Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Those of you who are paying attention to the airwaves have heard about some of, but probably not all, of the carnage lately in beer. It has been an exceptionally rowdy season for carnage out there. There always is a ton, and it's, I think, mostly a numbers game, but also big terrain. You're in the Himalayas. Things get big quick, and many of you, I'm sure, heard the news about my guest today, Ben Lewis, Canadian pilot from the Yukon, who got sucked up in Cloud Suck and had a number of injuries, passed out, went above 7,400 meters. That's over 24,000 feet, and incredibly came down at an unbelievable descent rate, whether his glider was all iced up or in a rope or what, we don't really know, because he was unconscious, but landed in the trees and made it home.
This is his story. It is absolutely unbelievable. I've heard a lot of crazy and wild stories being around this game and this sport for so long, but this one might take the cake, so you're in for a treat, and it all ends pretty well. But before we get to it, I wanted to make some......offhand comments about what I think about is going on out in Beer. I'm not there. I have been there twice. I was there in 2009 and 2011, and there was a lot of carnage back then, and it's just become an incredibly popular place to go for people from around the world. It has amazing conditions nearly every day this time of year, and a lot of big flights go down there in the spring and in the fall every year, and so it's definitely on the map.
But......I think the approach for many people going there is wrong, and what I mean by that is I think there's this real sense of safety and security flying there, because there isn't a lot of wind. You learn there pretty quickly that you can dive into places that you never would in the Rockies or the Alps. There's not a lot of lee, typically, but it is huge terrain. It is, once you go back a little ways......although you'll hear in this story, you don't have to go back. It can happen on the front range, too. But, you know, you get into areas that require either impossible walkouts in a helicopter or very long walkouts, or if you're hurt, very slow and very challenging retrieves.
Apparently this year, in fact, there was...sounds like, unfortunately, there was a fatality just this morning over there, but the day of this accident when Ben goes nuclear and goes up......over 24,000 feet, I think there were eight other accidents that day. A whole bunch of reserves. There's been a ton of reserves every day. There's been a lot of mid-airs. And because I work so closely with Global Rescue, I'm often getting the call on, hey, can you help out with this? Or, you know, why did they not get a helicopter for us? Or why are they not helping out with the claim? We, as a community, need to be a lot more thoughtful about how we're......using rescue. You know, it's not...we shouldn't be using rescue or heli rescue for being stupid.
What I mean by that is, you know, you get hypoxic, you don't have the gear that you need, you land out really deep, and you've put yourself in a tough spot. That's not a place for a heli rescue. A heli rescue is for accidents. But too many of those are happening as well. And if we keep stacking up the accidents, then people like our......companies like Global Rescue are just going to exclude paragliding. And that's it. They're one of the last companies out there that provides coverage for extreme sports, hang gliding, paragliding, base jumping, that kind of thing. And we want to keep that coverage going. But it's not going to if, you know, they're getting calls constantly from paragliding.
They pay attention to the numbers, and it's all just the bottom line. That's how insurance companies work. We could help that a lot, but also just help our families and our friends and other pilots by going to places like Bir and putting a lot more margin into your calculations. So that's, you know, having emergency gear, that's having an in-reach and understanding how to use it. But in places like Bir in India, they don't allow satellite trackers. So A, you'd have to sneak it in to use it.
If you go down and have an accident, it's not like it is in most parts of the world where you can just call a helicopter and deal with the claim on the backside. Helicopters and Bir, and in many places in the world, aren't going to come get you unless you pay up front. That's quite hard to do when you're on the ground and you're hurt. And so these kind of things have to be factored in. Ben tells a story in the show about a pilot who was in a relatively easy place to get rescued, had a broken back, and laid there for three days. Before the helicopter came and got him because they couldn't get the helicopter paid. And it took them that long for the insurance company to pay the helicopter. This, in my mind, is not a shortcoming of these companies. That's just how it works. They have, you know, when you go down hard, you have to let the insurance company know in advance that what's happened and it's got to go through a whole chain of command.
And that often is way too long. And so we just have to get the helicopter coming and deal with that. And hopefully they cover it. But it doesn't always work out that way. And so, you know, I think going to a place like Bir, you have to go in knowing that there's going to be a whole lot of shortcomings. And if you go down, you've put yourself in a really serious situation. So, you know, maybe we got to start thinking as a community of, you know, flying less hot gliders, having a ton more margin, carrying a lot more stuff. And as you'll hear, it's a lot of work. Here in this one, flying at times where, you know, it's safer. You know, in this case, a lot of pilots were lulled into a false sense of security because of previous days.
Big, you know, big clouds and cumulonimbus just dissipated. It went away. And so that becomes your mental model for the future. And that's a terrible mental model. You know, we can't predict on Tuesday because of what happened on Monday. Even though it looks exactly the same, there's different energy and there's different, all kinds of things in the, in the, in our atmosphere that could change from day to day. And we've got to create mental models that are going to allow us to fly the next day. So my point here is that there's too much carnage going on here in Bir. If it keeps happening, we're going to not have any company cover us. And this is on our community.
I think it's really important that we do and, and our families and friends will thank us for it. Next thing I wanted to talk about, and this is actually related to this, although it wasn't planned to be, but flying in rain. I had a listener reach out a couple of weeks ago, sent an email who was flying in rain. Wasn't that hard. Wing went parachutal when he went to land and he's really, really banged up. And just wanted me to comment. And I think many of you heard the story about my flying in very light rain situation in the first day of the ex-Alps, when I was doing the journalism thing over there in the race last summer, flying out towards Waugh Grine and I was flying a brand new wing.
It literally had zero minutes on it until that day. And I understand that Ozone's put out information about this on their website, but especially when wings are new, the fabric. It allows raindrops to stay on the surface that it doesn't kind of soak into the fabric. And this makes it very easy when you just, you don't need a lot to lose the flow of the wing. It breaks the surface with the air and, and a wing can go parachutal in very, very light rain these days with the fabrics they're using, especially when they're new, when they're, when the porosity is reduced. So, something to just keep in mind, if you're flying in rain, obviously we all know we shouldn't be flying in rain, but if you're even in light rain, you need to immediately give yourself as much margin as possible and stay on bar.
Do not under any circumstances, go use big ears. Cause that just makes less surface area for the wing to, it's more easy for the wing to go parachutal. But if you can Google it, Chrigel does some really good videos on what to do when you're flying. And, and basically the trick there is to hammer your speed bar and you do not get off the speed bar until you're safe on the ground. So if you're coming in and you're 20 feet off the ground, in fact, one of the bad accidents in beer was exactly this, a pilot was maybe on speed bar, but, you know, coming in to land, came off the speed bar when the wing was pretty wet and just instantly went parachutal and pounded hard. So got to stay on the speed bar to the ground.
Ideally don't fly in rain. Period. But of course it does happen from time to time. But I know from personal experience, from my ex-alps experience last year, I had flown in much, much heavier rain than that, especially in that race and previous editions. And it really caught me by surprise. And I was quite low over trees and had to hit my speed bar twice to the first time to just get out of it. And then I was, you know, I moved away from the terrain and I was making a very slow little turn, tiny bit of break and did the same thing. And then I was, you know, I moved away from the terrain and I was making a very slow little turn, tiny bit of break and did the same thing again. So just be wary of that, especially with a new wing, that they go parachutal really easy. So if you're low, it can be bad. Let's get on to the show. This is an incredible story.
Sit back, relax. You will not believe it. Pretty wild. Story of Ben Lewis going really tall and things getting crazy out in beer just a week ago. Cheers.
Ben, welcome to the mayhem. I wish we were connecting because of some other incident, but I think most of the world knows about your cloud suck incident in, in beer, a cross country magazine put out a really good little rehash of it. And I actually read your comments on X contest because somebody over there emailed a couple of days after your incident and said, Hey, he's never seen so much carnage. Uh, there's been a ton of incidents and few of them I've actually been involved with, with a global rescue and helicopters and all that kind of thing. It sounds like beer is getting a lot of traffic this year and, and, uh, many things have gone down, but maybe yours had tops the cream of the exceptionally wow factor.
And so let's, uh, before we get into the cloud suck and going super tall and passing out and everything, I want to hear everybody. I want to hear all about that, but let's briefly just touch on your background, how long you've been flying, where do you live, how old are you, all that kind of stuff. Give us your quick flying resume.
Yeah. Hey, Gavin, thanks for having me on the show. Um, yeah, so I'm, I'm 45. I'm a family doctor up in the Yukon, which is Northwest Canada. Um, I've been flying a long time. I, I could took a one day course in New Zealand back in 2009, and then my buddy and I split a glider. Um, and we just kind of. Took off a mountain in the Yukon, you know, and made some stakes there and flew kind of rarely for the next decade, um, until sort of upgrading my gear and then kind of getting more serious about, uh, three years ago with some tours in Columbia and sort of more flying in Mexico, uh, still pretty low air time. I kind of was around, I think a hundred hours heading to beer. Um, yeah, I think that probably shows a little, um,
trip to beer was, uh, 2009 and I think that was the first, first place I ever did a hundred K I was somewhere maybe around that now, maybe it was 200 hours or something, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's big terrain for low hour pilots, but it, it seems to attract many of them. Did you find it intimidating or redigging it? Uh,
I mean, yeah, there's, like you said, there's tons of carnage. Like we're on the, uh, the WhatsApp, you know, search and rescue chat group. And every day there's, there's all sorts of carnage. I think there's a sadly. It's like earlier today, even, right? Like it's, uh, it's crazy. Everyone's tossing reserves and crashing and midair collisions, people getting lost in the back mountains. Um, so that part was intimidating and, you know, but the, the flying itself and yeah, I certainly had my, every day we were having our personal bests. Uh, you know, I went to beer with a few other buddies and, and it was great. You know, you just fly these long flights for the first time, break a hundred kilometers and then, you know, break one 70 and then, you know, go kind of further and further. And that was probably part of my problem was trying to go for a 200 kilometer flight and sort of pushing the boundaries of it.
The, the gentleman who emailed me about your incident as in, which I'd already heard about, but also these others, I think the day that you had yours, there were something like nine reserves or maybe nine accidents. I can't remember what it was, but what do you chalk up all the carnage to what what's, what's going on out there? Cause there always is. And I think it's a, it's a numbers thing. I mean, it used to be that the, you know, the sounds bad, but the, the Russian contingent was always a big part of it because you had these pilots coming out that literally had 10 hours that were flying CCC wings. You know, there was, there was this, uh, huge disconnect between experience and where people were, were flying.
And that was, that was part of it. Uh, especially with the Russians back in the day. I don't know if that's still. The case, but the, a lot of it's just, you know, you can be on beer. I mean, even back in, you know, when I was, I was there in 2009 and then 2011 and, you know, there'll be 250 people on launch in the Himalayas. So I think a lot of it's just numbers, you know, you can, you, you see the same kind of thing in Annecy, but the carnage has been extreme this year. And what do you chalk it up as? Is it just too many people like Ben Lewis, not a left, not, not enough hours or. Is it some, what is it?
Uh, yeah, I think the number is like the house thermals are crazy busy and there's definitely mid air collisions every few days for sure. Which, you know, unfortunately I think was the cause of the fatality earlier today. Um, but, uh, yeah, I haven't, I, I was lulled into a, like a false sense of security with all these like huge threatening looking clouds actually like being super benign and, you know, you can kind of skim underneath them and no real consequences for, for a couple of weeks, all it. And then. And then, you know, and people who just drove out of the, you know, the base, they just go back and forth and it was a, you know, I was like, oh my God, the wind's so strong. And then suddenly, you know, storm, a storm appeared basically our first real thunderstorm. And I just wasn't expecting it and I wasn't writing for it. So, I mean, that's why kind of caught me out there. Um, why are, are everyone else kind of crashing and throwing reserves? I think that's probably, yeah, I think a lot of just sort of inexperienced mountain flyers, but there's also experienced pilots going down.
And. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah, there's a lot of. Yeah. You know, advanced wings in the trees and. people hiking down or relaunching and yeah i'm not sure exactly i
wonder i wonder if it's i had this experience that people who listen to the show regularly have heard this i won't get into it too deeply but i had this experience in annecy when i was a very newbie pilot now 15 years ago or so where one day we went flying and it was mostly perfect there was this big cell growing over actually the north of the lake north side of the lake kind of towards geneva and it went so big that i was just amazed that there were people in the air you know so we my little group we landed and then this thing just dissipated and it went away and so it made us look kind of dumb and there were you know still hundreds of pilots in the air and at all levels there were you know really advanced pilots and there was a ton of people flying around on enas and tandem pilots and you know just to you know typical annecy day and so the next day it was picture the same it was exactly the same the same cell the same time of day the same amount of sun the same kind of energy in the sky and and so you know we stupidly went well that one went away yesterday it'll do the same and it didn't and it went nuclear and the gust front was vicious and people were raining down on you know into the trees and bouncing off roofs and there were a lot of accidents uh people landed in the lake that day you know it was just proper chaos and you know i again i was i was pretty new but it was it really opened my eyes to how much we can't really uh you know we really got to be careful when it comes to big stuff because it can just like you said it can dissipate or it can go massive it sounds like that's kind of what you're talking about right now it's just it's just it's just it's just it's just what you what caught you out yeah
definitely like my buddies and i were all talking about the big clouds we're all like oh they look pretty dark and scary and we're like yeah they do but everyone's still flying and tandems are still going and everyone seems fine real
lemming effect going on
there yeah and so we just got used to these huge cumulus clouds and like not really having a you know like a much cloud suck and just being fine to fly underneath them and yeah um is
there much uh you know when i when i was there i don't remember even ever looking at the weather you know it's this crazy place where you just look at the sky and you go but that might have been because it's 2009 2011 we've got way better models these days are you all paying a lot of attention to weather models and cape and things that would have potentially predicted that this day was different i
would just check windy actually and i was looking at windy for a few days and and i think it seems to be just kind of not very accurate at all for beer air it was predicting like a better day than the previous days and it was going to be worse the next few days and so i was thinking this was probably like the last good xc day um for a while and i should go for a you know a longer flight if i can um and it uh yeah i was basically predicting the same as it had been but but you know less sort of less cloud cover and you know less activity um and it was just entirely wrong so
you're you're from the yukon northwest uh yukon northwest territories and that i i don't not very familiar with that terrain i've flown quite a bit in alaska and i've been a bunch up in the coast range in bc and stuff around terrace but the you mentioned you've been going down to columbia lately and getting kind of more serious about xc since 2019 what's your mountain experience you know how much time have you spent in places like the alps or places like beer with just big terrain i
think beer is the biggest uh mountains biggest yeah mountain flying i've ever done for sure uh we do have mountains in in the yukon up here in northwest canada they're sort of isolated and you know you kind of fly from one mountain to the next but it's not like a huge mountain range and they certainly don't extend thousands of meters into the sky um yeah so i'm very limited you know in terms of kind of proper you know tall mountain flying okay
i wash your track uh and i like i said i think most people listening to the show have probably read the report in in cross country the the article that they put up if not your comments which had your comments from on your x contest which i appreciate very much that you put out there often when things like this happen you know pilots are embarrassed or ashamed or you know nervous of putting it out there in the public sphere and i think it's really valuable that people do and thank you for for doing it uh it sounded just unbelievably terrifying uh i think most people listening have probably spent a little bit of time in a white room one time or another and of course we know we shouldn't and we shouldn't fly in rain and we shouldn't get cloud sucked but these things do happen and it's it's terrifying being in a cloud and just not knowing up from down and left and right and but you are in something just way more violent than i think
most people thankfully ever experienced but take us through that day you look you were flying you flew from beer look like you made it out uh dharmasala i i didn't i didn't zoom in i don't know if you went past dharmasala or or how far out but yeah what just rerun that day a little bit yeah
sure um yeah and it was certainly embarrassing to post it like i'm not proud of obviously making these rookie mistakes and ending up almost dying you know that's uh but i felt it was important to do and basically there was certainly a lot of people who were doing it and i think it was a story there so um yeah so the the weather predicted it a reasonable cross country day and so i i took off fairly early you know and the house thermal was just clogged with gliders it's super busy um so i basically exited as soon as i could and then you know scrounged for lift heading west towards dharmasala and i was kind of hoping i'd already flown like a 170 and was kind of hoping to break 200 kilometers i only had a few days left in beer and the best way to do that was to pass dharmasala so i i'm not sure how far past that i flew like i don't know 15 18 kilometers something like that which was uh i was kind of late in the day as well because i didn't get you know a ton of height initially if you you know if you get lots of height in the in the house thermal you can basically glide a third of the way there and that didn't happen um it was kind of a it was a hard hard to get lift fighting day um initially anyway and
uh yeah so i so i flew quite a bit past
and uh and the cloud uh cover was forming so you know the cloud base was dropping and so i made my way back you know to familiar territory fine i was keeping free of clouds i was able to sort of skim along the bottoms yeah and then i was back in familiar territory i had been you know in that location of several times so i had these gps track logs i could follow you know i was getting kind of harder and harder to stay down out of clouds like you know full speed bar was working initially and then full speed bar and big ears and then i was able to get to the top of the cloud and i was able to then i was in a cloud and i just sort of you
flying i
was flying alpina 4 and
and could you did you have a pretty good sky are the was this kind of embedded qnims or uh you know could you do you have a pretty good view of how how vertical things were getting no
not at all it was it was basically uh yeah this this overcast layered at like probably 8 000 initially and then it was dropping to you know 75 7200 feet okay and so i was yeah i had very poor visibility into the distance even if i was free of clouds i couldn't really see anything you know building in the further east of me
okay are you all on are you on radios how are you communicating with your your buddies yeah
i was on on solo that day like my buddies were kind of hanging around um the launch area i think one had sort of entered west a bit and actually was caught in the storm as well he got kind of rained on and had a had a ditch out and yeah we were on radios but uh i was i was pretty far out and i probably need a better radio because i really had no communication with with my buddies at all so at
this point there's no there and you all aren't sharing a say a frequency with most people flying at beer you were just on your own freak yeah
i mean i have um i have a dual band radio and i had the the emergency frequency on the on the second band but uh oh
so was anybody on that going hey it's it's getting really big or were there any warnings uh via text or otherwise
um i would hear bursts of language it often wasn't in english though so i i really wasn't sure what was going on okay um yeah and there was kind of nothing for my friends i wasn't trying to reach them i was uh i mean for a while i thought things were fine and i was you know even when i kind of got sucked up into cloud and then speed bar and big ears wasn't really working i was still able to follow my gps track and even though i was still climbing i kind of thought things were going to be okay i thought i was going to fly through the area of lift i thought i was going to come out on the other side of the sky i was going to fly through the area of lift i was going to cloud um and i just kind of kept waiting for that to happen uh and i was sort of leery of of uh kind of flying off into the valley because i didn't really i hadn't been there you know that far south before i didn't really know that area even though it you know replaying it in my head absolutely i should have just flown south you know just taking
a right turn and flown south
absolutely yeah the first sign of like you know this just kind of unrelenting lift and i just kind of expected to fly through it i'm not uh yeah no it's for sure in retrospect and then it uh
and what's your what's your vario doing early stages are you in a three up at five up i mean is it just zinging or was it oh okay this is probably going to be manageable yeah
i know early it was kind of a gradual sort of lulled me into you know it was sort of like plus one plus two this is with full speed bar and you know big ears at times still going up um but i thought uh yeah it was didn't seem too alarming at first um then a couple minutes into cloud flying and then i was like oh my god i'm going to fly through the area of lift and i'm following my gps track i basically can't get down i thought about you know flying back the way i came but it didn't make a lot of sense to me at the time because i just flew through this area of lift and so why would i you know turn around and fly back through that area of lift i yeah i mean at that point i should have i certainly should have headed south much much earlier but um yeah so anyway at
this point are you doing anything stronger evasively are you spiraling or you're still just uh basically trying to fly straight it's hard to fly straight i was just
trying to fly straight to get out of the the area of lift was what i was thinking and then yeah then it started to rain on me which you know turned to to sleet and hail quickly and then i so i tried to head south then and i at that point it was really it was i couldn't even maintain big ears it was just too strong and then i couldn't even maintain speed bar just got very very rough and my gps cut out and i had a magnetic compass that was just spinning back and forth and i really tried to maintain a south heading but at that point the variable started screaming and i just lost control of the glider and it's just yeah incredibly strong and violent and just up up up um yeah and it's uh i mean it it was just amazingly chaotic in the cloud it was dark and noisy um yeah there was there's thunderclaps and uh i i think i looped the glider at one point and just it was you know my lines were twisted on and off i untwisted but like it was just it was just crazy i was i was amazed that the glider was still flying it was just so violent
i was kind of i remember when i i looped i was sort of hoping i was going to get gift wraps that i could like fall out of the cloud and then throw my reserve but uh i was thinking about all sorts of options i'm like you know do i toss my reserve that's not going to help it's just going to tear my harness apart my hands were quite frozen at this point i was already up you know several thousand feet and um and i was thinking of using my hook knife to cut my lines but you know you'd be cutting one line at a time or something it would be you know disastrous for a period of time i wasn't really sure what to do i mean it was it was too late i realized like i had already made all the poor decisions to get to the situation and and yeah it was just uh it was just so violent and um yeah i was yeah i just just felt sad and just had regrets and yeah
was it what was there was there it sounded like you know when you got to this point of just wow i'm gonna die uh and kind of resign to it was that on the back side of just pure panic for a long time i mean you think your brain was just uh i when i've been in cloud and that not that kind of situation but i've been in cloud there's this there's this period of holy shit i can't do anything i i and it's it it's very scary yeah
i surprisingly there wasn't a lot of panic i just it was kind of a gradual transition to this like state of helplessness and i i just realized there was absolutely nothing i could do i mean honestly it didn't matter if i was had my hands on the brakes or not i had no control of my glider um there was really nothing i could do and so i just uh and yeah for some reason i'm sure i was in some sort of spiral because just the g-force is kind of like you know with my head out right and all the blood rushing to my head and it was just so hard to sit forward and i realized now i should have tried harder to like sit forward in my harness that would have spared me a lot of the kind of the negative g injuries that i received like the retinal hemorrhages and stuff and i probably wouldn't have blacked out too so i would have been able to throw my reserve you know after coming out the top but
pause here
for a second for those who haven't read what what are the what injuries are you talking about because i read about the retinal thing but you were also pretty beat up was that from the flying or is that from the landing in the trees
yeah that's a good question i i think it was the flying in the harness like i've got a couple broken ribs on the right side and i'm pretty sure that was just the harness i i broke my neck pretty good i had unstable fractures of c4 c5 which i actually found out several days later and that could have been really just from the flying honestly like it was a probably a
violent hyper
extension injury and yeah um god yeah i was just yeah i mean i think my friend had like looking at my track log and commented at one point it was 23 meters per second up and i just yeah just felt impossibly powerful to do anything about um yeah i think that's a good what
speed is that that's over 60k an hour and it went what are you what are you going up at there 70k an hour holy cow that's incredible the only time i've ever heard of anything even close to that was uh the Superfinal down in columbia Chrigel and yasin and a bunch of people in the league gaggle went into a fire on purpose it had been clouded out shaded out for a long time and you know from flying columbia they start you know they burn those fields the sugarcane fields and you know the pyrocumulus and this thing was a couple thousand feet over cloud base it was i mean this thing was was a ripping fire it wasn't one of these gentle fires it was booming and uh Chrigel went into this thing a couple thousand feet off the ground and you know had to full stall or macro stall three times just to gain control of the glider but he was going up at 20 meters a second this is the only time i've ever heard somebody you know yasin ended up having to throw his reserve because he got so many twists in his glider it was a rope
uh you know that's a really violent climb 23 meters i've never heard of that that's gross
impressive he could maintain control you know at 20 meters a second that's awesome people that saw it
my friend and neighbor matt bieschner was right behind him planning on doing the same thing and he saw him go in there and explode three times and went yep no i'm not going in here i mean it was one of these just black thermals you know that with stuff on fire and it was ludicrously dangerous maneuver but uh but yeah but apparently he had to stall three times just to hold on to the thing yeah
and i probably should have tried something like you know full stalls and stuff i just uh yeah well
i mean interesting i so i've asked about this several years ago i was contemplating and what what happens if you get sucked up in a cloud and what about just full stalling out of it and turns out it's not nearly fast enough of a descent to do anything so it's just basically putting your wing in a more unstable state than you already were so in other words it wouldn't do very much you know that the initial stall you'd maybe fall a little bit and then you're just you're still just a hoover you're still just going to go up so that's what people who know more than i do have said anyway but you know you're not coming down that fast in a full stall you know in a deep stall configuration because there's so much fabric still over your head yeah
and that's what it felt like it felt like there was nothing i could do to stop the the ascent it was just just up up up for sure um yeah did
you have a drogue by any chance no no i don't yeah not that that your hands were frozen not that that would have done much either but you said you were you felt like you were in a and i haven't looked that closely at your track log but you said you you felt like you were in a really strong spiral for a bit did you have was your wing open did you have a big cravat or it was a big cravat or did you have a big cravat was that just uh or was that something you were trying to do no
it wasn't purposeful i think my lines were probably mostly twisted at that point anyway and no the wing seemed like it was mostly open like it was collapsing all the time and then reopening and jumping around everywhere but uh just uh to be able to not have me sit up in my harness it was just a lot of negative g's like and it must have come from a spiral of some kind okay um yeah god
you know what would be fascinating is take a look at your lines you know it'd be fascinating to measure your wings and you know what would be fascinating is take a look at your lines and it would be now at this stage and see how much it's stretched and i mean because to get soaked and then all those g forces it'd be more interesting to look at those numbers yeah
i mean i paid somebody to retrieve the wing from the forest i didn't want to litter obviously in the jungle and so um and then i chatted with a local guide and he thought it was actually repairable like the the leading edge was pretty trashed actually there's lots of you know rips and tears all along the underside of the leading edge but uh no he said i should bring it to the local kind of fixer guru and uh um yeah so my i left with my friend in beer and he brought it to him and he's he's actually i think fixing it up right now and so he's gonna really measure all the lines and we'll we'll see what comes of it
wow interesting okay well back to the back to the episode so you're getting slaughtered uh and then i understand at one point you pass out
yeah i remember seeing 22 000 feet on my vario and then it like kind of iced over and it didn't see anything else and i had to actually take my goggles off i had to slip them down because i they were just ice i couldn't see a thing not that it actually mattered it didn't matter to see i should have left my goggles on it would have saved me some some injury there um yeah and so it was just up up up and then basically i just the injury
to your eyes was from the cold uh
yeah i had a corneal injury on on my left eye which is either from frostbite or maybe from hail like there was lots of like ice flying around in the storm and so it could have been either of those things i mean it could have been frostbite or maybe from hail and so it could be foliage on the way down too i suppose um yeah but uh that that was pretty minor and i thought that was the reason for my loss of vision in that eye but it was actually like bleeding in the back of the eye oh well we can get to the injuries i guess um yeah yeah and so i just yeah i just i basically just hung there and i just uh yeah thought of my family and it was just so sad that i was leaving them and yeah it's gonna be i have two small kids and you know just yeah i just uh one and three oh
really young yeah how much does your your background in medicine how much was that in your head were you thinking things that probably people that aren't doctors weren't thinking aren't thinking that kind of situation probably
when i came to i kind of you know was trying to figure out why i couldn't see and i was trying to assess you know why i was in so much pain and what was broken what wasn't um but i in the cloud i i wasn't really thinking about anything you know i was just uh yeah yeah it was just i remember reaching up to like turn on my gopro to like record the final moments um and i actually had been recording the whole time so i heard it like turn off and so i think i tried to turn it back on but my fingers were entirely numb i didn't actually hear the the beeps that it came on again but it was so noisy in the storm it yeah so it'd be really interesting to see that footage
smashed on on the way down and then probably had water damage from you know the storm and also the river i had to kind of climb through to get out and uh and so the the cards damaged i'm kind of mailing it off in the next couple days here to try and get some professional
to fix how did it get smashed the camera was that on the walk out or when you landed in the trees i
think the trees yeah like i got very lucky you know it's two inches above my face and uh it was smashed off my helmet the screen was shattered and the uh like a little side latch was broken open and um and my my face was fine my helmet was otherwise fine okay do
you do you know the the damage done in air versus ground do you know what because i as i understand it you were out until you woke up in the trees right you you passed out at somewhere 22 000 and then you didn't wake up until you were on the ground yeah that's right
so i saw 22 000 and then i passed out a little while later so i probably passed out right at the climb i only went to 24 300 or something yeah and so i was i was basically just out there and i don't think it was from hypoxia i think it was just from these negative g's right all the blood rushing to your brain yeah and i was out i was out on the whole descent and looking at the track log it was basically just fell out of the sky i was straight down at 15 18 meters per second right to the trees i don't know why i don't
what what what's your what are your thoughts there were you were you in the down flush from the like a microburst type of thing that's or your wing was just a rope yeah
i'm sure it was massive sink uh the wing was soaking wet and maybe full of ice like a you know i i have no idea it could have been collapsed or partially collapsed it could have been in a spiral i guess um
that's probably a good thing you were
unconscious
yeah i mean i would have thrown my reserve and that
would have been better yeah
but then i would have like landed further out and and even if i landed probably 500 meters out i wouldn't have been able to make it to the hill to call for help like it i was just so lucky the way it all worked out and i hit these trees going at 18 meters per second and had a relatively i think you know soft landing all things considered and i mean did you hit the ground break my neck i'm not sure i was uh about a meter off the ground when i came to good god just sitting there in my harness in this hailstorm and uh yeah so i had this like access to my quick pack bag so i just covered myself and
so i just kind of blew on my hands for like half an hour trying to warm them up under my little tarp okay
what what were the go through the list of injuries sure
yeah so um when i came to like um i was yeah just shocked i was alive still i was kind of it took me a little while to come to um my left eye was was essentially blind i couldn't see a thing couldn't see my hand in front of my face i thought that was from a corneal injury but it the corneal injury actually healed up and i was like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die i'm gonna die over a few days and i still couldn't see very well so it was actually just from a vitreous hemorrhage so blood in the in the back chamber of the eye and then my right eye um i couldn't see this large chunk this well-defined you know large blob and in the central vision so that's a retinal hemorrhage but otherwise i could see around the outside and that was clear still so i was lucky to have that kind of part of my vision clear that probably saved me
um i had bitten into my tongue really deep and that actually ended up being a really kind of annoying injury uh so like i think i use my tongue as a mouth guard like i basically bit right through i think i chipped my teeth in my tongue um yeah and uh what else is going on yeah so i uh um i separated my left my um my corneal clavicular joint my ac joint uh i definitely have a couple broken ribs on the right side i ended up with a yeah an unstable c4 c5 neck fracture um i didn't know that at the time i didn't know that at the time i didn't know that at the time i didn't know that at the time i thought my spine was was relatively good and i was just kind of all muscular you know pain that i was experiencing yeah what else i think that's uh and my hands just frozen and just not useful at all and then they actually ended up being kind of they're still burning and painful and numb even now two weeks later right so well
i bet you won't get some of that back for months yeah
it'll be a while i think but how many every day is a little better hopefully and yeah my vision's almost frostbite no no frostbite it was a moist freezing injury so not a not a dry freezing so so and no frostbite on your face nope nothing there maybe my my left cornea might have had frostbite damage but i had some antibiotic drops and i just used kind of to recover like you know and within three days the corneal injury whatever it was was kind of resolved any
of these injuries i guess especially to your eye long-term consequence i mean the fractures in your neck will be fine right yeah
yeah i just uh hard collar for for a couple of months and that should be hopefully totally fine the um yeah the retina i went and saw an ophthalmologist in vancouver you know a few days ago and i actually i'm gonna see a an optometrist tomorrow just for a follow-up uh when i saw the ophthalmologist my my right eye was too full of blood for them to see the retina uh it's kind of thinned out a little bit now so hopefully you'll get some pictures at the back but i yeah i have all these retinal hemorrhages on the left side and i guess there's a risk of like the retina tearing and the retina doesn't heal very well
but uh i think i mean my left eye seems great now so i'm kind of hopeful that there's no permanent eye damage at all and the right eye is still clearing it's kind of interesting so that right i had that central blob of vision loss so that retinal hemorrhage which is like a blood blister on your retina and i'm really lucky that didn't burst and create a vitreous hemorrhage like leak into the back chamber of the eye otherwise i would have been blind on on waking up there but a few days later like when i was feeling a little better like i think on day four um i was uh just kind of repacking my reserve actually and and i just saw this little just like well-defined blob just kind of spring a little leak so this tiny little wisp of blood just kind of started coming from it and i just watched it like drain itself you know into the back chamber of my eye over the next like a couple hours and i went i was meeting a friend for a mango shake at this our local lz you know cafe and and just by the second mango shake i was i was blown
away and i was like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die and i was like oh my god i'm gonna die and i was like oh my god i'm gonna die so
it went from being that my good eye except for this like central chunk of of like this red well-defined blob to totally blind in that eye like within an hour or two
yeah spooky man the spooky doesn't stop when you even when you're in the thundercloud as you think it wouldn't get any scarier than that but yeah
but luckily my left eye had sort of um the blood had been resorbed slowly and so my left eye was at least uh somewhat usable by the time you know this this happened and so i was wasn't entirely blind at that point but my my vision definitely took a nosedive on on day four there appealing i
wonder if you would have come to still in flight if the sink wasn't so dramatic i mean it was was that was that like the g's that put you out or just lack of oxygen i think it was g like i don't
know if i'm not a pro on you know high altitude medicine or whatever but i think it was most likely the g's it didn't seem you know especially if you're just sitting there in a like 24 000 feet doesn't seem overly high to i was only up there fairly briefly right um right
yeah i
would i would think it would be the
g's were you flying with those was
i flying with what sorry
oxygen oh
no i've never never flown with oxygen yeah
okay uh was this where had you gone over the back much on this trip or you just flying the front range uh
just the front range yeah we we were the three of us you know that came to be here together we're all kind of hesitant to fly i didn't have the proper kind of gps equipment and like you know i i had a spot device or in reach i didn't have that all set up and so i was i was leery to go anywhere where i couldn't uh you know self-extract okay so you didn't have an in-reach no no i didn't definitely would next time yeah the problem is they kept stealing the in-reaches like the indian you know or the airlines or whoever kept like you know everyone's was posting that their their varios and satellite devices were at uh yeah
customs or well i think the the main message that needs to get out to people going there that you know it it's such an incredible place to fly and it's it's so kind of accessible that i think people lose track of the fact that you really are in a self-rescue situation there you know you can't call you know helicopters want to be in advance yeah you know things like insurance take time uh you know i i think that people are not flying there with nearly enough margin you know you have to take it and that's that's easy to do when you're on launch with 300 people it just there's there's a feeling of safety there that really doesn't exist it you know it's it's it's a place that rescue is tough it's time consuming uh it relies on the community
more than the you know search and rescue or the helicopters i mean they have them there but every time i've been involved there remotely you know that none of this happened when i was there thankfully but when i've been involved in rescues there remotely because i'm the one that gets the call when people have global rescue and this kind of thing and it's just you know it's it's not straightforward i mean you're not in the alps yeah
just a couple weeks ago somebody waited for three days for a helicopter that was a broken back and they were just in a super accessible uh you know the golf course it's like clearing a couple of ridges over from launch and the helicopter just i guess had to work things out with the insurance company and it took them you know over 48 hours to figure this out yeah
and i think this just uh you know and then there's the inreach thing uh that they don't want you using them and satellite trackers and that kind of i mean i think i think you just you have to pile all this on before you step off the hill and really understand and i'm not telling you i'm just saying and general for the general knowledge is i i think i think it seems like the approach is too lax in beer i mean it's it's it's big stuff and and again like that false sense of security of flying that front range uh you know you're you're proof positive that it's still big still the himalayas
yeah i would definitely go back with the proper you know satellite equipment like i i didn't really know enough about it to be honest or anything honestly like this this whole mesh tack mesh tastic devices there's all sorts of sort of newer messaging options and i have very limited knowledge and all that stuff but i would definitely gear up before i went back to fly there for sure you
said you have a one and a three-year-old what's the future can you predict how do you think you're going to feel in the air uh how's mama feel about ben going flying
um yeah i mean we had some heated discussions a week or so ago but uh i mean she'll be okay i still want to fly i'm not scared off flying um yeah i'll certainly you know i've definitely learned a hard lesson and i'll definitely be far more cautious around clouds and even just considering storms and cloud suck i wasn't yeah for some reason i wasn't even thinking that might even happen on my way back from darmsall like i don't yeah just an experience so yeah definitely definitely learned a few things for sure but uh no i plan to i'll probably go back to beer and you know do some more stuff and i'll be back in a few weeks i'll be back in a few weeks some more flying and i mean it's kind of a lovely place the town's lovely it's a nice place to you know have dinner and hang out and flying's you know incredible if you can if you can stay safe
i understand you know so you you land in the tree you're a meter off the ground you can't see you're totally frozen i take us from there because i understand there was there was quite a bit of luck involved with that whole side of things too yeah
even just where i landed like i was within you know accessible um range basically of like getting up to a hill where i could contact friends like i wasn't sort of way deep in the jungle um i again just being a meter above the ground i was able to get out of my harness i mean definitely took some some effort and some time with you know frozen fingers and just pain everywhere yeah and then just i guess i packed stuff up and i was uh i wasn't really i think i kind of made a poor decision then as well i should have stayed high and then tried to kind of stay on the high terrain and then i was able to get out of my harness and then loop around to where i was going to go but i i followed this like cascading river you know jungle river valley down thinking i would come across a bridge or houses or a road and just didn't seem like it was happening and it was like one little waterfall after the next and i obviously could barely see so i was just sliding down these big boulders into streams and yeah i was just soaking wet and um it was sketchy is it
dark now is it nighttime no
no i was it was like i wouldn't be able to see anything the dark and so there was just like this pressure for me to get somewhere before dark because i would just be totally useless and i i kind of figured i would i might freeze to death like my i had a thermometer and it's saying five or six degrees in the hailstorm like in the jungle so it wasn't warm and i was uh yeah but uh you
left your wing but you took your harness what what do you got with you yeah
yeah i put everything in my bag i took my harness um that's pretty much it luckily my iphone survived this whole thing because that made it show me where i was and where i needed to go and so that was a you know there's a lot of things that fell into place for me to be able to get out i didn't have any limb fractures you know i i think a broken foot would have would erect me for sure um yeah so i slid or you know crawled my way down this this this river valley and then i finally found a an access point where i could kind of climb up the ravine side and it took a lot of effort and people
know you're in there at this point
no no they hadn't heard from me so they're they're getting too worried because my friend was actually caught in the storm and he got rained on had to go land and two other gliders that were with them through the reserves because they went parachutal so there was there was definitely a carnage going on and they they hadn't heard from me all day and so they were definitely worried something had happened um and so then i i yeah i managed to get up onto this bluff and and uh had cell reception and then just texted them i just said hey guys i'm in trouble yeah and then yeah their first text back was like where are you we'll come get you
yeah and you're kind of between it looked like you were kind of between dharmasala and beer right you're in that front range yeah
yeah i kind of flew back maybe a third of the way i think i was down below hobbiton the ridge hobbiton um yeah and uh i wasn't too far from civilization like a so i sat there i put my quick you know pack tarp over me again just sitting there in the dark it got dark now and then uh i was like oh my god i'm in trouble i'm in trouble i'm in trouble i'm in trouble i just couldn't walk anywhere i couldn't see well enough um and i i got my headlamp out i have a you know i carry a headlamp just for these situations and the battery was dead so i don't know if it turned on at some point but with that basically i was planning to walk in the dark but i just i couldn't do that with a headlamp so so i just sat there and then there's you know somebody had organized a local family to come find me and then two guys came with flashlights and basically held my hand and walked me back down to their house which you know took about 20 minutes and then they yeah just uh the mother of the family sat me down and rubbed hot water and oil on my arms and legs and just tried to warm them up and it was just yeah it was so lovely i had all these like spines and splinters from all these plants and she's like plucked them all out of my own hands and arms and yeah it was it was great at
this point you communicated with family with your with home did they know what was going on
i sent linds yeah my wife lindsey a text i i didn't elaborate i was just like oh my god i'm in trouble i'm in trouble i'm in trouble i'm in trouble like i i yeah i just said i think i i'm down i landed far out i'm you know waiting for a ride back i didn't want to kind of get into a conversation at that point and with the time change you know it was like probably six in the morning for her and stuff and she was in halifax at a conference yeah so i downplayed it for a day or two
have you ever been this close to sayonara before um
i mean this was yeah i i probably the closest i mean i think once in belize i was uh hiking up climbed up a waterfall and there was this like top pool and it was like this i don't know probably 50 60 foot waterfall onto rocks and there's just just really slippery rock bowl and i remember kind of just sort of getting close to it and i slipped i just like slid into this like top pool that was like pouring over this edge and i just like got dragged towards this this you know certain death basically and i remember just barely arresting myself and then like yeah so it's like i don't know i don't know slimy slippery rock and just like you know scraping my way back to back to safety there and yeah so i mean that was obviously very close as well but no it's probably tops
quicker and not so prolonged i mean this was a long period of i mean i'm sure in real time it wasn't that long but still you had you had some time to think about this one yeah
i mean it just feels like a bad dream to me now i just the effort and agony that like it took me a couple hours to get from my my harness to to where i you know i'm like i'm like i'm like i'm like i'm like i'm like i'm like i'm like i'm you know could contact friends and that was just it was just nothing but pain and just a lot of effort i had to keep telling myself you know i'm not going to survive that storm and then sort of die in the jungle that's just not an option i just gotta keep going
right right yeah i'm not giving up now yeah what was that feeling of resignation like do you remember it very clearly um i
do yeah like up in the cloud i um yeah like like i said there wasn't panic it was just this yeah resignation exactly i just felt like i'd made some very very poor choices and uh i just really let my family down and yeah i just felt very bad that everyone's gonna have to go through all this you know sorrow and heartache and it's all my fault and all for all for nothing yeah
i don't know that this is a very good question because i i think the i i think that we can all envision you know the where things went wrong and how you would do things differently but were there any you know anything you're writing down at this stage or contemplating that wow that what would you do differently that wasn't obvious i guess maybe that's the question uh
yeah good question let me just flying flying into the valley earlier like at the first sign of you know kind of somewhat unreasonable cloud suck you know just just get out of it be much more aggressive at trying to stay below the clouds for sure i just kind of let my gps track i felt fairly safe kind of flying along in the same direction and slowly going up and just not
recognizing the potential that's right
yeah i just didn't know and i was kind of yeah i was leery to fly off into the valley because i just i didn't know that area as well and i for some reason felt safe near my old gps tracks yeah it was silly for sure um
but yeah definitely turning turning away from you know the the or the mountains earlier just like landing out you know finding a spot to go to and then i just kind of let it go and then i just kind of let it land if it's clearly unsafe weather conditions or trying to fly around the storm that would have been yeah definitely the one change you would have made has
there been any interesting you know social media can be a vicious place these days has there been any you know i just found you yesterday on on facebook because i wasn't you know we hadn't connected before i understand you haven't you know you weren't a listener of the podcast so this was a name that popped up that i wasn't familiar with so i had to kind of hunt you down but there so i haven't seen any of that stuff because i don't pay any attention to any of it but has there been any weird blowback or i don't know god dude that was so stupid or everybody just thankful that you shared it
yeah it's actually been remarkably supportive everyone's just sort of you know get well soon and thanks for sharing and i mean there's i i think there was the odd comment on facebook oh that's what you get for flying in clouds and that's true you know no defense against that
i got on that one i guess yeah and
uh yeah no i i honestly have spent a lot of time on that one i guess yeah and uh yeah no i i honestly have generally positive experience i i mean i haven't been searching on social media really it's just that x contest and people's comments and yeah it was kind of it was sort of nice to read it took me a few days to post this thing and then a few days to discover private messages and you know and and then to reply to some people and stuff but uh yeah no i actually felt quite good just to get some support from random strangers and yeah overall it's sort of a positive thing i'm
still curious that it's it's it's pretty obvious that it's a positive thing i think it's a positive thing uh that you'll you'll keep flying was there ever any self-doubt about that obviously you know probably your wife and uh you know kids are probably too young there's rad years they're psyched you're back i probably don't really piece it together that much but um yeah talk more about just the the desire to keep going after something like this
yeah i think it sort of depended on my injuries if i had lost i was kind of worried about my left eye i mean after my corneal injury had healed up i still had this like poor vision so i was messaging with an ophthalmology friend of mine you know uh and i was worried i was going to have some permanent vision loss you know what was going on i wasn't quite sure and so that would have wrecked my flying obviously you can't really fly with poor vision so um yeah and uh i was i mean other than that i knew i was going to fly again like that pair lighting has been a really fun thing i've really enjoyed it the last few years and i definitely would want to continue that obviously it could uh yeah push a little less and just take it easy maybe maybe just enjoy you know floating around a little more and stop trying to go for personal vests and
yeah just good luck yeah that's a hard one uh i'm curious about you know you flew 2009 to 2019 about a decade and it doesn't sound you know you were kind of doing a couple flights a year sounds like you didn't really grab you and then suddenly it does what was the what was the switch there uh
yeah good question so i mean i bought this old buzz one like we split it with a friend and i bought this glider and harness and reserve and we basically took turns flying initially um yeah i think i just wasn't uh there's other stuff going on at that time in my life i was super busy um you know medical stuff residency and and uh i just uh i don't think i was in the right spot just to get enough air time and just to certainly do it safely um yeah and so so upgrading my wing and gear and getting a proper harness and and all that and then you know planning some trips to mexico and colombia and kind of getting some some real air time like some longer flights and not just sled runs and some proper thermaling and buying a vario helped too i didn't have a vario until i don't know 2021 or something it's uh
yeah and
so yeah um yeah it's basically just the surface you know up until then it certainly wasn't safe or proper i ended up doing some courses did some courses in nepal new zealand and uh yeah that was certainly very helpful how
would you classify your approach to flying before this incident there uh what i mean by that is you know do you think the outside world looking in would classify your approach as risky as normal as safe as you know if they could put a word on it what would it be uh
well i was contacted by a friend who i flew with in colombia quite a bit and he was just you know wishing me to get better sooner and he's like oh i you know thought you were pretty conservative pilot and uh so you know i'm sure this was out of your control but uh i think my friends in beer i'm kind of i was definitely more aggressive than them in terms of trying to push push boundaries and distances and i'm yeah i think for that yeah yeah yeah but uh i mean some i have a you know super good pilot who's far more conservative he's the guy who researched beer and you know he just researches paragliding everything and he's very very knowledgeable and uh he's very very conservative and and he says himself he's like ben somewhere between me and you is the perfect paraglider it's true i think i'm yeah
well said you do i mean yeah you you want you want some push or you never get get very good but you know i think when you're out there long enough you see enough things like this and like you said hopefully hopefully make mistakes this wasn't totally cheap but it was coming well it's
relatively cheap yeah even like you know i have this numbness and burning in my hand still but it's it's i mean it's nothing i'm just so lucky and i mean i have a broken neck but it's honestly it's not a big deal
you're a paraglider everybody has one of those yeah ben uh yeah i know it's hard to probably revisit the trauma and i'm sure you've done it dozens and dozens and dozens of times but thanks for sharing your story it's a great one wow i kind of have uh i'm glad you're all right bud yeah
well thanks a lot for having me it's been nice chatting with you yeah yeah thank you if
you find the cloud based mayhem valuable you can support it in a lot of different ways you can give us a rating on itunes or stitcher or however you get your podcast that goes a long ways and helps spread the word you can blog about it on your own website or share it on social media you can talk about it on the way out to launch with your pilot friends i know a lot of interesting conversations have happened that way and of course you can support us financially this show does take a lot of time and a lot of time and a lot of time and a lot of editing a lot of storage and music and all kinds of behind the scenes cost so if you can support us financially all we've ever asked for is a buck a show and you can do that through a one-time donation through paypal or you can set up a subscription service that charges you for each show that comes out we put a new show out every two weeks so for example if you did a buck a show and every two weeks it'd be about 25 a year so way cheaper than a magazine subscription
and it makes all of this possible i do not want to fund this show with advertising or sponsors we get asked about that pretty frequently but i for a whole bunch of different reasons which i've said many times on the show i don't want to do that i don't like having that stuff at the front of the show and i also want you to know that these are authentic conversations with real people and these are just our opinions but our opinions are not being skewed by sponsors or advertising dollars i think that's a pretty toxic business model so i hope you dig that um you can support us if you go to cloudbase mayhem.com you can find the places to support you can do it through patreon.com forward slash cloudbase mayhem if you want a recurring subscription you can also do that directly through the website we've tried to make it really easy and that will give you access to all the bonus material little video casts that we do and extra little uh nuggets that we find in conversations that don't make it into the main show but we feel like you should hear we don't put any of that behind a paywall if you can't afford to support us then just let me know and i'll set you up with an account of course that'll be lifetime and hopefully and you're being in a position someday to be able to support us but you'll find all that on the website uh all of you who have supported us or even joined our newsletter or bought cloudbase mayhem merchandise t-shirts or hats or anything you should be all set up you should have an account you should be able to access all that bonus material now thank you so much for listening i really appreciate your support and we'll see you on the next show thank you