Hi there everybody, welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. Got a bit of insurance stuff to go over before we get into this show with Eddie Colfax, one of the founding members of the Himalayan Sky Safaris and a guy I've spent quite a bit of time with, a good buddy of mine, and spent our first couple trips over in beer with those boys, and did my first bivy of course with John Sylvester. So we'll get to that, he's got a lot of thoughts on the carnage this year in beer and potentially doing rescues with a tandem, which I thought was pretty wild, but stick with it, he's got plenty of experience in that side of things. Anyway, we will get to this show here shortly with Eddie, but I wanted to go over some stuff with insurance, specifically global rescue.
I alluded to this in one of the previous shows after a bunch of the carnage this year in beer, and I want to clarify some things. The best way to think about when an accident goes down is there's kind of three steps, find me, fix me, and get me home. People are using global rescue for the wrong end of that. They're trying to use it for find me. And that's... That's probably because the title of it is global rescue, but it really should be thought of as global repatriation. And let me explain. So the find me part, that is SAR, that's search and rescue, and global rescue does not do any search and rescue.
Neither does many, many companies don't do that. They're more about medical and more about getting you home. Search is really the only option we have there. And the only option we have there outside of our own community is, depending on what country you're in, something like 911, if you're in the States, but it's also hitting the SOS on your inReach. So if you've got the high risk benefit, that goes out to the IERCC and they will activate a search. But 99 times out of 100, a search is still going to be better with our own community because we've got the resources and the tools and we understand the terrain and where we are. So. You've got a good group put together and you guys are well versed in rescue, then that's going to be by far the best first option.
And second option is going to be, again, calling 911 or whatever you use in your home country. So that's find me. Fix me is medical in country. So if you're domestic flying, you've got your own health insurance. You all know that if you're traveling, though, often your own medical insurance. Well, not pay for medical out of country, and that's where you have to have something like IMG signature, the one I use. There's many, there's world nomads. There's several others IMG signature is going to step in there. Also travel insurance for lost bags and missed hotels and that kind of thing, but it's medical in country. So you're down in Columbia, for example, and you break your ankle needs to be stabilized in Colombian hospital.
That's where IMG signature comes into play. Getting you home. That's global rescue med jet, that kind of thing. So again, we need to be thinking about global rescue more as in repatriation. There were many people who got in trouble this year in beer and were really upset because global rescue didn't pay for a helicopter to come get the victim out or come get them. That's not what they do. They are going to have to use their network, which is going to be quite a bit slower in places like beer. They use government. They use government choppers and the choppers want the money in advance and no insurance company is going to do that. At least that I'm aware of. So in those kinds of cases, you got to front the money and you got to let global rescue know.
And if you're in the hospital and you need a trip home to a hospital of your choice, then that's why you have that coverage. And to me, it's well worth it, but we need to not be thinking about them as search and rescue and getting you to a hospital on the front end. That's not what, what. And they are now advising me to put that out there to all of you that, and we'll have documentation on the website. If you want a lot more information about this, go to cloudbasedmayhem.com. Just put in the search term insurance. I'm constantly updating that blog post. It's been over 10 years now and I'm frequently adding things and changing things and trying to keep up with that space. I can't keep up with all the providers. I just really pay attention more to IMG and global rescue.
Cause those are the ones I've dealt with a lot in the past. If you use the links in there, it takes you to the correct place to buy it. There's also been a lot of confusion that IMG signature has an exclusion for paragliding. They don't. I promise you they don't. They've just been lazy and updating their documentation. But especially if you get it through the website, you're covered and I know you're covered and we will have documentation shortly there for both of these. IMG signature, which is not a global rescue product, that's totally separate company and also global rescue. And again, there are many other providers that not many, but there are several other providers that get into this space. I just don't have the bandwidth to cover them all.
So for more details, go to the website, check it out.
And any other questions, as always, reach out. I'll do my best to answer them. But baseline. Baseline pilot goes down and they're hurt. You need to get them out. Call emergency services first. Call 9-1-1. Get the victim off the hill. Get him to a hospital. Then deal. Eddie Colfax, my guest on this show, has been flying out in beer since the very beginning. Started flying in 1991. Set up a little company with Jim Mallinson and John Sylvester. Two huge legends in the sport and started Himalayan Sky Safari. And then as the years went by, brought on Mike Blubb, who was out there when I was there in 2009 and 11, and Dave Lewis and Stephan Bernard and Debu Chaudhary.
And I've had many of them on the show. Antoine Laurence has been on the show as well. So they're probably the most experienced guides ever in paragliding for sure. And for sure, the most experienced guides in that part of the world, in the part of the Himalayas. They are excellent. And if you're thinking about going out to beer and flying that big terrain, I highly, highly recommend their services. They're a ball. They're a lot of fun. They know the community really well, better than anybody. And like I said, they've been out there for an awfully long time. So I reached out to Eddie because he's just such a fantastic character and good friend. And also kind of the last piece of this group that I hadn't had on the show. And I wanted to get his thoughts on the carnage out there.
And then it was interesting because... He's thinking about putting together a kind of a tandem rescue. So rather than relying on helicopters, there are situations where you're above tree line. And they could get in there with kind of a backboard type and get somebody out potentially and fly them out. Which I thought was really fascinating. Sounds crazy, but he's got some interesting thoughts on all this. So we had a great chat about that. We had a great chat about... How important fear has been in keeping him safe in his relationship with fear and safety and security and guiding his incredible journey and all these years of flying in Morocco and India and around the world, his competition years and spending so much time with such amazing people.
And of course, John Sylvester, who I did my first ever bivvy with the late John Sylvester, sadly, but fantastic. And of course, John Sylvester, who I did my first ever bivvy with the late John Sylvester, sadly, but fantastic. Entertaining and fun conversation that I think you'll really enjoy with Eddie Colfax up in the UK. Kind of looked like Santa Claus when I was talking to him. He had a big old white beard and he had some great chuckles. Please enjoy. Cheers.
Eddie, it's good to see your smiling face. You're looking kind of Saint Nick these days. How are you, buddy?
I'm really well. Really good. Thanks. And it's great to see you again. Haven't seen you for ages.
Yeah, it's been a while. We were just chatting the other day about your... Yeah. rescue thoughts of beer which we might get to here in a bit but it was 2011 the last time i was in beer and i don't think i've seen you since it's been a while yeah
that's right but i've heard plenty about you you know you've been having a great time by the sounds things good to hear
well yeah it uh it it kind of started there and it's it's it's carried on but i still have very good memories of our time and in beer together you guys were setting up kind of a tandem bivy operation and we had that fun trip with thayer walker and i mean it all seems like another lifetime ago now it's crazy yeah
yeah that that tandem trip we stopped doing that but we're considering reinventing it now the insurance situation has changed we stopped because the insurance situation got really bad but it's got better again so we could do it and
uh we'll we'll get up to that timeline but i thought maybe a fun place to start is you know you've got a lot of history with this sport you've been doing it a long time how did you how did you begin how did you tie in with the boys how did it become himalayan sky safaris uh let's let's let's take a walk back in time here for a little bit it
was um yeah i started in 91 and it was it was really because i i really wanted to fly i was i was quite young then you know some time ago and and a friend of mine um i wanted to hang glide but unfortunately my family wouldn't let me and then my relative had died doing it in the early days it was you know a sad story um um but then you know once i turned 18 20 i i got it together myself to go out and do it but i could never get it together because i worked on boats but then my hang gliding friend turned up one day when i was in england and we went for a walk and he went he had this big bag with him and you know i was like oh my god i'm so tired i'm so tired i'm so tired i'm so tired i'm so tired i'm so tired and he said let's go to the top of that hill and i thought shit what's going to happen and then that was that was a wing there was a windy day the wind was vaguely in the right direction he bunged me off so that's my my first experience apparently
perfect yeah
well instructed nice and safe yeah
yeah no he was good he knew his stuff he was a he was a british he had the british record at the time um but which was what do you remember well it was big actually it was surprisingly big he'd got stuck in some convergence he'd done 98 kilometers he held the record for a long time i think it was in 91 when i did this walk and he held the record for um yes i think until about 98 or some considerable time really
i love that he got stuck in convergence
holy shit what do i do what do i do about this it's bumpy and uncomfortable yeah
yeah it was he was a he was a good man a chap called ross somerville and i just want to shout out to him because unfortunately he's another chap who's passed more recently you know on a bicycle accident so oh shoot he was still living at large he was cycling around the world in his 70s oh
wow excellent we just we just lost one of my uh ex red rocks competitors to a bike accident hang glider and now it's kevin carter and just an amazing guy these these things are yeah tragic yeah we lose people along the way you we lost one of the best with with your good friend john yeah
we sure did yeah that was a huge sadness to everyone the sport in general and lots of people in particular yeah very sad yeah
yeah he was real instrumental in getting me going on yeah uh okay so you learn in 91 and uh then what so
yeah how did i get together with all the with the the gangs of people i flew with i i don't know i knew john early on i i was very very i was super clean like many of us are early on i was doing all the comps and that kind of thing and got to meet john in that way so you know in the early 90s jim you know he was another instrumental you know his he is an instrumental man in both my my normal life and my flying life fantastic bloke you've interviewed him you know him well yeah jim's great yeah Jim Mallinson um or professor sir james malinson that's called you know more appropriate yeah yeah more abbreviations after his name than than than most of us most of the neurodivergent people no hd uh sorry oh
man i was so i i don't think i've ever been to
a bike accident in my life i've never been to a bike
so nervous doing an interview than i was with jim i mean just in the week before it i thought there's no way i can hang with this dude i'm just how am i gonna pull this off but just let him talk
yeah yeah i know he's very welcoming brilliant i'm very yeah very able and so i met so jim again i met i met up with jim again through the flying world but i knew him a little bit through through parties in oxford i wasn't an oxford student myself but i went out there with some of my friends i met jim there and then jim actually ended up going out with a great old friend of mine claudia who he's now married and got two lovely children with and so i've got really strong connections with jim going back you know into our teams oh
wow yeah
and um and then and i had yeah they said it's a nice story it's sort of tinged with a bit of misery because i was getting divorced jim said come on man you know let's go and do something fun why don't we do this and so we did and we did and we did and we did and we did and we started up we started up um himalayan sky safaris i i said to john come on we got you know how about it i knew john well and i managed to i managed to you know joy him up a bit about the idea of guiding again he was a bit reluctant initially but he enjoyed it um and so that's how the three of us got together and then of course in beer i you know i met some fantastic people debu i knew because i'd been working in maharashtra in the mid 90s i worked for a guy rinkley dick you know dick jones richard jones and he was an old guy and he called himself rinkley dick and rinkley dick's flying circus and goa and let's get high on a line and we had a winch outfit at south and juna and we did loads of tandems at south and juna and arambul and we were teaching paragliding to the rajneeshis the loony maroonies however you want to call them so the osho people in puna in the maharashtra and we were teaching paragliding to maharashtra so this was back in 95 and 96 i did two winter seasons out there and i met debu on the beach in goa with bruce mills who was like the sort of the grandfather of paragliding and beer and he and he and bruce just turned up to talk i think you know for various reasons but part of it was to talk to me because flying was still in its infancy everywhere
particularly in india so they came to check me out because i was a bhpa british hang gliding paragliding instructor um working in goa at the time yeah not under the auspices of the bhpa at that time because they at that time they couldn't do it abroad but i was a i was a paragliding bum in his 20s having a great time teaching paragliding in goa and maharashtra okay
orient me geographically here because i i've spent quite a bit of time in that part of the world but i'm not familiar with that area okay
so go is on the west coast more or less more or less halfway up india it's a portuguese colony um um and it's you know it's beautiful beaches it was renowned throughout the 70s 80s and 90s for its part party scene um and sort of said a hippie hippie lifestyle wonderful food and yeah it was it was a great place to hang out um uh and
this what kind of flying is this is it's more kind of ridge soaring and yeah
it's not it's terrible flying really on the scale of that but yeah it's just ghost yeah it's just very low cliffs and tiny okay it's just good fun and then but we had a winch and we had a winch there as well and it was just to introduce people to the sport and then inland there are one or two good sites but lots and lots of trees so it was always a bit alarming you know where you landed um but there was a place called amberley we used to go to a lot but brand maverastra in maverastra particularly around a town called well the british this its old name was puna and now it's called pune so p-u-n-e is what how it looks on the map and um and that's sort of that's about three or four hours inland from from mumbai
that's okay up on the western ghats and panchgani is a famous area a famous uh place now where they do through pwc's occasionally and
yeah okay i've seen that recently yeah
panchgani yeah they've got one in february i think that um and we used to fly there um so it was great it was quite a big elevation i did i was doing 50 kilometer triangles back back in the day there um what
was the catalyst to go out there to begin with what was the first trip well
the first trip the reason why i went to the first trip was because i was going to the first trip and i was i ended up in india to go flying because you know i come from the sailing world and i've done lots of traveling in south america on boats and things and i um i but i then you know i just got hooked on paragliding and ended up you know losing that life in a similar way i think to you but yeah
i was
younger and more flexible at the time you know i was i was only in my 20s really when i stopped doing the sailing okay well it was wrinkly dick
yeah yeah okay he um i was working in a british paragliding school called paramania um and it was the end of season and it was like you know sort of sometime in september or even early october i can't quite remember and it's like they they didn't have many winter bookings and i was only a junior instructor i missed the you know i missed the ticket to go out and to where did they used to go they used to go to alga de nales in southern spain and i i missed the job to go and help them and i was like you know i was a bit sort of oh what should we do and then um and then this tall sort of charming guy in his he was he was in his 50s then he was my kind of image you know nat yeah and he turned up you know looking very old you know introduced himself to wrinkly dick bought three tandems off me three full sets of tandem gear and offered me a job in puna working for him so i thought what the hell you know let's go i had enough money from the you know to get myself out there and he promised me a job
and um and he was good to his word and i had a fantastic time but
oh wow and where where jim and debu were they out did you know those guys back then i
think i knew jim but jim was a busy student but he would be hanging out yeah he would have been hanging out in india a lot because he was doing his yeah his his studies in sanskrit um jim uh john when did john do his big thing you know nowhere to the middle of nowhere i think yeah it was it was around this same time i think it was the year after but i'm not i think i went out in 94 and i think i'll have to check that timeline and i'm sorry but i think that might have been 95 he did that um and so yeah and people like antoine and stuff i don't know what they were doing debbie as i say debbie turned up on the beach so you know debbie was just starting out debbie when he turned up he was like
15 i think i
was gonna say he would have been too yeah he would have been really young
yeah he yeah he was super young he turned up in tow with with bruce and yeah he was he was definitely a youngster you know he had he still does have quite a you know compared to gnarly old v he's got a baby face but back then yeah it was general genuine uh and yeah um yeah so that's what they were doing i don't know about all the other puna people well one of the guys who's who i meet in berstow is still he's gill monnier he he was he was on the scene in both maharashtra and beer at that time and he's he's he's he's an interesting bloke he runs a school in switzerland fantastic guy he's been on this yeah he was he was um a regular beer man at the time ah yeah so
you're spending so you start spending the winters in uh in maharashtra and maharashtra and and goa and then the the spring and fall up in beer is that what you're doing and then summer back home uh
no i i after 96 i didn't i i've been all over the place i you know i was doing i started doing quite a lot in morocco i did bits in in mexico and spain just all over the place i've always sort of managed to keep you know i've never managed to be a full-time paragliding pilot i've never managed to get that you know i've never managed to survive that way and also i'm you know i've got too many interests as well i can't i can't just fly unfortunately um it'd be nice you know i just get distracted and end up doing other things as well um
but yeah so what did i continue to do after that i don't um i i went to pakistan in 2000 with john sylvester we did great things out there we did um um yeah 2002 that was when i did that first time and again in 26 and i think again in 28 and was
that when brad sander was were you guys doing stuff with him as well at that
brad sander was out there the second time i was out there that was when he was massive flight he did um he flew from booney to hunza which i think was about 250k more or less wow and and he just you know he arrived we saw him land it was like you know sorry i'm not allowed to swear on the radio but it was like oh totally you can't beep beep beep you know who's up there and you know it's really extraordinary and we were you know because we were you know we were been woken up in the morning by by by the pakistan military being asked you know how do you do this where do you want to teach us being offered jobs and things you know it was a really extraordinary wow yeah wow and we did some amazing flights who flew down to gilgit on my second flight i think in it which was i think it's without the map i think it's 70k you know but it's over massive terrain and then we i did a i did a 90k out and then 90k back and was in orbit got to well over 70k thousand seven you know seven thousand meters and was in you know did the classics good school boy
era you know so high up and thinking you know it's all so great and i was probably so hypoxic because we didn't have oxygen and i was like yeah it's quite late oh it's okay it's okay oh look it's getting dark in the valleys but i know i gotta i want to land where i sort of vaguely know and in the end you know i did this massive long flight where i landed in the almost in the pitch black fortunately i you know could see the sand you know we landed on this sandy beach but yeah you know just amazing flights all the time
were you there were you there with john uh in pakistan to guide or just to have fun no
it's just me and him having fun i was just his i was his sidekick you know it was john wow you know i i want to you know we all want to mentor and i was very lucky i had you know i had the best you know yeah i was the junior junior in the game um and he looked up and
what what put it on the map for him what was again what was the catalyst for you guys to go to pakistan for the first time because that you know now it's people going out there every year it's a it's a almost a tribal journey but i mean back then it wasn't
no back then i think i think we were we weren't the first people to fly there but we were the first people to fly up there everyone else was the descending climber or you know or low airtime john i think originally flew there in about 86 87 but he went he went out there in his first year of paragliding which whichever year that was as a climber really he'd managed to blag some wings so you could fly down he's tried to flock he camped under bibbly mountain ladyfinger then you know the spike on the picture the needle on the pictures you know which is like a 6200 meter literally a needle extraordinary extraordinary finger you know and um and then he flew down from it um and that was the you know that was the big flight that's what everyone would you know that's what what they were doing but they were when we started flying above the mountains everyone was stopping us in the in the village you know asking us who we'd seen you know which god we'd met literally which god we'd met which which spirit and uh wow cool yeah and so he i went there because of i went there to go back to his climbing grounds you know okay from climbing yeah
as many do yeah was what did you have a background in climbing as well or is it mostly sailing it
was sailing i'm far too yeah i don't have the upper body strength for let's be less modest say my body's too big my arms
bit of a trinosaurus rex moment you know
good for pulling on ropes yeah good for pulling on weights if i can put my wheels into it now i may care i'm in fairly good shape but i don't i don't have the shape that climbers have you know i'm not i'm not lean i'm i was a rugby player at school you know yeah and john was
very very tall and lanky yeah perfect climbing yeah
i'm i'm 100 kg and one meter 87 i think and john was one meter 93 or something like that and i'm not a 100 kg and i'm not a 100 kg and i'm not a 100 kg and i'm not a about 75 kg you know so yeah
i remember him uh walking the the the line at the colonel's place you guys had that slack line all set up but he was he was pretty nifty on that thing yeah
yeah he was yeah he was a professional i'm
just a big i'm just a dumb wombat i wasn't very good at that no no nor me we're built differently yeah yeah yeah cool so those must have been really questions for you yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah right and they must have shaped your attitude about the world in a big way just flying in pakistan it's it's big terrain big place yeah
it was just extraordinary yeah i i i've got a track log of it and um where i i went to 7640 meters something you know having taken up two two you know it was i i was a sort of world record but it was unofficial the um it was very complicated to do official records back then you had to have sealed equipment and the sealed equipment was right anyway you didn't have igc files and all the rest of it yeah
no it
wasn't digital and um but yeah just yeah just extraordinary heights um so yeah you couldn't thermal in the thermals because you couldn't call the thermals because your head just complete your head just exploded with that with the pressure and you've i've got a video i've got a video of me and my voice is like super squeaky you know i sound like john actually you know yeah
right which which is indecipherable yeah
but it's because of the lack of oxygen yeah
right you just become mickey mouse yeah
that's right yeah
so you took off at two thousand something meters and you went over 7400 i mean that's extraordinary over five i went over 76 percent yeah
oh my
god i
think it was 5550 something you know if i if i dig out yeah that's
mind-boggling yeah yeah that's without
no q nims were involved in the making of this video it was pure thermal just
just i i love i love too that you don't core you kind of dip into it go back out well you just do big
wide circles because if you're in the core you just you just sail plane it if you and it's just so much exertion you know and so little oxygen yeah that's not good yeah
i i love i love his films as tandem films with his you know with his uh his passenger just losing his mind the the efforts of that they they did to try to stay warm and uh it's so amazing it's wild i i mean one of my just memories of flying with john was with you guys very early on i think it was our first trip up to dharmasala and the first time we just went there and then another time we went there and we were starting to come back and i could never understand anything he said so i just would i would just whenever he would get really excited that meant i was supposed to follow him you know i couldn't really hear what he was saying but that just meant you know go behind him
tough
perfect client you know just stick in with the guide and you can get anywhere yeah yeah uh what were you doing in morocco morocco well the first time yeah that was a dream holiday i had a wonderful girlfriend and we and yeah that was an extraordinary story because i was delivering a baby believe it or not she yeah she had a great friend who come you could come back to england to give an english friend to give birth to her half moroccan child and uh and so the four of us me two girls two women and a tiny little child came back and delivered the child back to the womb of its bigger family and we and we had we we just had it we were treated like kings and you know by all these local people and it was you know it was it was lovely but i had a paraglider and you know and you know i had my first wing it was first wing i owned outright called edel apollo and
um we um i just went flying i just went with with lucy um we had a reno four and we just drove around the atlas mountains and went flying yeah and it was it was just a great place to go and all the places that we went to are now flown quite regularly there you know isn't the first person in morocco by any means they were millions of the french have been going to morocco for ages that's next you know the french is the is one of the languages that's commonly spoken there um but yeah we just so i just went exploring and then we then i did um and then i did quite a lot of guiding there working for another school called cloud base which was which was great fun i was given far too much responsibility but it was still great fun i'm quite you know it's quite green at the time i hadn't done that much flying but um yeah that worked well and
you were up in the atlas doing this or were you more out in the foothills to the west we
were more in the atlas okay in areas like agrigore which is a commonly flown area orica taradant tis the test um we did some flying and i can't pronounce this but who are who are zatti somewhere somewhere deep in the Nearse um um and yeah that's so it was mainly it was mainly in the atlas and and i can highly recommend it flew up to cow from tis the test um did a long flight from a place called orica but you know i did i was too scared to go over the back you know so i just pushed forward in a cloud street and made it i don't i think i made it sort of 30 or 40k into wind i i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know have a track log from that because that was before i owned it yeah
all that stuff
yeah still
taking pictures back then in the waypoints yeah
well i wasn't even doing that i was just hanging so
you you said you've never really been able to make paragliding that you know a full-time deal what are you doing when you're not flying what do you how are you surviving back then
back then i was i was just um i was painting and decorating in london learning to be an instructor in the uk um doing whatever came my way you know i was basically but basically sort of old jobbing it you know okay building sort of stuff um yeah i i trained as a boat builder that's why i used to do on boats i was ships ships rigger and carpenter on some amazing tool ships um and so yeah so i did it you know some of it was quite glamorous i suppose i was making catwalks and things um yeah yeah that was good fun yes so the
sailing you were doing was it wasn't merchant marine stuff it was it was tall ship traditional sailing yeah
it was tall ship traditional sailing in the main but also a bit of yachty sort of stuff it was saying it was sailboats and i tended racing no not really i mean we only in the you know we did the the what's it called the thing that happens in october across the atlantic um yeah we did jesus yeah we did that anyway the thing that goes from where all the yachts go yeah together um yep and but i was i was the most glamorous or the most sort of special job i did was i bought the golden hind back from atlantic city donald trump was one of my first employers believe it or not i've got history going back going back with donald's you know to you know this is pre my flying days so very late 80s where um i bought the golden hind which is a museum ship a copy of francis drake's boat we we renovated it and sold it back across the atlantic 30-day passage became a 70-day package because because we got blown off course and we had a we had a night we had various nightmares fires bucket chains uh sounds blowing out all sorts of stories whoa
fires are kind of scary on ships like that fires are always scary on ships but uh whoa yeah
it was properly scary that was it yeah it had a it hadn't was i checked around for it was unbelievable well off and did it yeah it had it was tied together and all the company polit equally on Mädels was put on hold and all the water and diesel were together in plastic drums all tied up stacked up three or four 40 gallon and drums on top of each other and you know tied up but the ship rolled through so much that all the ropes stretched so much that one or two broke through and once one or two of them broke through they all broke through and then they were all spinning around in this in this hold and somehow we had to sort of secure the back you know and it was absolutely terrifying you know it was as scary as any paragliding it was worse than any paragliding trip because most paragliding trips you know you know you you know terrible events you're either going to die in the next two or three minutes before you know whilst you hit the ground or you're going to land safely in two or three minutes right yeah well it's not extended
terror for days
and days when you're stuck in the middle of the atlantic but yeah it's forever when our voyage was ridiculous anyway it's not paragliding which i think yeah but it's a good story yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's a ship outside south cathedral in london nowadays it's in a dry dock outside south cathedral it looks tiny
so she's she's still going well
no she's a museum she's she's that in a drag outfit right there in the middle of london outside of one of our cathedrals yeah wow
cool that's a that's a good story yeah
yeah that was a that was a good time it's we're front page of some of the national papers when we're
pressing right now right in our ship yeah that's a good time a good time yeah i know somebody named
chestnut deck right at the beginning ah
she weren't ready yeah
we weren't ready she wasn't ready she wasn't ready and we'd been pushed out early um yeah but anyway we survived and there's some great stories and there's some videos of that somewhere online as well okay
so you're you're spending some time in morocco flying and at home i assume in the uk in the south southwest and in beer what other places are you going back back then uh
back then well it's it's lots of the same places that you know that everyone's still going to i went to Valle de Bravo early on oh wow yeah which was fantastic i helped Jocky Sanderson on a on a on a trip to valet but that wasn't that much early on that was in 2000 that was the millennium cup i remember that was the millennium cup so that's okay um but yeah morocco morocco morocco pakistan and india uh the places i've done most of my flying most of my foreign trips and spain and
when when did the himalayan sky safaris kick off in earnest well
john and i did a trip to nanda devi which is a it's a sort of wonderful mountain in india which is a national park and you're not meant to go there so we're so john and i thought it would be a great place to go
to fly well we the intention was for the fly over it and around it not to land but we went there and to be honest it it was too full-on for me the conditions weren't right that it was inverted it was windy and john who's you know as we all know was a sort of demigod and he made a he made a habit of landing in these gorges and he made a habit of landing in and climbing out of them and i just there's just no way i could commit myself with that kind of that kind of energy because it wasn't it was it was just too scary for me to be frank wasn't my game i like flying and landing somewhere vaguely safe i like flying over amazing stuff and getting really high and i don't mind strong thermals but i'm you know i don't i'm not a climber we've said this already i'm not yeah and john was climbing out of these deep gorges on um you know on with really shitty holds you know he was climbing up mud and holding on to grass and that kind of uh you know and that and so i just thought hang on you know and we had lots of discussions and i just eventually said john you know i'm probably going to hold you back if i hang around here i'm certainly not this is certainly not what i'm going to do i'd spoken to jim on them in the meanwhile and jim was saying oh it's lovely over here and beer you know it's only an eight hour bus ride or 12 bus ride or whatever it was so eventually i just said sorry john i'm off and got in the bus and went and went and hung out with jim and beer and so that's how yeah that's how beer started for me and i've just got a date on this sorry this was 2004 it's just remembered because the next year there was 2005 which i think was the first PWC they held in beer
i've only actually been going regularly to beers since 2005 um so um and since then i've been i've gone every i've gone every fall i've still yet to go in the springtime because i'm super busy i'm a farmer's son that's something else i've left out so the british springtime i get busy at home with with various things you know including the flying nowadays i've got a tandem outfit and and i did have a school here which which is still running it was set up by this wonderful guy who was my main instructor and he's still running at andrew pierce at flying frenzy um so i was you know i was always you know i the british season's short and sweet and i i don't like to miss it so i'm generally you know if i can be i'm here from april to october um and
the so 2005 you've been there every fall yeah probably not covet i guess but
actually right i did miss that one year i missed that one wow
that's a lot of trips to india that's amazing yeah
there's lots of trips to india i get through my passports mainly with india stamps now
yeah and i love it there is and it's changed massively which is yeah that comes us brings us you know back to why we've been talking recently about some of the things you know it's got it's got it's it's still an amazing place but like you know any sort of geographically interesting place i've been to i've been to many places i've been to many places i've been to many places it's really a very interesting area you know certain parts of it are a honeypot a glue pot you know they're very intense the launch is very intense you know there's areas which are too crowded um and uh but it's still a fantastic place to go it's still a launch pad into one of the best flying areas i've ever been to you've probably been to places than me do you agree it's beer
one of the oh
it's extraordinary yeah it's it it is absolutely extraordinary and
you know i've seen I
mean, the, the, the recent carnage is of course, you know, just a heads up, I think to our community that, I mean, it's still big mountains, but I, I still, in my, my memory is of punching it back into places where in most of the world, you just can't do that. You know, it's, it's remarkable where you can put a glider in those mountains. And, you know, I'm just not used to flying like that in the Alps or here at home in the Rockies or really anywhere that I've ever been. You just don't go. I mean, following you guys early on there into these, you know, really we're going there. Yeah. It was just, you know, and everything is so in a sense, sensible, everything that you think would work because it's supposed to, because of sun angle and all these things that we learn when we're first learning.
It does work that way. And, you know, it's just, at least as I remember, there wasn't a lot of Lee and there wasn't a lot of things that, you know, you really had to worry about other than it, it's big, you know, it's just big, but it was, it was very comforting and wonderful flying with you guys, you know, just mentors and these big personalities. And, you know, it was, it was, it was, it was a, it was great being so new to the sport, being able to
do that.
Just follow you guys around in such remarkable terrain and then, and then everything that comes along with it, the food and the tea and the people and the, and the beauty. Yeah. Remarkable.
Yeah, no, it is, it is an extraordinary place. It's particularly, you know, when you're saying, you know, flying into Lee, that's particularly true on the, on the, on the Dahlia range and going down towards 360, you know, on what we call the front ridge, you know, it's, it's particularly true there. But, you know, of course, you know, if you go over the back, it gets more complicated. You do get value. Sure, of course. You do get some value wins on the, on the front face. And so, like you say, you know, people, people are, it's in a wonderful place, but it can encourage complacency. You know, you're saying, you know, it was great. It was very reassuring to have guides who had knowledge of the area to be able to fly into those leagues, you know, because.
You know, we, we can get it wrong, but we do, you know, we do, we do have a huge amount of accumulated experience.
And some of those, you know, some, sometimes you're not going to fly into the Lee as that, as that poor, poor, but wonderfully honest man who got sucked. Ben, that's it. Ben, yeah. I mean, Ben's experience and all credit to Ben for being so straightforward and honest about it is, I wish we could all be less macho and say, yeah, I fucked up, which is, because, you know. You know, the best lesson is someone else's mistake.
That's it. Yeah. We, we, we like the cheap mistakes. Yeah.
Well, there, that,
that's a, that's a kind of a fun transition in a sense. When we were talking the other day about this, you know, about the carnage and about what's going on in beer and the potentially creating a different way to rescue people other than using helicopters, which we can talk about here in a bit, but you, you said something that I remember you saying to me. When we were flying together all those years ago, is that you, you tend to fly scared. Talk about that. What's that? Uh, I think there is a lot of macho in the sport and I think a lot of people don't admit to that.
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because I haven't yet read Kinger's, Kinger's piece in cross country and she says, fear isn't your friend. Or, you know, I haven't yet read the whole piece. I need to read it. But, you know, obviously people feel differently about this. I just feel that I don't think, you know, I think complacency is a danger. That's what I really think. You know, you want to remember it's not so much fear is your friend because it can definitely hold you back, but you don't want to forget it. You know, you want to nurture your inner chicken is a phrase I sometimes use because he or she may tell, you know, is telling you stuff. You accumulate experience. Sometimes you can't figure out exactly what's going wrong or what is wrong about the day,
but it's worth listening to it. And anyway, you know, if it, if it's totally illogical and irrational, depending on how bad it is, maybe just forget it. But, you know, it's, you know, we're in the sport. Most of us, you know, the vast majority are in the sport for fun. So if the fear is holding you back and taking away the fun, don't, don't bother, don't bother with it. But if the, if the, you know, if the fear is telling you of a danger, it's worth listening to it. It's worth, it's worth, you know, because there is always another day and it can all change very, very fast. You don't need a big accident to completely ruin more than your day, you know, your life, the life of your friends and family, you know, the people who will miss you or have to look after you if you're, you
know, something worse almost than death happens. You know, I don't really know. It's. I'm slightly nervous about talking about this too much publicly because it's an individual thing. However, I am prepared to say that I, I, I, I don't forget my fear. I let my, you know, I, I, I'm, you know, I've got thousands and thousands of hours and many, many extraordinary places, but I won't let go of the brakes, you know, the controls unless I know that it's safe to do so. I won't, you know, I, I won't, I won't. I won't push my parameters. I like to push my parameters because it's new. It's exciting and you learn stuff, but I will only try and push them at a small proportion each time.
You know, if you're completely out there doing something new, let's slow down a little bit, draw back, consolidate, and then push yourself just a small 10%, 5%, whatever it is. It's one of the reasons I've, I started guiding. I started, I started doing professional tandems is because I realized. Hang on, I'm going to Pakistan. I'm going, you know, I'm going to start top land 7,000 meter mountains if I'm not careful, just to keep the, the acceleration, the excitement and the fear, you know, and it doesn't make sense. Where's the logic, you know, ultimately it's like, you know, it's like squirrel suiting closer and closer into the ridge. You will eventually hit the fucking thing. So, so I just, you know, so for me, I started doing tandems and guiding partly to stop myself, pushing my own boundaries.
I was too much, you know, cause I got the carriers. I get a vicarious thrill. I get a thrill for taking Gavin McClurg who then becomes a Red Bull X-Alps athlete starts, you know, it starts up this wonderful, you know, quite based mayhem becomes, and you know, I, I got a thrill from being a grandfather and still around, you know, being involved. You know, I don't want to die young. I've got five children. I've got a life to lead. You know, I've got stuff going on. I want to,
I love that. People have had some really unique approaches to longevity in the sport and keeping it safe. I've had some amazing conversations over all these years of doing this podcast, but that's a unique – I haven't heard it articulated like that. I think many people probably have done what you've done to keep it interesting, to keep it exciting, to pad the margin a bit, but that's a great way to do it. Through tandems, through guiding, through instructing, it keeps you from squirrel suiting right on the deck.
Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's a joke. I say I'm a parasite. When I launch with every tandem, it's the first flight. It's the first flight for someone, or most of them, it's the first flight for someone. And you remember the first flight where your feet left the ground? Yeah, that's what we all chase
forever, right?
Yeah, and I can get it 12 times a day on a good day.
I fit literally between my legs, and that gasp – sorry, it all sounds rather pervy now, but that gasp as you launch, it's extraordinary.
Well, that's really interesting. I've always had this real reticence to get into tandems because it's the cliches. You don't want to make your passion your job. Yeah. And I've always been really reticent to – I have tandem gear. I bring my daughter flying. I fly tandem. I've never been a tandem-rated pilot. I've never done it as a business. Yeah. I've never done it as a job because I don't want to – I don't want to be a tandem pilot. I don't want it to rob from my – but it sounds like it's the other way for you 100%. It's really a gift. It's really providing you a lot of joy.
Yeah, it provides me a lot of joy. And also, you've got to remember in the UK, to stay competitive and exciting in the game, you've got to be prepared to drive a long way. You know, all the – so I live right on the south coast, so, you know, the good air masses are northerly, so we tend to fly in winds. It's not always that way. You can do big triangles. But I can't – I'm too lazy. I can't be bothered to deal with, you know, spending my life in a car driving all over the place to keep that level of commitment. There are some amazing people who've been flying as long as me or longer who still get themselves at the top of the league. But I find it – I just don't enjoy chasing the weather that much.
Let's talk about guiding for a bit, Eddie, because the – taking people, you know, up and down that range in beer, you know, obviously there's just a huge amount of – I wouldn't say liability. But, you know, like flying somebody tandem, you know, you're kind of the – you've got them in your hands. You know, you've got – There's a lot of responsibility there, and it is big terrain. I mean, even, you know, even on the really good days, I would imagine there's some – I've never done any guiding, but I've been thinking about it quite a bit lately because I'd love to take people to the Alps and share with them some of the experiences that I've gained in the X-Alps.
You know, you just get to remarkable places in that race at remarkable times of the day. And I'd love to share.
I'd love to share
some of that. But what you've done in a long time, what does it – what do you guys – you know, when you debrief at the end of the night with the boys, what's a common theme? What are you guys often talking about? What are the things that still make you nervous about it, I guess?
Oh, it's people not observing. It's always – the one word that we always say a million times, and I think every guide and instructor does. It's, you know, observe, you know, watch what's going on, watch where everyone is, you stay safe, you'll climb quicker, you're, you know, it's observation is the key phrase that people miss. And I mean, normally in the evening when everyone's gone, we're not – we don't talk about flying. We talk about our kids or we talk about, you know, we might talk about some of our dreams, you know, where we're going, you know. Yeah.
That's about it. And part of it is about not stretching it too fast, you know, just making sure everyone has a wonderful time and they don't jump off the deep end. You know, back in the day when you guided with us, we were possibly a bit brave, inverted commas, that we would take relatively inexperienced pilots and land them at 4,000 metres over the monopoly valley just for a very early takeoff on an ICP slope. And we were more cautious about that kind of thing now, to be frank.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The sort of stuff we talk about at the end of the day is how to push everyone's experience and knowledge gently, you know, so they can firmly retain the knowledge without pushing them over the edge, really, without putting anyone in too much danger. Yeah. But we make it also very clear at the beginning that we are… only guides there's a big difference between it being a guide and an instructor you know it's it's always the choice of the pilot if they want to follow us yeah
right yeah yeah it it it risk it what's the term i'm looking for you know it you don't follow us then you're not on our then you're on your own
yeah that's yeah well well no we we spend that's not true in our case because we spend a lot of time looking for everyone and making sure that they're with us but they learn a lot more if they can stick if they can stick with us right
yeah i mean what i mean is you know hey we're a guide follow us yeah stay with us learn from us don't go thinking on your own yeah
yeah take advantage of us you know yeah you know the guys i tend to work with have all got eight eight thousand hours plus you know that you know so take advantage of all yeah take advantage
of us
of all that knowledge this
is another thing i wanted to ask when you look back at the history of this troop that you put together all these decades ago i i wouldn't imagine it's pretty special in this world of guiding where there's things like egos and ability and talent and all these things that maybe are cause friction but you guys have held it together for a really long time what what do you chalk that up to i mean you and jim and of course john for all those years but and debu and there's some new team members new work antoine i mean but you've all been doing this for a really long time what what has been the glue there what's what's held that together
yeah so well you know what's held us together is and also mutual respect you know we're all personalities john and i are very different personalities and i'm quite annoying you know i'm you know i'm super annoying i'm adhd i forget numbers i don't have a clue you know you've asked me about dates to a certain extent and i just can't give you a straight answer you know there's and so it's the degree of acceptance and respect of the other schools that we all have you know um yeah
i always i always felt like uh well you know when we were putting those trips together in 2009 and 2011 i always felt like if you know if there wasn't all of you there's no way it would have happened very very, very distinctly different skills i mean you know john was never going to take any of the money or deal with the money or deal with logistics you know he was just we in the air and that was you know that was his skill yeah yeah no yeah but it's quite uniquely different skills yeah coming together to make it work but yeah you know if you if you would have lost one of the team members you would have been hopeless we
we work really well together but i'm you know we're still doing it i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i've stopped doing it alone i'm still wonderfully involved with debbu and debbu's works with a lady called forum and sky summits and the cumulative personalities we will learn and we can deliver a better product in my opinion you know if you because everyone everyone's different so you have a different type of guide you know especially if you've got a team with a variety of guides then you'll you'll pick up different skills and they will say it in different ways and and and and so so on you know i'm not i was you know the sport's dangerous i consider myself very much as being a learner still you know yeah and um and and and it's that kind of thing i learn a huge amount of and sometimes often not very good pilots they just remind you of stuff they remind you they word it differently we're not very experienced pilots i think you know just having respect for everyone who flies is is sometimes you know some of the words they say you can ignore it too but you know it's worth worth hearing um
we forgot to mention you know there's some other you know so antoine of course is a wonderful guy to work with and to enter in a brilliant pilot you're saying about machismo you know the machismo goes with the more experience you get yeah we're all i'm noticing you know none of us have anything to prove um yeah and uh and that's a great thing because it makes the world much safer and people more peaceful as well you know there's you if you don't if you're not trying to prove anything you know we're still trying to enjoy stuff do new shit new new things i'm not being but but i don't feel i've got anything to prove i'm happy in my own skin and flying world for sure and i'm very happy to be associated with so many wonderful people and we the person i wanted to mention who we've who's i feel has been slightly left out here is mike can you remember mike yeah good very good he is very
good mike that's right god
that's right wow and
he's still out there yeah every he's out there yeah he's flat he spends his life traveling around the world flying in extraordinary places you'll you'll run into mike a lot in guatemala and interlaken and in beer but and other places too i'm not entirely sure where his itinerary takes him but he's yeah he's free spirit yeah he's very much a free spirit and he's a super talented man yeah
of course yeah about mike yeah uh okay i'm gonna put you on the spot especially for someone who uh you know you've said adhd but the the do you have i mean this is digging into a lot of history here but i'd love to hear you know maybe a story about the craziest thing you ever saw in beer and that could be one of the carnage stories or something just remarkable something that happened that was that you still you know chat around it then sitting around the fire at night oh
man that's um
yeah well i mean the one of the craziest things was just reverting there's so many of them it's really hard but if i link two of them together because i'm going to sound critical on the first story and then i'm hopefully gonna hopefully i'm going to sound a bit more humble in the second story because it puts me in the same place and that but the first story is very brief you know that ben ben i think his surname was laws but ben and his cumulo number story just recently ben
lewis yeah
yeah and then and but seeing on that day seeing the weather i was in the landing field i hadn't actually flown that day at all um and i just saw you know you saw the clouds develop you saw the whole situation occurring and and then it was still occurring and there were still people up there and they were still coming back and they had to be you know the clouds were massive and it was still happening and it was still happening and it was still happening and it was and it started pissing with rain and the number of bright gliders on launch the following day was extraordinary because so many people had got so wet and it's like why the fuck are they still in the sky you know what's going on you know and it was really you know it was really extraordinary and so there i am sounding quite critical of the situation you know why are they there but then you know i think jim said the story on this thing anyway i've definitely heard it because for jim one of the most extraordinary stories for him was me and he needing a climb to get somewhere and there were three three or four vultures and jim was you know we were in the same air and i said come on jim they're going left let's keep going left let's take it in the into the into the cloud and then fly out and jim's you know you know yeah that was you know so i'm a hypocrite you know i i will do it but it's um yeah
so that's you know the extraordinary weather that people fly in and bear it's just it is mad it is mad yeah
you know it was it was interesting that the i had to check my own hypocrisy big time in the last couple of weeks because when we put out the show with ben i got inundated with emails from people who were there and saw it and you know and we had we had both kinds of emails come in people that flew that day and did the same thing and just got slightly luckier because they pushed out a little bit earlier but you know parachutal and tons of rain and you know just also being lemmings and also going i can't believe i did that and then a lot of people saying i can't believe people did that and i stayed on the ground and i mean what the hell are these people thinking and you know and i the you know the the hip check or the you it was it was very easy for me to to nearly fall into the trap of going what the fuck are you thinking and and you go wait a minute i've been there i would have probably done the same thing back then not with you guys because i would have had guides that would have gone no this is unreasonable let's go drink tea but you know we've all been there and we've all gone through that period of you know where there's more stoke than brains and you don't really yet know and and there's there really is a lot to peer pressure even though there's probably nobody going come on let's go that day but there's when there are people in the sky there's that whole well god am i being a wimp i mean is there you know those people are up there it must be okay and uh you know when you don't have the experience yet and you don't have the miles and you haven't seen it and you haven't seen the crashes i mean back when i was there with you guys in 2009 i was there with you guys in 2009 i was there with you guys in 2009 i was there with you guys in 2009 2011 i mean there were some bad crashes that happened in over development not with us but uh you know there were certainly a lot of people coming in under a lot of rain and you're going wow what are they doing anyway my point is that uh you know it's easy to be uh on the sidelines calling things out but you we are we have all had those moments where like you said turning i mean i did it up in alaska where i really really wanted more height okay well you get it yeah you stuff it into a cloud yeah and i i needed to do it in that in that instance and it all worked out okay but it might not have yeah
but then when there's a big cloud in the sky and you're still all up there and blah blah blah you know you know their situation is growing etc you know you've said it lemmings you know people being like lemmings following other people and it reverts me back to you know nurture your inner chicken you don't need to be a lemon yeah you've got nothing to prove it's not even a comp day and if it was a comp day they'd have canned it and um and so you know it's like you know risk to reward well you know how much risk is this what am i going to get out of it you know there's all sorts of things that alarm bells you know so yeah i yeah i get back nurture the inner chicken see if it makes sense yeah what sense is that what
one of the one of the recurring themes i got in the email was that oh i was trying to break my personal record that day and i there was a line of santa croce i did a show with him ages ago and you know one of his favorite sayings is there's there's always another day yeah and there's always another better day you know if we only flew the really good days we're gonna break huge personal records you know you don't have to do it on those days you don't have to do it on the marginal days there's always going to be a better day yeah i think that was what hit me the most was that why would you try to do it on the marginal but on that day you know when there's such obvious signs and i think that was what ben was was so honest about yeah there was no reason for that no
reason at all yeah there's always tomorrow for sure yeah
and if you're trying
if you're trying too hard you're probably doing the wrong thing yeah yeah right
yeah amen marriage
eddie you're a treasure man i appreciate you i appreciate what you guys uh did for me all those years ago i still have such fond memories from it and the world thanks you all for sticking together all these years and creating so many incredible experiences for so many people but uh thanks for coming on man and thanks for sharing your stories and what a life what a what a life of adventure you have led it's uh remarkable thank
you it's been a pleasure and i hope to do it for much longer too excellent
excellent talk soon buddy yes if
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