Hi
there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Got a great, very inspiring, fun show for you today with Dick Jackson, who started Aspen Expeditions and Aspen Paragliding many decades ago. He was one of the first, he did the first tandem in Aspen, one of the first to start flying there, paragliders at least, and remained a true alpinist throughout his life. There's some fantastic stories of climbing in the Khumbu and lots of legendary names in this one. Robbie Whittall and Chuck Smith and Dave Brashears and Dave Bridges, Alex Lowe.
Lots of great stories and some of his amazing accomplishments and feats in the mountains. We talk about when the mountains bite and not necessarily from the flying side, but just, you know, those of you who listen to the show know I just lost a very, very good friend in an avalanche. So we talk about some of that, you know, what we go through with these kind of things and lots of learning there. This was great. Quite a therapeutic talk for me. He's a very humble guy and quite understated and just a lovely talk, which I think you'll love. Before we get to it, I just want to say I have this kind of thing at the end of every show about how you can support the show from the very beginning.
And this is well over 10 years now. We have not relied on advertising. I can't stand that with podcasts when you have to sit through 10 minutes of. By this mattress or this thing, it just feels very inauthentic. And I think it's kind of what's wrong with digital media these days, advertising and misinformation, disinformation, all these kind of things. So what I rely on to make this show go and pay for all the quite substantial costs behind the scenes, editing and housing and storage and just getting it out there. But also just rely on it as a. As a way to make a living. So if you find the show valuable, all we've ever asked for is a buck a show.
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And I will keep doing these, what I'm calling the kind of the legend series. There are so many people who we all stand on the shoulders of incredible people. Like Dick, who set the stage and were willing to fly these crazy gliders back in the day and set it up for what we do now. And there's a lot of knowledge there and a lot of amazing stories there. So I'll keep doing it. He mentions a whole bunch of names in this one that people really need to get on the show. But you can also support it if you don't want to contribute financially in that way. Just buy, if you want to grab one of our t-shirts or hats, I got some great stuff on the website.
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Dick, welcome to the CloudBase Mayhem. I've been really excited to, I've been reading about you and stuff. Yeah. I can't say that I'm fully prepared because you lived a fully incredible life. There's a lot we can talk about here, but I'm excited to chat with you. Really thankful for Belcourt reaching out and saying, hey, you got to talk to Dick Jackson. He's been out there in Aspen since the beginning. Let's start at the beginning here. The audience, you know, I know some of them know you, of course, but maybe a lot of the Europeans and stuff don't. But tell us, how did you get in? How did you get into alpinism and flying? I know you guys were using it really more as a descent tool back in the day, but how'd you get into this crazy sport and what was the catalyst?
Well, you know, early on, I did a really cool expedition to Denali and we did the first American ascent of the Cassine Ridge on the South Face. So after that trip, I got really excited about every part of mountaineering there is, but I hadn't been to the Alps yet. And so that the next season I went and I spent three years in a row climbing around, you know, based in Chamonix, mostly Chamonix. And at that time, I would say that's probably 86, 87, right in there. And there was just sort of the beginning of paragliding going on in Chamonix. And I was way into trail running. If I wasn't climbing, I was running. And all I can say is that I would go on up to the launch site at the Planet of Gold.
Or across the valley. And I'd just watch these launches. And it was really, you know, just the question of, well, you know, nobody was really soaring much. You know, it was just a matter of how many flights you do in a day. And so I was intrigued by it because as an alpinist, I go, well, what a great idea. You know, instead of dangerous descents and all the thousands of vertical coming down, you just kind of huck off. And man, you're, you know, at the bar, you know. And so. So that was my start. I just watched a bunch of launches and landings. And then I go, I've got to do this. I've just, you know, regardless of the thought of a soaring sport, wasn't even on the radar screen yet. That's how I got my start. I bought a seven-cell Harley for 100 francs or something.
And I think I flew it once off Aspen Mountain and barely made it to the valley. So I think it had like one flight on it. And then it became a car cover or something. Who knows? Yeah.
So these were the, these were the original speed wings, seven cells and two to one glide. And so
that's how I got into it. And then as I came back to Aspen, I was all jazzed about it and I would do anything. And it kind of overlapped with the time when John Bouchard was kind of doing a circuit around the West, mostly in the West and getting his climbing buddies or anyone that was climbing at all. And that was predominantly who it was early on. To get turned on to paragliding and, and again, more of a descent tool than it was anything else at that time. Yeah. So, so
this is Bibbler and Bouchard and you guys were all, and then what, what, what was the gear? What were you, were you kind of, were you already really attacking kind of mountains in an Alpine style, you know, lightweight, minimalist?
The lightweight thing was kind of a given in time because the early on, you know, the, the squares. You
know, square
nines and all, uh, aside from the heavy material, there wasn't much to the glider, you know, so, uh, and you could pack things pretty small and, but I have to say the, um, the performance was so bad that you didn't, uh, really get too excited about, uh, using it as a descent tool until the gliders got a little bit better. And, and then as time went on, you know, obviously Bouchard was pushing that. And I think his initial gliders were copies of some ITV stuff, you know, square nine type things. And very tricky to launch because they were just so worthless. Uh, but once you got it in the air, it actually, you know, I think four to one glide and it seemed like it was pretty good. Yeah.
That's, that's, that's so funny. Cool story there. You just, before we started recording, you were talking about doing the first tandem off Aspen, uh, with who was it where you were with? And then you had to run halfway down the mountain or something. It
was still my, one of my best friends, Chris Blatchley. And, you know, we were some of the first to fly, you know. Among a couple of other people, you know, off Aspen mountain, but we did the first tandem and it was with a glider that I got. I had picked up the next season, uh, went down to Annecy and went to the ITV factory and they sold me this, uh, tandem glider that was like brand new, you know, new design. Um, it was called a Titan and I've got some photos of it that are just ridiculous, but we did fly. Um, and Chris would vouch for this, that we both remember. George Mahan Um previously, uh, we started off at quite a steep ski, running about a third of the way down walls is enough for anyone to flown off washes. It's like a steep ski run and it goes down a, you know, a few hundred meters or so.
And so we probably ran halfway down that thing, or a third of the way down before we got off the ground. And, and, uh, it finally worked out. um um we survived it
i i take it a lot of the flights back then were probably just survival just you're stoked if you live yeah
we you know we were self-taught you know but there we didn't have a clue at first what we were doing it just seemed like okay well you know these were essentially two riser maybe three riser uh rigs at the time and um we just did what we could and taught each other a little bit you know there we were conscious of mountain weather i mean we lived in that you know we live in aspen so it's at um eight thousand feet and the launch sites are close to eleven thousand feet so it's high up but you know again without a perspective on density altitude you know it is what it is you know i mean your speeds are what they are based on altitude but just name of the game at first yeah so that's kind of what we did we were mostly self-taught and it predominantly was uh alpine climbers and you know and as as we start to started to fly more um it just attracted more and more people just uh whether whatever their background was and you know all locals you know i mean the tourists weren't really dialed into it at all yet so yeah had
you done any hang gliding at this point or did you step directly into paragliding no
i have never done uh any hang gliding and my only first exposure to is when i we went to denali mckinley for the first time in 1976 uh some guys had just flown off denali and landed at the airstrip so we were right there we got i've got photos of these guys flying and landing and so i that might have been my first time actually seeing a hang glider up close and that was pretty interesting so yeah they
carried hang gliders to the top
of the mountain and they were flying up close to the
top of the oh it was
a major thing you know they i think they had friends that helped out because you know and especially in those days those guys were you know they were 60 70 80 pounds you know so i think it took them something like 30 days to get the gliders all the way oh my to the top god i never knew i
hadn't heard this one this sounds like a good podcast yeah
that was in 76 yeah
wow that's amazing so did your focus in the kind of mid-late 60s or sorry 80s when you were climbing all that did it stay if you stay i mean i know you've had uh aspen expeditions since but you've been you've been doing mountaineering trips for decades is that did that stay your focus or did it really switch to flying um
it was both you know i it was kind of fun for me personally because i became a certified internationally certified mountain guide and i was president of the guides association here in the states for about five years and so in those formative years i was without a doubt the the only internationally certified mountain guide that was also a advanced tandem and p4 pilot so i i sort of had this personal pride without even hardly talking about that i was uh in a pretty unique position and and my time was pretty much split probably more flying in those first years uh than guiding although on a given day i was doing either one you know and you know it took a little while for the paragliding business to really uh kick in and when and something that we could definitely chat about the early days because we were flying off aspen mountain and uh we had a very good relationship with the aspen skiing company and we we uh we knew all the top management people and blah blah blah and so they didn't much care what we did just uh we we went off the front side especially even in the wintertime
then it was just a handful of us doing this anyway and then we'd land right in town in wagner park and that started to attract more attention because we were very visible at that point that's
amazing and so the the are you guys in the same insurance problem that all the lift access is it still like lift access flying in aspen now yeah
um well you know it's a drive-up site in the summertime you know but in wintertime it's you know there's a lot less flying in the but still you know there's a lot of people do it and we fly off uh um you know both snowmass and aspen mountain um in the early days it was just the relationship that we had with the skiing company and they they seemed to have a lot of confidence what we were what we were doing you know so it kind of added to the attraction of in the uniqueness of aspen as a ski area and sure and then as time went on uh some issues came up and we had to tweak things and all which is good because that's the amount that the one thing that really made it work so it's the topography there because that's a mountain is basically a ridgeline so we fly you know mornings to the east off walsh's and then in ruthie's in the afternoons facing west so it it works out perfectly for even though we didn't have a clue what we were doing at first it was very accommodating put it that way yeah and
when did you start aspen paragliding and was there was there why did you start it there was just enough you felt like there was enough interest and what was it just tandems in the beginning or no it was you know it
was not so much tandems yet because we didn't we've had to kind of figure some things out but i was on a flight uh to reno for a trade show and i sat next to a guy that became my partner for a while jan stensvold and so we we didn't even know each other but in a short time we've got to talk a bit we were both excited about creating a business out of it and of course on that because you know we we were both excited about paragliding and i don't think he had any had done it yet but it was just this um ability to get in on the ground floor you know i think that's when you know probably about the same time that belcourt and some of these utah guys were responding to bouchard because he was a one-man show that was running around getting climbing friends somewhere i have a photo of like michael kennedy who was a big name and still is
but he ran climbing magazine at the time and i just have a photo of him i think there was something like three inches of snow on the base of the mountain so i have a picture of him uh and i don't even know if he had a helmet on he was like stuffed his head straight into the ground and anyway so we all sort of survived those early early years you know it was it was uh very fond memories i have to say it was it was a lot of fun even though we didn't really have a clue what we were doing yeah everybody
talks about you know the folks that i've had on the show and then just met randomly over the years that were part of that scene back today everybody talks about the just the community and what was going on and the excitement for the you know not long after where you're talking about that you know you started flying distance and going up instead of just down yeah
yeah the first big long flights i mean it was very unusual but you know chuck smith and a couple other people they flew to crested butte and so when that's the thing started happening it was just like wow you know it over several years it became it was obvious that this is becoming a very technical and soaring sport and you know we've always shared the launch sites especially ruthie's because it was rare that you saw a hang glider come off of the waltz's side but we were sharing the site with those guys and it didn't take long for the paragliding community to far outnumber the few hang glider pilots that were still you know still and so it was it was a very exciting time for us and i think it took a little bit of years to kind of was a pretty cool scene it was the camaraderie was there it attracted uh some really good locals into the sport and and ironically there was very few accidents in those uh first couple years you know things started happening a bit more after that with you know people getting a bit more aggressive and visiting pilots coming and you know all the factors with high altitude flying you know flying and all that and
tell me about were you part of uh you know helping the comp creating the first comps there and that kind of thing because i mean aspen used to be a place that was you know legendary as telluride was you know for competitions and telluride for hang gliding as well but uh when when did all were you were you part of that whole thing too oh yeah were you flying competitions were you really i
was never really a comp pilot although we hosted the nationals in both uh 93 and 94 and when that happened it was such a wide uh opener because you had all the europeans come on over uh you know and they you know just like with mostly ski racing things like that you know they they were state-of-the-art they were you know definitely ahead of americans when it came to those initial comps and some of the names back then you know it was um like Robbie Whittall and claude schwager here's harry sandy coachapan claire bernier those were some of the pilots and of course as time went on you know of course dave bridges it was so sad when dave you know died on shisha pangma with alex lowe but chuck smith mark axon john bouchard ed pitman mitch mackler bob englund bob schick scott amy so these are all the names in those first few years that were representing comp flying and so it was great to host the whole thing but i i have to say i've always taken pride in being a a good tandem pilot it's kind of like a ups driver or so and uh and so i i was never really this my time was split between guiding mountain guiding and traveling paragliding so i never became much of a comp pilot yeah
tell me about dave he you you guys ran aspen paragliding together right didn't he buy into it at some point or you guys were co-owners tell me about
that yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
about dave i just oh dave was just the
most impressive person you know he was world class in anything dave did and he was just such a pleasure to be around and so fit so we did quite a few things together in the mountains and yet when he moved to aspen he wasn't much of a skier yet you know so we spent a lot of time in the high mountains uh around here you know because almost all my skiing and my business was backcountry skiing it wasn't really the front side and so dave became extremely close friends you know and uh when he went off to climb some big peaks like for instance you climbed makalu which is the fifth highest peak in the world you know the video that they shot because it was a sponsored trip here he is at you know over 28 000 feet and he's feeling good like dave was just you know he's kind of a mutant in a way because he was just so fit and so yet so easy to be around you know no ego yeah didn't exist yeah yeah yeah wow so it was it was always great to spend time with dave you know and then when he when he died on um a big slide triggered and had nothing to do with them they were just the wrong place at the wrong time and him and alex low were killed and conrad anchor survived it so dave was great on my desk i still have some photos of us together and he's he was one of the most impressive people i've ever met in my life and he was one of the most impressive people i've ever met yeah yeah
yeah i i hadn't planned on talking about this at all but uh you know i i lost a very very dear friend uh in an avalanche here just a couple weeks ago it was he was my main ski you know backcountry ski partner he was the you know main er doc here in our little town and uh responsible for getting the town through covid just amazing guys climbed denali climbed everest it's kind of a younger version of dave bridges just a total beast he wasn't not a pilot but um you have any words of wisdom for uh dealing with that kind of loss i mean it's not uncommon in our sport of course but you know you went through it with dave is there is it just time is it yeah obviously this is very fresh for me i'm gonna be you know running his uh his memorial here in a couple weeks and just well a lot of it
is time time is a is a it's a is a healing factor but only if you actively participate with it and a lot of time to yourself you know to photographs uh can bring back some memories that are not as vivid i think it's an important part of our our maturity because this these things happen with our lifestyle the way they are uh we you know we tend to be somewhat buddhist in our in our feelings in our lifestyle here uh you know especially since our daughter's a sherpa and being over in nepal quite a bit but it it does take time but it's not passive you really have to get into your own head and any other mutual friends it's it's it's very very important to spend time together and voice feelings uh some people are we're all different how we express things and and deal with grief uh but there's a formula and that's all part of it you know to move through the late the stages of grief into an acceptance and and you come out shining but not but not without the uh permanent loss you know it's there you know so you know it's part of you know personal growth and you know the the whole buddhist mantra and among other things is impermanence you know we're all here for you know a little blip of time you know so yeah
yeah well that's helpful thank you uh were you part of the rescue operation i know bill went over there and you were part of the rescue operation and you were part of the rescue operation when they to to get alex and dave out uh were you were you part of that whole process no
i wasn't um um there was i got a phone call about it it was a sponsored trip and and actually ironically it's the same fellow john wilcox who is hosting this puja for tomorrow for for brochures brochures you know um at the time um that trip was uh was run as a film uh adventure and so dave you know because he performed so well and and shot some great footage on makalu he was there more as a high altitude cameraman uh the same way that dave brochures became so well known especially in 96 you know when he shot the imax uh footage of everest um so there's a lot of history toward um uh expeditions and filming sponsorship and the
and of course the dark side which you know does happen you know so yeah tell
me some stories from back in the day in aspen paragliding some of the things you know we had uh had josh cone on back many many years ago and he talked about one of one of the funniest things he'd ever seen was flying in a well funny slash terrifying flying in a gust front in aspen i think with robbie blow him or something but uh you know it must have been wild to yeah i i remember you know the the thought of running a comp in aspen or telluride where you're just higher and you're more in a sense surrounded by bigness uh you know less places to run it must have been pretty wild time it
was because this thing kind of surprised us even it didn't have all the classic this was a gust front and we always you know people you know newer pilots now they have don't you know they don't have any recollection but we uh but for for the longest time we just called it the friday night rodeo because county sheriffs and everything they're they're gliders all over the county you know uh this big gust front came through and ironically i don't think anybody got hurt a couple people went down under uh under reserve uh but it was it was wild just like a lot of things like you know years ago i shot some photos of a big avalanche in chamonix and then i i got a hold of like life magazine or perry mash and it's like well you have photos of an avalanche in chamonix uh it's just like duh so um it's anyway that we we all survived that one but and you know when it comes to some favorite stories um for instance aspen is still a sister city with chamonix france you know and in the early days of that organization i we hosted this delegate delegation from chamonix here in aspen
to maurice herzog who led the first expedition uh to annapurna in 1950 and his visa number for nepal was zero zero zero zero one you know anyway he and i i never thought i'd ever meet him and so quick long story short i sat next to him asked him if he'd like to go paragliding and and at the time he goes i would love to although uh he qualified and said he's not allowed to do it in chamonix because he at the time he was in chamonix and he was in chamonix and he was in chamonix and he was in he had just been mayor of chamonix but he was one of just a couple uh surviving members from the original annapurna expedition so they were guarding him silly things like paragliding well anyway we did i did take him and uh dave bridges and chuck smith uh because he must have told me like 60 times he can't run because he froze his feet off and all that and so um you know we had a plan and it worked out fortunately dave and chuck ran him off ruthie's you know and said don't ever let him touch the ground unless you know we're flying or whatever and then i had a good friend pine uh who was a rugby player and i said look i'm gonna spot land he is not to touch the ground and you know of course it worked out you
just catch you told him to just catch him like a football yeah
but yeah um like a baby you know holding him but it was ironic because you know at that point over the years you know he became a really big guy you know well over 200 pounds and you know so but it worked out you know but i have to say i i stayed in touch with him for a while and he would write me these letters in those days saying to my hero and i'm going like i don't get it man you're my hero so that's one oh man you made his day that
was that's incredible what happened to his feet just frostbite yeah
in the original 1950 expedition when the french climbed annapurna there's a classic book out that he wrote but he froze his feet off in his hands and this and that he still just had a couple any time he'd write anything it would just be like scrolling up but um just a wonderful man and and it was a pleasure to not only meet him but to share something special like that you know it's good you know it's really good tell
me another climbing story that was a good one
all right um let's see what have we got here i've wrote a few notes down maybe
maybe a dave one did you do you guys must have done a ton of climbing yeah
we did
ever get in a gnarly pinch yeah
we um we definitely did a bunch of climbing together but we spent a lot of times dave was kind of new to skiing when he moved to aspen so uh we we kind of held his hand a little bit and you know being such a great athlete he became a pretty good skier in a pretty short period of time and of course all the initial skiing was purely backcountry so it's a little bit higher uh learning curve when you're learning to ski and it's almost always tricky changeable conditions in the backcountry versus the front side but we you know unfortunately dave wasn't around all that long before he started to travel and then and unfortunately died uh died in that big avalanche and so um you know i forget exactly how old it was but he wasn't very old when when he finally passed it's all about quality you know because there's no uh there's no guarantees these days you know so yeah yeah
there's another
story now we used to run trips to international trips quite a bit so we had a group that went over and went paragliding in ecuador and we flew some sites that were new sites and everything but we ended up taking the group up uh cotopaxi which is almost 20 000 feet and two of us flew off which was really great fun and it it kind of highlighted the whole thing that i was into as a descent tool and even to the point where being over in europe and chamonix a lot i ran into the guys that ran the company nervura i don't know if you ever heard of that company it was from the south yeah sure yeah but they were the first to make ultra light gear and so i actually imported some of their gear myself and hardly sold any of it but they had a little solo glider that was you know something like two and a half kilos total so that was kind of fun to to be on the ground floor of ultra light gear and then of course a thin red line and um um you know like the big trip we did that chuck was on where we went to uh nepal and we flew quite a bit and it it's a video that a lot of people might not have seen but it's called over kumbu uh between earth and sky so we ended up filming that it was sponsored by marmot because that was our big sponsor at the time and we we made a pretty darn good film out of it i don't know if you've seen that but you could probably pull it up somewhere it's called over kumbu
between earth and sky and it it and it was one of the best adventure trips you could ever have because we just had such a good time and we had sort of the the classic a team and uh it was great fun and and uh chalk dale covington surey silveira you know so there were a handful of us that and our goal was to fly off of a unclimbed peak in the kumboo it was around 23 000 feet and so we we actually didn't end up didn't fly off that but we ended up doing that we ended up doing that uh some other some pretty amazing flying it was good fun yeah i
had uh pierre carter on recently who flew off of of everest and his his uh his story about just the the thinness of the air was was fascinating i mean we we all we all know this but when it's very different when you go to do it you know he he said when he took off you know i can't remember it wasn't a full-size glider it was a kind of a mini wing but it was just honking you know he thought man this is really at the extreme end of the wind that i can manage especially being this high but then he brought up his wing and it was it was like flying in you know a very mellow wind on the coast yeah he said he barely had enough wind to take off you know because you can't run you know at 28 000 some odd feet 29 000 feet it's pretty hard to run and so uh but yeah you actually need a lot
of wind yeah you you do and then of course the wind direction and changing flying from a high altitude especially uh you know a technical summit uh is quite tricky of course and you can easily have too much wind or just you know just kind of changing uh direction and just you know all that kind of stuff so you you know anytime you go up a a major summit you're likely to be prepared to walk down because it's the odds are stacked against you as far as liable conditions but you never know i mean if you're doing homework and you have a predictable weather pattern that's kind of where my whole head was at for a lot of years is he's uh using uh lightweight gear and flying and uh not necessarily just as a descent tool but certainly launching from uh way high up and there's you know there's a lot of peaks in the elk range here and around aspen that you know we've flown off of in fact one of my favorite things i that i've done i used to really enjoy the wind and the wind and the wind and the wind and the wind and the wind and enjoy guiding people like up peaks you know the uh most people wouldn't know but there's a peak here it's almost 14 000 feet called mount grizzly or grizzly peak and it's got a west face that is perfect for flying because it's it's a big scree slope and the thermals just kind of
come up from the west once the sun's high enough and and so i used to really enjoy bringing a lightweight tandem glider and hardly even telling the client you know that this is what our plan is because uh we're you crampons ice axe you know it's a snow uh climb and you get to the top and it's just well let's put this stuff away and it's like well boy you know as opposed to you know thousands of vertical going down it's just like uh you you get all set and you do your prep and and fly off and land about i don't know five or ten meters from the car
but it makes it uh
it's all very civilized isn't it when it works right
very civilized and it's just so much fun to combine mountaineering and paragliding and to me that's always been my true passion yeah for sure yeah
you've probably seen some of the films coming out recently the guys that are using their paragliders you know they're going up into the and the pakistan and uh and using their and there is this happening all over the place now but the the films that i'd seen originally when kind of the first move were happening out in in pakistan where they're you know they're they're taking off down low in the valleys and putting on their skis in the air and then thermaling up and you know which then makes it much more much nicer to land you know you're you're you're way up high now and you can just slide in on your skis put your stuff away in and ski down until you can't ski anymore and fly back down to the car right the hotel or wherever you're staying you can cover a lot of ground you know so you're not only using to now but an ascent tool and a descent tool it's yeah pretty amazing yeah
it makes perfect sense i mean when you combine lightweight gear and and good experience and and being a technical climber and all that um and ideally i mean these days now everything's about what you do once you're in the air um it's not just a descent tool it's like just amazing uh chris told me the other day that someone launched from uh near fruta which is not far from grand junction way on the western slope here in colorado and flew over the divide and landed in boulder and like wow i mean but the stuff that's being done i don't need to tell you i mean you could tell me more than i even have any idea about is what is being done these days you know it's just yeah yeah it's that
was that was an amazing day you know yeah one one of one of our pilots landed in winter park another one landed in avon and then like you said the guy
may have this wrong he's done a couple of my hike and fly events but he he was at the wide open last year and that was his first goal i think he's only been flying four or five years and he flew like you said from grand junction those of you listening don't know this terrain so he flew from the you know the western side of the of the colorado rockies uh out in the desert the high you know high desert yeah up and over the spine of the of the rockies which is just peppered with
terrain and all the way to the east side where you know those of you know in denver and boulder and and yeah and landed north of northeast actually of boulder and it was a 340k flight or something yeah yeah massive
yeah incredible yeah and wow when chris told me that it's like you know i don't know the guy or anything but man that is some serious serious flying yeah
yeah yeah yeah the uh the gliders are helping us do amazing things yeah and i wouldn't have
i mean you could tell me on and on about you know the newest greatest you know the two line gliders and uh boy it's you know so like you know i've been out of touch with things for quite some time so i i just love to hear the stories in the same way that we're talking about this you know that just kind of blow me away with literally with what is going on these days yeah so
this friday what'd you call it the friday night rodeo was that uh that was at one of these nationals no no no that was at one of these nationals that was at one of these nationals that was at one of these nationals
it was an evening normal friday night we had a bunch of visiting pilots around it was mid i don't know mid-season and and it was just like you know where everybody was really excited about flying and you know i my recollection is that it didn't seem to have all the ingredients that would you know get you worried or concerned uh it wasn't like there was a big you know cumi out there that was downloading it but this gust from you know happened and you know again i don't know and other people might know more details than i do but all i know is that everybody there was one one lady that was flying and she goes hey come over here there's really good lift and it's like well you could not avoid going up way faster and out of control than you wanted to um and people like i said they just landed if they could even land you know um it was it was really serious and i have to say that's um it's just so fortunate that
everybody was even hurt you know when you consider what the potential was for that one you know blowing all over the place you know just uh and and that was kind of a wake-up call it's like maybe we ought to pay a little more attention here ed pitman was flying and gosh yeah we had to see i'm not really sure who was in town at that point yeah it was it was something else you know and i ain't you know there's no question anyone that flew and if they're still around if they're you know whatever they're wherever they are you'd never forget that night you know so yeah you
so you have is aspen paragliding still a going concern and aspen expeditions are you still guiding you still no i sold both
businesses there but they were separate businesses i sold the aspen expeditions to two of my guides back in i think 2017 and then alex pamas he ended up buying the paragliding business and he still runs it you know things are things are good you know everything's been changed with uh insurance and access and all that fortunately the relationship with the skiing company is still really good so they're flying the same sites the ski company is self-insured and so uh as opposed and because they're flying off aspen mountain predominantly or it's no mass you know but it's it's uh under the aspen skiing company they're not they're not going through the same headaches and challenges that so many flying sites and they are one you know of course every time i talk to chuck it's it's it's a variation on the same thing it's it's been really rough and so without knowing the details of what people are going through the scene here in aspen is still still
pretty good that's great you you mentioned you adopted a little chirpa girl who's now grown in her early early 20s is she a pilot does she fly no but i used to take her when she was
just little i think her first flights you know i've got photos where i think she was around oh three and a half or four years old something like that and of course she doesn't remember that you know when she was really little i didn't even need a tandem glider you know because it was you know just adding a little more weight to me you know and uh yeah so she's she's grown up over in the mountains and she's a she's a ski race and she's a really good skier as she got a little older she went to colorado not uh rocky mountain school down in carbondale and and now she's at uw so she went from a graduating class of 43 to a freshman class of like 8 000 you know udub's a pretty big school but she's loving it and she's actually she flies home for the summer tomorrow so it's just going to be great to have her around again yeah
oh that'll be sweet tell me about this uh tell me about the thing for brashir's tomorrow you said it's a buddhist ceremony what's that look like well
there's going to be a high lama there that i don't know how he's it's been arranged i don't know many details but when there's a high lama there's a high lama there's a high lama there's a high lama there's a high lama there's when there's an important uh need for closure you know there's everybody deals with it in their own personal way but to have um an acknowledgement in a community um especially friends and those who have shared the same lifestyle or similar climbs and you know an awful lot of people knew dave uh either just by knowing him or done trips with him and of course his reputation was as as as sensational as anybody else you'd ever you ever know of or meet uh and so there's a closure it's a puja puja is a is a buddhist ceremony that is about chanting and and prayer and it's it's a way that even though it's a couple easily a couple months after dave passed it's a the appropriate way to acknowledge the passing from one life form to another depending upon what you believe in you know and
you know the lama geshi he ended up dying in 2018 but he was the the highest lama buddhist lama or priest uh in the upper kumbu valley and and he lived in the same small village that my daughter was born in he actually gave her her name um we i have we had the pleasure of meeting him and being close with him on a couple trips and so this whole process is something that is very soothing and it's uh it it it'll be really uh and if anything else it's just a wonderful time to see old friends and to and to be there for each other you know and and you know stories just not unlike some of these of uh you know about dave and you know what was going on with him because quite frankly i i knew dave a bit but not more in recent years you know so i i wouldn't be the one that knew too much about his more recent years before he passed legendary
legendary guy amazing
uh i'd love to hear a couple more stories just about maybe do you have a do you have a flight that still you still think about when you're in bed sometimes at night going oh man that that one yeah
well i might have to say that you know the culmination of my my career in the mountains you know was around this trip we did in 2003 and ironically that's the same time frame when my daughter was born about 15 kilometers or so from where we were flying in nepal that that trip with chalk and dale and all and sherry where we you know the ofra kumbu uh between earth and sky trip that was a very strong remembrance and you know it was a fantastic trip for one thing but it also meant so much to me because it it pulled together all my attraction and passion it in one trip and one film and one series of stories uh and so it it worked out so well and even the movie that was made the video nothing was contrived everything that is recorded was done in the same order and the same style that uh that it was presented in the in the final version as opposed to some of this stuff where the editor's license could kind of tweak things in a way that you're going like that's that's not really how it happened you know and it was great and so that probably means the most to me the uh there's so many little mini trips where you you fly off or hike climb fly and so there's all sorts of stories out there but that's probably the number one that and it was a long trip you know it's about a month long uh it had all the ingredients of mystique you know we got over there and we thought we had permission to fly in the in the kumbu it's it's all national park it's called sagamarta national park up there and it'd be like if you were going to the tetons and going well well you know we've got permission from the park service to fly off the grand teton or something like that it's like well that's okay but you don't necessarily have permission from the faa
so we had to go through the um the process of it wasn't possible to simply beg for forgiveness as opposed to permission because we were flying over you know namche bazaar which is the main village in the kumbu and and at the time that maoist activity in the mountains was really ramping up and and um it was it was all these uh let's just say uh challenges that would be a bit daunting uh but we somehow we pulled it off and we got permission uh to fly um and we took a bunch of locals you know tandem and and some of it was just hilarious because they you know the shirpanis you know they have a traditional dress that they always wear so it was and dale was del was great to um make the statements like well you know how do you how do you uh figure out the configuration to put a paragliding harness on you know this you know shirpani with a long dress on you know and and then of course praying and prayer beads and you know some of these like we flew this one one wife of a very good friend of ours and she was having her beads and praying the entire flight
but you know she had a good time you know but you know and of course we filmed it and at any one time we had as many as five cameras on board you know i don't need to tell you about the kind of stuff you know especially back before gopro and all where like you're flying with the smallest video cameras you can and you go
oh my god i'm flying with a gopro and i'm flying with a gopro and i'm
going wow this is the money shot you know this this was a great flight and you realize that after you launched you know the the wire connecting it to the it disconnected not only wasn't the money flight but you got you didn't get footage out of it you know and so it took quite an effort to make the whole thing happen there were seven of us on the trip and at any one time we were all making it happen and uh and we flew from pretty high up we flew from a peak to a high up and we flew from a peak to a high up and we flew from a peak to a high up that we called the louisa peak and it was around 20 000 feet so we were pretty high up and yet the the location was exquisite because you know we're right there in the shadows of mount everest and and the highest peaks in the world uh right there and then the spin-off to the whole thing was that because we cut the trip short and didn't fly off the peak that we were hoping to uh we had some extra time and i'm in our plans so we created what we called the kumbu flight paragliding school and we
were able to do that and we were able to do that and we were able to do that and we were able to do that and we were able a lot
of the locals that we dealt with we you know we were just doing our our due diligence you know on level ground and doing the ground handling and all that but it uh but it completed the whole picture you know where in the aftermath it's like well you know you're often closer to meditation and to nirvana whatever you want to believe in it's more so when you're stooping than when you're soaring so for the you know the mantra of like well uh you certainly don't have to soar to to reach the same to reach the same height you know so yeah so that was that was a great trip and to me i think all of us on the trip we were just like so blown away that it worked out like it did and and uh it it still means a lot even though it was back in 2003 yeah yeah how
how has the time you've spent in the mountains and also with the maybe with the people of of nepal and then the sherpas and that culture how has that transformed you as a how has that affected you as a person or or how does when you look back what how has that made you kind of see the world through a different lens boy
what a fantastic question i have to say it's it's totally changed my life uh i started climbing over there and doing trips quite a long time ago and so i i immediately had this attraction for the obvious things with buddhism you know prayer flags this and that you know that you you're around but as i spent more time there especially in more recent trips and being so close now with our daughter from being from there that it's it's everything i'm 74 now and i feel pretty good the mantra of impermanence and this it makes a lot of sense to me i'm over the hill but i'm well let's just say i'm still going up the hill but i'm not so sure when i'm going to be topping out and over truly over the hill it means everything to me and our it our home our relationships my my wife my daughter we're all totally on the same page and there's even even in seattle where my daughter goes to school uh there's quite a large sherpa community up there we like to hopefully um indulge in the camaraderie and the and the the companionship that we have up there as well it's it's it's very remarkable and i i i think a lot about it even when i'm not thinking about it it's it's becomes part of us yeah what
do you find more scary that the climbing or flying um
neither one you know i think it'll be a little bit more scary i think it'll be a lot of times fear kicks in after the fact you know when you have a close call or something like that and you know if you add up all those close calls you wonder how you ever got to this point but uh no i the fear has never really been overwhelming to me even in the earliest days of paragliding where it's like i launched off the grid of medina and chamonix uh with my square nine and i don't know what i would have done up there on my own but there were two pilots that were like quote unquote factory pilots for north sail and at the time they were like they were like they were like they were making some paragliders and everything was pretty bogus at the time but they i got up there and they could tell like well this guy's uh they looked at my gear i had this pink and white square nine from bouchard and they went well we probably ought to give this guy a little help
and uh you know but even then if you blew a launch there you know i mean it was two thousand feet straight down you're gonna die but i've never actually been overwhelmed by the fear factor i've uh you know i've appreciated that you know after the fact sometimes i um i've been far more scared doing other things than climbing or than uh you know i would say backcountry skiing at times where you know you you're you're going first as a guide and you do your homework and you train your clients well enough so that if there is a slide then hopefully they can be responsible and they can do their but you know the guide's always going first uh and therefore your level of confidence and communication and all the due challenges is something that is what guiding is all about and yet there's the dark side i we lost two really good friends this year while they were guiding you could always be
critical because you know accidents sometimes happen when you make a mistake you know your lack of judgment is uh or your lack of judgment is uh unforgiving and yet in the moment i have to say my level of confidence uh has been appropriate um not inflated but certainly it's the real world out there yeah yeah yeah i get i get far more scared when i think of traffic or front range type city urban stuff you know um no when it comes to the mountains and everything we do i'm okay with that yeah
yeah well well said i'd love to hear maybe the maybe the craziest thing you remember seeing or were a part of either flying or climbing i don't care which one yeah
well boy the craziest type stuff um you know probably more in the climbing realm because i've been around that so much on big trips in the big mountains and all and when it comes to like crazy type stuff you know when i think about what has been done in the himalayas now because it as opposed to the early days when everything was done in sort of expedition style siege style you know you fixed ropes and in multiple camps and and taking your time and you know it didn't take too much after that when alpine climbing you know in
places like uh the aspen area or the alps and then you translate that to the himalayas or the andes or or the the big mountains bhutan whatever um then to to utilize that same style where it is really unforgiving you are heading up something and it's not real clear how the heck you'd have to get off the thing if you didn't summit you know it was committed and without really a specific uh example that's what's been going on and it's been going on for quite some time uh and when you start to think about the big peaks you know the 14 peaks that are over 8 000 meters um and it doesn't they're just numbers because uh there's times you could be on something that's you know 7 000 meters i mean it doesn't have to be 8 000 that to make it you know sensational but the the style that is going on is
pretty you could you could say crazy but it's all a matter of perspective you know um yeah i i'd be hard-pressed to say someone else is doing something crazy and you know only after the fact you might say well they they screwed up or they had bad luck or whatever yeah you know there's all the one-liners that are out there you know yeah when you know like for instance i don't know this doesn't apply to climbing so much but mark twain one point saying it's the only thing one really good thing about getting old is that it just doesn't last that long
and so how if we have this um you know luck and luxury of actually getting to be older you know whatever that is well then maybe we've just been fortunate for a bunch of times you know
that uh my my buddy uh and neighbor nate scales who's been a mentor for me he is saying is better lucky than good yeah yeah i think for any of us to reach uh you know the age that we have given what we've done you've got to be lucky you're going to be lucky yeah yeah
yeah uh you just don't turn down the good luck because it's you know in one moment it's there and another moment it isn't you know this friend who did die guiding uh about oh it's probably about a month and a half ago now he was in canada he's an american guide but i won't mention names it's not fair to do that right now but he he stepped off the track to uh to take a pee and you know it's not necessarily something that's on the podcast or anything but it's just an example we're pretty benign you know and for whatever reasons you know they're on a glacier and they weren't roped up and it's the first thing that could be a critique is like why in the world weren't they roped up but that would be always the case when when things go south up that quickly so i think it's a good thing that we're able to do that well he stepped off the track and disappeared into a crevasse and and and died um and just like that and that's pretty much how a lot of accidents happen you know you you kind of let your guard down but you don't you don't only you're not even thinking that you are you know it's just yeah it's it's like things happen you know and it could be it could be a car accident
you get it besides you know the big c if someone's healthy and they're staying healthy into their older age a number of years you know what didn't get them that's
been an interesting thing i've been kind of thinking about a lot since my since my friend died in the avalanches the you know when you have there's two kinds of deaths there's there's the kinds where you know if your your parents are especially if they get a chronic disease or something and there's time you know my wife's dad died about 20 years ago from cancer and and there was but there was you know there was a there was a timeline that everybody was given and this is probably what's going to happen and it followed that timeline so everybody had time to be with him and talk to him and process it and go through a lot of those things but when you just suddenly step off the track and die in a crevasse and you're gone yeah it's just so sudden and there's no time for anyone to prepare yeah or to understand or to make sense of when you go through those all those emotions that you talked about the blame and the anger and the why and the why not and what if yeah which are all kind of useless but you do it because you you do yeah and yeah it's just it's uh it's a it's a remarkable thing to go through that i don't think we're very good at going through well
there's that middle ground if we could somehow control you know this this turn of events you know having the luxury of time to say goodbye but without an uh without an abundance of time to the point where you become uh just a burden to those that are closest to you um and so i think there's an important time to hopefully check out before you become really just a burden you know and um and i and yet the sudden death is obviously really hard on friends and family uh because there was no time to to say goodbye it just happens and especially when people are younger and they have smaller kids and this that it's it's kind of the worst case scenario i would just hope that when when i'm getting you know if i knew that i was going to live another 20 years it'd be
that'd be kind of cool but you just never know and i have to say that so far i've had all sorts of orthopedic injuries and this and that i've been beat up but overall i i guess i feel fairly healthy but you'll see how long that goes you know but you're right what's your friend's name that you just died terry o 'connor dr
terry everybody called him but yeah you probably saw it in the papers because it was a it was a big
big big big big big big big big big big big big big
you know it was an avalanche a that's you know it's kind of like a shark death fairly recently yeah it was just two two weeks ago yeah was
it a rough yeah and it right right up there and and those mountains right there uh yeah it
was over in the big loss just south of bora you know which is our highest peak in idaho and it was on on donaldson yeah which strangely enough it had a big slide to a couple people out not but they both survived uh just a few years back and so um and like i said he he taught avalanche rescue and safety and i mean snow science as knowledgeable as it gets you know that's that's those are the ones that are weird you know like you said your buddy the guides you know that it takes them out as well right when you're up you're up but it was uh you know late cold spring late bunch of snow you know so persistent slab problem that he was totally aware of uh down climbing on crampons and just you know trying to get to a safer spot for their descent they'd had lunch at the top hot day yeah and uh triggered something probably because he was on on his feet rather than skis yeah you punch through something yeah but um yeah i mean the write-up the assessment his his very good friend who our main forecaster went in the next day and just assessed the whole thing and did a fantastic job writing it up but like you said you know you're the mountains bite you bring up an interesting paradox that is is kind of interesting to think about you know on the one hand
it's it's horrible for the people around the person when there is no when there's no time when it's really sudden like that but you know talk to a hundred people who spend a lot their lives like we're talking about you know one that you're you're you're dealing with some risk but you're also doing what you are passionate about and love and so fortunate to be able to do 100 out of 100 would say i'd rather be the guy taking a pee and crawl into her and die in the crevasse than you know being being a burden or going through some horrible disease you know long cancer you know it's an interesting one isn't it you know for the for the surrounding friends and family it's nicer to have the time but for for the person for the victim i'd rather be a victim in the mountains than you know or a victim in the air than than the big c 100 i mean there'd just be no yeah i don't think there'd be any variance if you asked 100 people yeah yeah
it's an
interesting one
well and again it depends on what where someone feels most secure you know we we actually you know um feel very secure in the mountains you know or in the air um it's um it's what we do and it's uh you take that away and it'd be you know you're missing an important part of your life you know i don't fly anymore because i don't need to i'm trying to stay healthy in that sense i just had my left knee replaced not too long ago and um and but now my main source of adventure is more on skis or um you know i just really like to work out on a bike you know i'm i'm the body's finally at a point where i'm not trail running like i used to and so i'm somewhat limited but i'm fully participating in the things i can do i should do and it's very satisfying it's i'm okay with with all that i don't
know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know
actually miss paragliding and i don't miss being in my prime for for climbing uh because i've been there yeah you know i'm okay with all that uh how old are you now 52 50 52 oh my gosh totally in your prime yeah i'm just a young buck i remember the first
time i don't i don't feel like it every morning sometimes but you know i
remember the first time i climbed denali it was back in 76 so it was the bicentennial year and everybody and their grandmother was up done up on denali but we were on the south face and there was no one else around and there was one guy on our trip and he was 43 and of course in 76 i was 26 years old so i was totally in my prime and i would just never forget feeling like oh man i sure hope this old guy doesn't you know keep us from summiting or whatever because 43 just sounded so old and you know great trip but i just never forget you know now i look back in the age of 43 going man
wow yeah
right wrong with that nothing
wrong with that i i spent quite a bit of time ski racing young i was out in vale i was kind of your neck of the woods and uh you know there was quite a few of us that were you know a few that were on the u.s team and headed that way and you know as fit as fiddles it just couldn't get any stronger and our coach was stronger than all of us he was 43 yeah so you know there you go i mean especially when it came to endurance you know if you if you got into long running or anything that had any kind of time because ski racing is pretty short you know but any kind of real time he would just destroy us i remember that being so inspiring i mean you know at 20 he was just old really old god he's look at him he's gray
yeah yeah yeah well it's it's it's great to have that mutual background as a skier and
pilot and everything else because it's i don't know i look at you know i live down valley from aspen i live in basalt so it's down about 18 miles down valley from aspen and aspen's gotten to be so crazy busy and also i go to the town every now and then but it's it doesn't do much for me anymore unless i'm skiing you know we're surrounded by a pretty cool mountain range and so are you and it's like i i cannot you know it's great to go on vacations and do beach trips and whale watching and any of the things that are exciting to to do but i couldn't imagine living anywhere but in the mountains and we're most traveling going to mountain regions and you know just the mountain people one thing that i think we're all aware of is how
connected we are wherever we go it almost doesn't matter where it is and there's you know we might be attracted to a buddhist culture and lifestyle uh all that but you know when it comes right down to it the mountains have their own sort of uh spiritual benefits and you just have to open yourself up to it because it's you know even the dalai lama would say hey you know it's you know all religions are based on the same thing you know compassion and impermanence and all the uh things that are shared you know and i think the mountains help to bring that out yeah
dick this has been not not only wildly entertaining but quite therapeutic for me i i appreciate you and the life you've lived and i just can't thank you enough for sharing a tiny slice of it here on the show and with the audience thank you sir this was a real treat i appreciate it well
it's been equally fun from this side and i have to thank you for reaching out because you know i've never done a podcast before probably i'm not sure i will ever do another one but as the point is but it but it's it's nice to be able to express uh in this these are all kind of things that mean a lot to me as i've aged just to be able to project out a little bit some of the things that either i've learned or just feel like sharing in some format you know
you're helping me write my my remembrance you know we got a ceremony for my buddy here in a couple weeks and so you've given me some good fodder but thank you sir thank you for your time yeah yeah if
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