255. XC Concepts in depth - Calef Letorney

Hi

there everybody, welcome to another episode of the Cloud Base Mayhem. I sat down with my good friend and instructor, New England Paragliding, Caleb Letourne, for the third of these series. We're calling this one 301. So this is pretty heavy on instructional thoughts on quite a few different topics. How the day and pressure modify our thermal techniques. Kind of revisit that sticky to fizzy concept that Kelly Farina talks about in his book, Mastering Paragliding. Talk about lee-side thermal strategies and cautions. When to move on, how fast can put you higher. Fast always isn't a risk. So flying the speed of the day and how to crunch distance most efficiently.

Sharking and the art of surfing cross and upwind. So we used to always talk about dolphin flying and the concept is more shark flying these days. We'll talk a little bit about that. Team flying strategy and in-depth. And we talked about how I spent so much time with Donizete Lemos. He was part of that world record team down in Brazil. Spent some time with him in Texas a few years ago. He and Cody Mittanck and I did a bunch of team flying together. I learned a lot about it. Talked about team flying, how it works and concepts and rules and really setting the mindset for team flying. Talked about shifting gears, how important it is, how to recognize it, how to not

hit the deck. I think that's it. This was a long one. We get into this for quite a while. It's about an hour and a half. Hit

some nice areas and I think some concepts that will really help you crunch more miles flying XC. Enjoy.

Califf, welcome back, dude. It's been a while. We're doing the 301 episode here. We're going to tackle some questions. I dig it.

Yeah, paragliding 301 cross country techniques. Thanks for having me back.

I like it. I like it. You guys have had a good season out there in the Northeast.

Yeah, we've had a great year.

Every once in a while we get a drought and it's fun. And I think the community is growing. We're learning lots. The gear is getting better. So we're having better and better flights. It's been really cool.

Cool. And you are not the sole proprietor anymore of New England paragliding, right? You sold? I

sold paraglide New England when my day job got more serious. Yeah. So. Range Rover? Yeah. Rover's North. We sell Land Rover parts.

Rover's North.

Right, right, right. We became employee-owned and it didn't seem right for me to have a side hustle. So. Right. I've been flying more than ever, though. So.

That's great. So you made a good move there.

Yeah. That's awesome. We've been having tons of fun this year. So I just reached out because I've been thinking about these concepts that I think have really helped me fly further and better. And I don't claim to have made any of this stuff up. It's a collection of books I read and great pilots I've hung out with. And I think you've got like a great format to help folks get their head around concepts because not everybody's read as many books as they should. And it just seemed like a great idea. And I'm. I'm hoping to learn some from you, too. I've got a bunch of, you know, we'll flip the script a little bit. You know, you can ask me some questions. I'll ask you some questions. But.

Yeah. Let's dive in. Cool.

Great.

So right off the bat, I'm wondering sort of like, you know, let me set the stage a little bit. But I think, you know, obviously the fundamentals of cross country are good climbing and then being able to glide somewhere and climb again and our ability to put that together as we grow. Uh, there's a bunch of concepts that I think really modify our flying and I'm wondering how, um, the day and the pressure modify the thermal technique and, and sort of how we're changing strategy based on what's going on. And I'm curious, sort of, how do you think about that in your flying?

Yeah. I mean, when I read this one, I got really excited. The first concept that came to mind, which I've always really liked is Kelly Farina's in his book. Look, mastering paragliding. He talks about, you know, the, the day depending a lot on the, on the pressure and, uh, you know, the, the skew T and the lapse rate is, is really a spectrum, right? From sticky to fizzy. And it kind of cracked me up when I thought about it this time, getting ready to talk to you because, you know, in the Rockies, it's always some spectrum of fizzy. Yeah. We don't have a lot of. Really stable days. We do sometimes get an inversion, but, you know, so firstly I thought was, wow, this is really location dependent.

Uh, and you know, we really experienced that spectrum in its full in the Alps. You know, you could have it totally the spectrum on the same day. You could definitely, you're definitely going to experience it in a week. Right. And so, um, and I. I have very frequently been on the losing end of not identifying, especially the sticky days and flying it well in something that had a lot of consequences like the X-Alps. You know, some of my campaigns where on really sticky days, you know, when I think of those, they're kind of soupy and moist and a really hard inversion, but you can cover a lot of ground if you're just wicked patient.

And you're just, you're talking. Hopping out the slowest climbs, which is just not something we deal with here in the Rockies. We don't have slow climbs. And so I'm excited to get to your question down the list here about that concept, you know, when to leave and, and, and when to be in race mode and when to be in slower mode. Uh, but before we get to that, I think it's just firstly identifying what the day is going to be forecast wise, but then also being able to flip a switch when you're in the air. And recognizing when things have to be patient, because sometimes, you know, there was a day, I think it was the 2019 Red Bull X-Alps. We had this crazy high pressure come in that blew in from the Sahara.

So the, the skies were really full of dust and it was crazy hot. I mean, walking through Chamonix at seven o 'clock in the morning, it was almost a hundred degrees, you know, so it was low 30 Celsius at seven o 'clock in the morning. I've never. It was record heat, um, crazy hot and, you know, the kind of heat where you'd be walking up to launch, taking snow and just packing it on the back of your neck and putting it down your pants. And at three o 'clock in the afternoon, I launched trying to get to St. Hilaire, you know, third hike of the day, got way tall and had a ton of vertical to work with and launched at three, you know, should have been on by three o 'clock in the afternoon and didn't get a blip out of my very hell.

But that was the same day that people top landed on Mont Blanc and, uh, Toma Coconaya got to almost 6,000 meters, you know, he was just ahead of me down at going into Monta Vesso in the, in the Maritimes and went to 6,000 meters. So if you could break through that inversion, you were on the moon literally. And so, um, you know, I just didn't, I wasn't patient enough, you know, right when I launched, I should have sat there. For however long it took and just bumbled around and bumbled around and bumbled around and eventually I would have gotten something. And so, uh, yeah, I mean, I think it's, I like that visual, you know, sticky to fizzy and obviously at the far end of fizzy where I live is, you know, you want to be looking at Cape values, right.

And, and really is it too fizzy and how fizzy is it going to get and how, how much OD and you know, when it goes ballistic, it's pretty uncomfortable being in the air. Um, you're talking about

overdevelopment risk.

Yeah, exactly. If it's too fizzy, you know, which, which you also very much get in the Alps. And so, but I like thinking about it on that spectrum. I, I like that visual. Um, you know, what kind of, do you guys have really sticky days? I, I, I imagine you do, especially in the maritime air and

we've been having a ton of days and what I've found. Okay. And I've also found this in the Alps. Is that sometimes they, the thermals release more on the terrain where in a lower pressure day, like a, a knob partway up the terrain might release just all the juice. And so you got to go out front and look for it if there's nothing happening on the hill and there could be a boomer happening just off of like a down the spine, a lower knob sort of thing where on a higher pressure day, I feel like that's much less likely. And I like to think of like a. The lid being on a pot where that's our inversion and we'll get them like, you know, maybe at 3000 feet and again at 5,000 feet, you know, they'll be in fairly regular increments.

And you, when you get below them, you know, you often start below them, but the thermals really stick to the terrain quite a bit. And it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a bad day. Like full blue sky can be awesome. And a lot of times like our main spine. And peaks will have the only clouds around. And then if you can be there on that main spine, like you said, taking your time, but really understanding that the thermal is trying to go up and the lapse rate isn't good. It's hitting inversion and it's bumping along and drifting downwind. We're in a lower pressure day. I might be searching more upwind for better climbs, knowing that the best thermal core is going to be consolidated and more up.

Wind like smoke from a fire. The good stuff is, is going more directly up and the trash gets blown downwind. So I'll hit a thermal and I'll turn into the wind and I'll sniff up wind more on a low pressure day. And I might be more willing to invest altitude and gliding a little out front, seeing if I can't. And then sometimes it just pulls you in. You fly straight for, you know, 30, 40 seconds and it gets better and better and better. And then boom, you're on the rocket ship out. And that. Doesn't happen quite so much in high pressure days. I feel like the bubbles will drift, especially if it's a light wind, high pressure day, and then there might be some sort of convergence happening, or it's just the terrain that it will drift and not go up. And you end up following thermals downwind where you're kind of bopping along with the bubbles until the terrain really forces it clear, especially if you've got heating on the other side of the mountain and sort of that happening from multiple directions.

And it seems like the terrain. Is even more important on the high pressure day where it, it takes the wind drifting the bubbles of junk into the terrain to physically force them free. And the great part is you don't know how high you're going to go on a blue sky day. You can often go much higher, right? There's no limit. You're not limited by cloud base. You know, of course, if there's a cloud, the top of the climb is different because you switch from dry to about a collapse rate to moist. The adiabatic lapse rate, but normally the lift goes higher than the cloud base. We just can't go, you know, we got to stay 500 feet below cloud base. Um, yeah.

And I think what you're talking about for me is really visual. It's, you know, you're, you're mapping, you're, you're mapping what you're feeling, seeing, saw on the forecast before you launched what you saw sitting there, setting up, you know, you're, you're, you're putting together all these things and, you know, like here, for example, on the high pressure day. Right. Before I launch, I have to be, you know, those are often the days that are, you know, dust devils are ripping off at the, at the launch and carrying rocks with it. And it's, it's kind of disturbing. Uh, but, but the climbs are two meter climbs, which for around here is a really lousy climb. You know, that yesterday there was most of my climbs were four or five meter climbs. And so, but you can still cover a ton of distance on those high pressure days, if you map it well.

Yeah. Okay. you also, for me, I have to get in a little bit, especially in the spring when things are rowdy and we often get the high pressure days is we have to, I have to mentally switch gears to kind of be in that battle mode, you know, that because the, the edges are going to be sharp. You're going to feel like you're in a ripper and you're in a one meter climb. You know, you're just kind of getting your butt kicked a lot more and high pressure is different in different places, but they tend to be, you're getting slapped around a little bit more. And, but if you're in the right frame of mind, it's not scary. It's fun. It's, it's yeah. I, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to push through, I'm going to get to that terrain. I'm going to break through really cool on those days where you can see it. You know, there, there are days that I've been in Northern Italy where you get a lot of smog coming in and a lot of dirty air coming in from Milan and from the flats and from Venice.

And, and you can, they're blue days, but there you can see the inversion is so defined and you can see, you know, at a certain point in the day, Oh, it's starting to go. There's, there's places that are getting through this and, and you can see it happening and you can, you just got to get through it and be patient. And, but you're absolutely right. I think there's definitely when you're mapping it and understanding how it relates to pressure really does help you, you know, in general, I'm always trying to, you know, on a glide, uh, on a climb, I'm always trying to work to the windward side, but there's definitely, you're definitely right about how it relates to pressure. High

pressure days. A lot of times the windward side, you just fall out of the bubble where if you're willing to turn down wind and drift with it a time, it may be bouncing against a layer until like a critical mass of other bubbles and maybe some of the terrain influence and, and you, downwind it. And then it turns on again. You know, sometimes the thermals will like lay sideways for a bit. Sometimes that happens around cloud. If they're weak

to start off with. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I, one of the best climbs I got in Alaska, I love this story. I've told it before, but really late, you know, I'd had a couple of flights and it was seven, 8 PM, which actually isn't that late in Alaska. And I just did this little X-Alps move and ran up this Ridge and the wind was blowing pretty hard, but it was blowing the way I wanted to go. And I thought, well, three, if I get, three K out of this flight's better than walking three K. And I launched and just kind of Ridge sword for a bit. And then finally got a little bit higher high enough that I thought, well, I'll just wing around this thing, this little knob I was on and, and just fly down the Valley. And I was at zero AGL. I mean, I was basically at sea level and, but you know, but in the base of these mountains, but very low and caught a zero for ever, you know, it was one of those where you're just turning and, Ooh, I should probably land.

Oh, one more turn. I should probably land one more turn. It's probably, I mean, I was just right on the deck, but just maintaining, maintaining, maintaining, maintaining forever. And then 0.1 and then 0.2. And I went to 15,000 feet in that climb. I went up 15,000 feet in Alaska. I mean, I hadn't had to climb like I never did another one. That was the only climb I ever had like that. I got to the top of this thing and flew for 50 K and never got another thermal, you know, it was just, but it was just hanging onto that thing. And eventually it stood up. Like you said, it was pretty windy and it was just, enough to just keep me in the air and then boink, it went straight up and I was out of there.

And it was a high pressure evening. Yeah. High pressure evenings often totally release and have these amazing glass offs. So like some of the best glass offs are high pressure. I

think that

was a glass

off, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think it was this combination of

- You

get some

cold wind from the cat, you know, dark shady slopes, catabatic flow, wedging in under your warm valley air, just enough terrain to cut it loose. Yeah. And high pressure days. I feel like often work great later in the day too. They've had the whole day to bake in sunshine. You're not having shaded. You don't have to worry about getting shaded out. Nothing's releasing. Yeah. It's got like a cap on it in the valley and maybe it's blowing towards the terrain. The terrain eventually pushes it out, but you know, it's just a different strategy. And I think everybody sort of has to learn their own game and technique, but if you start to check into what's happening and you don't have to actually look at the pressure, but just feel it. Is it bubbles or is it, you know, more continuous calms and then start modifying your strategy based on what you're doing?

Because, you know, like other sports, like skiing, you know, you can have a great day if the conditions are really obvious and easy, but you can also have good days and challenging conditions if you're changing how you're using the terrain and what you're doing with it.

Yeah. I mean, finding the right aspect, finding the right slope. There's always good pal out there somewhere. Just got to hunt. So, yeah. I, I like this. I mean, it's what you're, what you're saying to me is, you know, you're, you're, you're making a visual map of, I mean, this is how we find the core, right? This is how we find, find glides. This is how we find lines. It's, it's just visually mapping all the time. And I love combining that with these, these concepts that you're talking about with wind, with pressure, with sticky to fizzy time of day, blue clouds. All these things, you know, you're, you're just getting, trying to figure it out. And let's touch on that wind, figure it a little bit.

Sometimes you don't.

Yeah. Let's jump in. I want to jump in touch about the wind. Cause that really changes an incredible amount of what we're going on. I mean, first of all, there's always like the, the buoyancy to sheer ratio issue, right? Whereas it gets windier, it gets blown apart and only the strong climbs survive. But I think also something that's really helped me in, you know, the last dozen years. Or so I've been paying more and more attention to it is the wind direction as it changes in relationship to the terrain, like little valleys and whatnot, but also especially going through layers and inversions. But in a climb, you can see the wind direction change significantly. And if you're quick to pick up on it, your strategy can totally modify as well. And you can really make the most of it, or you can be totally oblivious to it. And then, you know, it's not working for you.

This is where I think racing really helps. Or, you know, are having multiple people that you're flying with. We're going to talk about team flying techniques here in a bit, but, you know, I think that in my experience, people who fly well in the wind, fly in the wind, you know, it's, it's, it's not something you're just magically good at. And, you know, there's talent in this sport, of course, but I really think that, you know, flying in wind just takes a lot of practice. And again, back to that. It's better to lose a climb. To the windward side than the leeward side. In most cases, you're, you're absolutely right about hunting with, with pressure on high pressure, but the, you know, it's easier to get in the wind falling out of the backside of, of, of the climb could be a death nail.

And it's depending on your height, you, you might never get back to that, but, you know, what I see in general is lower our pilots turn too soon. So when they hit a climb, it might be convergence. You might not need to turn period, but it could also, but typically it's ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And then, whoa, there's a ripper bank it. And they haven't felt that other side of it yet. And so, especially in wind, that's, that's your death. That's going to put you on the ground doing that over and over again. So, you know, having other markers. Really helps, uh, but also just tend to play.

I saw a beautiful thing in Valle de Bravo one year. Uh, we set the task that year and it was quite a long one and we went out towards Victoria, but we came back to the lake. So those of you haven't flown by, this is North of the lake and there's always winds always blowing North there. And so it's typically we just go North. We just go with the wind. But in this one case, it looked light enough that we could get out on those flats and monkey around a little bit and come all the way back to the lake. And only two or three people made goal, maybe only one, but Mitch Riley won that day and he ended up winning the whole comp. And the thing he did differently out on those flats that put

the rest of us on the ground was because it was quite windy, you know, you would get the climb, never get it as much as you wanted, went off. Oh, I'm not going to get to that climb on the windward side, so I'm going to fall off and we had to get to this turn point on the other side of the flats. And so every time you fall off, you're making it harder to get back up wind to the, to the turn point. And he was the only one that made it because every time he got to the top of the climb, he always went to windward. He always kept moving to windward and, and trying to find your, we're going to talk about shark flying here in a bit, but, you know, trying to find a decent enough glide. It's hard. To do into the wind. And it's, you know, it's usually if you're getting near the ground, it's always easier to just bend off and go down wind and get a climb.

And if you're almost on the ground, that's your only option sometimes, but sniffing that better air to windward was the wind of the day. And so, you know, I always say when it's, when it's a crosswind task, or if you're flying in wind, always opt to the windward side whenever possible, because that's. You know, otherwise, if you're, if you're going from A to B and you're constantly falling off downwind, you're never going to get to B.

Yeah. Great stuff. Um, the, we, we sort of started talking about surfing and sharking. Do we want to jump around and, and, and touch on that?

Yeah, sure. I mean, XC mag did a really good article about this recently, and I can't remember, you know, they've been doing those masterclasses as well. I can't remember who it was that they. Had on that was talking about this, but, you know, this is a concept that I think is really much more used in the sailplane community. Uh, but it's, you know, it's the, it's the concept that we, we always talked about dolphin flying and, you know, using speed and sometimes bees, or maybe a little bit of breaks with going through, uh, air that's going up versus air that's going down, you know, Lifty lines. And, and using those and turns out that it's, it's quite a bit more efficient to shark fly.

And, you know, so especially again on a crosswind leg or, uh, trying to move to windward, you know, you can, you can kind of shark fly through the air more efficiently by just constantly working these better lines, you know? So rather than just blindly going straight and. I'm using my, this is an audio podcast. I'm using my hands a lot here, but, you know, rather than, you know, going straight and slowing down and speeding up, depending on what the air is doing, literally just coming off. And following that line of better air, um, which inevitably not inevitably, but most of the time will lead to an actual climb.

Um, and so you're more efficient than rather than flying straight. Kind of. Kind of sharking through the air is how I think about it. Um, I'm not sure I'm articulating that very well, but how do you think about it?

It's really challenging to describe. It's something I've been thinking about and then trying to sort of regurgitate to the baby birds quite a bit recently. And I always struggle with it. Um, and I think it, it pays to go back to where the term comes from and that's how sharks cover big distance by not swimming directly towards where they're going, but hanging out in the current. That's going to bring them there eventually. Um, and I got a masterclass in this, uh, in Mexico last year, flying with, uh, Sir James messenger. And he was like, Oh, I'll let you lead out. I haven't been out that way too many times. And I think, okay, well, I'm going to stop and make turns because I want to be conservative and gain some height and just watched him fly straight and leave me behind and end up not only there earlier, but also higher without making a single turn.

And I was like, I see.

So I've been really putting a big study on this a lot. I mean, I was aware of the concept before, but it took being taken to school that badly to realize how much more I had to learn on this topic. And what I've been finding that is especially in high pressure, bubbly situations, especially, uh, cross wind and upwind, you know, and it may be. that like you're flying uh northwest on a southwest day or something like that you know so it doesn't have to be totally against the wind especially if there's terrain involved you know or like a cloud street or something like that um you can sort of sniff a line and feeling your glider and there's a lot of intuition that's hard to describe but you'll feel it pull you on to these lines where you king it's almost like sailing we're going across wind it you know i don't know anything about sailing so this is what i've heard that better than downwind is like crosswind um but you know uh we had a day like this it's funny that you mentioned sailplanes do this more um you're the good flying in vermont we had like a week of high pressure where some midwesters came and visited and and they broke the escutney site south record south launch escutney they broke the record on sunday and then again the visitors broke it on monday and then we went and broke it again on tuesday and the previous records had all been frisbeeing downwind but it was sort of light and we flew across wind to get to the terrain and then we got on this sailplane route and we had a good base like eight thousand feet you could just fly the lift line sort of into the wind and and sniff and fly and the entire line was lit up such that we were able to do a higher average speed than flying downwind because we weren't spending half the turn going the wrong direction and i wasn't turning you know once i got on to that continuous ridge it wasn't the main spine of the greens it was just east so it's the it's called east ridge and then to the worcester range um you know i wasn't turning unless it was like at first it was like 500 feet per minute i'll stop for 500 feet per minute and then i was like all right i'm not stopping unless it's 800 feet per minute you know just going to continue and the line just yeah there's some bits of sink in there but then you keep finding these ribbons that you can just hunt into the wind on this line and and it can really be extremely fast and productive and i think part of also what's going on is that we think oh we're going to be conservative so we're going to stay and lift and turn but because half of the turn is downwind your climb rate almost needs to be double if you're going to stay in lift and turn circle because you're spending you're having to reclaim all that that distance that you drifted back downwind with it right so it's actually more productive just to go straight and then i think also our our sink rates higher when we're turning right and sometimes there are just the currents that set up that you can tap into terrain makes an easy one to follow cloud streets can be great and if the cloud street is because of the wind it's going to be a lot more productive because of the terrain you don't necessarily have to be under the cloud and work the cloud itself so much as just put yourself on the appropriate setback from the ridge based on the wind flow and where the thermals are going to drift for your given altitude and then you work like a diagonal line as you get lower you end up pushing further out front because that's where you're going to reconnect with that same flow from you know the fields heating out front and then hitting the terrain you can draw a line up to where the clouds would be

and then you're going to be

but the clouds are coming and going and you know um we'll talk more later about when to move on but one thing i've learned is that if the cloud's not happening at that moment like some of the best lift is as the clouds just starting and you might be there anyways so don't like turn around and feel like you're you're tied to the cloud you gotta search that cloud you know keep moving on this productive line and you're going to be in the right place at the right time because you're moving through the air where it's coming up that ridge and you're going to be in the right place or what have you and you can cover big distance this way i

remember Chrigel in one of the races he flew off the zugspitze uh uh in germany and i guess it was quite windy it was seven o 'clock in the morning and he got to the the terrain on the other side and just surfed the katabatic for 30 something k and everybody just said this is the

rotor right

it's what it how yeah it was like the rotor it was what how did he do it what what's happening here and you know because he always there's all this latent heat in in the trees that you know like you talk about bubbles that they kind of bubble out and he was just he just put his glider right on the trees and just kind of bumbled along for 30k and it's seven o 'clock in the morning and i've had i've had flights like that where you're just you're getting 25 to one forever you know just cruising along and there's no sun and it's all cloud and it's six o 'clock in the morning and you know almost like a reverse glass off you know but i i think what you're talking about is often you can fly really fast without turning and no bar that's the other part of it is just is just letting the sky kind of pull you along and if we can get in tune with that

the concept of sharking or however you like to think about it i think you know like jamie took you to school and you know you shouldn't feel too bad about that he's he's a phenomenally good pilot but you know i you can really if you let the glider sniff we're going to talk about two liners here in a bit they're really beautiful at this you know they're they're if you let the glider do the work you can often find that and it's really hard as a concept i find to teach or you know it's just a it's just a feel i learned a trick actually pretty recently from matt bieschner we call him farmer here he and i've been flying for a long time and he's been a lot together kind of doing a lot of team flying together and but he's a famously good i mean he's in my book about gliding he's a really famous he's a legendary lines pilot he's really good at finding lines and he's that guy that's constantly he's at the end of the glide he's always higher and he's always out in front um and i said i asked him i've been asking him this for years but one of the ones that sunk in recently that he said how are you you know is your glide ratio is you're constantly looking at your screen well he can't see his screen he's flying the sub now i can't see the instruments and you know like i we all are when we get older it's really hard to see stuff that's close and so you know i can't see my instruments now anymore either and so but he's just constantly scanning the horizon whatever he has out in front of him to just see it and feel it you know oh okay i'm not losing the horizon as fast this is a better line i'm going to follow this for a bit okay now i'm losing it okay back to you know just letting the glider kind of do its work and whatever tool you lock into i think really helps i mean obviously you know convergence can often be kind of ratty and you can feel it or or oh my my glide ratio is getting better this is pulling me into a climb versus sometimes that's sick it's it feels like it's kind of pulling but it's pulling you into into the waterfall so you know we've got to be aware but uh i i like this concept of

you getting through the air with the least amount of work as a shark does in the water so yeah i like that that's a good one

yeah and it's like the straight line often isn't the fastest and and the long way around if it sets you up without turning right i that you're bringing Chrigel into it was interesting i remember reading somewhere he said that you know somebody somebody was asking about techniques like this and he's like well you know turning half the time you're going the wrong direction so we really

have to embed that in us though i mean it's it's a it's it's funny and it's totally right but it's really right you know and so i i think about that every time i take a turn i i had a pretty nice triangle here yesterday and i just decided on the second leg okay i'm gonna fly from here i was kind of down in the pioneers i had to dig out a little bit and okay once i get out of here i'm gonna fly from here to the rest of the to the next turn point and not make any turns i'm just you know there's clouds there's support there's great lines out here why can't i just fly in the lifty bits i remember nate saying that on a podcast a long time ago you know half the sky's going down half it's going up why can't we just stay in the up stuff and so i think if we you know really are resistant to that now obviously you don't want to do that too much and be on the deck i mean obviously we need to climb we're not that efficient through the air so we need to climb but you know i think these are great things to do and i think it's a to have as little strategies and stuff on a given day you know maybe the day is not that great maybe you only have two hours to fly set yourself a cool task like that you know try to try to move around the sky and not climb try to find the lifty bits

and i think it's all about when it's presented take it and then quickly turn it off when it goes away like um two days ago i had a moment where we were all there was like 15 of us stuck at the hill high pressure day we weren't getting more than like 800 feet above the top of the mountain and i just looked off to my left which is you know probably 45 degrees off the direction i want to go cross country and more upwind but i was just looking down this cloud street and i was like let me just go off on an adventure and i could feel it pulling a little bit and i just sharked my way right over to the cloud street and then from there on the next like eight miles were no turns and it was like about maintaining legal cloud distance without a single turn and everybody else nobody else got the move me i was a little bit higher when i started but it was also just about deciding like i see the move i'm sharking my way out of here and committing and it just was beautiful it wasn't up the entire time but yet without turning i gained like 3 000 feet over the course of a couple miles and then i was in the cloud influence where everybody else was still stuck at the hill and sometimes you just see the move or the line and you're like oh my god i'm stuck at the hill and then you're like oh my god i'm stuck at the hill and then you can just feel and fly it and it can be really fantastic and then sometimes you got to quickly turn it off and retreat to safety and core like your flight depends on it because you can't shark your way to the ground right yeah

and i mean these are kind of when hero moves get made in contests where i had a i had a task a few years ago in chelan that you know we were out on the flats and we're all racing really hard and really you know pretty good position and there's you know course line is through this blue hole but it wasn't that far to end of speed and and goal and so most people just went for it because you're kind of going oh man it's it's only a nine to one or whatever i i'm making things up at this point a few years ago but there was just this beautiful hook route you know quite a ways off it looked like it was quite a ways off course line but it was just the clouds were popping as i'm looking you know i mean it just presented itself just like your thing and i went ah that's just for sure going to be faster because i'm not going to need another climb for end of speed and just it was so much faster and you know it was a great task win and uh which is a wonderful thing to experience that's a lot of fun but you know you're

all it's a gamble it's always a gamble you know is this going to be faster is are they going to beat me you're going through just going straight and sure enough they had to climb one or two more times or you know and it was just

it was just a lot of fun

just ended up being a good move usually i'm the dumb head that's going in right straight into the blue hole i want to beat these guys but yeah i mean when they when life presents a good opportunity this is a great sport to take it this

is maybe a good point to talk about shifting gears since we're sort of already touching upon this i think there's a real art to you know you can't always go fast but when there are opportunities to go fast you're moving fast but then sometimes you're you very much need to switch back you know uh and the ability to recognize the situation and i'm just interested in your thoughts on that because i think we've all gotten caught out by pushing too much and i and i can also point towards times where we weren't pushing hard enough and we didn't you know uh make the most of it so yeah

i i always think about russ ogden when it comes to this you know he was out here a couple years ago in a battle with henzie in chelan and man it was cool to see those two just throw down so hard and his his concept of speed i i really like it's because you're not thinking about mccready and all this technical stuff and how much bar it's basically when the when you know when the when the climb is marked and you've got the height to get there and it's better you don't think about it you must go right now and this is why newer pilots are so slow they don't move fast enough they're they're unwilling they're in a two that guy over there is obviously in a three and it's

literally seconds to get there it's full bar you go as fast as you possibly can you don't keep turning one more half a time you're done if you do that in in you know in world cup racing yeah let me just

interject that the date makes this a little different too it's a good low pressure day with long continual thermals but you got to be careful applying this because sometimes the high pressure bubble they get a little bit of a yank and it and you can feel it draw you really hard so you throw it on a wingtip and you're doing a thousand feet per minute for like a half a turn that's maybe not the situation that's worth jamming full bar but for the most part what you're saying is absolutely true you're the pimp by watching everybody below you they're all working for you and as soon as it's

done you're going to be able to do it

hits you get right on top of them full bar and then yeah yeah

if it's you know if it's clear and obvious and you've got the height to do it you you must do it now things change when i don't know if i can get there and or a lot if it's to win word and there's a lot of you know there's there there are a million but yeah uh but you know on a day that you you're in the your average climbs have been three meters you're not stopping at all for a two meter climb unless you're on the deck right and this is just this is this is how you race this is how you cover fast ground and so if you've got a marker if you've got a rabbit if you've got an obvious climb smoke birds uh you know i have seen people where i can't i haven't been able to see them i saw this down in mexico a bunch of years ago and i've seen people where i haven't been able to see them not via another spot we were flying and andy mccray was way off to the left of me and i was kind of in the terrain and he just hooked this hard left turn 90 degrees off course line and i'm looking at him going what is he doing what is he doing what's he doing and it was just bugs it was little birds and bugs and he went to that thing and boof and that five seconds of me going what in the hell is he doing was holy cow was 2 000 feet of vertical separation where he had been right next to me you know so staying really observant but being

in the flow of the day is super important and so a little bit of high cirrus comes in and it's more windy and you're out you know you're away from the terrain and you're out in the flats uh you know you're you're not on divisadero ridge and via but you're heading towards what is that stuff to the south that town we always go to anyway anywhere in the world right you've left

the mountains and you go in the flats and all of a sudden you're tuned up for oh my god this is so strong and you got immediately downshift and be like anything going up we're taking our time and if you get too great story for you hit it yeah

i have a great story for you that's just exactly what the concept we're talking about i was just in turkey for the PWC in this place called axoray and axoray is one big volcano and flatlands and that's how you can think of this place there is some other terrain but just think about that you you launch about a third of the way up this volcano and you play around the volcano until the start of the race and then you go race and this one day i think it was the first day we we it was working really well in the terrain you know the the triggers are are pounding and and we're just we're cranking the first 20 of the course 25 of the course just hauling ass you know not stopping in anything unless it's a five meter climb and get to the first the first uh turn point and turn back around and it's kind of on the same

go out into the flats and the volcano was sucking so much air from the flats from all directions it's all just going to the volcano and teeing off so that's what we've been flying in and experiencing it and now there's 80 pilots that are heading out into the flats and you know at first you're kind of half bar and then you're a third of the bar and then everybody's flying trim speed because we're all going holy shit where is the climb i mean not a blip for 20k i mean not a blip just flying we've gone from high to just holy hell are we just going straight to the dirt and a bunch of people did so immediately you're going i cannot be the rabbit i do not want to be out front i have to pimp i gotta stay on top of all these people and i'm just watching like a hawk is anybody got better air than i do and just trying to stay on top of this whole gaggle and that whole way to that next

just taking the weakest climbs crazy slow flying just an instant downshift you're just going from six to first instantly for 40k whatever that leg was and then for some reason we got out to that turn point and boom it's out in the flats not really any difference in the terrain and then and then it was just a heater all the way into goal so and then you're the mistake i made was i'm with the lead gaggle and i'm still kind of in that slow mode and so i i was still backing off where i needed to be full bar racing again and so again these are concepts that are hard to you know we can articulate them but you really have to go kind of experience it and go through it and you will screw it up you're going to end up on the deck racing too fast but you know in in general that kind of 1

to 4 p.m when things are working really well you know again this is without you know high cloud and bad serious and all these other these other possibilities but if you've got um or inputs you know if you if the you know the heat of the day you want to be flying as fast as you possibly can and at some point that changes and recognizing it and that can be literally from one climb to the next things change really fast uh you know i've been in in contest and in columbia where they'll just be what happened it's just gone and it's just gone and it's just gone and it's just gone just massive downshift and uh and and trying to stay on top and trying to you know not be the one pushing

yeah terrain really matters too um another thing that's interesting about pointing that out is when it's time to go fast it can seem like a risk to go fast but what i've been finding and learning more and more is that when the day's on and you've been getting four or five meters per second when you stop and turn in the slower stuff you're actually spending more of the lifting part of this cycle if you think about like a breath that goes up and then the breath that goes down you're not going to get as high because you're spending that up cycle in the stuff that's not as strong so it feels conservative you know you're thinking oh i better be conservative here's a meter or two per second i better turn in the slower stuff and then you're actually spending more of the lifting part of this but by spending your time there rather than carrying on this is of course when you're in good position you know top maybe two-thirds of the between the clouds and the and the dirt

you're actually missing the opportunity to be in the real boomer that is the one that actually gets you to cloud base because yes sometimes you can drift and follow and and that light stuff will turn into a good climb sometimes but sometimes it's not going to turn into a good climb sometimes the move is to keep moving on for the better stuff that boom you're now you're back an easy straight in cloud influence flying the street or whatever you're doing uh and knowing when it's time to continue moving on because there is better on the horizon that's worth it versus oh time to go slow because we might not get anything more it's a it's a study really

yeah and i mean it's all dictated by what you've experienced to that point and not that far back it's it's really kind of the last not that long of a time period you know the the mistake that i have made on those fast days is if i've got a big move to make and i'm in a climb and i have experienced these climbs that are not that great low to the ground and they they at some point they'll gel and turn into a ripper and i'm struggling to find that and i think there's something better out there and i don't obvious i i again i'm missing those pieces that russ talks about i don't have the rabbit out in front of me i don't have an obvious you know i i don't have the great amount of height it's not obvious that i'm going to get to that and that could be a real bummer that the day is really working and you're on the deck that would be to me kind of i call those schoolboy errors you know nate always talks about that don't make any schoolboy errors but the reverse is if it's been four or five meter climbs and you stop in a two you've just wrecked 20k 30k of your flight you know just right then you know because you're literally just wasting time if you make it to the end and you're going if you make it to the end yeah exactly and i mean i think because when it's fast when it's good we fly really fast and we should be flying really fast and you know there's just always a point in the day where that's no longer the case now you're using a lot less bar you're slowing down it's mellow it's easy now it's relaxing you're not fighting as much and i love that part of the day but that's where you're looking for that you know big final glide and you know if you're still in racing mode then you're you're not going to get to experience that and so you know the but a lot of the again is what you've experienced to that point really matters because we do have these days where

again newer pilots what the mistake they'll make is only leave at the top of every climb okay on a fast day that is not a good rule that's a really really terrible way to go xc and so you know you leave as soon as that four has gone to a three and you know you can get to the next four you need to leave now and so you know there's no way to go xc and so you know you can get to the no point in getting to cloud base where the reverse is true you know especially in racing you can really make some huge moves with this is people are pushing so hard when you're racing especially at a world cup level and so you know you're in that two and poof you're just moving on moving on moving on well that two that turns into a five that takes you all the way up to base and now you've got everybody on a three to one you've just won the day most likely and so you know you have to understand i saw cody do that in australia one time where he had looked at the and everybody's just kind of ridge running and just moving you know real quick but he knew that if he could get up in the upper you know the higher levels and take his time almost was at the back of the whole pack taking his time climbed all the way up and then he had this massive tailwind all the way to goal and so and he beat everybody and so you know there are times where you do want to be patient if it's if it's gonna rocket chip you to the top or you want to be patient if you're not going to be patient if you're not going to be patient if you're not going to be patient if there's a really good chance you know the lead gaggles going to the deck or something and so you know they're that shifting gears is something i still struggle with massively i've been racing for a long time i just blew it a couple days badly in turkey just being the rabbit and pushing too hard and not shifting gears early enough that wasn't really so much the day it was just me you know that i i needed to be more disciplined and that's the other concept that russ talks about all the time discipline discipline discipline

and so but you have to be disciplined to go fast too like you said you have to be disciplined to not be conservative when the day is telling you to not be conservative that's

a really good segue into my one of the other uh questions i had in here is like when do you know it's time to move on and you were saying when it drops that little bit uh in climb intensity i'd heard a good one recently that when the day's on you know the climb rate you find it gets better and better and better and then when it decreases back to the climb rate you found it at sort of maybe you're at the lower third of the sky when you first hook up with it um but i think there's often for me this again goes back to the conversation about the day like uh a lot of times i'll be you know if it's a high pressure day sometimes you bust through a couple inversions you're up high maybe there's a couple clouds there still you're moving fast you get down low again and the thermal just isn't gonna bust through that inversion and you find yourself bouncing off of it and a lot of times people will really either do bigger circles or maybe even push back up wind looking for it and um i feel like a growth for me recently has been knowing that we're in bubbles hitting the inversion so if i turn and go down now there's still going to be those scrappy remnants of lift and those extra couple circles that aren't going to work we know they're not going to work the thermals dissipating it's not as good you're just wasting time if you leave in the highest parcel of air yes you were six thousand feet off the ground a little while ago and now you're only three thousand feet off the ground this is the hand you're dealt and it's time to you know not every thermal goes all the way to cloud base sometimes it's just a little lily pad that you can just put a little pressure on before it sinks and it just bumps you along to the next one you can continue to move fairly fast if you're willing to cut and move and you can really have a height advantage by doing it at your highest point in it rather than you know trying too hard at the end because you're still stuck in the middle like it sucks you're stuck in the middle but you got to know when it's time to move on and especially if you're moving downwind

you know you can use that extra little bit of altitude to get to the next place that will hopefully again get you back where you want i mean we all want to be skipping across clouds easy street without any challenges in our cross country flight but the reality is there's going to be a couple low difficult moments in most flights right i mean yeah definitely

i mean i think that you know again the inputs all change everything i've said you know depending on where you are and what you're doing and what you're doing and what you're doing and what you're doing and what you're trying to accomplish you know the flying fast is a skill that is hard to learn outside of competitions and so you know and we're our concepts here are really different when you're flying with 80 people versus yourself or just a couple people you know you're if if the goal is to stay in the air all day and cover a lot of ground well it may not be full bar just fully crushing the you know you're not going to go as far but it's farther you're going to go a lot farther than only flying for two hours because you've bombed out and made a mistake so you know there are times where the right move is definitely to stay in the climb when it's gone from a five to a two because you've got a really difficult transition ahead uh the the state of the sky is changing you're confused you know you're with your you don't have a very good idea you're not going to be able to fly

it's not it's not clear i had that yesterday on this flight trying to close this FAI i was trying to do i got really flushed and went from super tall almost 18 000 to really flushed and very very very low save it was ridiculous it's great uh but then where i wanted to go was totally shaded out you know it kind of od'd where i live and and that was not bad and i'm not in a dangerous way but it was just putting a ton of shade where i was trying to go and so my my direct move you know your X-Alps moving of course line was into the shade and and that's what i tried to do and i bumbled along and i kind of made it work but i still landed 10 k short of the truck what i should have done is gone completely off course line and gone back to the sun there was still day left it was not much but there was day left and i think i could have gotten back i maybe could have made it to the terrain got tall and and made it work and but i was kind of i was kind of i was kind of i was kind of i was kind of i was kind of i was kind of tense and i was kind of worried about this big walk i was flying my heavy gear i wasn't flying my x-alp stuff and i just didn't want to take the risk of going further away from the truck and this all comes back to i mean this is a very specific example but we

have to stay with the flow of the day and and we have to stay observant over everything and there are times where

our neat little rules

really fit and i think but in general what i see is newer pilots fly slow because they spend too much time turning the wrong way they spend too much time climbing they spend too much time time trying to get to base um and that light climb is not going to do it when you've got

that light climb is not going to get you to base you can turn in that one meter two meter per second all day long and and that's sort of what i'm really putting together is it feels conservative in the moment but it's actually precluding you from finding the four or five meter per second that actually does the work in a third of the time you don't get as high you're not going to get and it while you're climbing in that moment you're not going to get as high so 10 minutes from now the pilot that knew it's time to move on is going to find the boomer and end up higher than the pilot who played it conservative quotes around conservative and you end up that

the pilot who took the risk is in a more conservative safe position exactly and i think again this is dictated by what you've just felt what the history is and it really helps having other gliders out there right i mean if you have if you have people out there rabbiting a bit and and everybody working together then you can take more risk than when you are by yourself for sure you know and you can always fly faster when you're flying as a team that

i think we touched that really well and you just said something that made me want to say something about that i want to switch to another topic i had down low but i want to move up you said the ones that take the risk end up in the better place and that really just made me think about sort of planning to succeed and picking the line especially when you're concerned about landing zones and bailouts and whatnot like there are so many times especially in new england where our hills are small and they have these big aprons of trees so things can feel a little committing but we encounter these things where we have to decide where to go and so many times i see people who are just getting good at xc they choose their route based on good landing options and where that's going to work and then you start flying with the great pilots and they're going where is going to work as long as there is a bailout doesn't matter how horrible it is as long as there's a bailout they're going to the one that's going to work they're not you're you're planning to succeed rather than planning for your eventual landing if you plan for your landing you're going to have to make sure that you're going to land yeah

100 100 and i mean i this was just full force when i did the trip with Will Gadd because we were flying for hours without a bailout lz unless you call lake a bailout and so you just had to fly optimistic and you just had to go it's an xc day it's working it's good that's going to work i know it's going to work because i do this and this is what this is my game and you have to that's flow that whatever you want to call it but you just you know you we've got to be optimistic in this sport because as soon as we start thinking about what if i don't pull this off i'm a living example of this you're not going to pull it off in the X-Alps every time i went oh god i don't know if i should do that what if i don't do it you're not going to do it that's not going to work and so yeah i mean i think i think that it's pretty rare that when

you're mapping things that they don't work you know that the concepts that we learn when we're puppies in this sport and that's in all the books they're pretty correct and so it may not be exactly on that trigger it you know you may have to fly over that thing and get into the lee side but you know it's it's it's gonna it's you most of the time it's gonna work out don't be too stupid but uh yeah i think it's good you know just use your xc brain stay in that in that brain yeah

you really have to believe in yourself and there's a fine line between you know youthful ignorance and and knowing the right thing to do and doing it and having it execute just beautifully the way you know it should uh so being able to walk that line is tricky you mentioned lee side and i want to get back to that but i think this is a perfect segue into tight landing zone strategies right because if you keep doing this long enough you're going to end up needing to put it in somewhere tight and i'm curious to hear how you approach a tight landing zone you

know having having vision having bailout one two three especially in a lot of wind this is this is something i've learned i'm getting off your subject but you know when there's a lot of wind uh you really want to be looking over your shoulder and okay that's the one i'd like to get to but i'm traveling pretty fast and i might not be able to stick that what's the next one downwind and what's the next one after that and you know are there hazards i've got to worry about their power lines or their is their rotor um you know so i think having that processing power uh is is really important rather than freaking out and uh and that comes from a lot of xc and that comes those of you who are listening who are new you will experience this if you fly xc you you just will uh there this sport goes pear-shaped uh too frequently and so you know it's

a real good time to you know have some techniques breathing you know identifying okay i'm sitting up my harness that means i'm really nervous like dude relax sit back sit back relax just breathe and solve it you know it's a puzzle that can be solved almost every time there's there's usually a safe way out of this and uh i've told this story before but one of the first really bad accidents i saw was i was doing a trip in annecy and uh it was a day we should not have been flying it was you know there was a lot of od around and the instructor was you know he just wanted to get us in the air this is a pressure that instructors have and and so we went we were at this kind of cliff site where you could ridge soar but these cells were coming through pretty frequently and he thought oh we could fly and you know just next cell get on the air get on the ground before the next cell comes through and this guy flew and was pretty low pilot and when the gust front hit you know he wasn't on the ground and his his one bit of toolkit was big ears and so he was trying to land with big ears and a gust front and let's just say it didn't work out but

what he could have done and you know if he'd been you know just had all the all the stuff in his toolkit is before this thing hit ran downwind and if he didn't get up and over this ridge which he probably would have because the wind hit it and there's all the convergence i mean there's all the pressure grading on the on the winter side of the hill and he could have turned into the wind and it probably would have just floated him right over this thing and then there were huge fields on the back side of this thing so a couple people did do that but if he didn't pull that off just surf it into the trees and land in the trees big beautiful canopy trees or trees everywhere and you know maybe ripped his glider or something but almost certainly would have been injury free you know maybe would have scratched some stuff maybe would have broken an arm or an ankle or something but not as bad as happened and uh so i mean i think these are these lightning fast decisions that you've put yourself in a bad place shouldn't have done that but we're pilots uh we make mistakes and and the weather is dynamic and you know so what can i do if i can't spot land what can i do if i can't plan

a

so um yeah a lot of good stuff there to bring it more to a technical level and like actionable stuff um one thing i like to think about is making a regular practice of trying to land short because so many times we have this giant lz and then people never practice tight landings until they need a tight landing and then you have a problem because you've practiced all your landings in these giant landing zones so i think just a really good place you know obviously there are you know master pilots that listen to this and they don't need this advice at all but for your average intermediate pilot working on becoming an

avid pilot you know you're going to have to

advance pilot wanting to fly cross country just the first thing to do is to make your regular landing practice into a um a a faux tight landing you know like a mock tight landing and you know so in general i would try to work a fairly consistent approach pattern you know i think it's a really common thing for novices to feel uncomfortable you know intermediates to to feel uncomfortable flying downwind near terrain so they like to set themselves up and then have these slow turns into the wind the whole time and they're doing like s's or maybe figure eights you know the difference being of course that a figure eight you have to turn downwind for part of the turn you know at the back of the landing zone they're doing figure eights or s's downwind of the landing zone uh and and i don't think that's the best way to approach a tight landing especially there's often like a wind gradient if you're in a valley it can be windier down low or less windy you don't really know what you're going to get and you're going to have to do a lot of work to get that downwind so i think it's a you're just making turns flying into the wind so what i like to do is go upwind of the landing zone and do circles feeling the air and then what you're doing is you're going to be flying down into the landing zone in the air you'll be landing in so you're previewing the air is it super wifty you know and then being really mindful of how there's going to be different wind at different altitudes like if you're this happened uh just two days ago i i had a pretty good xc flight and i was like oh my god i'm going to be flying downwind of the landing zone and then i'm going to and um we could see the river was quite calm and it was quite windy up a little higher and this actually happens quite a bit at some of our local sites where you know that it's calm on the ground and it's 15 miles an hour or 12 miles an hour just 200 feet up you're going to be going through that wind gradient and your fortunes are going to change very quickly and it's going to be turbulent and then mixy and very fast and sinky at the bottom so you're going to have to modify your plan you know your approach pattern for that predictable change in the wind um but so thinking about that as you're coming in how the wind may change but setting up a downwind base final and practicing it don't just wait till you need it like on your normal landings go out past the landing zone upwind pick a side one side or the other do circles and then set up your downwind 90 degree turn base and if it's a really tight landing zone what i'm looking to do is fly downwind until you're in the air and then you're almost at like tree height and then you're banging a 90 to come along it and then again into the wind because you know if there are high obstacles around like you should be able to do this into like a soccer field surrounded by power lines right you know these are the kind of places you might end up needing to land and so really working the downwind base final and if you're uncomfortable maybe do a little high knowing that the base is where your figure eights would be so every downwind base final is just setting yourself up for figure eights and then you're if you're feeling high um you mentioned being tense and and locking up and i think that's a real thing i see with people is that they stop weight shifting as much and they stop letting up their outside brakes so they end up just sitting flatter and using more inside brake and getting really slow and you see people spin into landing zones so i would say focus instead on flying fast and dynamically especially up high right if you're say 300 feet you have to be able to have altitude really letting up on that outside brake weaning in and giving it you know we're not trying to do wing overs of course we're trying to separate the turns right because wing overs are much more challenging for people to control but a dynamic turn so you don't use up much of your distance because if you're doing these conservative i'm scared turns the the distance it takes to complete your turn puts you way more into your landing zone it chews up your landing zone so we're dynamic while we're high and then we can mellow it out as we're getting lower and on final rather than being scared and and and turning conservatively air quotes around conservative when you're at like 300 feet then you chew up your landing zone by doing these mellow turns that put you further and further in the landing zone then you don't have anywhere to go and people make bad decisions so set yourself up for success by being dynamic and purposeful in your landing zone and then you can mellow it out as we're getting lower and your approach turns early and that way you can smooth it out and if it's a really tight landing zone you might needing to be turning until the last 20 30 feet or whatever pulling out for a long straight well the straight final right as you're coming in near the terrain but it might take that aircraft landing downwind base final approach where you know you should practice this flying downwind at the obstacle understanding the wind you're in and how much you're you know how early you need to start how much it's pushing you how much sink there is because you're in it so that obviously you don't fly downwind into your obstacle but flirt with that obstacle taking a second to look at your wingtip so you remember exactly where it is and then we're obviously not object fixating on the hazard but we're going to look for like which branch actually sticks out the furthest because tetherball is not any fun right you don't want to accidentally catch a wingtip um but

getting close to the hazard in your approach you flying downwind towards the trees and then doing a 90 degree to fly along the trees and another 90 to bring it in or maybe it's power lines which is scarier but it's the same art of intentionally getting close to the hazard to make the remaining part of the landing zone bigger yeah

uh we should scratch everything i said everything you just said it was way more on point you're obviously an instructor and i'm not i'm telling goofy ass stories but you said you said a couple things there that i think are really important i think of landing like launching be a boss like own it go into it you mean airspeed kills you what i mean by that is lack of airspeed so when when what we see in accidents is especially with coastal pilots who are ridge soaring who are not used to a lot of airspeed because there's a lot of wind and so they're just surfing the cliff then they go xc and they slow their glider down way too much and they're too much when they come in to land and speed is your friend pressure in the wing is your friend you need airspeed and then be a boss you know if you've done a ton of ground handling you can walk up to a launch that's got some cross or a little bit of wind or it's kind of a plucky one and you own it and you make it look great you know you're patrick von cannell up there and a lot of that's just mental of course it's training but a lot of it's just own it be there you know if don't be

same thing when you come in to land you know you you want that airspeed a pressurized wing is a safe wing you can do a lot with a pressurized wing can't do with a wing going do much with a wing going slow you can't flare can't run it out um you know so brakes are are there to catch a frontal especially if you're in a whole lot of rotor or something i like it better on the bees but you know you don't want to totally go away from them but be wary of them just like you should be on a windy you know brakes are not your friend and so uh yeah i i like everything you said there i in thinking about that you know when it's windy the other thing you said that was really important when it's windy you really got to set up way upwind you know especially if you're super tall and it's or something you got to get down to the ground you know i'm throwing my wing overs or my spirals or whatever my descent technique is way upwind way way way way upwind and then as i'm because i'm sampling all that air but i do not want to get down to the ground and i don't want to get down to the ground and i don't want to end up downwind of of the only lz i've got right so you're way upwind and you're coming in and then if you've got still a lot of wind and you're sampling as you're all as you're coming down you're sampling as you're coming down if it's just getting windier and windier then i'm being even more more more conservative on that and i'm not going to stop until i'm basically right on the deck and then you can just and in you know you can just downwind it and in but you've lost all those options if you're farting around and you end up

it's such a rookie mistake to set up behind the landing zone lose all your routes here and then not make it to the landing zone like what were you doing i almost never you look like a noob don't do that never go down yeah great stuff never go down all right in the interest of time let's keep moving on i'm really interested in hearing your thoughts on lee side thermal strategies and cautions because people talk about it a ton but you can also have these just incredibly successful xc careers where you don't even enter the dark side so so good luck go yeah

yeah i mean again this is really location dependent uh you know it's pretty hard to cover a lot of ground in the alps without flying the lee side it's just how things work over there and so you know aspect and sun angle are very important things when it comes to this sport and that might direct you to the lee side in some cases now kelly farina would say there are pretty hard rules you talks about that you just don't go in the lee if it's more than 15k an hour medio wind um great that may be very suitable uh for many pilots you know 15k an hour and a decent lee side thermal i would agree with that that's pretty manageable um but more wind is certainly possible and a lot more wind is certainly possible but those require a different skill set and you know these are things where you dabble you know you're you're you're just getting your toe wet a little bit because as lee gets stronger wind gets stronger in some ways the safest slash most dangerous place to be is right on the terrain where you're going to find you know where that flow is coming over the top and doing the rotor thing just like you know anybody that paddles understands how eddies work you know so that is swimming around on the back side of of their uh you know it's going to be potentially violent and but the place where you're going to find it is right next to the terrain and so you know Chrigel has studied this more than anybody in real time flying on the back side of a cornice and a lot of wind and this kind of thing so it's just physics this is how it works but that can be very uncomfortable driving into terrain where you're getting flushed really hard going i'm getting pretty close i'm getting closer i'm closer, I'm getting closer.

You will find it. It is there, but, um, you know, then it's going to require some wing management skills. So I like the idea of, you know, putting your toes in real gently, slowly, and using these kinds of generalizations that Kelly has. But I just think that in real time, that's pretty hard to live by. And so back to your point, you can have a pretty happy flight, never going in the Lee. You don't have to do this. Um, and you know, here in the Rockies, we've really tried very hard not to go in the Lee cause we often fly in more wind than is nice in the Lee.

And so it's scary. It's not fun. Uh, and it's kind of a last resort. You can almost, always find the good climb, just surf in the windward side of stuff where it's a lot safer. Um, things will come through and if you're not flying in wind beyond trim speed, you can hold your position until something does. And so, uh, I go back to my opening that is, it's just very location dependent. You know, Lee side climbs are a beautiful thing. It's how our sport works. You've got to be able to fly in Lee side, uh, in many places in the world. And, you know, it shouldn't be totally nerve wracking if you go into it slowly and start understanding how it works and, uh, watch all your signals, you know, watch the birds and watch your other fellow pilots and ask a lot of questions.

I

think an actionable place for listeners to start with would be on light wind days. Sometimes when you arrive at a landing zone, like we'll often be the situation where we'll be, we'll be in a valley between two mountains and the landing zone will be in the middle. And we just assume that the wind is coming towards the windward side of the hill, picking up heat from the valley and the thermal should be releasing up the hill. And yet you were flying around and you don't find anything and you're sinking out and you go into land and then you find a thermal in that situation. If you watch your drift and, and rather than imposing our will upon, on what the drift should be actually listening and tracking it in those situations, you'll often find you get your first lee side thermals by just following the thermal the wrong direction and being like, Oh my gosh, this one is now taking me the wrong way.

And then your mind like totally expands and you're like, Oh, it's a lee side thermal, you know? And so you didn't dive into it looking for it. You happened upon it in a place that just sets up such that there are thermals and the thermals take you the wrong directions. And now you're a lee side thermal pilot. And I think that's really a great way to explore this concept. And everything you said tracks, I certainly don't do it in high wind because in high wind, you often, what I'm talking about typically isn't the way it sets up, you know, in that amount of wind, it would be a different situation. But there's a lot of times when we're flying, where we're sort of between two valleys, you know, we're in the valley between, two mountains and you'll just find a thermal that defies what you think should be going on.

And it's going the wrong way because it's drawing up the backside of the mountain because it'll be feeding. Yeah. With, with this, with the, there's like a, like a negative pressure behind the mountain that the air will draw up. And the thermals love to climb right out, out that, you know, out the backside of the mountain that it's protected too. It doesn't scrape the heat out. Go ahead. Sorry.

Certainly a lot of places in the world too, you know, where you're going to get your first taste of lee side flying, it's just on launch. You know, there are many, many places in the Northern hemisphere for sure, especially that have East facing launches. That's what we want for a nice morning launch, but a West medial wind. And if it's 10 K an hour or less or something, you know, we call that over the back and you know, it's, it's blowing over the back and you get up to launch and you're going, this isn't going to work. You know, it's just, it's blowing the wrong way. And then those cycles start to come in and you know, the, the real veteran pilots will take the first couple and they're out. And, you know, if you wait a little bit longer, those, those cycles get a little bit stronger and you'll blast right up through that West wind and not even know it exists.

And so, uh, you know, these are, these are things that these are ways where you can really assess a lot from the ground. And see it in real time, get to the launch early, talk to the veteran pilots, talk to the local pilots and, you know, start understanding, you know, if you fly, I've never flown there, but if you fly Boulder, that's all you're ever flying in, right? You're always flying. That's where you learn.

Exactly. So I've never flown there. It sounds kind of scary sometimes, but you know, they have amazing flights there. And if you don't fly Leaside, you're never going to fly there. And so, um, it's, I would just say, I mean, I think the moniker is just, it's something we have to be wary of, uh, but not scared of.

Great. All right. Let's switch to team flying strategies. Cause we talk a lot about it, but I think that maybe, I think we're all guilty of this, that we kind of just say team flying strategy and then gloss over what exactly in your mind, what are some of the things you're thinking about? What are you working on? How do you use multiple people to your advantage?

Yeah. Let's start. First by correct framing. And what I mean by that is this is a really conscious effort. You know, if everybody's not making this conscious effort, you're all going to be at launch going, we should team fly today. And that's going to last for about 10 minutes. Uh, and so, you know, everybody's got to work at this together and, you know, Matt Beechinor and I have found this beautiful synergy lately because I couldn't team fly with Matt for, for years. He's just, he was too good. And, you know, so part of it, I think is I'm getting better, but also it's just him being really conscious. Okay. We are going to go farther if we fly together. And so sometimes I'm having an animal day and I'm sitting on top of him and I'm waiting.

Sometimes he's having an animal day and he's got to wait for me and we're not predisposed to wait. We just, you know, this is not that game. And so, but so that's the first thing is just, it's a real mental switch. That you've got to actually do it. The next thing is there are some kind of steadfast rules that I learned from the Brazilians flying with Donajete down in Texas a few years ago. And, you know, this depends on how many people, but let's say you've got four folks, four folks flying together as the day goes, the hero changes, you know, certain people are going to be in flow. If you're flying with relatively, you know, similar abilities. So, 10 to 12, if it's Califf, that's having one, you're leading, you know, you're, you're in control, you're topping out the climbs, but you're taking a lot more risk because you're having one and you're, you're, you're, you're trying to pull the gaggle, you know?

So for team flying, what we're trying to do is fly fast, fly the farthest we possibly can. And that means we've got to fly fast together. But rule wise, it changes, you know, when you're, when you're competition flying, if you're in control, you're going to be in control. And so, you know, so that means you're at the top of the stack, right? You're at the top of the gaggle and you're going to, the, the, the concept of being in control is you're trying to fly fast, but you're not taking any of the risks. So you're, you're at the top of the stack. You're going to leave that, that climb full bar because you're trying to get through the sink as fast as you can, but then you're, you know, and you're pulling, you want everybody to leave with you. You want people to help you out. Those people leave, and then you're savvy and you back off bar and you let all those get out in front of you and you use them and you stay in control and you fly the best lines.

Not the case. When your team flying for XC, you're the one taking the risks. Now you've topped out the climb, you lead out, you pull everybody with you, but those people are birds. They're not right behind you. They're instantly fanning out. You've want four people sampling four different types of air. So, Oh, Andy's on a better line. Gavin's on a better line and we're working together. The other concept, side of it is inevitably someone's missed that climb or not climbing as well that day or not in the zone or constantly a little bit behind. They're the de facto Rick's risk taker. Now they're the ones that have to keep pushing, you know, so they're, they're sacrificing themselves for the better, for the, for the good of the group.

So we can't wait for that person. You know, these other three are at the top of the climb. This guy's a thousand meters below, we're not going to get, we're not going to cover the ground nearly as fast. That guy's, if, if he looks up girl, Garrett guy looks up and my three teammates have left, I got to go and I'm going on full bar, you know, so I might dirt, but I'm helping them. I'm trying to get out in front and show, show them. And so I can pull them. So there's two people really pulling the gaggle, the hero and the lamb. And, and so, and these, because the pilots are good, the one that's pushing out front, hopefully, they're going to find the better climb first and bang, the other pilots can, can go to that climb.

And he's gotten that, you know, 10, 15 second advantage on them, even though he's lower and they come back together. And so when it's working well, you know, like, uh, Rafael Saladini, you know, when all those record attempts that they had, a, it takes a lot of time flying together with the same people over and over and over again, but when it's working well, there's no radio, there's no contact. I mean, you should, you should have radios, but it's just, everybody knows their role. Everybody knows their position. Everybody knows what needs to be done at any given point. And, oh, Raphael's he's in the sweet sauce. Now he's feeling it. He's pulling the gaggle because you to fly fast, you've got to push, especially in the best part of the day. And so it's not the same as competition flying where you're, you know, there's a lot of pimping going on.

There's no pimping. Everybody's working hard. Everybody's contributing to the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the gaggle. Everybody's trying to sample different air. That's the most important thing is everybody's trying to sample different air. So the really good climbers are constantly unsatisfied. They're always dissatisfied with their climb. They're constantly pressing out a little bit on this turn. Try that. Oh, I feel something over here. Not didn't work. Got to come back. Oh, did work. Everybody comes to that pilot. So, but that's also kind of tiring. And so that's why I'm talking just naturally happen. Uh, and Oh, so-and-so's they're on one right now. They're really moving good. Um, let's, let's follow that pilot. You know, let's, let's let him do more of the work.

Um, but everybody's contributing. And I think it's, but I think way more than all those little rules I just spilled out there that I learned from Donna Zeta. It's the, it's the really making a conscientious point of doing it because in the end, there are going to be times where you're going so slow. It's driving me nuts. But in the end, you're going to fall. You're going to go a lot farther. Or

I don't like their line, but I'm going to stick with them because we're a team. That's not how I would have played it. They chose to zig over towards that remnants of a cloud and I would have carried on straight, but my teammate let out and I want, I still have a teammate. Cause I know come five o 'clock, we're going to do a lot better as a team hunting. Cause I, you know, that difference, if you make it from five to sunset can be huge distance or you can dirt early. Cause you decided you were going to be faster and headed out alone. Um, yeah, we've been fortunate. I think that we've been fortunate that, um, our community is getting kind of big and there's starting to be a lot of people and a lot of people chasing XC, which is amazing. And so more and more, I'm not saying you're going to be my teammate on launch because people don't always get up and out at the same time.

And if you miss that window, maybe you get stuck for 30, 40 minutes or whatever. And so what I've been seeing is that they tend to just sort of develop at Hawk where you're like, Oh, us three or four, we're all in position. We're doing it together. Um, and then you touched upon something that was great that it's not pimping, right? There's so many times when you fly with somebody and it's just infuriating because they're not contributing to the effort one bit. And I try to really go above and beyond to just do the opposite of that. When I'm team flying with somebody, you know, instead of you're below me, I'm using you to find the best climbs. It's I'm going to let you work the thermal to the best of your ability.

And I'm going to use my height advantage to hunt around us and be dissatisfied for the whole group. That way, I'm not going to let you pass me, but every time I'm going to push a little further or maybe upwind, I'm going to push a little over here. If it felt, good over there and try to drag us. Cause when I find twice the climb rate, I'm going to get in the radio right away and tell you, or probably not even necessary. Cause you're going to see it. And we're going to drag the whole thermal over. And cause there might be something so much better that you just have to fly through five seconds of sync to get to. But if you're just pimping, you're not going to take that risk necessarily. So that's a real way that I think you can, you know, rather than just waiting, for somebody above them, waiting for him to catch up, you can use your height to better the team.

Um, the flying fanned out, you know, on glide, like you said, it's huge. Um, I think that, uh, the, the low man marking the climb can be really powerful to, um, you know, multiple people above them hunting around the person who's low. Like if you're scrapping and low, do your best to catch up to us, stay in the lift you're in while we're off hunting the vicinity around. And if we don't find anything better, then we'll arrive back at you before you pass us. And then we're back together again.

Yeah. And it might be, you know, and again, this is world record, uh, chasing that I learned from Donna's that day, you know, you just don't have the time, uh, when you're, you know, these 11 hour days and you're got to, you're trying to do 50 K an hour, you just don't have the time to wait, but maybe, you know, the right thing to do is to get that person back in the game. You know, you're going to be stronger together. And so maybe, maybe this is one of these things where they've taken that a little bit too far. And, uh, you know, and, and again, it depends on the goal, but I would say the one caveat I would say to you when you, if you don't, if you had the three that you, your example was the three leave off. You think you've got a better line over here, but now I'm team flying.

I'm going to go with them. If everybody's really team flying, they should see you start to drift off to take this other line and go, that's a better line, you know, or that's a good time for a radio, you know? So I would, I would say, you know, don't necessarily just follow because you're doing the team thing. It's, you know, you're all, you're trying to do, you're all trying to get farther than you as a team.

And so that might

be, hopefully they're being observant and going, Oh, I want to go. You know, Hey, Caleb's on a better line. I'm going to take it.

Yeah, obviously. Yeah, for sure. And definitely. Hey, like, Hey guys, I think we should go this way. Convince the team. If you think you have the better idea. Um, but back to the thermaling thing, what I'm describing is not necessarily waiting. You know, it's like, if you have a 200 foot advantage, the waiting, isn't that significant and, and you could just pimp them and stay right above them the whole time. And then you, the, you know, the, the, you can leave on normal schedule, or you can do a slightly bigger hunt pattern and use that altitude to hit something at twice the climb rate. And then the whole team's moving faster because you use your height advantage to better the group rather than using your height advantage to as an insurance policy.

Cause so many times people just treat their height like, well, I got the person below me working for me. And as long as I don't ever take any risk and let them pass me, then, I'm going to at least beat them, you know? And I think that's just not the team mindset. The team mindset is I've got this little bit of gift. Let me be the one that takes a little more risk so that we get,

I need to sacrifice a little bit here.

I, I, I, I sacrifice the altitude because those are also the moves that pay off. Like I like to use the gambling mindset of like, we're playing poker and you know, we're putting in the ante constantly. Right. And sometimes those big bets require us to,

you know, we're putting in the ante constantly. They

go off on a little bit of a hunt and, and they hit right. And when they hit, they have a huge payout, but you gotta have enough to make it worthwhile. And, and I want to talk, the last thing on the list to talk about was two liner technique. Um, so get there shortly, but one of the benefits of the two liners are just that you can cover so much ground. It can be great to fly with like an old school. See if there's a good pilot on it. Cause there's your thermal buoy. You just leave them in the thermal while you just go off. On your adventure, trying to find the better lift, as you said, dissatisfied and you know, you got your C pilot Mark and your thermal for you.

Yeah, totally. Totally. We, we might want to leave the two liner for another one. We're an hour and 40 minutes. We've got a lot of ground, but let's, yeah, let's call it. That was otherwise miles will kill me with the poor guy. I'd be editing this for two days, but, uh, Caleb, man, you're a treasure. I appreciate you. I appreciate all these questions and always so fun to catch up, man. It's been a while.

Yeah, I really, I appreciate the opportunity. I think it's fun to create some educational content rather than just telling stories. I mean, I got stories for days. We've had some great stories real quick. I landed at a Red Sox hall of famers, uh, house, that huge flight we were telling, I was telling you about, right? Six 30 final glide off into the Northeast King of Vermont, middle of nowhere, land this farm field, two drunk guys come out. They're talking to us, you know, about their farming. One of them's like, you know who this is? This is Bill Spaceman Lee. He's a Red Sox hall of famer. You know, we get to talk into the dude and he's like, are you boys? I'm so happy you landed here. I'm going to give you a ride back. I'm like, you're way too drunk. And it's like a two and a half hour drive.

You're way too drunk, dude. He's like, you're right. I'm way too drunk, but this guy's going to be sober a couple hours. Take him with you. He'll be sober in two and a half hours. By the time you get him there, I'm going to send you, his car is not roadworthy. You take my car. Neither car was roadworthy. Neither car. Finally, we get talking to the guy for a while and he's like, you're right. We're all too drunk. Just take our car. We're so happy you boys landed here. You boys take our car. So then we were like, no. Okay. So we proceed to just empty his car full of baseball bats and gloves. He like makes his own baseball bats. And I had heard the name because he runs for governor every time there's a gubernatorial race, which is hilarious. He gets like 3 % of the vote in Vermont. He's like a local celebrity hero guy. Anyways.

So there's baseball gloves, bats, balls, like trash. And like a bunch of cards. He's like, Oh, here's a card. And it starts signing cards and handing out signed cards. So we're like very appreciative piling this guy's total hoopty. This thing is falling apart. Like barely roadworthy. Ended up driving it to my buddy's parents' house, borrowing their car, bringing the spaceman back his car. But yeah, getting home is equally as much exciting. Make this up.

Right. I know often it's more exciting. You can't make this stuff up. I love it. I love it. Well, I got to come out there and fly with you guys. I've never, I never have. And, uh, it's just sounds like a blast.

We'll have to watch the weather. You get a nice streak of weather. Maybe sometime.

That'd be great. All

right. Well, appreciate you, man. Thank you, dude. Yeah. Thanks so much. It's been great talking to you.

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