213. Pierre Carter and Into Thin Air - Pierre Carter

Thank you for watching.

their adventures and misadventures in Pakistan. A few shows back, I thought I have got to reach out to Pierre and he was keen. So we just had a talk. He's over in Johannesburg and planning some cool stuff. You may have seen the XC Magn article about his recent ascent and descent by wing of Everest. He's been working on the seven summits for quite some time. He's bagged them all. hasn't been able to fly off all of them. You'll hear about that in Denali, because it's in the national park. But he's got them all pretty much wrapped up, except Vincent down in Antarctica. So we talk about that and that timeline and how it all weaves in and out of his three Red Bull X-Alps campaigns in 2009, 11, and 13.

Fascinating individual, great storyteller, some wild adventures, and uh and yeah misadventures especially in that first Red Bull X-Alps that he did in 2009 and a lot of fun please enjoy this great talk with the legendary pierre carter

pierre i've been meaning to do this with you for a decade man uh i'm finally i'm glad we were finally able to put this together. It's nice to see your smiling face there in Johannesburg. And it was nice catching up with you before we hit the record button, but welcome to the mayhem. And how are you, bud?

Yeah, very well, Gavin. And yeah, I just want to say thank you for putting this show together for everybody in the paragliding community. It really is your, your, your platform's amazing. So it really gets everyone connected. Yeah. Yeah.

Thanks, man. I appreciate that. We were just chatting before we hit record there on what should we cover with you? You've been flying for 35 years. There's a lot here. My heart, of course, is with the Red Bull X-Alps. And you competed in it in 2009, 11, and 13. So right before I got into it. And so we've got some storytelling to do there. And then we've got your Seven Summit stuff, which I think is what people are really going to want to hear about. You've got them all done except Vincent, which is an exciting one to leave to the end.

It's the most expensive one. Maybe

I can

join you on that. Left it to the end. Oh, is it?

Yeah, I guess getting down there and the whole thing and the ship and the whole Denali sailed around Cape Horn a few years back in the winter, but we never made it across the passage. But yeah, that'll be very interesting. So we'll get into all that, but maybe before we take a walk and fly down memory lane with the X-Alps, catch everybody up on your history a bit. Where did it start? How did it – what was the catalyst? How did you get to where you are today? Because your life has been kind of defined by flying to an extent, right? right?

Yeah. So I started, I think, starting with my climbing, which was, I sort of started when I was in school in the senior years and got into that in quite a big way in South Africa. So that's rock climbing, not mountaineering, so to speak.

And I

eventually, I've always had an inkling to fly something. I think it was hang gliders and

And I can't think of the one with the motor on the back. What's the hang glider? With the motor. Trike. Trike, thank you. With a trike. I was thinking about that when I was at school, trying to get into that sort of thing. And then South Africa had military service back then. I went and did my military service. I came out of that when I was 20 years old and went off on a climbing expedition with Chris Lomax and David Davies and ADK was in the background as well.

He was climbing with his American girlfriend.

And David Davies was a big hang glider pilot in South Africa, the Davies' brother, Hilton and David. And he said, no, there's this new thing, paragliding. You must really try it. Andy's got this little rig here. So Andy had sort of started, I think, in South Africa in 87, I guess. But he was a big skydiver and base jumper. So he was jumping all fields with his skydiving rig. and he'd then David then showed me some photographs where he had I went and climbed a couple of mountains with him then went off to Machu Picchu etc and then met up with David again and he showed me some pictures of Andy sort of plopping off one or two peaks with this sort of rag of his and I thought that's the way to go to climb these mountains because it takes you like six days to climb them and four days to get down and And so it goes.

I thought that's definitely what I'm going to try when I get back to Joburg. And so that's where it all began in 88 for me. And I found someone who actually had a hang gliding school in Joburg, and they had just bought a paraglider, and they were trying to figure it out themselves as well. And, yeah, we sort of – she showed me the ropes of whatnot, you know, at a school sort of in a hang gliding way. And I must have been one of her first students, I guess. and uh yeah never looked back since then and then the bug bit where literally my climbing took a dive and you know uh paragliding uh came to the took

over yeah

yeah took over but i've always been climbing and i have linked it up with a bit of my mountaineering uh hence the seven summits

um and yeah it's uh it's been a good ride but it's always been something as a career i never really had a proper career you know like most people get it yeah i've always i've always worked to go and fly or go and climb something so yeah yeah how

do you usually what kind of work does that typically entail

i'm a builder so i've always been a builder so i did a building degree and uh i tried the big corporate companies i lasted maybe four years and that was it and i just know now i've pretty much been by myself jumping from small little companies to small little companies. And then I decided with the seven summits and I'd save up enough cash over two years and then go and do one of the summits. And so it's been going on since 2005 my seven summit. Really?

So that started before your ex-Alps campaigns. It's quite cool to hear that. Go ahead.

I wanted to start in 19, I came up with the idea in 1998, 99. pretty much the same time as Zeb and Claire did actually.

And they got sponsorship and just did it in like two years or two and a half years. And I tried to get sponsored, but South Africa is a bit of a, they've got other problems to worry about. So yeah, we just, I've just been having a way. I didn't, I just thought, let me just go for it and save up the money and just go and tick it off as I go along and enjoy the ride. it's

very cool to hear that you know you and andy came out of the climbing scene back in the day and and and used paragliders as they were kind of first designed which was a descent tool for for mountaineers and then and then now you know 35 years later you guys go and do an expedition together in pakistan and you're using them as an ascent tool you know we just

I just

did this show with Jake Holland and, and, you know, he's been doing these crazy trips with Fabby Buell and, and Will Sim and these, you know, really famous climbers who have gotten into paragliding and gotten really good because they just want to avoid the, you know, the tracks. They want to avoid the five, 10 days getting in. And it's very cool to see it kind of come full circle with you. I mean, and it's also very cool to see you guys, you know, you're still friends. You're still doing it. It's still chasing it.

Yeah. Yeah. We're nearing 60 now, both of us and Andy, so another year and a half we'll both be 60. I think we're the same age. So, yeah. But yeah, I met Jake, well, obviously in Pakistan when we were there this last season and I met him he's filming for Horatio and Tom and I was helping him out with all the winching and stuff and the background stuff. But it was great, great guys guys and uh jake told me about some of those uh those trips of his it's quite amazing what he's been doing pretty wild the footage is is just

unbelievable it's very very inspiring very tempting you've been off kelly six times you were saying before we started here

that's yeah so part of the that's impressive to get out we when i started the seven summits i thought okay i'm just going to be a cowboy and go and do it uh and then i saw people who had done in the past got got slapped on the wrist, got put into a jail for a couple of days and then got paid a big fine to get out.

And I thought, no, actually, I don't feel like doing that. So I thought I'd go spend a couple of days in some dodgy jail in Africa or wherever it might be. So I thought, let me try and do it all legally. And to get permission to fly off some of these seven summits, like Denali, they actually won't let you. So I've tried Denali. It's actually, I've climbed it, but I haven't flown off it, even though I say I've flown all the seven summits. Denali still eludes me because they won't let me, they won't let us climb until when I went there in 2015, I think. Or 16. They actually, they must have Googled me. Because as soon as I got there to go and get my permit, they said, come into the boardroom, sign this big lawyer's letter. You're not going to fly. Give us your glider and we'll give you your permit.

So I had to handle the kit over. And they took it all and said, come get it when you come down the mountain. So it was. that

is really interesting to me we had a different experience with denali so when when when we did the the alaska range traverse we really wanted to start in lake clark national park because it's it's truly the end of the alaskan range i mean it i mean you're only you only have to be 20 kilometers into it and it's the start of the alaskan range and they were just flat out no way not not going to happen but they'd let you

land in the park see they'd let me like take off somewhere else and land in the park is no problem but taking off in the park right they said not a chance so yeah you're right you're right that

was that's the same that's the same we got i mean we i brought some films in to show them and we went you know i went up months before because i knew that was going to be the make or break thing so i went up months before and went went to the ranger station there for the Denali, you know, it's on the South side, but it's, we went and sat down with them and they were just fascinated. And, and their take was that, Hey, we can't treat you any differently than we do a helicopter or a plane. You know, you, you can take, you know, cause we explained it, we could take off from here. It was heart mountain right outside the park. And on a good day, we'll fly the whole thing. I had no idea actually, if we could actually do that. Cause I hadn't flown up there, but, but you know, it seemed seemed reasonable it's but it was you know it required it was over 100k and yeah and uh you know and i said but there's a good chance we're not going to make it so what happens then and they said well you just have to declare an emergency landing we want to see your trackers we want to be able to follow you guys and you have to declare in the air an emergency landing just like you would if you were flying a plane and then land but then you can't relaunch that's so you're right okay yeah yeah ah

shoot so it was very it was very tempting and it still is It's tempting to, I guess you could always sneak, give them an old glider to confiscate and take a little life on and bomb off. But there's only one road out, which is a bit of a problem. I'm sure they would stop you before you made it out. If you had someone waiting at the bottom of the car and you jumped in the car and you bolted, but it's a long road out. So, yeah.

It's a long glide. It's a long glide. It's a long, long glide. You'd be very visible for a while. Yeah. You'd have to do it in a very cloudy day or something. Just disappear into the clouds. Because,

I mean, we were up there and it was a balmy day where we were in our short-sleeved shirts, I think. We didn't even have a down jacket on.

That's amazing. Because Denali is always the coldest, you know.

So 15Ks from a nice sort of north, I think it was, northerly wind. It was beautiful. I mean, it was a perfect launchable day. But anyway, that's the way the cookie crumbles, right?

Zeb and Claire were the last to fly off. Yeah. Yeah. They did fly off it. Yeah, they did. Yeah. Yeah. And ever since then, they got caught or

what happened?

No, they, I think they, they just said, the rangers just said, that's it. No more. And that's when the big rule came in. No, no paragliding in the park. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. It'd be nice to, I mean, it'd be nice

to, you know, Will Gad's been pretty successful at lobbying the Canadian government to, then they're slowly changing these rules in the Canadian parks. I think he's opened up two or three now. And, you know, it's just this ancient rule in the 60s with the Wilderness Act and how we're classified as aircraft. And it'd be really quite nice to have that rule changed. It's not going to happen tomorrow, but maybe someday. That

is great. As I was saying, I decided to do the legal route. I've gone to each mountain I've approached. And only two really difficult mountains was Kilimanjaro to get permission to fly off that.

And Everest. Those two didn't allow it. and we lobbied. So my friend, Linda, who does the paragliding Kilimanjaro tours, and I help out in that, she lobbied for, it must have been about eight years of just knocking on the doors and just going to see the government and the various ministers. And eventually they said, okay, we'll allow you. And that was 2011.

So we went to Kilimanjaro then. Three of us flew all the way. yeah how

long is that glide how

long are you in the air if you don't thermal once you get below cloud base you can then obviously thermal back up to cloud base but if this is the straight glide down back to the hotel is about anything from 50 minutes to an hour 10 just glide wow you just go and go amazing wow but it is what's the elevate

what's the start and end so

you you roughly got got 5,500 meters of, I think it's the highest top to bottom sort of, toffee if you want to call it. It is

beautiful.

The last person I took off, she was 60, 65, I think just over 65 and her husband

sorry, her brother-in-law flew off single and, no, it was her husband, yeah. He flew off by himself and I took her. She must have been in her mid-60s. And literally after five minutes, she fell asleep. I mean, she was just so tired, I think, and ultimately got to... And she fell the whole ride down. Her husband was a bit pissed off with her, I'm sure. And I had to wake her up before we landed.

Hey, wake up. You should probably be watching this. It's really funny. Denali's got to be close to that, isn't it? What's Denali? 23? It must be very close to that, yeah. because i mean if you if you went off that i mean that's almost six if you went off that you're you'd be landing at basically sea level yeah

yeah because you know that could you land at moshi there moshi i think is around about 500 meters above sea level so it's yeah

you know huh i hope you get to do it well hey maybe then i wasn't planning this but maybe an interesting way to do this is by timeline let's go you know you started your first in 2005 let's just do through the seven summits, but then interrupted, of course, by your X-OPS campaigns. Let's do that. So 2005 was the first one.

So that was the first one, Ulbrich, and that I just did by myself. And I actually got some mates who wanted to go and climb it.

And, yeah, I just said, well, I'm going to come with you guys and I'll fly off it. And, yeah, it was pretty straightforward, nice, easy climb. But Russia, I really loved Russia. It was a fantastic country. The people are just so, they're very much like South Africans, actually. I think the country's been through a big turmoil in terms of their change. And so we sort of, I found I gelled with them very, very well. We had great parties. It was really fantastic. Even though we couldn't speak a word of each other's languages, they're still good. Right. Bound by vodka. Yes, yeah. Yeah, they definitely can drink. That's one thing.

You know, it seems like places that are dark a lot of the year, booze tends to help.

I agree with that. But the Russians, they do. Anyway, I really enjoyed them. So I don't know why they're fighting this bloody war. But anyway, that's Putin's problem. But yeah, lovely, lovely people.

and then that was 2005 and in 2007 I went and did ACT, actually 2006 I went and did no wait let me start this again no I started 2003 I went and did ACT with my wife and I wanted to fly off and that we climbed it but we got up very late and she wasn't going to she didn't want to go tandem with me and I had my own little rig my little montana that i was a gradient pilot in those days so i had a montana that andre had made for me and we're up there at like i think half past seven eight o 'clock at night the sun goes down around about half past nine and i didn't want to let my wife walk down by herself

so actually in her story her version is she would have put a pickaxe in my head if i had but i had left her there so so anyway i walked back down with her and we got back to camp sort of 11. We did the Polish direct, which is a bit of an ice climb at the top. So we didn't do the normal route and we went down the normal route.

So that was the first time I went to try and fly off it. And then 2005, I did Ilbrus and then 2007, I went back to do Akron-Kagia with a friend of mine, Guy Pittman. And he had just learnt how to fly. I think it was his, what about his 20th flight? flight. And so he was, he was the same, I'm in your hands. You just tell me if when to run, when to not do what to do. I said, okay, that's cool. It's a, should be fine. If the weather's I found generally, it's a weather, if you can, you want to climb the mountain in good weather. And if you get on top and it's all good, the weather generally is gonna stay, stay fine. And it's been like that pretty much of all my, my flights off of the big mountains. You, you generally summit in good weather and you're gonna have good flying weather then as well.

Unless you're pushing the boat out and going up in terrible weather.

So we got up top and there was zero wind. We got up there quite early. We did the normal route. I think we were up top at like 12 o 'clock, 1 o 'clock in the day.

But there was no wind on top. There was absolutely no wind. I must have tried 30 times to run off and you just can't run fast enough. You need skis or something, you know, to be able

to go. Oh, wow. It's near something.

It's a thin... Shit. And it's big on top there. It's like the size of a rugby field, you know. So you've got plenty of running space but we just couldn't get it done. It's not

technical. This is a class zero launch. It's not hard.

Yeah, well, you're running off a cliff but you're just running on a big... Yeah, it's just flat and you just run off the edge, yeah. Okay. So it's, yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, the guy tried about probably 15 times and he said, I'm buggered. We didn't have oxygen or anything like that. We just acclimatized. And he said, he's walking down. So I said, cool, I'm going to carry on until sunset and then I'm going to walk down if I don't get off. And I must have tried 40 times or so. Eventually, the sun, I mean, you're so buggered after running 20 meters that you just, you know, you have to rest for like half an hour, then you try again and rest. and at sunset the sort of must be the east sorry the west face the west face yeah was sort of heating up and just a little puff of air was coming up the cliff face and i just put a streamer out on the cliff and as i saw it moving i just ran and that little puff of air just caught the glider nicely you know as i got to the edge she felt you know nice and solid and not like i was gonna have to jump up and deal with the rag uh and uh so she didn't lift me off i saw it was quite a dive yeah uh she really did dive there right into it and uh yeah so that's how and then i went and landed back at our base at least a high camp at 6 000 meters

and beat speed guy down actually he was still walking down so did you have

and you had enough light you could see yes

i sort of took off probably at i guess it must have been about half past seven and the sun goes down at about nine so yeah oh okay yeah Oh, you had enough time. What time of year was that? I

actually flew

around. It was nice. I flew around and I stayed up for about 20 minutes or so.

What time of year

was that?

That was December. I remember we had Christmas up top there. Yeah, it must have been 28th. It was just after December. God, there

wasn't more. Why wasn't there more? I would think it'd be rowdy and thermally

up there in the middle of the day. It was strange. It was very, very nice and calm. the next day though we then uh we then radioed down to a because we were doing everything by ourselves we weren't doing it through a company and we radioed down and said how much for you guys to come and collect all our gear and they said whatever it was a thousand dollars or something so he said cool we're going to leave it over here mark we told them we're going to leave it and they came and connected the gear and guy and i then flew off from 6 000 meters and uh now remember this is guys like 20th or 25th flight and we took off and we flew over um I can't remember the name of the valley there now. Anyway, we flew up, flew off, and we just hit this beautiful thermal going up, nice and huge. I mean, it was a huge thermal. So for a beginner, it wasn't so easy. He just had to do gentle circles, no tight cores or anything like that.

And it took us back up to 6,000, sorry, 7,600 and something meters. Right above that. And we were right above Aconcagua. And it was beautiful. It was unbelievable. So I think that was the first time someone had actually ever flown above Akron Kegler. Wow. And then we flew around and we told the guys we'd come collect our gear at base camp, but we should have told them we'd collect it out, you know, back on the road at the hotel. Because we could have flown all the way back, you know, like Anton did from the past. Wow. But it was beautiful. I mean, it was unbelievable. and bloody cold. But yeah, and then we went and after sort of flying around for an hour, eventually we were freezing and we went and landed at base camp.

But yeah. That must have been one of the most memorable flights of my seven summits is that. And doing it with someone, a good mate of mine who had just learned how to fly. I mean, it was unbelievable. And really fantastic. That was

2007, you said?

2007, if my memory serves me correct. All right. Wow. That was, special. Amazing. We were climatized, so we didn't have to worry about oxygen and all that stuff, which was great. Okay,

so you've ticked off three, right? So we took it

back in Kaguya. I thought we went back and flown off Akum Kaguya for 2007, 2008.

I did nothing. 2009, I decided to try Red Bull X-Alps. So that then, I said, okay, let me, instead of going to go and do a mountain let me go and do an x helps it cost me i think the first one cost me probably 60 000 rand which is roughly three and a half thousand dollars in today's terms um and uh so i thought okay let me save up for that and go and do that this sounds like i just loved the adventure and i've been watching because i think it started in 2003 yeah the first one i remember correctly so i sort of watched it twice and thought okay now i'm gonna go and do this into this and see what's just apply and see if they'll accept me. So they did. And yeah, that was great fun.

So I began six years of doing XL. Yeah, right.

So what I've asked the others with this, and I'd love to do the same with you, is rewind back to 2009. I think that was the one.

So that was Kriegel's first race.

Kriegel's first one, yeah. Tomo, I think, was second. And Hansa was third, I believe. As I remember, that was a pretty bad weather year, wasn't it?

Yeah. Every race I've done has always been bad weather.

I remember 2011 was shockingly bad, but I think I'm pretty sure 2009 was pretty tough.

Yeah. I bailed early. I got eliminated early. I ended up breaking my foot and having a bad crash in the mountain. and I'll tell you about that now anyway. But yeah, so that was 2009 I went and decided to do, sorry, 2009 was my first X-Alps. And for me, it was just, you know what, X-Alps is a huge adventure. And in those days, we didn't have the cell phones where, I don't think we, did they have Google then, Google Maps on cell phones? And I can't remember because we, I've still got them. I've got this box of maps across the Alps, one in 50,000 that we'd track ourselves and work out how to go. And coming from South Africa, and not knowing the Alps very well. I've been to climb the mountain here or there, but I didn't know the valley systems.

And I've flown some competitions there, but I didn't know the valley systems. You have to live in the Alps, I think, for a good five, six years and fly there to get to know those valleys well and how everything works. So for us and my friend James, who was a gradient person in South Africa, the gradient dealer here, he put me in contact with Andre and Andre helped out with gliders and whatnot and he was fantastic that way and Tom was also a gradient pilot then and a couple of other gradient pilots as well yeah that was a great adventure I think I got eliminated I was probably the second or third to get eliminated

and I basically flying around the Gros yeah the Grosglockner I think was the turn point somewhere out down there and I was thermaling, come over the pass and we were thermaling on the on the southerly side there going up and I just, I fell out the back of the thermal but I was very close to the to the terrain and I basically came around, I'm not going to make it and I just smacked straight into the into this huge granite face and it was a good probably I guess 45 to 50 degree angle so you know i and i ended up and i hit it hard and i sort of tumbled and luckily my glider got caught in some little bush and then i was just lying there on this granite thinking geez that was stupid but luckily nothing's broken everything seems okay

and then i look around and i said but where are my shoes i couldn't find my shoes both those shoes were gone and i was looking for them i said what the hell and then i saw my foot was cut and bleeding quite badly i said wow you know the adrenaline's there so you kind of go and feel much and uh i then found my shoes both my tackies my running shoes were up around my knees and my feet from hitting hitting the ground my feet had punched through the front of my shoes and in so in so doing so my obviously the uh uh the shoe uh the webbing or whatever of the shoe had cut into my one my right foot which hit the ground first i think took the hardest the bruntons and it cut right down to the bone on my toes. So my big toe and my toe next to it were right down to the bone.

And my shoes had been pushed right up onto my knees. It was quite weird.

So I just radioed James. And they said, James, call the doctor. I'm going to take off again and fly as far as I can before this adrenaline runs out. And I won't be able to walk. So I put my shoes back on, took some duct tape and wrapped them on so they wouldn't come because the front of them was totally, they were just flapping open.

And yeah, then moved across off onto sort of 100 meters down onto sort of more where the grass was a little bit flatter, or the snow, should I say.

And relaunched and just flew straight down the valley as far as I could. and by the time I got there James had organized like the team doctor was there from Red Bull and he stitched my toes up and he gave me an injection

that just numbed my legs from the knee down so I couldn't feel my legs from the knee down and I thought okay this is okay I can carry on so I carried on for another day or two and he said to wear off I think he said to wear off in about 10 hours time and then he's not giving me another one so I basically started running again because I couldn't feel anything oh god dude and yeah it was eventually obviously the pain came back sort of the next day and then I carried on limping around for another about half a day and then I just said this is too sore and I basically called it but yeah that was a good adventure that was my first taste of Red Bull I think I was in probably day 3 then or day 2 I can't remember I think it must have been day 2 at the cross Oh,

so it was pretty early on. Yeah, it was really

early on. So I lasted two days, three or day four, and then I just said, no, that's it. I'm out. And I basically, I actually waited for another guy to come past me before I declared my. Yeah, as you should. Yeah. As you should.

It's the unwritten rule. The honor rule. I

loved it. And I thought, that's it. I'm coming back to the next one. So, yeah.

Wicked. Cool. So that wasn't enough to put you off crashing into the mountain.

No, no.

your shoes around your knees this is proper south african i love it okay so did you do any seven summers between nine and eleven

two thousand and did i say yeah ten i think it was we did the kill you got permission to do kill you it was either 2010 or 2011 no it must have been 2010 september um that i got permission to to go and do it and we put a big team together there's about about 10 of us that were going to fly off, off Kili. And we decided to go in September, October is when the sort of, the doldrums hit that part of the world from a sailing point of view. And hopefully we've, we said, hopefully it'll transfer onto land as well and there won't be too much wind because a lot of people have a lot of bad wind up at Kili when they're trying to take off.

That big Australian crowd was trying to do it at the same time, but they were trying to fly off like a hundred people at a time. I can't remember the guy's name. They weren't very successful. Babu, I think, went with them and flew off in 2000. He must have been 13. No, he flew off Everest in 2013.

Anyway, Babu did it about a year or two after we had done it. And he did it in the Howling Wind.

Yeah, it's very, very risky.

Anyway, so we did that. And out of the 10 of us, or 11 of us that were going to fly, only three of us managed to fly off so the wind wasn't nice and gentle like we'd hoped it was actually coming over the back so coming from the crater over the back at about probably five to ten k's an hour and to try and do it yeah and we thought maybe we should launch into the crater and hopefully get a little thermal and go up and over so we waited around to do that and eventually uh the sun started warming up the east side and uh nice strong thermals were coming coming through at a good sort of 5, 6 k's a meter a second, a really nice big gust. So we thought, well, let's just take off into one of these gusts and push the tailwind out the way and we'll take off.

And that's exactly what we did. But there are three of us who have experienced it. The others have all only been flying for maybe three or four years at that stage, and they just said not a chance. It was too high. The risk seemed too high. but it was beautiful so I took off in a tandem I had a friend of mine who's busy 2010 I decided to try and do the seven summits with a friend of mine Marianne Schwanckart who's a famous South African climber and she's a photographer and videographer and everything so I said will you come along we'll go tandem and you can film everything and we can make a little movie at the end of the day so she's done a couple of them with me except Everest she didn't because it was too expensive for both of us to go

and she won't come and do Vincent that's more expensive than Everest but yeah so I've got a lot of footage that eventually when I get the time we're going to go through it and edit it ourselves sometime so anyway that was the Kili and then in 2011 the next XL came up and obviously you start training the year before you start in November November, you start your training. I'm sure you know how it all works. And yeah. And you train like hell and get fit. And yeah. And 2011 was, was a good year. Sorry.

No, I was just going to say, just to, just to remind the folks with the course in 2011 was, I believe Tomo was second, right? In that one. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It

kind of ran the whole way.

Yeah. You can run that man.

Yeah. Can't outrun that man. Yeah, and really bad weather. I mean, we always say, yeah, it's really bad weather. But 2011 was shocking. I think that was Paul Kuschelbauer's first. He did quite well. Yeah. It was a good year to be really fast on the ground.

Yeah. It was a good year. It was turning out to be probably my – would have been my best year. And I did the first couple of days with Honza. I think four or five days I was with him. And we were cruising along nicely. we were sort of in between fourth and seventh place and we're a nice pair flying together when we did fly and going through the night etc but we got sick we ate something in one of the high altitude little i think we got there just before the bell went at 11 o 'clock oh yes in 2009 we that was the last 24 hour non-stop one yeah in 2011 they introduced you had to stop for four hours. I think it's longer now. I think it's six hours now or five hours.

I can't remember. But we just made it

to that.

Now they have

this last one, they have that adjusting rest now. I think it's maybe seven hours, but you can decide when you want to take it. It's quite an interesting, it's something Kregel's been pushing for for a long time because he's really felt like the lack of sleep is super dangerous. Yeah. No, no, no. It is. It's quite cool artwork. work.

2011, I fell asleep thermaling.

Let me go back. We ate something. We just got into the hut at 11 o 'clock and the lady had some soup left, the dregs of the bowl kind of thing. She gave us that and we ate that. Next morning we both took off again and carried on.

I think the Tres Ame was the turn point. in not Marmalade in Dolomites yeah so we got there and I started feeling sick during the day and I think Konza we separated in a flight and I only saw him again at the turn point actually and he was sweating I've never I just remember he was just like this he was drenched and it wasn't from the walk up it was just he was just dying and I thought my stomach and I've really thrown up once in the morning I wonder if we picked up the same thing anyway he went and got the term point and went off to fly somewhere i still was going to the term point because i had stopped and had something to eat uh but i had a really queasy stomach and here i took off and clearly my mind wasn't with it because i hadn't my speed bar wasn't done up and i hadn't done my pod properly so it was one of those oh god anyway let me just get a thermal and go up and try and fly as far as i can and i was up above the actual the three tracer mares themselves and sprang up really nicely sort of getting to three three and a half going carrying on and the next minute i woke up i don't remember like 15 minutes of it i'd actually fallen asleep and my glider had just gone in whatever direction i'd fallen asleep and then it was quite scary you suddenly shit okay and then you know you think wake

up wake up just punching yourself in the face come on and

then i realized yeah it's not because of lack of sleep but i must I said, obviously, be quite sick. And then I landed, and then it hit me. After I landed, it hit me like the doctor came. Then I was throwing up and shitting myself, and the doctor came and said, no, you pushed yourself too hard because the day before we had done like 100 Ks on foot.

And I said, no, definitely not.

Something's wrong. Yeah, something's wrong. I discovered Honda had exactly the same thing. We obviously had a stomach. We had a food poisoning.

Brutal. it is for me it took me probably three days to recover and I remember I sat in a I found a hut somewhere and we just sat I couldn't move I literally couldn't move for about two and a half days and you just watch guys come past you walking past and I just sat there going from like six to seven, eight and I eventually ended up at 21 or whatever it was and I managed to hold on to that I couldn't catch up after that so that was probably my best year in terms of I was in the best shape, Red Bull shape that I had been.

Yeah, it was all going pretty good until you ate the Ron Blair.

That's part of the game, but it was good.

That's been a part of Hans' game a couple of times. I think 2009 was his no, 2007 was his first, but 2009 was really sick before the start. He was all sick heading up to the the uh darkstein yeah

yeah yeah that's right he recovered i think within a day and a half he was back again hey running i mean it took me like three yeah two and a half three days to recover it was brutal anyway oh

it's the worst but uh

but that was great and then uh i decided okay let me give it one more go in 2013 and uh did i do another summit between that no i didn't i then uh yeah i I did X-Helps again.

And in those days, we only had one report. I think 2013 was the time when you allowed two helpers. The other ones, you only allowed one. And Shane, they worked like dogs. As you know, you've now sort of seen what happens in the background. Yes.

Oh, my God. It's a big

job. It's a huge job. I take my hat off to any second. I see now you're allowed like three or four. So it's quite a, yeah, it must be a bit. you can have as many as you want. Oh, really? Wow. Okay. Yeah,

no, you can have as many as you want. I mean, some of the teams are, you know, four vehicles these days and stuff. It's pretty wild. And it's really interesting, you know, the strategy's really interesting. You know, Kriegel's never had a big team. You know, he just feels, he always just had Thomas and that was it. And they had kind of, you know, they had their weather guy back in Switzerland and they had other people on the team, but the actual on the road team was him and Thomas. most most for the most part yeah and then it got to the point i can't remember when they when he switched this i don't know 2017 or 19 or something where he just thought okay it's just now it's so advanced it's so fast that you know he needed somebody else yeah so they're i think their team this year was bigger than it had ever been but it was it's still compared to some of the others are it's still quite small because it's just it's more logistics isn't it it's just more to manage It is, yeah.

I mean, 2013. More things to go

wrong in a sense.

I had the same guy and I could only afford, I paid for my second each time.

So James, again, I couldn't afford another second. So I said, well, James, you buy yourself again? So he, and he was great. I mean, it's, yeah, it is, it is.

You had the same supporter I read in Wikipedia this morning that, you know, the kind of the synopsis of all the races. You had him all three, right? Yeah, all three. yeah just

he he knew what you have to make those little Moyes and you have to do this and that and if you don't you get penalized so james was very good at doing all that stuff he was he kept it nice and and then i just made all the other decisions and yeah he'd try and give me weather when he could and but i was just flailing in the dark i was never very good at it but it was good fun i just enjoyed the adventure yeah yeah

right so were you were you did did you go into each one with a different goal what was your what was your kind of hope what was it was it more just hey i'm just going for the adventure it

was basically for the adventure and the first time i did it i said i just didn't want to get eliminated but i did because i had the crash so that was my first goal the second time i wanted to try and be in the top 15

the second and third time i just wanted to be in the top 15 i didn't uh i mean it would love be lovely to make a goal, but I just wasn't in that league of flying. I just didn't have those skills and the knowledge of the elk that you actually need. You need to go there for a couple of seasons and actually just learn those valleys backwards. Those valley winds coming from South Africa, those valley winds were just so confusing to me. It just blew my mind. It's a

very, very complicated terrain, isn't it? I mean, I remember Nate has a great story. He he showed up in 2007 to do it. And his, you know, his wife was a supporter and his Ripley who was two years old, his first daughter was there and his dad and Ripley hated his dad. Cause his dad was a chain smoker. And it's the funniest story ever. You know, that she, she would call the Red Bull headquarters every day to find out where he was, you know, he would, he would, he would call, he called her one day and, Hey, you know, I'm kind of hungry. Can I get some food? Nate, we're at the pool, you know just just so funny back in those days but i he said when he when he showed up uh ulrich or somebody i can't remember who it was you know with the organization you know basically just said hey you know hello you know welcome to the red bull x-ops we're happy to have you here you're from idaho you have no chance in this race you have zero hope because you don't know the alps you know i mean it wasn't being mean it was just a fact no it is it is a fact

you have to know the out yeah yeah yeah you have

to spend a lot of time

over there but it was so 2013

what was how was i now as i remember uh the weather was really good in 2013 you know until this year that was the record for it was i actually managed to

fly over 100k's on one of the days so for me that was i've actually you know

flown something

in the in the X-Alps now um i didn't have uh this gradient It wasn't the best glider they had made that year. But what can you say? But I'm not going to blame it on the glider. I still wasn't a top flyer like everyone else. But yeah, I was hoping to, again, be in the top 15.

But I stuffed up the first turn point going out to... What was the first turn point then? After Gaisberg? Oh, the Gaisberg. no no guysberg and then dachstein there i i went we got caught in a bit of rain and uh the other guys just bombed off down the valley and i decided to land on top this is the valley before um the dachstein itself yeah

you sort of go

over a pass and then you go down i can't remember the valley and then you're on to the lake near and you go up the back and up that via ferrata yep and i decided to land on top there and wait out the rain for some reason that was a stupid mistake Everyone else just bolted off. And I think they were out of the rain shower within like a K and they carried on flying. And I was just stuck in this bloody rain cloud for a good couple of hours. And then she had to walk off and it was a nightmare. So I ended up like at the back from that first turn point. But I managed to catch up. I think I ended up being 20th, if I remember correctly. But yeah, I never had to, as you said, it was good flying. then the guys just yeah it's good flying they just fly smoked

it yeah

they just smoked it yeah but it was great yeah yeah i really enjoyed it and uh i wish i could go back again but my knees started giving problems so i decided no let's rather rather not and i have actually i had now had a subsequently had in 2000 and when was it 20 yeah i had my knees replaced no 21 yeah

really yeah you've got both knees replaced

yeah both knees replaced i decided to do that before I went to Everest because I decided to go to Everest. I needed a year and a half to recover for my knees. They got so bad, I was holding onto a rail trying to walk downstairs. I thought, wow, this is now getting bad. I need to do something about it. When you have to hold onto at the shopping center, you feel like you look like an 80-year-old. Was that

a result of the crash or was that just use and abuse over the years?

Use and abuse over the years. I've been running competitively since I was about 10 years old. and obviously obviously i've had a you know you hear lots of other people have been running since then and the knees are fine but obviously i had a my knees were just always going to go that way for whatever design i am um and yeah

it's quite interesting you know in my my first was was 2015 and you know the the what everybody said was was pretty true you really only toma ran you know you you didn't, you, it was helpful to be able to run out of, out of Mozart plus up to, up to the Geisberg. And there, there were places where you wanted some speed, but for the most part, you just had to be able to move fast all day and, and, and especially go up mountains all fast. You didn't have to, you didn't really have to run, but as you know, between 15 and my last one, which was, which was 21. And then this year reporting on it and watching, you know, the, the, you know, Benoit, there are a lot of guys that run a lot.

Yeah, I ran a lot. I mean, I remember looking at my

stats when Chrigel had finished and I only got like halfway. I've sort of run 700 Ks and flown like 300. And Kriegel's the opposite way around. He's flown, you know, 700 and he's only run like 150 or walked 150. And just, yeah, wow. It's amazing. But yeah, I did a hell of a lot of running. I remember every time I got down to the valley, if it was on a road or a decent path, and here the paths are good generally, you can run. And I'd just jog along at six and a half minutes a case. That's what I'd do.

And I think that's how I really enjoyed it. I mean, I love that suffer fest of it. I'm sort of that sort of, my mind's like it. I enjoy the suffer here. Yeah.

It's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a nice place to be, isn't it? Yeah. Mentally, it's fantastic. There's only one way to get there, and the X-Alps will get you there. That's true. So after 13, where are we in the ticking off the big peaks?

So then we had done – so I'd done Elbrus. Sorry, I'd done Elbrus first, then I'd done Aconcagua, then I'd done Kili. And then I decided to go back to Elbrus with my tandem friend, Marianne. so we went back to Russia, had great parties again and climbed the mountain and flew off and then she videoed it this time because the first time all I had was some happy snaps of me flying nothing much so that was great, so that was successful

and then we went to go and do Aconcagua again next for her to just experience that so I've done Aconcagua three times wow but the time, this time when we got on top like it was a typical act it just didn't it was just howling from from like five in the morning it just blew right the way through so that's 30 40 k's an hour so we just couldn't get off and we then went down to our high camp at 6000 and the next day we flew from there down to base camp so so she did get a flight off so that was 2014 i think it was the year no it was it was 2003 December 2012 was Akankagia because then I did Exalt in 2013

and then the next mountain we did was

Denali in 2015 I went and tried that I wrote to the parks I started about a year and a half or two years, I started writing to them saying will you let me go, this is my name and I must have written to them three or four times and always just got an answer so not a chance, not a chance. And then a new ranger would come there, try him. I spoke to Andy about it, and Andy said, no, this ranger, I know him. He's a good guy. Actually, he'll let you go, I'm sure. But obviously, they got their rules there, and their boss is hiring them. They have to stick to you, and he couldn't, and so it went. So we thought, let's go there and just sneak up and fly off. And when I got there, obviously, because I'd written to them, they knew I was obviously on a list there. Watch out for this guy. he's going to try and come back as we walked in the door they just that's it they had a lawyer's letter prepared we had to sign it and yeah

really yeah

so it was uh anyway but it was beautiful i really enjoyed yeah we summited yeah we did it in i think eight days or seven days it was very quick uh yeah i pulled pulled all our own gear up you know put it on the sleds and had that whole walk in and the whole yeah it was really i really really enjoyed it was very fantastic alaska's amazing uh really out there i mean there's a an out there mountain if you don't if you aren't doing it with a you know with a a guided group we just went i just took two mates of mine and we went off and we did it it was really a great adventure and for being south african and not big with snow you know it was really uh it was really exciting yeah

yeah crossing

all those crevasses and looking for them and yeah roping up and all that stuff it was fantastic um

and bloody cold, actually. That mountain was cold, if I remember well. It was a cold mountain. I was surprised because you said you

were up on top and you were in a t-shirt. You had quite a nice day, but they always talk about it. Getting

to that point. We must have had minus 25 on some days. It was bloody cold. Yeah. I

mean, everybody always talks about the Denali. Depending on luck and when you do it, it often can be the hardest just because it's so cold. I remember

they told us a big system was coming in and that's why we pushed it to do it I think we did it in 8 days we just thought let's get up this thing before we get caught here for like a week but I remember luckily on summit day it must have been just before the storm because we summited and we then walked out the whole way we picked up our stuff and we walked right out to where the airstrip is that was a long day yeah that's a long day yeah and then luckily they said said, okay, that's it. No more flights coming in the next day because the storm's coming. Luckily, we persuaded the lady there. I can't believe she was so nice. We saw a tourist guy coming past and we said, please radio him. See how many tourists he's got in his plane. There were two. We said, come land. We'll give you tea and stuff and your tourists can run around the glacier.

The pilot was all keen. He relayed it to them and they said, cool. They landed and then we jumped in the plane and flew out of them. That's it. Then it was snowed in. I think we came in and they couldn't do anything for like a week or 10 days. so it was great fun the

weather's rowdy up there is i mean you're you're so close to the ocean that it's just you know it's that maritime air and god it can be so cold yeah vicious but i mean it's a place i definitely want to go back again

sometime to actually do some nice some nice climbing there there's some beautiful beautiful climbing and there's good flying too And good flying, yes.

Really good flying. Cool. Okay, so that's 2015.

Yeah. Then I looked at doing X-Helps again, but I thought, man, my knees are just, yeah, I'm just going to make them worse. And then some other South African guys tried X-Helps. They've only done it, who is it now? I can't remember his name. Kortse was his surname. I just can't think of his first name now. I should know it. Anyway. so they he did it and then another guy from Cape Town did it in 2018 I think that's the last South African that

that has tried maybe others have actually gone on and they just haven't been accepted I'm not sure but I find that disappointing with XOF that they don't allow more of the outliners I know it's a race for them and it's also a marketing thing so that's nice to have but they should try and make it a bit more inclusive in terms of having some more you know even though the guys are aren't going to win or aren't going to come they're just just the adventure and getting the you know that spirit with all the other guys because for them it's even a bigger adventure i mean it's so out there for if you don't know the alps it's it's really is uh yeah so they should allow i think some more guys from one or two countries in there instead of having like four people from switzerland or four people from you know the european countries let a couple more in from from outliners yeah

i mean there's there's it's a hard thing isn't it because you've got so much i mean that the french could have 10 easily you know in terms of in terms of ability or all of them you know they could all be french and there's there's so there's so many really good athletes i i've never they at least have never told me i have no idea how many people apply for the X-Alps you know i i don't know they've never allowed behind the veil there and i'm sure i'm sure a lot of the decision is just you know is this person going to have does they do they have the ability to not get hurt yeah i'm sure they're looking at it it's just a but yeah no it's it's all fascinating i mean it's and

then um yeah i mean i must come and do your race it's the red rocks race hey yeah i've looked at that a A couple of times. I'd love to actually come over and do that sometimes. It's wicked.

It's an incredible venue. It's really, really, really neat. It's spectacular. You know, the, the, the fall colors that time of year, it's truly psychedelic. We use that word all the time, but it really is. And it's a, it's, it's a, it's a pretty neat area. You know, it has none of the accoutrements that the Alps does, you know, there's no huts, there's no trails there's, you know, it's, it's, but it, but it works. You can top land and there's launches. It's tangly and messy. It'd be more South Africa. But the terrain is really neat. It's pretty special. The Europeans that have come over and they've had a really good time.

I never raced with Nick in the X-Alps. My last one was 2013. Nick then started with you, I think, in 2015. Yeah, we both

started together.

because he came over to South Africa, I had a little race called the Xberg Challenge.

Yeah. In

the Drakensberg, and it was sort of like a 300 or 400K race down the escarpment. And I actually, I started that for training in 2000. We must have had the first one in 2000.

No, it was my last race, 2013. So training for that race, I thought, oh, let me just put something together. And I'd invited like 10 friends, some of them ran and some of them were on bikes on mountain bikes, I said I'll race you from this point to 350k I think it was or 400k down the range and I invited some other paragliding friends that went to hike and fly there are not many in South Africa there will be a handful of us that enjoy it and that's how our little Exburg thing started they're still

going isn't it?

no, I do it now informally I just it was a labor of love I'm sure you know it's a lot of work to put these things together and we did it for 8 years and now I've decided this is a lot of work and when people are paying you you then got you're responsible you're liable put it that way when people start paying for for an event in South Africa you are liable if something goes wrong badly and you can be seen to have been

negligent so I just thought no the risk is just too high just now someone is going to kill themselves and then maybe I have forgotten to tick some box and I'm going to get sued so I thought okay let me just do it that side of it

makes me makes me really nervous yeah I remember when Nick was on I've had him on a couple of times but he was he was very he was very complimentary about the expert he had yeah I mean he was amazing so we I mean we raced all

the way down it was Nick just arrived there now we met up a couple of times and and nick i came across in the one day i think we stopped at a hotel sort of late evening and we ended up you know having a burger together and then carrying on and sleeping somewhere in the bush but he was his feet were sore and nick was just that's it i'm just walking barefoot now and he just like goes feral he just walks along barefoot on this rough ground it was uh yeah no it was a knife now he really enjoyed it i mean he was yeah uh he actually

He really is part animal.

He's amazing, isn't he? He's very comfortable in very uncomfortable situations. He needs the least of any of us. He'll be just fine. I

say, what food have you got? No, I've just got this little bag of nuts for the whole day. Yeah, yeah, a little block of cheese. He

doesn't need anything. He doesn't need anything. It's amazing. I mean, all of us, we've got these big teams and vans and cookers and all this fancy stuff, and he's got a Subaru in his mom.

It's pretty awesome. It's pretty awesome. Amazing.

Yeah, you must ask him to tell you one day about his, I don't know if he ever has, about his night out in a herdman's hut. basically right if you're right on top of the scarf and in the sutu you just get these little hats uh yeah the odd herdman herdman and he got invited into it but you know he tells it so well it's hilarious how funny yeah catch

up with him on that that's yeah that

sounds excellent so was the next

one let's go sorry yeah

so then he he then went on to i remember i told him you must go and do xl so maybe it was really in his mind to go and do it i said you're going to be be amazing if you go and do that race and you're going to love it and the next year 2015 it was so two years later he went and did it it was a yeah it was so great seeing him doing it yeah

yeah he's a big fan favorite for sure all those years absolutely yeah he's got a battle together

yeah i've got a little house down there in the berg and he stayed there i think for a month and a half just flying around and going down rivers he had that little blow up flat bottom canoe thing that you, I don't know what they're called, but yeah. So he really enjoyed himself there. It was fantastic.

Yeah. Cool. Yeah.

So then that was 2015.

We did, where was I now? Oh, we had just done Denali. You

just did

Denali. Yeah. So then we went on, I then had to go and do the next sort of, I was going by expenses. My process of choosing the mountains was the cost of how much it cost to do them. because I put a whole lot of money aside for Everest and Vincent and that was slowly making its own babies and getting better and better. But I didn't save up for the next sort of cheap mountain and that turned out to be Carstens Pyramid. So of the seven summits, you have a little bit of a – it's either Carstens Pyramid or Kosciuszko, if I pronounce that correctly, in Australia. So Kozi is just a little mound. I think it's 2,000

meters high.

Yeah, I've been up

Kazi. There's not much to that. It's a paved road to the top, as I remember. So

I looked at it, and I then went and looked at Zeb and Claire, and they hadn't done Karstens Pyramid. They had only done Kostyorsky. So I thought, okay, I haven't done Denali, even though I climbed it. But let me try and do Karstens. I got hold of some guys who had done Karstens. They said, no, you had to go and do it through an agent because there's militia there, and they're always fighting, and they're fighting with the big gold mine there and it's a bit of a thing to actually climb the mountain. And sometimes you have to get smuggled up through the mine or you have to get helicoptered in if they're fighting because you might get told to ransom if you go through the rainforest, which I wanted to do. I wanted to walk up through the rainforest and everything.

Anyway, so... Where

do you start? Is that Port Moresby or where do you start in Papua New Guinea to do karstens? So yeah, at

basically the big town there. Okay. Yeah. It's got the mining village there as well and everything. All the expats stay there and.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Um, and so we're going to walk in from there. We got there and we have to hang around a couple of days. And the guy was going back and forth and saying, no, no, there's, there's problems with the, uh, with the insurgents and the other, the guys that, uh, want to blow the mine up and, uh, infighting and whatnot. So we, we said, okay, no, let's wait and see if it calms down and then we'll carry on walking. so he said no problem and then he eventually comes back and said no listen we're gonna have to chop you in uh maybe he just wanted the money and is bullshitting us it's gonna be an extra 500 600 each uh because it's too dangerous to go any other way so it's okay no no problem it's a bit disappointing because we're really looking forward to the walk and it's beautiful rainforests here and really amazing amazing height looking at the pictures videos i've seen

anyway so we uh we chop it in and that was a an eye-opener of notes we get in there and the guy another pilot climbs in with instance two of them and we then discover that the pilot that we're going with is now learning so so if we think okay you're going to what you're going to put us down at like 4 300 meters or 4 400 meters and you you look i hope you've learned enough you know you've got enough hours under your belt and we packed this thing full they load it up they load this this is a little um one of those choppers little squirrel uh alouette but it's now the squirrel whatever it's called now so it's a powerful little chopper that uh they load it up to the max so on takeoff this is down at sea level he goes up and you can hear them talking to each other and the guy comes and says it's a little bit heavy just put it down and they unload a couple of more tents or chairs, whatever.

Okay, this should be okay. This is the instructor. Okay, let's go. Off we go.

You go up the mine. You're going up these valleys, following the mine road all the way up. And eventually, the mountain's off to the south of you. Off to the southwest. No, southeast.

The mine is just... It must be one of the biggest mines in the world. It was just huge. They're just destroying that mountain, just digging into it and mining. Really horrible to see. But, you know, we get up and we see the mountain. Okay, now we have to go up this other little valley that leads up from the mine. And you start cruising and you see, you suddenly see this hill. And the guy says, okay, we have to get enough speed so you can make it over the hill. And then literally 500 meters after that, we land in the valley. And he goes over there and they then start speaking in their language. And it's getting more and more rapid and more and more. and the guy's obviously trying to crank this helicopter to its max and he he just goes over the hill by like a meter i mean i was sweating myself and then he he picks up speed going down the other side thank god and we had like a so he had to go sort of fly up to four like it was four seven to get over and he drops down to back down to about four and a half four four when we're landing and he comes to hover it in and he says okay no then the pilot then comes and speaks english to us and says i cannot we can't hover it in guys we're going to do a skid landing here we're just going to slide it in because

we're still going to auto-rotate or something and we come in to land or just won't have the air density pressure or whatever to land this thing and so that was a bit of an opener when you're just coming in and the guy just puts the skids down and just slides in for like 10 metres in the chopper and then stops it so that was really an eye-opener but really beautiful little mountain once you're away from the mine and because the scenery is unbelievable yeah and were you

able to take off from the top

not not from the very very top i think in today's glide if i'd had like a double skin not a double skin uh uh the little bantam we probably would have managed to do it where you can throw it up it's just the rock is so gnarly and so yeah it's gritty it just grabs every it was very steep but the rock is very sharp it's like yeah the back of a i don't know what it's like it's like fainbos in the cape but it's rock and it just grabs everything it holds your lines it tears it i mean when we climbed it we wore leather gloves that's how rough the rock is just so you don't cut your hands wow and then you know the leather gloves get shredded just from the so it's a limestone that's from the rain it's just full of these sharp little sort of inch inch and a half little spikes everywhere over the rock it's quite amazing now

so we couldn't take off so we walked back down it's sort of like a it's about a 1200 meter scramble and they've put up some little rope, Tyrolean bridges you haul yourself over and what not

and we took off, we then walked back, on the way up we then found a place where this would be comfortable to take off here and there's a little bit of gravel around so the gliders wouldn't get too damaged and the lines wouldn't get caught on and we took off there.

Yeah, so we took off literally about 200, 250 meters below the summit. So that was the first time someone had actually flown off from Papua New Guinea.

I bet. I mean, I've seen pictures of it and stuff. I mean, aren't you totally surrounded by jungle? Where do you land? Do you land back at the mine?

No, we landed back at our base camp where the helicopter dropped us just because they just said, please don't fly over the mine. We'll get into trouble. they'll probably try and shoot you down. They had a whole lot of reasons why not to, but we could have easier flown all the way back down to the town. It would have been a beautiful flight. Because you could fly to the coast actually, it's not that far.

Oh, really? How high is Carstens?

Carstens is just under 5,000, I think. Oh, it's big. Yeah. It's not a small, it's five Carstens. I wrote it down here somewhere because I knew you'd ask me yeah five thousand yeah just under five thousand yeah oh wow okay so they land you at four and a half and then you've got i think like one and a half thousand meters of actual sort of rocky scrambling to to do yeah it's quite steep i think it's about a grade probably five nine at one place yeah so yeah they've got a rope which you just clip onto and you you can sort of self-belay yourself yeah so yeah cool no no that's

that's more that's way more of an adventure than Kazi.

Then we went to Kazi. We then went, landed there and hired a car, drove up there and walked up to that little mountain across all the little grids and the things on stilts.

They've got that winding road. I don't know if you did it there, not the road, but they've got the grids on stilts so that you don't walk on the marsh.

I guess damage any of the fauna and flora. So we climbed up there and then we just flew down the literally like 150 meters. You can't fly much further unless it's a really thermic day.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, Australia's got a lot going for it, but mountains aren't really one of them. No, no.

We should have actually gone and flown at... Ayers or something? Yeah, yeah. On the way out or something, but we didn't. We set aside two weeks to go fly a climb in Tasmania, which is fantastic. Tasmania is a beautiful country nice little island and a fantastic rock climbing there so we went and did that for two weeks and then we went to try and fly off Mount Cook after that so I've got a brother who stays in Christchurch who lives there so we went across to him and stayed with him and then popped over and we helicoptered into Mount Cook and because I discovered Mount Cook if you look at my website site, 7th Summit, 7th Flight. It's 7th Summit, 7th Flight plus one

when the website opens. And the plus one, my daughter discovered that New Zealand's actually the eighth continent. It was declared its own continent in 2017.

Wow, there you go. Good thing you got it. Good thing you ticked it off. Well,

we didn't get it. We just walked. It was out of condition, so we flew into the camp to the high hut there. And we trapped all the way up and got to the Bergschrand and we couldn't cross it. It was just too wide. And the guide, not the guide, but the helicopter pilot had told us, no, it's probably out of condition. You won't get across the Bergschrand, which is basically the opening between the rock and where the glacier pulls away from the base of the mountain. And it was like 10 meters wide. And so you look down, it's like a hundred meters. No way you're going to cross this thing. And we couldn't find a way across it. So we just turned and we walked out, which was, we should have called for a helicopter company because, wow, that was a walkout. very deceptive there in new zealand those mountains are beautiful mountains so i want to go back and fly there and uh again sometime now that i've got a brother that lives there yeah yeah yeah

there's some neat flying going on down there a guy named benjamin kellett and there's a bunch of them they're doing

30 who did that big traverse yeah really cool

stuff happening down there in the southern alps really cool very cool all right and then so i think we're We're up to Everest now, right?

Yeah, then it was Everest. And that was really just saving up and saving up. And I had the money or waiting for my money that I put away to grow, which it had. And then I had my operation for my knees, had to recover from that. So I had both knees done at the same time, which was probably the most painful experience I've ever had when you wake up. That's

a tough one.

The doctor is a friend of mine, an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Mark Heumann.

And he said, okay, normally I don't allow any of my patients to have both done at the same time. But I know you and you're a fit guy and I know you can put up with the pain. But he says no amount of morphine is going to stop this pain. And boy, he wasn't joking when he said that. That was the most excruciating. I think when I woke up and that pain just hit me, you put, pump that little morphine bottle as much as you want. It did nothing. It was probably for a good, I reckon, five hours, six hours. It was the most agonizing pain I've ever gone through, but it was, we survived it. But yeah, yeah. And happy now to be back on my feet and yeah, then I decided that's it.

Now I can go and do Everest once I recovered from that. so and that was an experience in the heart it really was yeah

i mean xc mag did a great article on this but you know so for those of you listening you check that out but yes give give us the highlights that was so did you deal with the gal that was doing the photography and stuff too or no you said that was too expensive no

no yeah so i just went by myself and i took a insta 360 and basically filmed it like that and yeah so i've got hundreds of hours of walking up Everest and all the stuff that goes with Everest and the flight down and so I still have to do something with that I just put a friend of mine put a little clip together but

that's sort of on YouTube and yeah but Everest itself was it's been a dream of mine to climb it from ever since I was climbing since a teenager so so that was already a dream of mine coming coming true and then uh since i could paraglide why not fly off it so you look back in the history of this the history of everest itself is this yeah it's just one of those iconic mountains um if you put aside all the other stuff that goes with everest and all the you know the the nonsense about it these days and all the politics and the

i don't know who you are um the people that shouldn't be climbing it that do climb it and and get hauled up Everest and all the drama that goes with it and the politics. Put that aside, it is an amazing, iconic mountain. It's got a lot of history to it.

And flying history as well, actually. Mark, I'll butcher his, Bovin, or however you say the French name. I should know how to do that because my mother's French.

So he flew off in 1988.

I didn't know that.

Yeah. And he landed, you know, the gliders, I think it was actually 1987 when he flew off it. And he took off from just below the summit and only made Camp 1 just above the icefall. That was his glide angle. He managed to get out of the glider. It was like a one in, less than a, like a one in a, one in a half, no, one in a half or something. I don't know if it was like, oh God, like a 70 degree slant, this angle, boom, straight down. Basically in

a parachute. He was parachuting down. Yeah.

A wingsuit would have got further. Yeah, right.

Way further.

And then there was, I guess I've flown off it, but like from much lower off on the mountain from 6,000 meters here and 5,000 meters here and there. But all of it was illegal. And I had this little goal to do it legally. and I asked various people to try and eventually someone actually an ex-alps pilot put me on to Asian Trekking, Dawa Steven Sherpa who runs that company and it's I think it's the oldest Everest company it's been running for 45 years his father started it and Dawa Steven took it over and they're well-connected family in terms of being there for so long and and they're well-connected in Nepal.

He started skydiving Everest, where they take you up at base camp and you can jump out of a helicopter at 6,000 meters and land back at base camp. So he started that little thing as well. So I thought, this is definitely the guy to speak to. He's got the contacts. He's got skydiving approved there. He just has to get us flying off the mountain. So he went knocking around on doors for me and came back with a no. so this is like a year a year before the trip and then he came back six months later no and i said okay well i'm booking with you now anyway and if i have to i'm gonna do it illegally so i told him that and he undernod and argued with me and i said well yeah let's carry on knocking on the door and he carried on doing that and luckily for us one of the ministers actually changed portfolios changed and they got a new guy in.

And they had just been through COVID and their numbers were down with tourists. So Dawa went to him, Dawa approached him and said, listen, let's give this to this chap. It's going to increase a lot of,

give us a lot of exposure if he manages to fly off. And there's a lot of pilots out there that might want to come and do this. We never know. This might take traction. And so the day before, actually, it's my summit day. So you go there and you're acclimatized for like a month and a half. And then you wait for the window and an opportunity to climb Everest because you have to wait for the jet stream to lift and move out the way so you can actually climb it without getting killed. And obviously, for flying, you don't want the jet stream around. And literally, the day before, the night, he came to me and said, yeah, good news. they have just emailed me your permit and I was like, thank fuck for that, because I was going to we were always talking in base camp you can't do it legally, I'm going to get fined you're going to get fined, please don't, it's not worth it

and paragliding will never be allowed again, and yeah but the permit came through and now it's opened the whole region up Gerard Corrine, who is there now, a friend of mine, I don't know if you know Gerard he's been in Cross Country Magazine a couple of times times i think he's done this once yeah he went there flying and he was flying around that area so they they now opened it up and you can actually just go pay your little permit and go fly there it is very busy i wouldn't in terms of helicopters and that it is a busy valley i mean it is helicopters non-stop going up and down so i would take an airband radio and try and communicate with them because generally the helicopters are in the middle of the valley uh and we'd be on the side of the mountain so we should be pretty safe yeah yeah

how did babu do it then what did did they have a permit or was that illegal they

did it illegally and uh i didn't know that just because he's nepalese and that they turned a blind eye and gave him a slap on the wrist and and yeah yeah so he got he got away with it but i must say his tour operator wasn't very impressed because he went on as a as helping the cook as sort of a helper i mean him and the cook just went up the mountain.

Really? I didn't know that background. No, no. They

got, yeah, they weren't very happy with Babu, but I think in retrospect now everyone laughs about it. It was an amazing adventure what he did. I mean, wow. Taking off, flying all the way down and then jumping in a canoe and wow,

it was

amazing what

he did. All the way to the sea, yeah. That was a good mission for sure.

So Babu was part of me getting my permit as well actually. He,

the Minister of Tourism and then said, well, we want you to be signed off that you can actually fly, that you are a paraglider pilot, that you are able to fly off Everest. And we would like Babu, because Babu is the Nepalese guy who flew off Everest last. We want him to approve you. So I thought, oh, well, that should be okay. I've walked, I know Babu. I met him at EXALF. We walked together for a whole day in 2013.

So I just sent him a mail saying, Babu, please, when you get this from the minister, sign me off. And he said, no problem. yeah so luckily in that sort of sense that uh that that happened and that babu managed also i guess dalva steven and babu were maybe putting a little pressure on the minister and it worked out for me and yeah so

looking yeah

yeah anyway but yeah

babu is such a good soul he i can't remember which one he competed in it was one of the ones i did i don't know if it was 2015 or 2017 but he had done everest you know that had happened yeah and then he he showed up at the at the red Red Bull X-Ops. And I might have this slightly wrong, but he gave a presentation for that club in Geneva. And I was there, I was giving a presentation on some film that I had done. I can't remember which one that was either. But then afterwards he came up to me and said, Hey, I would really like to, can you tell me about this thing I've heard? I keep hearing about called the Vario.

And he said, yeah, I would like to compete in the Red Bull X-Ops with a vario can you can you tell me how it works are you kidding me babu seriously it was just i just gave a big hug i'm so glad there are people like you still out there in the world you know you've flown off everest but you haven't flown with a very oh that is awesome

no he was amazing yeah yeah i mean when i was with him yeah he's very broken english but it It was great. We still managed to communicate. He's got a very nice setup where he is now.

I've heard. It's amazing. What were the unique memories?

You flew off the top, didn't you?

No, they didn't. My permits only allowed me to fly from 8,000 meters.

That's right.

They wouldn't let me go from the top for whatever reason. The permit to fly off, besides the climbing permit, the flying permit, they came to an agreement. Actually, there was an Australian guy they were also trying to fly off at the same time as me. I've forgotten his name now. I should have written it down.

And so both of us were applying, and Dawa Steven was the guy who was applying for both of us. And he agreed. Before I got there, before I got to Nepal, he was there like a week earlier. he had gone and sat down even though the minister hadn't uh hadn't agreed to giving us a permit yet he had negotiated a five thousand dollar permit fee to fly off uh which was a bit of a shock to me to i suddenly had to fork out five thousand dollars which was uh not good for our bank account but anyway yeah it was uh to fly off so ken it was ken that was his name and i said thanks Ken for that, but maybe that's why I wasn't in those negotiations and Ken came to that, but I wish he had stuck to like a thousand dollars or five hundred dollars.

But anyway,

so anyone now that goes to go and try and fly Everest, they're going to have to fork out a five thousand dollar.

That's kind of the precedent.

And Ken sort of said that's it, no more. And maybe if he had gone and said maybe eight thousand for the top, they would have said yes, go to the top. I don't know if it was a money thing or if it was a, they never told us, or if it was just a political thing because the summit is shared with China. They didn't want to have any fallout of China with someone flying off the top. I'm not sure. So they just said, no, 8,000, that's it. Please don't go above that. So that's basically the South Coal. And that was, yeah, when I got there, I never went to the top. I'd love to go to the top of Everest, but I had to make a decision because of the weather that was changing.

so and to go back and climb everest and pay that fee again which in south african terms is a lot of money uh it's uh yeah i think it's going to cost you you know 60 70 000 dollars yeah the cheapest sort of trip so it's uh yeah so to pay that sort of money again to go and climb just to the top of the mountain uh i don't know if i really want to from that keen i'd rather go and do another 8 000 meter peak week. Yeah, that's like joy or one of those, which I probably am going to do sometime and they cost a 10th of the price of Everest. Sure.

Yeah, sure.

But yeah, so it was, you know, when I got up there, it was the decision to the weather was coming in. And it's amazing the guys that get the weather from from guys in Switzerland and someone from actually in the States, it gives the weather as well. And that accurate down to the almost like the hour it's amazing they can predict it that that well um you know i woke up and the guys just said listen my summit day uh they just said it's going to be snowing by 12 between 12 and 2 o 'clock it's going to be a whiteout on top you won't be able to take off you know from the south summit upwards basically from seven i think i said from seven and a half thousand meters upwards it's going to be so uh and so then you sit there and you're discussing with your Sherpa.

If you're really fit, can you make it back down here by 10 in the morning? And you're leaving the summit day, it's only like 800 meters or 700 meters that you have to go. No, it's 850 odd meters. So it's not very high if you think about it, if you're at sea level or at 2,000 meters in the Alps, that's quick.

But up there, it takes you, a fit guy will leave at like 9 in the evening and only be back down at about 11 12 the next day wow so it's uh it's like a 15 hour to 18 hour day uh and i'd i'd been sick uh quite sick at camp two on my way up and i stayed for four days i hadn't eaten for three and i vomited myself you know to to like seven kilos lighter and uh so i wasn't in the strongest is in best shape.

When I got up there, I just said, after that, I just took it camp by camp. If I get to Camp 3, fantastic. If I'm feeling sick at Camp 3, I'm going to bail and fly down from there. If I get to the South Coal, that's fantastic. I eventually got to the South Coal and I was feeling okay. I said, maybe I can go for the summit. Then they told me this weather prediction and I thought, okay, I'm going to have to make a decision and I'm not that fit so I'm not going to make it up and down by 12 o 'clock. and my teammates who went they only made it down uh around about the quickest i think was around about three o 'clock so he came down in the light out in the snow and the slowest which maybe would have been me because i wasn't in the best of shape came down at like six that evening so uh wow i decided right through the storm i'm here to fly off it let me fly off and uh the summit i can always tag another time if i make a lot of money along the way i can go back and tag it another other time so so uh yeah we got up at six and checked and there were clouds in the valley and couldn't see the body i couldn't see landing it was just a whiteout as far as you could see

at that sort of five thousand six thousand meters the cloud just banked up so i went back had tea had tea got up checked at 10 then the wind had picked up and i was howling like 60 k's an hour and the cloud but the clouds had broken up so at least something was happening Basically, the whole air mass was now coming up the valley and up to our altitude. You're looking at, you know, you've got 5,000 meters and you've got 67 and then you've got 7 to 8. You've got these different sort of altitudes as you go up.

And the

weather patterns seem to differ between altitudes. It's quite amazing.

And then we're having more tea. That's all you do up there is drink tea. And my Sherpa was having his 100th cigarette. red and uh it's amazing those guys they can they go the whole way up just tapping away hey they are so strong unbelievable um anyway so we are having our hundredth cup of tea as well and suddenly the tent just it's not actually shaking as much as it was like an hour and a half ago i said okay this this is getting promising let me go and have a look so zip everything on and climb out um and and walked to the edge and the wind was feeling, this is maybe takeoff. Well, it's like feels 35 to 40 k's an hour. That's what it feels like. And you think, yeah, at home, if I take off, I'm going to be, have to go on speed bar straight away and maybe I'll be able to edge forward and get out of the compression here.

But okay, that's looking promising. Walk a bit further. Okay, the clouds have opened up. There's gaps in the clouds. Okay, now I think I can do this. So I went back to the tent, started kitting up. My Sherpa came out. We called some other Sherpas from other teams because they tried the glider. The glider was just blowing all over the place. And it was one of those lightweight gliders. So the wind just blows them like a rag. So I got them to hold it down for me. And I thought, hell, when I pull this thing up, I'm going to get – this wind is feeling strong, but I'm going to get yanked backwards before I get it under control. anyway so I pull it up tell the guys to leave it, pull it up and nothing happens it like pops up have to control it a little bit, it's a bit faster than usual it was at 8000 meters and things are now reacting a bit like a compwing you sort of have to catch it quite quickly

and this is like an A glider we're talking about so it's okay this is doable but it's not lifting me, it's not dragging me and then I have to start bloody running to get this thing to fly I think I must have the longest sprint, well, I felt like a sprint on Everest as well. Must go down on the record books. I had to like run 20 or 30 meters to get the glider to fly. And you're running there. And I was so out of breath. It was unbelievable. I thought I was going to pass out. Even though I had oxygen on me, it was, and I took off, gave a yell, and then I'd sat and I panted. I thought I was going to pass out. I just kind of like hung there, sort of in a delirious state. and slowly the oxygen, I actually took my mask off because I thought I could breathe. I just couldn't get oxygen. You get that feeling where you can't breathe, you just can't get enough oxygen.

And eventually I thought, okay, that's stupid. Put the mask back on. That's where the oxygen is. And so I took a big breath and eventually I sort of flew out and we were discussing with the helicopter pilots, I'll stay on the right-hand side of the valley all the way down and do the dogleg. And I'd chosen a spot to land down at Gawker Shep, which is only grass because I didn't want to land in the rocks and at base camp with the ice just in case yeah yeah i came in too fast because it's five and a half thousand meters you're landing at uh and uh my in the video you can just hear me breathing this i'm feeling like a like a run yeah sprinted a thousand meters as quick as i could the whole way down the whole way down it was just the whole way anyway but it was yeah and it was totally surreal it was unbelievable i mean that flight was just yeah even though i only took over 8 000 meters if i'd actually got my breath or maybe i don't know how you would have

maybe if i'd had a bigger glider and a maybe a more high performance glider i think i could have actually caught something and gone to the top ridge sword up to the top i really do

wow i

was just in such a buggered state i just didn't you know i just couldn't do anything else i was that time.

And someone is going to do it. Someone's going to go and take off from there, if you take up a nice C glider or a D wing and a little bit bigger than your normal size. Something that has a little

bit of performance.

Actually, I think I'm sure you could actually take off from Gorka Shep and fly to the top of Everest. So someone's definitely going to do that as well. Yeah.

Because I went through a big thermal. I went through a thermal. I look at my track log. I went through a two and a half meter second thermal. for about a good 20, 30 meters. And I didn't even register it. I was so buggered. But yeah, I could have actually taken that up and the clouds were going up the side. Yeah, I think I could have registered up the top. Anyway. Wow. Wow, cool. It was really a surreal experience and just flying through those clouds and you're flying up a base camp and you're still at 7,000 meters going up a base camp. You're higher than Paul Morey. It's just unbelievable. beautiful yeah so this

would be something so gratifying about i mean all these years and money and time invested and everything and just and then having the experience as well i

think it was you know from flying if you look at it just purely flying and i didn't forget about the scenery is that it wasn't you know it was a flight a foot down basically of just over 20 minutes so from that point of view it wasn't uh yeah but just flying off everest and just that experience and flying through that history of it. It was just so, it was just unbelievable. I mean, it brought me to tears when I was landing. I was just, yeah, I was overwhelmed. So it really was very, very special.

I'm sure you were. Yeah.

And it was a nice one to have ticked off now. Nice to be able to breathe

again. Must have been nice.

Yeah, that was, it was nice to get into the warm, warm air from like minus, I think it was minus 15. It wasn't that cold on top, but yeah. And luckily, Luckily, Darwa Steven had the sense to send a Sherpa because I hadn't actually planned. I knew I was landing, but I didn't have any kit. I had my long johns and then my downed Everest suit over that. So to walk back, and now you're in like 10, 15 degrees. So luckily, he had the sense to send one of the porters down with some tackies and shorts and a shirt. So I could walk back. I sort of landed 8km away from base camp. Great. yeah no it's fantastic and

so that leaves um that leaves vincent do you have a timeline on that you said that's the most expensive yeah

so that that that is another that's going to be so this everest one i did asian trekking or one of the the cheapest ways you can do it and that cost me fifty thousand dollars it was actually 45 i think yeah um so vincent now i've I've been looking around and you have to go through, I don't think you can actually do it by yourself. I must just research it a bit more, but I want to do it now in December, January coming up.

And just looking at the cheapest there is going to be around about 50, I think around about $60,000. So it's not cheap either.

But it sounds like a big adventure. So I'm probably going to go building

and tandems in your future.

No, no, I've got the money actually, luckily enough. So I put the money away, so it's there. I must just now book it with the right company. Book it and make

it happen.

And I'll probably go and do an Aconcagua trip, maybe guide one up in December, then I'll be acclimatized and then go down and do it.

Smart. It's like a 10, 11-day trip, so it's not a long trip.

Yeah, it's an exciting trip.

Yeah, that's awesome. Like Alaska, a very neat part of the world. It is, yeah. We'll have to bring you back to the show for the postpartum on that one and see how it went. And we'll have to get you back to talk about that. But Pierre, thanks for sharing all these amazing stories, man. I don't even know what the time is. I've been smiling for an hour and a half.

Good job. But hopefully if I do that, then we would have done the seven summits except for Denali. So yeah, that would be a... Yeah. Yeah. Well, hopefully that gives

me some motivation to keep lobbying over here to try to get this ridiculous rule removed. I don't know what will happen in our lifetimes, but the change is slow when it comes to government. But it'd be nice to get rid of that. But thanks for all the stories, man. I really appreciate it. I'm glad we were finally able to connect here. Thank you. Yes. hopefully

we see you soon hopefully I'll come and do Red Rocks sometime do you want to come over to South

Africa? I'd

love to, that'd be great, we will

take care of you in style we have some yeah, we've got American hospitality here to show you so just let me know we'll take care of you, that'd be a lot of fun we'd love it

cool bud thanks for talking

to me bud, cheers thanks

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