot about, you know, explorers and adventurers doing first in the podcast.

And I used to be one of those journalists. And I used

poles and mountains, but I really cared about, you know, the, the, the facts, you know, you'd get these stories about people who youngest person to hike to the North pole. And then you kind of look at the detail and they've only gone on the last degree. So, you know, that really used to annoy me. And I was quite hot on, on challenging people's claims. And it was in 2007 and bear had done, um, you know, this high altitude, a paramotor flight. Um, and I, as it happened, I was in, in Kathmandu at the time. And I bumped into, uh, Jilo Cardozo who was, who was there in Kathmandu. And I said, Oh, wow. How did it go? How did the expedition go? And he goes, yeah, yeah, we did it. It was amazing. Blah, blah. I said, I great. And, and, and let's see the proof. And I was, you know, I literally like kind of like, yeah, let's see.

And it was like, he suddenly got really defensive and was like, Oh, well, you know, um, that I'd asked him. Yeah, exactly. And he said, it'll all be in the TV show, you know, in six months time. I was like, okay. Um, and then fast forward about six months, I called bear. We kind of, he wasn't really a close friend, but we knew each other socially and we had some friends in common and, you know, I called him up and I basically challenged him, uh, about the flight because at the time there was a bit of confusion, whether he had claimed to have flown over Mount Everest or just above Mount Everest. I think finally he settled on, or it was reported that he flew above Mount Everest, certainly above, um, you know, 28,000 feet, um, above the height of Everest. And I challenged him on that. And he said to me, but Tarquin, you wouldn't write that.

You're my friend.

And the funny thing is a year later, you know, bear, this was just before man V wild went mad and, you know, bear is on every billboard from Los Angeles to London. And, you know, at the end of the day, someone sort of said to me only about, you know, five people really care about these things, but it does bring me to the, you know, the interesting thing, what, what someone said to me, well, it was actually Richard Meredith Hardy, who, who has flown a microlight over Mount Everest. You know, he, he said, you know, there are, there are three things in this game. There are, there are records, there are firsts, and there are personal bests. I mean, a record is not a record unless, you know, you've got the, the, the, the authority there stamped, you know, to document it, you know, you've got to, you know, someone with a clipboard, you know, whether it's a FAI, you know, triangle, you know, you've got to jump through various hoops.

So bear was never going to qualify on, on the kind of record, because I think that there's some arcane rule you've got to take off from a certain altitude and all this stuff. You know, then there are firsts and, and, and, and within it, within any of these things, you know, you need to, it's not good enough just to say that you've done it. If you're a free diver, you don't get the record until you you've pulled the, the, the card you you've done the okay sign. And, and, and there are other things as well. You've got to do it. And so that, that's, that's that. I think, I think for the record, the FIA still FAI, sorry, still credits, um, uh, Raymond Marillas, uh, with the, the paramotoring altitude record, which he set in 2009. Uh, and that was 7,800 meters. Um, I think it's still, it's still out there written that, that, that bear flew above Mount Everest, but certainly no, that could be camp one,

right? I mean, yeah.

How do you define above big mountains? He said at the time his, his GPS wasn't working. Um, which is unfortunate. Um, that's kind of bad luck. Uh, but, uh, certainly,

certainly there's no, no one has ever flown over Mount Everest in a paramotor. So there's a, yeah, well, I think, um, yeah, one has to be careful what one says doesn't, you know, but certainly, certainly the, uh, the, the flying over Mount Everest, you know, is yet to be done in a, in a paramotor, but, uh, but yeah, that's more

amazing to do.

Funnily enough, I, I spoke, I know that his safety guys in my paragliding club, um, guy called Scott and, um, we got chatting and, uh, you know, I, I chatted with, with bear a little bit on social media, uh, this year, just saying hi and exchanging pleasantries. Cause we didn't really talk much after that. And, um, he, he sort of let it be known that, you know, in a way he was grateful for the experience of me sort of challenging him. And really it was, I was quite polite about it. And it was quite civil because it prepared him from what followed the following year. He, there was

an absolute

shit storm where he was accused of, you know, like staying in hotels or kind of faking it on man be wild, which was really stupid actually, because, because actually that was a TV show. And, you know, it's kind of what you do when you're making a TV show, you do stay in hotels and, and, and, and I have, I have met people who work for bear, you know, and they all say he does his own stunts, you know, on that stuff. He's, you know, I don't, I don't think you can question what he does. I mean, he's, he does some pretty ballsy stuff, but yeah, on that, that little high altitude, uh, was it? Wasn't it a flight above or over Mount Everest? I think we're still yet to get really to the bottom of exactly what he did, which is a shame because whatever he did, whatever he and Jilo did was amazing. I mean, it's still cool. It's still paved the way, you know, experimental.

Um, and Jilo is an interesting character. In fact, funny enough, I was talking to, um, a colleague of mine, you know, we used to write about active sports, you know, on the, on the paper and his, for his, his, so I did one on, on paramotoring and my guy, we're coming into land. He doesn't see the tree because my head is in front of his head. And, uh, and I, I'm classic passenger. Don't say anything. He's the pilot. Don't say anything. And at the last minute, he sees this tree. We bank hard to the right. And, you know, we ended up landing on a, on a dry stove wall, but, but it was okay. We dusted ourselves down and he bought me lunch and I promised not to write about it. But my, my colleague, my colleague did a, he, you know, a year, two before, after I forget which, but he did a story on Jilo and he's never flown in his life.

Jilo puts him in a, in a paramotor and says, right off you go. And just starts talking. This is what you do. And you know, you just know you'd never do this. Jilo is probably only about 20, 21 years old. And this guy absolutely freezes in terror, you know, shits his pants, everything near death experience. And he's luckily he's survived, but this episode, then he then wrote a novel, and this novel has been published and the central character dies in a paramotoring incident. And, and, and he describes this, this incident of taking off where they, yeah, absolutely. You know, he's up in the air and just convinced he's going to fly into some electricity pylons. And yeah, you wouldn't do that now, would you?

No, I'd like to think I wouldn't.

Yeah. So there's my bear, bear grill story. Fantastic.

Tarquin, great. Catching up with you. That was a lot of fun. I'm glad you pitched this and hope you all listening enjoyed it, but thanks, man. Appreciate it.

Yeah, really enjoyed it, Gavin. I can't wait to see you again in 2025.

Yeah, man. Can't wait to see you, bud. See ya.

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