Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Happy New Year. Happy 25. Hope you've got some good plans shaping up and some good flying adventures happening. On that note, my guest today is Tim Pentreath, who we interviewed almost exactly to the day four years ago in 21, as he was getting going with his gumball rallies across the Alps. These are no charge. Just show up and see how far you get rallies in the Alps with various levels of ability. And just people wanting to show up and have fun and have little bivvies in the Alps. They've been having a great time, and I've been following closely as Tim puts out these fantastic videos of their marches.
And it looks like they have a ton of fun. So I wanted to follow up with Tim. The first one was really about just how they handle the logistics and the equipment and a lot of real specific advice about doing bull biv. If you didn't catch that one, go back and grab it. Just put in a search term on the website, Tim Pentreath, and you'll find it. We put it out January 1st, 21, and here we are, January 1st, 25. I'm heading off for Valle here in a few days, which will be a lot of fun to go rally around. And at the moment... On that note, let's get back to the now with Tim Pentreath. Enjoy this episode with a good buddy of mine. He's up in the UK and has a lot of fun. Been flying for over 30 years now.
And here's just more information on tackling the Alps. That's one of the main questions I get is, when should I go? What should I bring? How to bivvy? And this answers a lot of that. If you've never done bivvy and been really keen to try it, you should... Check out what they're doing. Like I said, there's no charge for this. There's no guiding. You just show up and they create a good communication network and a good way to track one another and communication channels and pair people off with like abilities and start at A and see how far you get. And something I'd love to go do with these guys one of these days. So, they're having a ball. Here we go. Tim Pentreath with the Gumball Rally.
Enjoy. Happy New Year, everybody.
Tim, good to have you on the show again, man. How are you? It's a
pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very well, thank you. Yeah. It's a pleasure to be on your show again. Thanks very much. Yeah.
Well, you know, last time I saw you in person, I believe, was when we were up there at the lakes and I can't... I don't know, 2016, 2017. It's been a while, but I have been keenly following your Gumball Rallies. That's what you call them, right? Your Gumball Rallies across the Alps. Gumball Trans-Alp Rally. Trans-Alp Rally, yeah.
Yeah. Named after that movie, the Gumball 3000. Yeah.
I mean, and it's been... You do a really good job of documenting it. And what I love about it is it just seems like an outrageous good time. It's just really fun. It seems like that's the goal, right? It's just to have a really good time.
That's basically it, yeah. And it's have fun, be safe, and to introduce... You know, experienced flyers who are experienced in the mountains as well, but who've never quite plucked up courage to do Volviv on their own. You know, to be able to do it in a supportive environment. Not necessarily sticking together as a group the whole time, but I mean, we've had big numbers on some of the recent ones, so it's never going to stick together as a group. But, you know, you can find your level within it and stick with a smaller group.
And how do you go about organizing it? And what are the kind of the rules, the ramifications? I mean, can anybody... Can anybody join? Does it cost money? All those kind of things. How do you handle the logistics of it all?
Everyone is aware that it's, you know, everyone's on their own when they're there, really. You know, you have to be able to fend for yourself. So if a random person comes up to me and says, can I join? I always make sure I have a, you know, check out their flights on X contest or whatever. In Alpine sort of environment. I mean, it's one thing flying 100K out and return in beer, for example, where you're just blasting up and down a ridge effectively with no van. I mean, it's a lot of valley winds, but in the Alps, it's, it can be a different story. Yeah. And as for, as for cost, there's no cost. I don't, I don't charge anything. Right. Once, once you start charging, you get into all sorts of legal ramifications in France, especially. Sure. You know, because you're effectively an instructor or a guide and it's a lose the house scenario.
And
you've done it, you've, you've done it every, every summer, right? For the last, I mean, what, what, what edition was this last one?
Well, this would have been the fourth sort of official. Gumball, shall we say that if you like, there was a pre, a prequel, a pre Gumball in 2018. No way. 2019 was the first one I did with a bunch of mates year before that. I just did a little short vol biv with my buddy, Nigel, Nigel Cooper, who actually joined us on this year's Gumball, which was great. But yeah, so 2019 is four of us did the same, did basically that trip. And then 2020, we actually called it the Gumball Trans Alp rally. So yeah, fourth edition. So next year, fifth year. Yeah. It'll be a, it'll be a big one.
Yeah. What's the maximum number of pilots you've had on it? 23.
Sorry. 2023. No, no. 2023. There were probably more than 23. There was probably, I think it was about 25 of us. There was a whole bunch of Northern lads who came down from the Lake district who really swelled the numbers this year. I think it was 13. Okay. Which is a good, a good size. Yeah.
And then are, do you kind of, are you the, the kingpin when it comes to, okay, this, this is the route and this is where we're going to start and end. I mean, do you kind of do that or, I mean, is everybody kind of on the same page?
Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, a few people, well, most people will join, you know, we, we traditionally started in St. Andre down in the South of France in 2023, because of the forecast down there, we actually started in Shamroos, near Grenoble. Um, and that was a sort of fairly last minute decision to change. Yeah. We, we'll discuss it and, and, you know, before beforehand, we go. Through, I do some, uh, zoom calls and we go through the routes for, for people who are not familiar with that area. Talk about crux points, uh, you know, maybe even go into the detail of what sort of height you need to cross certain, you know, valleys, et cetera. So, yeah, we do a bit of briefing beforehand.
And is, is the style of it, uh, you know, try to top land at the end of the day and, and fully bivvy or as the style of it, uh, you know, sometimes bivvy, sometimes jump in a hotel. How, how does all that work?
It's entirely up to, up to personal preference. I mean, the best times are when you get a group of you and you land up high and you have a brilliant night together and then short hike to a takeoff in the morning or whatever. But some people prefer, you know, a nice steak and glass of wine. Easy
to find in the
Alps. Steve, you know who you are. He listens to this. And Cyprian. Yeah. They like their, they like their steaks. So, I mean, yeah, that's not every night, of course, but, uh, so it's, it's a personal preference.
Okay. If you got quite an international crew there or is it mostly Brits or how does that work?
It's mostly Brits, but we've had, uh, some Americans, uh, over the years we've had Italians, we've had French, we've had, uh, Venezuelan pilots. Um, so yeah, it's, uh, it's pretty multinational. So, yeah, majority of Brits for sure. But yeah, we've had a great cross section.
How does your own personal packing work out? I mean, are you, are you, or how does your own style, what are the, what are you trying to accomplish? I mean, are you, are you filling your bag with five days of stuff or two days or, you know, are you always trying to tent? Yeah.
My preference is always to camp somewhere. Yeah. Okay. If the, if the weather's turns really bad, then I'll. You know, couch surf somewhere or, or take a B and B or whatever, but there's only been one, one time when I ended up actually staying a couple of nights in, uh, my brother's wife's family have a chalet in Verbier and, uh, yeah, I had a couple of pleasant nights there, but yeah, so I will, I will pack normally about five days worth of adventure food and breakfast and stuff. So, yeah. And that normally works out pretty well for if you're going for about 10 days, you end up eating out quite a lot of the time. Coffee and croissants quite all the time. There's always restaurants everywhere. Yeah,
sure. So easy in the Alps. Do you guys typically fix a week way in advance or is it really weather driven? Okay. Everybody's ready to go at a moment's notice and you, you peel out from bath and head down when it looks like you got a good window.
Yeah. I mean, I think that would be ideal to do that, but for quite a lot of people, it's just unrealistic. They need to book the holidays in advance. So, yeah, we. We're looking at dates at the moment. Historically, we've been pretty lucky in July, 2023, the weather was not so good that week. This, this year we really, you know, we had a great, we were pretty lucky actually this, this year because the weather in the Alps has generally been pretty mixed, should we say? And yeah, we got a great week. Yeah. About a week before it turned. And then, um, a couple of guys stayed on, carried on flying a bit longer. In fact, one guy, Raphael, Polish guy. Yeah. He spent a month out there, I think, or six weeks. Just. Slowly and steadily making his way east towards Slovenia.
It's always a bit of a gamble, but we do have a bit of flexibility with, uh, with destinations or starting points, you know, destinations. What I mean by that is where we fly to. We changed, like I said, uh, last year from St. Andre to Chamruz just because it was super windy down in St. Andre. Are
you, are you typically flying into Nice then and getting up to St. Andre?
Yeah. Most people are. Yeah. And
then, and then.
And It's just such a nice little
It's just such a nice little
journey from, uh, from Nice up to St. Andre. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's fantastic. And
then are you, are you destination unknown every time you don't have anything in mind? I would imagine, right. You're just going to go as far as you can. As far as you can. Yeah.
And until, um, until the weather changes or, you know, you run out of time or whatever, but, you know, we follow roughly the same route up towards Chamonix and then, you know, head down the, uh, the Rhone Valley.
So you kind of backdoor into. Into Verbier typically, and then jump and, and start flying up the, up the Volus and, and then keep going. What's the farthest you guys have made it so far of all the years? I think it was probably 20, 20,
I think I, I made it to almost to Bassano. So that was about 800 kilometers, uh, over 10 days. I was sort of on my own by that stage. Others were, I went to Chris, Chris made it to Lake Como, I think. Uh. Uh. Uh. And this was, this was in July, but some guys say again, this was
in July that year.
Yeah. It's always, we've always, it's always been in July. Yeah. I mean, in fact, I think two years ago, Roberto, he's the Venezuelan pilot and Cyprian is Romanian, but lives in the UK. They made it all the way to Slovenia. They just stayed on. They, I think they had a month or three weeks. So, yeah. So some people have done the full, the full Transalps really. Yeah. I've never done, I've, you know, I've, I've run out of time. Uh, before then. So I've never managed to do, to do the whole thing.
Hey, I guess, I guess, because most of the time you're, you're tenting or bivvying in July, have you found it? I'm asking questions cause I get a lot of people asking about, you know, Hey, I want to do it my first bivvy in July. So I'm going to ask you a lot of these kind of generic questions that people that just don't know, but is it hard to find accommodation? Yeah. I mean, you know, obviously you can't book anything in advance, you know, you don't know where you're going to be, but is it, you know, cause I know. It gets, it tends to get more busy kind of early July when the kids start getting out of school and a lot of travel, especially post COVID. I
mean, France, France, I don't think there's any problem in July because August is traditionally when they, all the French go on holidays. I don't think anyone's had any problems. This is obviously for, you know, for people who, you know, the weather's bad, they want to find a, a B and B or whatever, or a hotel. I don't think there's, I don't think there's a problem. I mean, refuges, refugios in Italy. They're. They're dotted around the place. I, I don't know whether you have much luck just, you know, landing by them and, and asking for a bed. I don't know. I suspect in July, you're probably okay. Yeah. The mountains are never crowded though. There's always, there's always space on top of them. Yeah, that's right. Isn't it?
I mean, the, I guess it's quite a bit different in June, but the, that last June when I did the X-Alps coverage, you know, so I wasn't racing in it, but. Yeah. You know, the refugios were super easy. It just, you know. Tracee May was fine. The one in the, in the Brenta was fine. You know, it was, yeah, it was, you just rock up, knock on the door and seem, seemed okay. But that's June. I know June's less busy even.
Yeah. Come August, you might have issues in, in some of the more popular areas. I think unless you're trying to land on the side of Mont Blanc or something, you'd probably be okay.
Right, right. I'm curious from, you know, those initial years, the, just you and a mate. In 2018 and then, you know, up to more than 20. What is, what has changed for you, if anything, philosophically, safety wise, you know, what, what are some of the, you know, looking back, some of the points that have, that have helped define how you do it? Good question.
Nothing intrinsically has really changed. We've always, it's always been a, you know, we're, we're always flying and making plans in a. supportive and collaborative sort of manner, sharing ideas, looking at weather forecasts together, that sort of thing, looking out for each other. We have had, you know, we have had people injure themselves in previous years, including myself actually. We've got a sort of network of people back home who are also sort of looking out for us on live track, so you know, there is an emphasis on safety. There's a emphasis on everyone, you know, reports in when they land and and effectively does a sign to fly in the morning, you know, before they take off. Yeah, I mean, that works because we say we've got 20 people, we'll split it into, we'll have four or five different little safety groups, telegram groups, have a sort of team leader in each, in each group as it were, who's responsible for making sure everyone signs in and signs out as it were, what
What? What is what? How do you guys communicate? Are using radios or just Telegram groups in reach? What? What's the kind of stuff you guys have for safety on?
the grounds. We, it will tend to be telegram in the air. It's been a mixture in the past of some people using Zello, some people using radios. This year, and I think last year, I went Zello only. Uh, I just didn't want the extra weight and complications of a radio, having to have a charger and all that malarkey. So yeah, cheap, cheap headset with a little boom mic and, um, you know, Bluetooth headset, and it, you know, it works really well, really well in the apps. This is Zello, it's great being able to answer people who have got questions in the air. Or like, there was a last year, there was an occasion where I was like 50 miles ahead and I was, I hadn't taken off yet or I'd landed, I can't quite remember, and I could see what, uh, this guy, um, Craig was was doing, and I said, and I knew he was on Zello and we're mild, you know, well outside radio range, but I was able to tell him, you know, take that route.
and I was able to
Don't, don't do what I did because it didn't work for me, and he managed to glide all the way to Fish. Ah, cool. Whereas I landed, you know, just south of Visp, so that—that really worked well. Yeah, so yeah, I—I think I'll be encouraging everyone to get a Bluetooth headset and and a push to talk and and and use Zello, yeah.
That was, that was what we used in the the last couple of my x-ops campaigns, which with a lot of success. I mean, none of the x-ops people fly with radios, but you gotta have something pretty good, and we found that that worked really, really pretty well. I mean, there were times where there'd be a long delay or whatever because you weren't in cell service, but you know, it would get it, and it was quite, quite easy to use, yeah.
It, it tends to technically, it works well in the Alps because I think, I guess they've got cell towers, you know, in the valleys, but also on the mountaintops in places. So you get a pretty—you're never going to be flying thousands of meters above the mountaintops, so you always, you tend to be in cover. But you're never going to be flying thousands of meters above the mountaintops, you're never going to be flying thousands of meters above where I've—whereas I found in the UK, if you, you know, Zello just doesn't, doesn't work when you're doing the cross country flight because you're just above the cell coverage.
Tim, I, I have a a lot of listeners call in who, you know, who who aren't in the Alps, don't don't live there, and they're not, and they, it's hard for them to imagine. It's a little, you know, your first trip's a little overwhelming. It's, it's, there's a lot of places you can start, there's a ton of sites, I mean, they're just everywhere in the Alps and, uh, but I, I have a lot of people who are not in the Alps and they're people ask, you know, hey, I'd really like to go do something like you're doing every year, like the Gumball Gumball, but if they, you know, for people that don't have any background in the Alps, what would be your kind of top three? You know, here's the things you need to know before going to do this, I
mean if they just want to pitch up on their own and just go for it, well, I would say, well, I mean the main thing that catches people out is the valley winds and storms. So, you know, be, be super wary of storms brewing up; they can develop very quickly. I mean, you can't, you can't learn by memory every single valley wind in the Alps; it's impossible. But try and have an idea of some routes and have an idea of what the valley winds typically, typically do in, in those, uh, you know, on, along those routes. Speak to pilots. If people want to approach me, that's, that's fine. I can, I can help, but I'm, you know, I've the Alps is a vast place and I'm not going to be able to do anything about it. So I've only, you know, traveled on a few, uh, sort of main routes, really.
So there's, there's people with way more experience than, than me, obviously. But yeah, I would not be afraid to ask advice. I
You know, there's so many places to fly in the Alps, and I, I think you can really, you can almost throw a dart at an area and go and and and rock up, and like I said, talk to the locals and, uh, and and have a blast wherever you end up. Then it's, it's more just weather, isn't it? But if it, if it's bad, all you're gonna do is wait, it'll get good again, or go somewhere else.
You know, hop on a train or go somewhere else. That's the, you know, that is the transportation links in the Alps are fantastic.
back to the the people who join and and and how they join and that kind of thing. What would you, if you ever looked at, uh, someone and you don't know them and they'd love to join your your trip, and you look at their x contest flights, is there kind of a bar that they have to meet? Well, what would you like to see that shows you, hey, you're you're probably ready for a journey like this? Yeah,
I mean, I think if, if they've done some, some of the sort of competitions like the used to be called the Gin Wide Open, I think it's something else now, or the Shabra Open, you know, any of those sort of level, and they've done 50k flights or 70k, that sort of thing, you know. I mean, in a competition environment, it's a little bit different because you don't really have to think for yourself, you're just basically following other people. If you've certainly done those sort of distance flights on your own, or just with some a smaller group of mates, then, then yeah, I would look to see whether it's just in like the foothills of the Alps, you know, which would be a bit different, different to flying around Mont Blanc massif, for example, or some of the, you know, bigger mountains.
I mean, essentially, the bigger the mountains are, the stronger the valley winds, so you know, I want to see, you know, relevant experience, really. But I mean, if someone really wants to come, we can't really stop them. They can rock up in, which case we'll, we'll say, well, let's just take it really steady, watch out here, we'll just give them as much advice as possible. But at the end of the day, it is everyone for themselves, you
You said that you kind of break people down and you have almost a team leader and you know, a group of four or so pilots in a group. How do you decide those? Is that by experience?
These are just safety groups, so that they're not—you wouldn't necessarily be flying together. It's just they're just, yeah, we can be split up over 200 kilometers, but we're still all checking with each other within that group. It's just because, I mean, ideally you just have, you know, one group with 20 people in, but that gets quite difficult to manage and check up. So if you've got smaller groups, it's just easier for one person to be able to keep track. Oh, I see. So, yeah, that—that's, but I mean, people naturally sort of find other people who fly at the same level. So, yeah, these little pods would form naturally.
You, you mentioned that you've been hurt and some other people have managed to, you know, injure themselves. What's been the—is there been a common theme there? Is that top landing? Is that getting caught in wind? There's just been random. What—what has there been personally for me? It's
It's been windy landings, someone else a few years ago now. He, yeah, he landed in a particularly windy place and I, I can't remember the exact—I know roughly where it was, but I can't remember the exact scenario, but I think he, he had a collapse or low-level collapse and came in quite hard. He's, he's, he's fine. Another guy, yeah, just was coming to landing and he did, yeah, bad one. Guy ended up in some trees. So, yeah, a mixture. For me personally, it was the first, the first year I was just, it was stupid. I was crossing over, I was heading along the valet or wallace near fiche and I was trying to cross over onto the south side, and I'd done exactly that move two years previously and didn't I thought it's going to work exactly the same, and I failed to spot the signs of the uh, the northerly coming up and I was like, "Oh my god, I'm going to have to do this over and over." The Grimsel Pass, so it was, it was pretty windy on the south side.
I arrived a bit lower than where I'd arrived at two years ago, and um, all of a sudden I was in horrendous sink and really rotary air. I just had no choice but to dive down the valley, which is the valley that leads up to the Newfoundland Pass, and the wind was switching. And when I landed, I did, I landed downwind pretty fast. Once I packed up and walking down the hill, the wind was blowing from the other direction, and you know, it would have been fine. It was, it was bizarre, but yeah, nasty cut on my leg, but I was sort of walking wounded and made my way, uh, walked down to the, uh, the village at the bottom, hopped on a train, and, uh, you know, got myself checked out at a hospital. The
Grimsel snake struck the
Grimsel snake, she's a snarky
little one so
Yeah, I'm very, very wary of that now. And what was so stupid is that, yeah, as I was crossing the valley there, I had—I had 10 minutes I could have fired up web browser, looked at winds.mobi, and and seen exactly what was going on there. And in fact, you could—you could see that the cloud sort of spilling over, but I just—I was overconfident. I thought, "Oh, yeah, done it before. I made this move really successfully two years before, and it's going to work exactly the same." Yeah, so yeah, that was a good lesson for me. So it just goes to show, you know, every day is still a school day in some respects, you
mentioned Windsmobi, which I use as well. I use Wind Alert, which just kind of captures them all in the same kind of thing, but what, uh, what tech are you using for, for forecasting for stuff in the air? Uh, radar, what are you using to both plan, but also on the fly, yeah?
So weather apps, um, on the morning or the day before, we're looking at Windy, looking at, um, MeteoParapont, looking at Soaring Meteo, you know, whichever, whichever one's giving the best forecast. Um, yeah, quite liking Soaring Meteo; they've got some new models, um, and it's quite good.
to be able to do that, and I think it's a good thing to be able to do that, and I think
A nice, easy-to-use, um, interface which gives you a lot of information in one go. Meteo Parapont as well has a—has a really nice, easy-to-use interface. I find it overestimates the wind a bit, don't know why that would be, but you're always a bit wary of thinking it always, you know, overestimates because one day you'll get caught out like that. Meteo Blue as well, it's got some good, good, uh, you know, and graphics and, uh, animations, but yeah, so it's a sort of mixture. It's, um, yeah, it's no one hard and fast app that I would sort of use all the time whilst, whilst we're flying and checking. I mean, the main thing is wanting to check out winds, so in Switzerland, the, uh, Meteo Swiss app is really good.
It's got wind animations, um, or wind, you know, spot readings from, from lots of different places in valleys and mountaintops, um, yeah, winds.mobi are you
Looking at, are you looking at live cams much? Not
when flying, but uh, I have, I have looked at them in the past, you know, to when was it? Would have been probably three years ago. I was stuck on Mont Noble, uh, which is on the south side of the Sion valley, just dead in fact, just sort of above Sion, I think, more or less. And I thought I'd glide over to the other side, onto the north side, to get the thermals, but the cloud just, I was ended up, you know, clagged in in cloud. But I was checking the webcams in the valley, I could see that is this cloud was just purely on the hilltops. The valley was completely clear, so I made the decision, right? I gotta lob off and fly straight out and get in the clear air, and then, yeah, it worked perfectly.
went down through the cloud and bang, I could see everything, yeah.
glorious sunshine. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I mean, you know, I could see there's no nothing in front of me, you know, no cables. It was just taken off in clear air, so I knew it was safe to do that. I
Think I asked you this on the last one, but uh, any particular flight of all these gumballs just really stand out? You know, you—you make these great kind of summary videos, uh, of your—of your trips that people love. I love, they're amazing, they're really well done. But, uh, anything just really stand out? You know, something you'd—you'd tell your little ones one day, "Ah, this one flight, I've"
Had a few, but um, there's one day I did just over 200k from San Andre that ended up at, uh, just at the landing field at Mont Lambert. So that was a really cool flight. I landed six, seven o'clock, something like that. There were these French youths, shall we say, having a barbecue and a few beers, and I landed. They offered me some food, and that was—that was terrific. Another really good flight was from Verbier all the way to Balanzona. That was a stunning flight. I did
that in the xops going the other way in 2015, that exact, yeah, yeah, cool, I
think that at the time, that was my long flight
I did that in the xops going the other way in 2015 that
was my
long flight
I did that in
the xops
going the other way in 2015, that exact... yeah, yeah, cool. I think is flying out. What else? I mean, every time you fly over the Grimm's will pass and the Firka pass, that's always just spectacular. There, spectacular.
and a little bit butt puckering, yeah, yeah, he's going, oh, is it gonna strike? Is it gonna strike? But yeah, when it's good there, it's doesn't, it's no, it can't be, it's just, it's incredible flying over that glacier and you're on the moon, yeah
It's spectacular this year, when well, I flew over it twice, actually, on two different trips. But the second trip with, uh, there were just four of us in in the group, so it wasn't—it wasn't, it was like a gumball part two of a smaller, you know, it was a—we felt this year, uh, we felt a little bit cheated by the way that we had sort of—we actually had eight good days, although on two of those days we didn't really make any forward progress, but, uh, and then the weather changed. So when I saw a little weather window in August, early August, I, I put the word out, said, "Anything fancy joining me?" And yeah, four of us, we had a great flight over the Grimm's will pass
and we had a great flight over the grimm's
pass and firka pass and thermaling with a with an eagle just by that glass glacier. Um, but another really memorable flight was was in 2023. The gumball was over for me over prematurely. This was the gumball where we didn't have the best of weather, but I ended up landing on the south side of Mont Blanc and it was the wind had picked up quite a lot. Um, and I got dragged into some boulders when when I landed. Yeah, ended up gashing the same leg, ended up walking off down to Courmayeur and then got a bus to Aosta to the hospital, um, where they looked after me fantastically. But yeah, about then. Yeah, then I came home, three weeks, had my daughter's wedding and then a couple of weeks later I was out to the Alps again. I thought I spotted, yeah, again, a nice little weather window from Saint Andre and I had an amazing flight from Saint Andre up through the middle of the Ekron and landed near Courcheval, sort of area around there, the three valleys and that was
That was just epic, flying through that landscape so pretty.
The Akrons are incredible. Uh, when, when you hurt your leg, was that the Aosta? Were you at the west end of the Aosta? Yeah,
I, you know, up until then, it had been fantastic, beautiful, and the plan I was with two other guys to start with, and the plan was to fly up towards Passy, um, but there were some big clouds there, and I thought, oh, the clouds to the east look, you know, we're starting from which is above the town of Beaufort, and um, so I sort of did my own thing, headed, headed east really around the south side of Mont Blanc, an area I didn't know at all, and it was a, it was a beautiful flight, it's going fantastically until, and I, I was trying to get up to Verbier around the south, but really cloud base wasn't high enough, and I thought I'd be sheltered by the, by Mont Blanc, by the massive itself, uh, from the northwest sort of wind, but instead the wind seemed to whistle around and accelerate through that valley, so I'd
be sheltered by the by Mont Blanc, by the massive itself, uh, from the south side, and I decided
to land. Yeah, call my ear was the nearest town, but that was a, you know, it's about seven or eight mile walk down. Oh, okay, so
you were trying to get up and over from the south side, I guess. Uh, would that be like the Saint Bernard pass into, uh, there's that one town or Siers, and then up to Verbier? I guess that's, I guess that's just to the east of the massif, right? You're, you're just, that's what. Yeah, that's what I was planning to do, cool.
and I should have, uh, I maybe you could, but there was some airspace, uh, shown as a danger area, I think, a firing range or something on on fly sky high just sort of where I was, so I didn't want to go through it. I was sticking to the west of it, and it turns out that I don't think that danger area is active most of the time, and in fact it's, it's right by colder San Bernard, I think it to the to the, it's just to the west of it, I think, and I think people fly through it all the time. I didn't know this, so I was avoiding it, but yeah, had I, I had the height to sort of dive through that, and it was would have been, I think that would have been a very sensible decision
Typically, when you start in San Andre, is your is your line typically, you know, up to Saint Vincent? You, so you're flying the dorm, use? Yeah, yeah, that's kind of a cool first day. I mean, if you had a lot of, exactly, a lot of people at the gumball, just show up and do that and go, "Pull, dude." Yeah.
blows their mind. That's that's a
pretty mind-blowing flight. We've had a few people
Yeah, I mean, not a lot of people have done that, but I think everyone makes it. Even, even sort of regulars sometimes struggle, you know? We had some, some people not get past, uh, the Cheval Blanc, really. That sort of area or land in, in the boonies just north of the Cheval Blanc, that gets pretty boony pretty quick. But you can, you—it's amazing, France, you know? These, those guys, um, solemn hitch and just did a bit of leapfrogging. Others hiked up and, and relaunched, so you know, somewhere on the, the side of the dormitories. So yeah, there's, there's plenty of options when you're flying
through it, I think it's
That's the thing about the gumball, yeah. If you do land, yeah, bomb early, you can either sort of stick with it, just do your own thing, or you can just leapfrog. You can just put your thumb out, get a bus, or whatever, and just catch up and then, you know, regroup with some other people the next day. So, yeah, it's, uh, it works well like that. Some people have been known to take a train pretty much all the way from like, like Dean all the way up to Chamonix, I think.
Sure, why not, right? You know, it's
Whatever works, yeah, absolutely. We're still
Seeing some beautiful country, would you ever, I don't know, would you ever leapfrog right from the beginning and instead of starting in France, would you start, uh, I don't know, Davos or something and go to Slovenia, or you know, go do the pins gal? No, no.
I think we should do that sometime, just start somewhere else. Um, it is tempting, you know, to fly some new areas. I sort of touched upon doing this little, uh, trip in August, and that was a real eye-opener for me. I started in Fiesh and I bought a my return air ticket that was so flew out to Geneva on the Thursday, booked a return flight from from Venice, uh, on Tuesday, so we had four flying days, and so yeah, to get as far as possible towards Venice and, uh, had some amazing flights and covered some real new new new ground, uh, for me, and especially the Dolomites. The last day was absolutely stunning, but yeah, it would be fun to start in Chamonix, see how far we can get east.
But I mean, I think the appeal for some people is to start, you know, who've got more time, as long as you start as far south as possible, really, and and then make their way all the way to Slovenia, like I was saying, uh, Raffle did that this year, slow time, um, see what people fancy doing, you know, 2025, yeah.
Right, curious. Well, before we started recording, you mentioned, you know, you're—you're saying that you're going to be doing a lot of now. And, you know, I'm 52 now. I definitely am finding myself thinking more about my—I'm less durable than I certainly was when I was training for the X-Alps, but just, just in general, you know, the—the vision's not as good, uh, a little bit harder to get out of bed in the morning, you know, a little more stiff, definitely. I just start thinking, I'm thinking about it more that, you know, I can't—I can't necessarily, you know, the crash reel we had in 2021 in that race, it was—I did a lot of crashing in that race, and uh, you know, when you're training real hard, you can kind of roll off a lot of that stuff, but I start thinking about that, you know,
Wombat is leaving, yeah, I got less.
wombat these days, exactly. So, uh, just wondering how that factors into, you know, what you're doing and what your group is doing and how you, I don't know, is it something you guys even is you something you talk about, something to think about, I
Don't think it's anything we specifically think about, you know, subconsciously, or maybe not even subconscious, consciously. I think this year I was happy to take a little easier, not pushing it. Um, I don't know if I'm flying any difference or I'm not, you know, as a group I don't think we're doing any any difference, um, just because we're all getting older. I say I'm probably, I was probably the oldest, but we had some youngsters there as well who, you know, did you have a great time too? So I don't know, it's, uh, yeah, you just got to fly within your own limits. And this year for me it was great, actually. It was a very sociable gumball for me, way more time spent with other people than than in previous years. So yeah, I really enjoyed it.
Are you noticing your own personal flying goals? Are they, have they shifted in the last couple years? Or, or have, or actually, have they shifted because of the gumball? Are you finding, you know, less, less need to x contest out every flight and more just flying for the aesthetic? Or, you know, yeah.
I mean, I certainly am not chasing kilometers in in X contest, and I don't even do the UK national league anymore. You know, who doesn't do like doing nice long flights? Obviously, this year, when I got to Chamonix, flying from La Cluzas, it wasn't a huge long flight. Um, you know, up the Aravi, and then across to Pasi, I got to plan Praz, went down the valley a bit. I thought, do I push on on my own? And by that stage, I knew the other guys I saw had been a part of a group with the night before. We all took off roughly together, you know? They were landing in Passy and and Chamonix, and so I thought, no. So, at this time, I'm just gonna, I top landed at plan prez, and we had, there was five of us, I think, in the end, camping up at plan prez, and it was such a great evening and a really great morning the next days.
And yeah, in terms of my own flying goals and things, yeah, I love the aesthetic flights on that fish to Feltra trip in August. Yeah, the lines we took there were absolutely stunning. You know, back at home, I'm not chasing every kilometer, for sure. I love doing 100k flights, or even more, 200k flights, but I'm certainly not out, you know, every available opportunity, and and because I'm not doing the league, I'm much more relaxed. If I miss a, miss a good day, you don't bother as much. There'll be another, yeah.
Yeah, interesting. Cool. Um, um, you were saying before we started as well that you're not doing a ton of travel in the winter, you know, you're not doing big long haul fight flights. I assume you're not going down to Columbia or Brazil, or that kind of thing. How do you bide your time, uh, with the, with the winter blues and getting ready for the next season? The winter blues, yeah.
re-watching my old videos
editing editing videos from the summer. Yeah, uh, just do more, more local stuff on the, on, you know, a bit more cycling, a bit of paddle boarding on the, on the river and canal. Um, we just got a new puppy, so we'll be doing, well, he's too young for long walks at the moment, but, uh, training, yeah, just my wife might even get me doing a bit of DIY. Better edit that bit out in case she ever listens.
Some honey do list coming your way, yeah, yeah.
I'm in the world was best procrastinator when it comes to DIY you, but
You were saying you, you, you were already thinking about dates for next year, so you guys most likely be in July, uh
Yeah, when I first was thinking about being involved big trips, I did a bit of analysis, you know, looking at number of flights in different areas of the out, you know, number of flights over 100 kilometers or the number of days in which there were flights of over 100 kilometers, and you know, July seemed to be the most reliable. You're not getting the biggest flights, um, but you're getting the the most days with with reliable weather. But I think, you know, with what the weather's doing, I think, and especially last year, it's less predictable. Yeah, sure, okay.
Well, I don't know too much more for you, but I'd love—I think everybody'd love to know—what you're flying, what, what are you using, what, what are you using for gear on these trips, so
I've got a Omega ULS. It's X helps five, I suppose. It, you know, it would have been called, um, it was absolutely love, yeah. Two liner, D two liner recently got a, so I haven't got a super light harness. I've got the lightness four now. Yeah, fits all the gear in, it's very comfortable, so I like that a lot. That's my main, yeah. That's the flying gear I'd
Say, I know you're a fly sky high user, so you just extra battery and a phone and oh
Yeah, yeah, my flight that's got an extra battery and I so I carry two 10,000 milliamp batteries. I don't know why we say, you know, 10,000 milliamps, why?
batteries in reach of, you know, in reach mini exit tracer, uh, two flam is my very most of the time in the Alps, don't have to worry about charging. Yeah, yeah, solar panel as well, anchor, uh, strapped onto the onto the front of my pod and
Then are you carrying full sleeping bag, stove, pad, tent, and all that kind of stuff too? Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Personally, I use a quilt, but yeah, um, okay, yeah, all right, yeah, again. And you know, I, I don't spend, I try and spend as little as possible on, on this sort of stuff, so it's all, it's all fairly budget stuff. Except, well, the, the mattress is the Thermarest NeoAir, which I think is, well, it's the, it's the first model, so it's the noisy, rustly model, but, uh, it's very comfortable, yeah. And the same one, and the tent, and the, the quilter from AliExpress, um, and they're fantastic, great, yeah, really good. I mean, you can spend hundreds of dollars, pounds, on, on sort of lightweight gear, but I don't intend to walk miles and miles and miles with a kit, so as long as it all fits in, and there's the whole lot comes to about 20, 22 kilograms, something like that, and a bit more, you know, add a bit for water.
They're just, I mean, food is, uh, quite, that's heavy, quite a lot of the weight, you know, the more days you cater for that significantly, uh, you know, adds up significantly. But I mean, gets lighter as you go through, yeah, sure, Tim.
Thanks very much, man, as always. It's a pleasure. It's good to see you. I, uh, really enjoyed getting your texts a couple nights ago, and, uh, when I was flying to find the sailplane wave, that was—that was—that was really—thanks for reaching out. That was fun. I
enjoyed, enjoyed following that. It was, uh, definitely a cool thing to just follow along. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, flying at 256 knots was, uh, that was new.
Yeah, well, I, well, I, I was following in, um, uh, a website called puretrack.io, which I recommend everyone check out. It's a fantastic sort of aggregator of all your different trackers, okay? And yeah, I had it set to kilometers an hour, so when I was, uh, when it reached 440 kilometers an hour, I thought, "Bloody hell, well, I"
Didn't tell you, so I was on the stick when you sent the text. You said, "Hey, what? You know you got to 397." I was so hoping you'd get to 400, and so right then I asked Gordon, I said, "Hey man, uh, we got some people watching. They want us to get a 400." He goes, "Oh man, that'll be easy." He just pointed the nose down a little bit, and and then right then the wave started getting really strong then. And so we were, we were going 250, you know? We were over 250 for a while, but we hit 256 and we were screaming up. I mean, we were going up and going that fast, it was just, this is ridiculous, yeah.
So you're, you're basically, you're nose down to get the speed, yeah? And we just stayed there, but you're still going up.
stayed pinned. I mean, I could tell he had because I had my hand on the state at that point. He wanted the stick because we were going way too fast; if we hit any turbulence or something, but I mean, I could tell he had the thing pretty pinned down and, uh, and still just the vario
You could hear it on some of your video.
Really, yeah, great. And and then, and then landed in time for breakfast at the exactly, yeah.
And I mean, by the time we packed away the plane, it was dumping rain. I mean, we knew that this was coming; it got—it came a little bit about an hour earlier and
then we were like, "Oh my god, we're going to be a little bit faster than"
We were planning, so I mean, he—he knew way in advance it wasn't going to be kind of any record day, but yeah, I think he stretched it out really as far as we could and
It was, uh, how far south of takeoff did you end up going? I couldn't—I wasn't quite sure.
distance. I we got down to Whitney and Mount Whitney, which is that we call it the Whitney Portal, uh, it was right beneath us and we did a little jog down there. So we got all the way down there, came back, I don't know, I'm guessing 20 miles, 25 miles, and went back down again because we could see on sky side it was going to light up, you know, we could see that the the wave was going to get even stronger and better, and so he wanted to kind of pause a little bit down there before coming back, making sure we could. And when we turned around to go north, you could just see our altitude over goal just start. It was at zero and it just went a thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, five thousand, six, eleven. I mean, it was, you could see we weren't going to have to make a single move, which we didn't, we didn't, and we actually flew past it. We flew past goal and went north and north a little bit further, and then, uh, you could just see it was gonna, it was time we had to get on the ground, and it was, I was impressed with how much wind they can land in.
Luckily, it was coming in pretty straight on the on the airfield, because if it would have been sideways, that I, I'm sure he could have done it, but it would have been pretty exciting because it was how it was. 35 knots on the ground, it was, it was cooking, just such a different thing. Yeah, yeah.
It's, it's so, it's, it's like worlds apart from what we do. Worlds apart, yeah.
It's aviation, and then you kind of change, you stop right there. But it was, I would say, uh, you know, I think he was just impressed with the knowledge. You know, he could, you—we know what's going on, we just don't fly in those conditions. But, you know, you could, it was really neat being above the wave, you know, the—the night when we were on the night vision goggles, when we were, you know, twenty thousand, twenty-two thousand, and it, you know, you could really see the—the harmonics of the wave and all these things that I've only ever seen from the ground. But you could, you know, we were above it, so
You there were, yeah. So there were wave bars, you could see the clouds exactly, and you know, and it was, it
was neat because on the night vision goggles, and you could see the lights underneath where there wasn't cloud, and you could just see these rolls of, you know, in the domes, and the domes would stretch north and be another, and then no cloud and another row, and you could just kind of see how it all works. And you could see how he was, was, you know, he would say, "Okay, well we're going to go through some period here, we're going to get washed, and then but we'll, okay, right about now, and then we're going to hit it again." And then, you know, 10 seconds later, the variant start ripping again, and you could just kind of see how you maneuver around in that kind of thing, and you
never got any of the sort of, uh, the downdraft from the oh
Yeah, yeah, we got really washed heading south, you know, because
We had quite a bit of wind on the nose, and so that's where I was telling you we got down to. We were actually going backwards at one point, but we, we went quite deep into the terrain and hoping to kind of move over to another kind of segment of wave and to our west and didn't get it. And, and we got down pretty low. I think we were down, I mean, it's not low by our standards, but we were kind of more in the train. It was kind of thirteen, fourteen thousand, which at that level in the Sierras, you're, you're not that far above the peaks and, uh, and then it was, it was rowdy. It was, it was definitely, and you, but you could see it. And at that point, he was really looking more for rotor cloud below us, so the, you know, the wave stuff was above us and we were just starting to get lenticular.
To that point, there wasn't much moisture early on. It was much more blue, and as the day got more and more as this system pushed in, we got a lot more moisture and you could really see everything very well. But, um, but what saved us really was, you know, just off to our right there was these little bits of cloud and you can see them, kind of, they didn't look like normal clouds. They were kind of rolly and he said, "Oh, okay, there it is," and he just banged over to it and it was very rough. But then we started going up again and, and it's when you're, when you're in the rotor, it's terrible, but as soon as you get in the wave, it's just, you could take a nap. It's just smooth like butter. You don't, yeah, no jumping around or jerking around. It's just Super smooth. It's like being in a in a commercial jetliner.
It
Went smooth. I've never flown in wave myself, but I know there's, um, up in the Peak District, which is sort of near, near Sheffield, near the city of Sheffield, in sort of northern England. There's, you, you do get in winter, you get wave there off sort of above a site called Lord's, Lord's Seat, I think it's called, or around that sort of area. And yeah, people have had amazing smooth climbs up to three, three and a half, four thousand feet in, in, in winter. It just looks spectacular. I've never, yeah, yeah, I've never been in the right place. I don't
know what I anticipated, but everything that I anticipated was different than it actually was. I, you know, I—the night vision goggles, especially. I, I really can't believe what you can see with those things; it's just incredible. You see everything, uh, the same way, of course, but you know, for example, we could see the sun coming up an hour and a half before we could see the sun coming up. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's like
If you take a picture of the aurora with your phone, it just sees so much more, I guess.
Yeah, and and you could, you know, it's looking east about four o'clock in the morning. It's winter here, I mean, the sun doesn't come up until 7:30, 8 o'clock, and so, uh, with the time change, and so you know, but at four o'clock, 4:30, you could see it starting to get light in the east and you could
see the sun coming up and
Go, oh, there's the sun come out, and you take off your night vision goggles, and it was dead black. There was, there was not nothing coming up, but in the night vision goggles, there was, and uh, yeah, it was really, really quite cool. I mean, taken off from a totally black runway, yeah, you know, and you can see it all
Yeah, wow, very exciting. But I mean, it's not, it's not the same as flying cross country across the mountains and battling with rowdy thermals and no you know feeling, just you know, on the on a paraglider, you just immerse in your environment, aren't you, you
Really are, yeah. I, I, I was, um, impressed that that you have more of a feeling than I thought we would, and I think that's because of the wave and everything. I mean, I think the standard glider flying would be less immersive than than this was, for sure. But, but yeah, you're right. I mean, you're, you know, that's why he's, he's so keen on paragliding. He loves what we do because it's just, it's, you know, it's aviation, but it's very different. Yeah, you're not feeling it in the same way, but it was cool. It's neat going 300 miles an hour.
Well, cool, bud. Well, hey, thank you very much, uh, as always, appreciate your time. Thanks for saying hello. Yeah, let me chat to you again, sailplane. Yeah, and good luck with the future gumballs. I'd like to join you on one of these; they look, they look like just a hoot.
That'd be, that'd be terrific. Yeah, do that cool.
Talk to you soon. Great.
thanks goving with lovely, talking to you if
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