Hello there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. I had a great show for you today with Pete Thompson. Before we get to it, I just hope you're enjoying this track, our new music. You probably noticed that. Our intro and outro music has been written and performed by Thad Spencer, so it's all ours. He did the last one as well, but I was really ready for a change, so I hope you're digging it. Thad has been on the show. He's an awesome musician and kindly offered to write us a new track, so I hope you're enjoying it. Pete Thompson, Little Pete, out in Colorado, made some pretty big waves this year. You've probably seen the news recently, but he sent some big FAI triangles. This is something he's been working on a long time. He and I have very similar backgrounds in flying, a lot of whole bib and a lot of racing.
I've been racing with Little Pete since my beginning and his beginning. We've both been at it a little over 20 years now. He's been out in Colorado, which has over... We're 50-14ers, and he did a whole bib a few years back across the whole state, which was really cool. It was a great movie of that. I'll have the link up on that in the blog post about this show. But I reached out to Pete this time because of his summer. He's been planning and working on these big FAI triangles and trying to crack the 300 here in the U.S., which is not nearly as straightforward as it is over in Europe, partially because... How our terrain is lined up, but also because you're typically doing it on your own or maybe if you're lucky with one other person.
So it's not like rocking up to Col d 'Angers in France and having 50 people on launch or Fiche or Andermont or any of the number of places where they do big triangles over in Europe and not Andermont. I'm only trying to say Antholtz. But yeah, Pete this summer in August, which is a couple months after... The solstice, and the days are not as long, cracked the FAI record with a 275 that just beat out Galen's, who did that here in Sun Valley last summer. So that put it all on the map and we were all really watching. And then very shortly after, he did a 292. And then very shortly after that, did a 305.
And, you know, he's flying with two big O2 tanks and often up at 18 grand. So we've got, you know, we've got things that... are more difficult about doing big triangles here, namely the deepness and the remoteness and lack of roads and a lot of terrain and stuff, a lot of treed terrain, especially there in Colorado. But we do climb really fast and we can glide a long ways before we need another climb. So we've known that this could happen here. And a lot of us have been trying to have a big crack at it. And Pete finally did it. So I wanted to reach out to him and find out where the motivation came from and the lines. And what were the tricky parts and what's it like flying with all that O2? And how does he deal with cold and everything else and the equipment and all of it?
So great discussion. Great dude. And you've seen the news about this, but this is kind of the deep dive. So enjoy this chat with Pete Thompson. Cheers.
Pete, awesome to have you on the show. We should have done this live when you were out at the wide open when we were doing acro yoga and getting freaky. You had to peace out and go hunt some elk. But good to see you, man.
Thanks, Gavin. Thanks for having me. I've been watching your podcast for a long time and thought maybe one day I'd do something worthy of chatting about on here. So it's good to be here.
Well, damn, dude, you certainly have. Yeah. Let's talk about some of that. So I just found out before we started recording, you've been flying out in Colorado for 16 years. Is that right? You had about five years under your belt. You went out to do Tandems. Take us back, back a ways.
Sure. I have been flying in Colorado for 16 years and about 21 years total. I learned right when I got out of high school, my buddy in Pennsylvania, my buddy, A.J. Fry introduced me to the sport and we did some renegade flights there, took a couple lessons, went to college in Bozeman, Montana, met Andy out there who was really supportive with Bozeman paragliding. And. And spent about five years in college and spent most of those summers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And those are big formative years for me as a, as a pilot, because back, I mean, Jackson still has a good crew of pilots, but back then, man, it was one of the epicenters of the country where you had, you know.
Hot in Greece. Oh, gosh. And 10, 15 guys on takeoff on a good day, all trying to fly a hundred miles with oxygen and a hundred miles was a big flight back then. And. And then right after college, I came here to Carbondale, Glenwood Springs and started working as a tandem pilot. And
that's it in Aspen or you did tandems in Glenwood Springs?
I did tandems in Glenwood and it's like 45 minutes down the road from Aspen.
Okay. Uh, and then you and I have been flying comps together for longer than I can remember, but, uh, you know, you started going to Menarca about the same time, right? Kind of 2000. 2010, 2011. Is that right?
Yeah. That's that too early. No, that's probably accurate. Yeah. Uh, when I worked as a tandem pilot, you know, I couldn't fly any of the comps in the U S so I was missing out on that scene for about a decade, but I would always go to Menarca and fly there. And that was kind of like a one comp a year, kind of a guy. Um, and then I stopped doing tandems five years ago and that's freed up my schedule and now I get to fly about four comps a year.
Okay. Uh, you, it would be remiss if we're, we're talking about these big FAIs you threw down this summer, just over and over and over again. I got a funny story about that actually, uh, being over, where were we? We were in Turkey at the World Cup, Bill and I, and I said, Hey, did you see Pete's flight? And he goes, yeah, of course I saw Pete's flight. I go, no, no, dude, yesterday's big flight. He did it again. We just like, what? Oh my God. But, uh, so we'll get to that, but it would be remiss of me to jump over your back. You had, you made this really cool film, uh, mutual friend of ours, Michael Bahar, who, who did a bunch of writing for me back in the days with the boat trip. I know he, he covered, uh, he did some writing about your bivy across Colorado, but let's spend a few times there.
What was the mission? What did you do? Where can people find out more about it? Sure. So
it was a number of years ago now that that project went down, but it was finally in.
2020, I did a cross Colorado bivy flight trip and it took about eight days. It was four days of flying and then four days of walking, um, in a row, um, and starting down South in Mancos, Colorado. So really close to the New Mexico border. And then I finished by going up through the Wyoming border to the North of Rocky mountain park. And I've been trying that project. For three years and gave a good swing at it every year, but just never really had the weather and the weather in Colorado is really challenging. And that's right. I forgot you connected me with Michael. He did that article for the first year. I was out there for like nine days, just like getting stormed on, on mountaintops and took a lot of footage of that.
And then the, finally the third year I was successful. And that has been commemorated in a film that. My friend. Dylan Brown has made, um, in the film is wingman and it's on your normal streaming services and yeah, it's pretty cool. It's about an hour long. It's a lot of me, but, uh, it was, it was cool. It was quite the adventure. It was cool to, to kind of cap off that series of seasons of trying that experience a lot. Like how this year was, um, the accumulation of a lot of effort over a couple of seasons to try and do some really, really big triangles.
And what were those, the big triangles that you did this year, was that on your radar even back then, or did that, did this kind of grow out of, so in some ways that trip and, you know, as you were marching across Colorado by air and by foot, were you kind of piecing this together or had you already?
I didn't have the full vision for the big triangles back then. I like at that time I had the Colorado triangle record. It was like 170 K. Um, but I was still doing tandems back then. And so my schedule was always a bit restricted, uh, mainly that I would fly tandems in the morning. And then we had this great site by Glenwood where we could go launch at noon. It worked perfect with our schedule and you could still go crank out a hundred or 150 mile flight. Um, and it wasn't until I stopped doing tandems and I started flying in the mornings in Aspen and catching those really early morning thermals. I started realizing like. Oh gosh, like you could fly for 10 or 11 hours in this state on a good day. So it was four seasons ago.
I started trying to do some big triangles in Colorado and I've always loved to do triangle flights, whether we're in Valle or Columbia or Brazil. And, you know, just the concept is
getting homes. Cool is
getting home is so cool. And the added challenge of piecing together the different legs of it. Um, and then here in Colorado, though, it's hard to find the, the light wind days. It's almost harder to find a good open distance day because if you're going to fly 300 Ks here, you end up running into overdevelopment somewhere like to get a day where, you know, it's not just nice here, but it's nice in New Mexico. It seems to be impossible or more rare.
Right. Uh, try to explain to those listening who haven't flown Colorado, which incredibly is me. As well, I've done one speed flight in Colorado. Can you imagine? It's so ridiculous. But, uh, how does it differ from the Alps? How does this triangle, these triangles that you did and they weren't all the same, but, uh, you know, when you look at X contest and you switch over to satellite view, you know, it, it looks pretty tiger, uh, not all of it, but it looks pretty tiger. And it looks, uh, in, in some places, incredibly committing. What is, what, what do you, what are you dealing with there? What are the heights of the, of the mountains?
What are the heights of the valleys? What are the road systems? Try to explain it for those who haven't been there.
Yeah. I think that Colorado is an amazing venue for, for big flights, but there are some inherent challenges as well. So the state is covered in, you know, the center of the state's covered in really big mountains. With fairly narrow valleys, it's fairly dry and yeah, there, there aren't a ton of roads. We're not generally dealing with areas where you're going to have a three day walk out. I think some of, some people think that, but it's, it's just not really what you run into around here, but you're going over a lot of terrain where you're still pretty far from a road, say 10 miles or 15 Ks from, from little quiet dirt roads.
So there's a lot of boonies out there.
There's just, you know, you might see a dirt road down below, but you could watch it for two hours and not see a car go by. And it's, it's committing there's the valleys are generally open enough where you can land in them. It's not like the Pacific Northwest where you're going to get choked in some valley and there's not even going to be a trail. So there's a lot of wilderness the bigger of those two triangles, the two larger ones crossed over a big section. Desert as well, low terrain by the Colorado river and there's high plateaus, jagged mountains. It's really got it all.
And there's how many 14ers in Colorado? 54. 54. Okay. How many of them are you ticking off on these big flights?
Oh, on the smaller of those three flights is the most mountainous line. And you're, you're in the good proximity of. Of probably eight or nine of them.
Wow. Yeah. It's cool.
It's cool. But you've definitely got to be pretty strong willed to, or you just have to have a really good ability just not to think about the fact that there aren't a lot of people down below you or a lot of roads and a lot of rough terrain.
Just keep believing and making the moves that make sense.
Yeah. But that's what we do with your. Just
trust in your skills. Yeah.
Trust in the day. Trust in the skills. I only go for big flights on really good days and. The deal is around here. If you wanted to follow the roads and you had that as a condition with what you're going to try and do in your flight, you'd never get anywhere. So it just comes with the territory like where, like where you live.
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's just interesting. Cause I, I, I need to get there to see it. But you know, for when I first moved here, what we always just talked about is, oh, it's so deep and it's really not. It's, it's exactly like you say, it's, there are places. It's the land and there are places that, you know, there's going to be hunters or people out there recreating. Someone's going to come along, you know, knock on wood. I've yet to have to spend the night. You know, usually you're going to get out, but it's just, but it sure looks remote. It sure feels remote when you're, when you're doing it. Yeah, it is. You know, and some of the stuff we do out in Nevada is that's more to me, life threatening because there's no water and it's hot and, you know, you really do need, there's not much shade.
You need to get. You need to get to somewhere, but what are your biggest, what's the biggest, oh shit factor? Is it trying to stay below 18? Is it, you know, what are the things that you're battling the most? Is it the cold? Is it the altitude? What is it?
Yeah. Getting up too high or too low, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Avoiding breaking the 18,000 foot airspace is a challenge and you have to be really. That
sucks, doesn't it? Yeah. This is the one. I mean, when I look at your big days, they're the same as outdoors. But here, you know, we often have these 21, 22, 23,000 foot days and that's actually more of a pucker factor for me than the other things. I mean, I hate fighting to stay down. That is hard. It's hard. I mean, it's just hard. It's hard on your head. It's, it's hard to do when you're cold. It's, it's the last thing you want to do when you're, when you're crushing out distance. Yeah. That sucks.
Yeah. I'd say that, you know, that's a major challenge. And then it's, it's managing that with being over the deep terrain. So you do want to be. As high as possible. You don't want to spend too much time having to go around clouds and obstacles like that. And then, you know, when, when you're trying to go to these maximum, maximum distances and have the highest average speed for the day, you're also kind of having to race. So you're not going slow. You're not, you're having to go as fast as possible. So, you know, having that perfect recipe in every moment of, of those different factors. Yeah. I think, you know, most of us, um, take
that.
It's kind of a, it's a thing, but just, it's, it's a thing. Uh, I think we're, we're always going to have to try and, uh, um, I think this is pretty hard at times, but, but sometimes it's okay to go up to something and not just do it. Right. And you know, what I,
I kind of want people to get a grip on, is you know, why, you really need to go down on a little bit of a slope. That'd be a nice thing. you know what I think? Yeah. That'd be pretty cool. Yeah. That'd be great. That'd be great. Thank you. Thank you. june i had a flight where i stretched out to that mesa and i'd never made that connection before i never thought that it would work that early in the morning connecting the the crux crossing to get to it and i finally did that and i landed at like a hundred i i bombed out this day but it was a huge day i bombed out at 100ks at 1 p.m after four hours and i and that kind of lit a little bit of a light in my head where i realized oh man maybe i could do a huge line out there but i had another line i'd been chasing for the last three seasons and it's just pure mountain flying
it goes to the south first and then northwest and comes back to aspen and i i'd done 270 on that line last year and that was the first really big triangle of the year and that was in early august i managed to stretch the last turn point of that flight and get i think 275 kilometers and get the north american record which i'd come really close to um besting galen's incredible flight last year and and that was just like an incredible achievement like i'd been trying it for four seasons and i finally got the full expression of of that liner and so that
was the line i mean this line was the one you'd planned you'd looked at you had it sussed out yeah and it It finally went
bigger where I got into the big mountains at the end of the day and was able to extend it a little bit further. But then on that day, I'm extending the last point and I'm looking at going further and I'm looking at the numbers and I'm thinking, man, I could get 300 today. I could do it. And I hedged my bet in the safer direction and turned back and just got 275 and closed it. And I was really thrilled with that. But that left this hanger. I probably could have gotten it that day, like 300, the benchmark, because that was really the bigger, biggest goal was to get 300.
So eight days later, the forecast was on again. And I realized... I went out and I tried this new Grand Mesa line that I've just done the first leg of previously. Only one time had this line really been even tried. And I ended up going 292. I didn't quite close it. And I could have. The end of the day was slow.
And I came like, I don't know, 6k short of coming all the way back to the landing field. And I just needed to extend it a little bit. And I had it there in my fingertips. And it was a nine and a half hour flight. But, you know, it was a new record. So it was this kind of bittersweet thing. I'd come so close to 300, but I got a new record. But you left a
little on the table.
Yeah, but I did it with a good... Like I got the record by a good margin. So I was just thrilled. I mean, that's when people were like, what the heck is going on in Colorado? Like it's happened again. That was like the first he did it again.
And then the next... After that flight, I told myself and I told my partner, Caitlin, I said, I'm pretty much done with the big flights for the season. Because you were
physically smoked? I was just pretty smoked afterwards.
Yeah, yeah. Less smoke than the first big one. But I felt like I was in better shape after that flight. And then I was at home the next day. And I'm looking at the forecast for the following day. And I was like, man, there's so much less headwind for the first leg. And the lifted index looked a little bit better. And so that Wednesday, two days after I'd done... The previous flight, I showed up back on takeoff. And everyone was pretty surprised to see me. And they said, what are you doing here? I thought you were done. And I just, you know, I had a dream. I had what I wanted to accomplish. And I went out and did it. The things just went a little bit more smoothly. And I was able to extend the last leg. And it was a little bit different of a flight with just some added challenges in one area, but some ease in another.
The end of the day was really fast on that flight. Was that
the one? I was going to say, was that the one that started really slow? And you were thinking, ah, this isn't working?
Yeah. There was, yeah, there were some slow parts in the first leg. But on the last leg, I mean, I had an hour where I had a 55 kilometer an hour average speed. I finally caught a tailwind. And I was throwing my anti-G out to just glide under clouds and getting sucked up. They weren't, the clouds weren't even that big, but they were just pumping.
And it was able to... They get the flight at the end of the day.
Whoa. And that was three, what? I think 305.
Okay. I think 305. And then there was another one. Then about two weeks later, we did Jared Scheidt. It came out and we got to do a really cool flight together where we did a similar line. We went a little further on one leg, a little shorter on another, but we went like 260 and didn't quite close it. But, you know, by that point, it's like 260 was a small flight, it seemed.
It's crazy. It's
just nothing.
I know.
It's crazy.
Scary moments or was it all pretty straightforward?
There was, I'd say in each of those flights, there were some really kind of heads up moments. I like the triangles because you're not really flying in a ton of wind, but it seems like in Colorado, you always find some spot that's windy.
And so, I'd say on each of those flights, there was a moment where I had to like tuck tailwind. I'd go straight downwind off course line to either get out of a big lee side or just to go downwind to find that climb and go off course line, which is something I've gotten better at doing instead of just headstrong pushing until I'm on the dirt, like realizing when you got to slow down and do what you got to do to get back up and getting back up is the most important thing.
Yeah, there's certain cruxes. On the big triangle line crossing a low zone at about 45 kilometers into the flight, it seems to always be tricky. The four times I've done it where you get kind of stuck there. And then the second leg has a really incredible but really challenging section where you're flying this big high plateau and you've been up there for like two or three hours. And the plateau is at 10,000 feet, 3,000 meters. A bit higher. And it has 5,000 feet of relief above the valleys on either side. And so, you know, 1,500 meters.
And finally, when you leave the plateau, you've kind of felt low all day because you've had all this high terrain. And you glide out over the Colorado River Valley and you have all this height to deal with, which is absolutely incredible. But you're going over this really low valley.
And suddenly, you're really worried about finding a climb. And you have to start kind of scraping stuff together. Is
that kind of like going out into the swell? It's just you get a lot of sinky air for a while coming off the mesa?
Yeah, it can be like that. And it can be stable. And then when you do find there's climbs in there and when you find them, they seem to be really rowdy. On the first time doing that crossing, I lost the glider one time, which I haven't had a full blow up in years.
And yeah, so there are moments I mean, crossing the big plateau, there's another big plateau that we cross at the end of the day, and you're really deep and it's the end of the day, you're like 6pm and you still have 60 k's to go and you're over this just no man's land of a plateau, very few roads and a bunch of lakes up there and it's like a three hour, maybe drive from my house. So, you know, you're just looking at spending the night if you mess up. And yeah,
cool. What was the longest in terms of time?
Those the longest was 10 hours and five minutes. And each of those flights was were 920 950 1005 and 923. So there's an average
speed. Help me out with the math. I was kind of average speed of if you put them all together.
The average speed is always right around 30 kilometers an hour. Yeah, so not that fast. I mean, it's pretty good for a triangle. But no, I mean, on each of those days, I feel like we could be going faster. Things could just go a little more smoothly. I mean, you're just getting
stuck in a couple places.
Yeah, headwinds. You know, you could just have a day. Yeah, having a day without any. It's
not slow. But, you know, when you start thinking about, I mean, can you does this happen in July, you know, closer to the solstice when you've got more sun? Or is that just usually too much OD, too much monsoon?
Yeah, there's a lot of monsoon. There's a lot of monsoon in August as well. We just got really lucky this year. I mean, in general, Colorado is such a overdeveloped monsoonal place in the summer.
But, yeah, getting a flight in July is the dream. The first time I tapped into that Grand Mesa line was in was in July. It was July 6th. And, yeah, I mean. By that time of the year, you have an extra hour of daylight, probably stronger climbs. So,
maybe an 11-hour day. What time are you taking off in Aspen? It's a morning sight, right? Yeah, it's
a morning sight. You're taking off at 9-ish.
Okay. So, wow, cool. Pretty early. Yeah. Tell me about your gear. I mean, you do a ton of racing on the Enzo. I know you're flying the Zeno for this. I want to hear about your oxygen setup, too, because you've got a new forever and ever. You've been a little Pete. Now you're two-tank Pete. But, yeah, that picture of your two tanks is awesome. So, tell us about those two things. What's the reasoning behind your gear and this tank setup you've got?
Yeah. So, yeah, flying the Zeno, which I love to fly in Colorado, just for the little bit extra passive safety, even though I love the Enzo. I love the CCC gliders. Flying a big GR5 harness for those. Those flights. I've modded that harness with some extra pockets so that I can get to the oxygen easily. I can have space for more snacks and just kitted it out a little bit more.
And one thing that's really helped, I think, with these big flights in the gear are these big sub-harnesses. One, you get a little bit of extra performance. But the amount of protection that you get from the elements is incredible. I mean, now you just have my full-face helmet sticking out of this neck gasket and then my arms. You're not, like, my hands don't get cold anymore unless it's a really cold day. What are you using on your hands? I have a pair of fleece liners and then I have a pair of Black Diamond stance gloves. Loves. And they're like a puffy coat for your hands. They're not super thick with leather or anything. They're like ripstop nylon.
And I really like them. They just make my hands feel cozy. And then I have a pair of over mitts that I can put on if I need, but I haven't had to. I'm also doing this season. Game changer is that I've cannibalized an old down jacket. So I have an extra set of sleeves that I wear on top of my normal down coat. And it's... And those, you know, they're sealed off from the arm gaskets on the harness and it works really well. So you don't have to wear too much on your body and you can have these over-insulated arms.
Oh, wow. Yeah. Do you wear down pants too or is that too much of a set? No, I just... Yeah, you just wear jeans. I'm
just wearing... Yeah, I'm just wearing normal pants. They're good in there. Yeah. Okay. Yep. And then, yeah, the two tanks. I, you know, starting to stretch these flights of eight, nine hours in Colorado. I really... I realized that even my larger oxygen tank, I fly with like the AL-248. It's a mountain high tank that's larger than the one that most people fly with. But I'd still run out at about hour seven, seven and a half and have to... What kind
of regulator are you on? Are you using the on-demand pulse or are you... Yeah,
I have an on-demand pulse. It just seems to be... And you're still running out. Wow. I know. That's what everyone says. I don't know if I'm just up there or just taking little... Huffing. Too many little breaths or what. But... Yeah. But I realized that I need to figure out an option for that. And I can fill my own tank. I really try and overfill it, but I'm still running out. I mean, it's not like I'm running out at hour four. I'm running out at hour seven. But... Yeah. But so I just started flying with a second tank and I realized that I could have it on in my cockpit and pinch the little red tube. And since I made this extra pocket in my harness, whenever the one tank runs out, I can just unplug the one red tube, plug in the other red tube and undo the little red tube. And so I just have this little rubber band that I have pinching the tube closed and keep on rolling because I need all the help I can get out there.
Low
tech, but that's sweet. That works. That's kind of cool. I mean, I saw your post about it, but that's neat. I mean, on my big flights, I always run out. That's a great solution, but I'm not flying with that. I saw that. I've never actually seen that big tank you used. We'll put up a picture in the show notes for those of you listening and a link to all these flights. Because they're really inspiring. When you did the 292, you know, we've got this Telegram chat channel over here in the States for kind of the XC group and people immediately were, oh, can you do 300? Can you do 300? And you got that one pretty quickly. So now the question is, you know, obviously in the over in Europe, they had another big year.
Edouard Patel did the what, 350 something.
And, you know, so they, and they've, they're doing a lot of them over there. What's on the table there? Do you feel like you're just tapping it? Do you feel like this is, you know, obviously for us, weather's always the thing. And one of the reasons I haven't gone and flown in Colorado is it seems even less reliable than here, if that's a thing. But, you know, is, was this just an extraordinary season and you'd be really tapped it out? Or was this just, this is just the seeds of a dream? That you're, you're, you see a lot more that can be done there.
Yeah. I think the, the crop is still growing over here. Um, we, we, August was good this year and some of those days they were really good days, but I could imagine better days and I would definitely like to go further. It's just so cool to me to have that challenge. Like I, I really like goal oriented flying and, you know, these previous flights, they came after four years of trying and gosh, like countless days of me. Like. Like sitting in the winter on like the flight planner app, like drawing it out and, you know, just trying to use my imagination and convince myself that bigger is possible. And I definitely think that bigger is possible. And I, to justify that I've just used math, like I'm not a big math guy, but if I just think about, okay, well we can launch a half an hour earlier, we can land a half an hour later.
You could increase your average speed by two kilometers. An hour over 10 hours. I mean, that's 20 Ks right there. Um, so I think that we could go significantly bigger, which is hard to imagine because these flights aren't really in the, in the North America. They're not really going down that big anywhere else, but I think that there's other, there's potential for other launching starting spots. Definitely in Colorado, there's probably better spots to start than where I'm starting. Um, the flying off of Aspen mountain, it's a, it's a really great early morning. Climb out spot, but it can get shut down by any little bit of wind and it's not like this high spot above tree line. It's maybe a little more than 2000 feet, AGL, beautiful East face, but you know, you could just, I think you could just start higher in a little bit deeper in the mountains.
There's just nothing that seems quite as convenient. Definitely for me.
What, what about, what do you think you could bump your speed up to if you had 10 people?
Oh yeah. I mean, that's the other thing. It's like, I'm doing it all alone. So having it, having a team would be incredible. Um, yeah, I mean, it
would maybe just help erase some of those stuck moments. Right. It would, it would, and it would just, you're pressing your, your, your pushing more bar when I, when I file fly alone, I don't use as much bar. I just, it's impossible. I just, I, I try, I always think I need to use the same kind of bar we're using when we're racing, but I find that hard to do when I'm by myself.
Yeah. It's, it's much easier when you have your buddy beside you and he starts pushing a little more. So you just push a little more and then vice versa. Um, yeah, I mean, I don't know if there were a group of us out there, probably, you know, 10 % faster, 8 % faster, just, you know, three kilometers an hour at 10%. That's
a fair bit. There's, there's 30 K right there.
Yeah. Yeah. No, I think the sky's the limit. You know, you just need everything to work out a little bit better and, you know, the data be a little bit better. But then, you know, you look at these record flights in Europe and it's like, well, you consider them. The numbers there. It's like, there's 200 incredible pilots that are ready to go every single day and trying and, you know, 50 guys going from the same launch and one guy eking out that extra stuff. I mean, I think if we had that going on here, no one ever missing the day. I think who knows?
Yeah. I think Matt and I have talked about this a lot, but Matt Beecher farmer, we we've been talking about it a ton and, uh, you know, what, what I saw over, over there in Europe, you know, I tried the anthels one a few times and, you know, what they have there is really early launch. You know, you're launching eight 39 o 'clock in the morning and you're not really turning for the first 60 K, which is a more, which is incredible in the morning. You're just, you're not flying fast, but you're just, you're just right on the terrain. There's just enough air coming up on these beautiful Northeast faces that you're flying all the way into Austria to the, whatever that glacier is there, the glass clock. You're, you're doing the first leg without turning, you know, before. Before it's really on. Uh, and I used to think, oh, well, that's, we just don't have that.
We don't have that kind of terrain. We don't have that kind of aspect. We, you actually do in Colorado in a sense of when I look at your track logs, but, but what we do have is eight meter climbs, you know, we, we spend a lot time, but less time we go up faster than they can in Europe. And so by that, we also glide farther and faster. And I mean, So we've got some pros that they don't have, and I think it's, it's a combination of just putting it together, uh, that, you know, I, I think these really big FAIs are, are there for the taking, uh, but it's just a different approach or it's a different style. Yeah.
Yeah. It definitely seems different. I've never done any big flights in Europe, but like, I, I know what they're, what they're doing over there and has seems lovely. It just cruising some real long Ridge here in the central. Colorado Rockies, the ridges aren't that long. We do a lot of little crossings in the morning, but kind of a wild thing with the mountains here in the morning is that they're just on, like, you'll be, you'll be catching. I mean, I've had eight meter climbs at 10 30 in the morning.
Like, so there's that, uh,
tell me about your mental farmer always talks about, you know, after these big flights, eight hours in the air. Kind of thing. You'd land and you're in this kind of alien world. Uh, you know, you're, you're, you're, you feel so good and you touch the ground and you're, Whoa, I can barely stand up. Uh, uh, how, how tired are you? How, you know, what does it take to kind of recharge? What does it take to get ready mentally for these big flights? What do you, what, what, what's the headspace you're trying to find?
It takes a lot, obviously just the pure physical endurance and the mental endurance. Of nine, 10 hours, you know, doing it by yourself. Gosh, that's a huge difference. I mean, you need to do a eight, nine hour flight with some friends. Like maybe we'll do in Chelan doing some triangles there, some open distance. And it's so great. It's so, it feels so casual, but being by yourself, I mean, there's a, you're mentally processing so much more and, and, you know, you just don't feel any support around you. Right. I do feel the support of, of people cheering me on. And, and all of that, but, um, yeah, they're really exhausting through the course of those three big flights. I felt myself progressively get in better and better shape and my comfort level go up and up on the first big one.
Gosh, I had all of these like forearm cramps, right? Right below my elbow on my forearm, just from like over gripping the bees. And on that flight, my harness wasn't adjusted properly. I actually had an abdominal cramp when I was making a low save. Like my whole stomach felt like. Someone like was clawing into me. It was really incredible. Um, and then it was, you know, by the third one, I actually felt pretty good when I landed, like I could have done another hour. Um, I think having your gear, you know, your harness and everything, just at the maximum level of dialed in doing the flights with the really, really big goals. It kind of feels like racing where you were so driven and you were so pulled.
By the goal in front of you that it doesn't seem like it takes that long. And it just like, if you told me to stay in the air for even two hours over one mountain, I would just, I would get, I'd feel all the turbulence. I had every little bump in the wind. I'd say, oh, it's too windy. It's too turbulent. I'm getting thrown around here. But whenever you have this huge goal in front of you, it's like turbulence is just an obstacle between you and your goal. Just like racing. You know, you're just on that bar. just crushing through it and whatever happens it's just you know if you get low on some ridge of course we want to stay safe and keep our margins but like that low surfing that ridge you're just getting slowed down like you're it's just an obstacle and i'm just so driven to just overcome that get the speed up let's go go go um that it it helps with the mental space it's because you're just you're so hungry you know just sitting around here in the winter dreaming about doing some huge flight and in these case this case you know being able to do some big records it's that drive stays with you it's like uh i feel like in my months that i'm not doing this which are most of the months it's like a it's like a dam that's just filling up with water and filling up with water and filling up with water and like come july or august i'm just so ready to go and like we'll go to chelan in july and the end of july or sorry in the end of june and just get primed up and i come back here i'm just i'm ready man like let's go and and then though like even on that day like you've got to be in the right spot like i've had days where i don't go flying because i just don't get a good night's sleep like i was too excited maybe the night before and slept like shit and just said oh it's not it's not for me here you've
had you've
had a lot of fun and you've had a lot of fun and you've had a lot of fun and you've had
uh you know so that's a long time flying 21 years we're pretty similar there uh you had any accidents i
have yeah i have a like a couple two the two injuries i've had in the sport were somewhat self-inflicted like i crashed launching on my first year flying in bozeman when like it was just 15 mile an hour dead cross steep slope you know i had 40 flights and i was like oh my god or 50 flights whatever um you know so i had that one and then one year after i got out of college so like 15 years ago i was doing i was down in arizona i was towing and i was doing a ground spiral and i just there was obstacles in the way i'm not a ground spiral pilot and i uh i ended up just nicking the ground but hard enough to break a vertebrae in my back so i've had that i didn't have to have a surgery but i'm not a ground spiral pilot and i i'm not a ground spiral pilot it was uh i almost did i felt really lucky to get out of that one and then the one in montana i'd broken my tip fib um okay outside of that no i've i've thrown my reserve once in live action in colorado and that was probably seven years ago so
how do you i mean that that's a long stretch and flying in lots and lots of big air what do you how do you approach your own personal safety risk balance yeah
i i
want to do flights that feel good like i don't want to go out and do something and fly around some crazy over development or in too much wind where i land and i feel like i really got away with something you know we have it's not worth it to me it doesn't leave a good taste in my stomach um and so i i try and fly in really good in good conditions and i think probably an action like not flying the absolute hottest glider i can in these colorado flights and stepping that back a little bit for the passive safety is um something that i do to help mitigate the risks carrying all this oxygen is something that i do to help mitigate the risk just to stay sharp um but inevitably there are always on i'd say on nearly any big flight i've flown in the past i've flown in the past and i've flown in the past and i've flown flight that you do there's some moments that feel a little bit hairy and they're and you're just
you gotta be honest with yourself and know when to hold them and know when to fold them but there's such a fine line there because if you backed out and flew out every time that you got low you probably none of those flights would have happened so it's it's you know it's it's great to have you know half of my life is being experienced paragliding to have that to to lean on and to have a good objective lens about what's going on and not to let that ambition of wanting to do the flight like lead you to do something dumb or too risky but there's a really fine balance there um what was it uh is it an apocalypse now quote the the crazy um awol general says uh a snail walks along the edge of a razor that's my dream
that's my nightmare i might be butchering that but um yeah there's a there's a fine balance surely some of those flights you know the the biggest risk would have been like pushing it over some trees like in some foresty areas where you're looking at their glide out and it's looking a little bit um a little bit not great if you don't get it but i like to look at that with a conservative lens like so i'm not looking at my glide out thinking like oh in best case scenario i'll be able to glide out i'm trying to be good and honest and yeah um what's the worst case here yeah the these last two really big triangles the are over a new line and a nice thing about that line is that it's not big jagged mountains the entire way you have like 40 50ks of big mountains in the beginning and then it's it's a lot of forest they're mountains but it's like this high plateau
there's more landing zones and it's a little bit warm and fuzzy feeling than just being over the jaggedness all day you know
you you said that uh you know there are times where you just wake up it's a good day but you don't really feel like you have it if you have do you have a do you have a way to check in with that is there certain is there is there are there certain kind of red flags that you try to pay attention to or just is this just a gut feeling and i'm not not feeling it today yeah
um i would say that you know i'm kind of measuring my sleep is a good one um and just try you know trying to get a good night's sleep or at least like try to get a good night's sleep two days before and like have the cumulative number on that um i
don't know i think every i i never turned down any good condition this year for flying so i was always feeling pretty good so it's not something i do that often but like yeah um i um i don't really drink which i used to like have a couple beers like pretty much every evening and like that would really mess with my sleep quality and like i used to like maybe wake up and be like man i think i they had one too many beers last night i'm just not gonna go do it because it's just so demanding here it's not like you're not flying over the flats like you just have to fly feel tip-top you gotta be
tapped in yeah you're going to be tapped in yeah you're going to be tapped in yeah you're going to be tapped in for a big day um yeah do you do any training outside of flying for flying but what i mean by that is uh are you doing any reading studying you know going out for little short flights doing little training flights for you know to try to push up wind are you doing stuff uh yeah outside you know and you do you do you were saying four comps a year that's certainly training you know we always have to view those as training
and training and training and training and training
because sometimes we do good and sometimes we suck yeah uh but yeah talk about that side of things uh is it obviously put a lot of time and effort into these lines you know thinking about them in the winter and plan them out and looking really closely at certain aspects and is this going to work i know you put a lot of time into you know four years into these big fais uh but talk about that side of things
sure i mean since i was young i've been a rock climber i don't do it as like my the biggest thing that i do now or the most main thing but yeah to short answer your question see i feel like i do a decent bit of cross training yeah rock climbing um i used to practice highlining a decent bit and like that was a really great one just for like your mental space um because it is definitely one of those spaces where you can be where you gotta slow your mind down even though it's telling you you're nuts um you know a bit of mountain biking a bit of strength training so some of that i i know that i can't go out and fly an eight hour flight or nine hour ten hour flight off the couch though i can fly i can fly pretty well off the couch like a lot of 20 year pilots can um so i definitely try and you know leading up to these flights to to try and get out and warm up it's great that the chelan comp is always kind of right before me so i'm going to try and get out and warm up before our season kicks in so i usually come back from there i usually go there feeling really unprepared um and then come back from it feeling really good um so like before going to chelan this year i did like a 190 kilometer triangle and there's a lot of headwind on the second wind of leg of that and i normally i if i didn't feel like i needed to train i would have just gone down and landed but i pushed for like eight hours and made it back and that one and i remember going to chelan people said well it was a really good flight and i was like i'm gonna try and get out and warm up and i looked at it said no no i was just training like i didn't even think of it as like a really good flight like i mean it was good but so yeah you know being ready i yeah you can't be doing that fully off the couch for sure if
my math is sort of right i'm not very i'm like you i'm not great at math either but uh you know half of your life has been dedicated pretty closely to the sky crack and cedar likes to call it uh if you could rewind the clock you've heard this one before but if you can rewind the clock to that pete you know five years before you moved to colorado and you're just getting started you're maybe you're 50 hours self you're 50 hours in first year second year uh what would you tell that pete it doesn't have to be about paragliding you'd just be like but either way whatever you want
yeah it it i mean it fits it 50 hours it would have been to slow down a little bit um and to like make sure to get out and go flying with other people that are better than you or other people that are the same skill set as you because i definitely would get out there a lot by myself i've always been pretty independent in that respect and yeah to surround yourself with with great pilots which i was fortunate enough in in my career to to have some really good mentors but i'd say it at that point it would be it would be that and then after that i would say to only fly because you want to when you want to like i used to feel like every summer that i'd spend in colorado like i've got to do 100 flight or sorry 100 mile flight otherwise people are gonna forget who i am and i'm gonna lose my namesake or someone's gonna take this record um and um i kind of like that pressure a little bit but it definitely is going to be a lot of pressure but i'm going to be able to led me to to push
it on some days like i know we were speaking earlier about flying in these light wind days and the triangles um and how nice that is you know like 12 years ago probably i upped the colorado open distance record and went like 245 kilometers which to me was huge back then i did it in four hours and 45 minutes it was a 50k 51 kilometer an hour average speed over mountains the absolute entire way and whenever i told people the next day they had been hiking in the mountains that next day they said you were flying they said it was windy in the mountains like and i knew it and i knew it and i still went out there and i think you can relate i think that you've you know been there where you're like god i am so driven for this and um and and the solution is to fly in the mountains and to fly in the mountains and to fly in the mountains and to fly in is more wind and um and then you know calibrated and uh and yeah i mean
my my big one here that was a long time ago now and she's 2013 but i think my average speed i have to go back and check again but it was either 54 or 55k an hour you know for seven and a half hours it was yeah almost 400k but i mean the whole time was just i mean if i was at 18 000 it was fine yeah when i was in the terrain which thankfully was only twice really i mean it was you know it was it was it was it was it was it was it was it was it was it was it was it was ridiculous there's no way i would even think about doing that now you know so just you know sometimes we get lucky for sure yeah i mean that's speed that they're doing in texas when there's no there's not there's no there's no hazards it's just flat there's no mountains there's no lee you know so yeah that was we learn and get a little bit smarter yeah pete awesome man i congratulations it was just so cool to watch that from afar of course we were all incredibly envious too but uh congratulations on putting it together after so many years of dreaming about it and planning and scheming and uh just to see it go down over and over and over was ah man i was i was channeling your your stoke for sure everybody was around the world but congratulations and i can't wait to see what what more you do and i'm hoping i get to come join you next time i'm gonna put put colorado on the map like i said it's ridiculous that i live so close and i haven't been out there
yeah thanks so much yeah that was that was really a dream come true for me you know i i wanted to show what i can do but also and express that but also express you know what is available here in the state and you know after seeing all these big flights go down in europe you know time and again i'm just like i want to show what we can do here man and i know that it's possible i mean anyone anyone at a comp after party in the last three in the last three years has heard me say to them you gotta come we can do 300 man let's go
yeah and that was it was really inspiring i mean we we've definitely got it on the table here too yeah yeah i know you do it's just it's just a matter of we gotta get out we gotta do it we gotta make it happen yeah we've certainly got the terrain up here for big stuff like that too so i think you you shot us all in the arm with a whole bunch of inspiration it was great i
love it i mean yeah it's i don't it's not just here it's not just where i've been starting in colorado there's other sites and in the down in the san juans and in idaho and in nevada i think that the really the more that we open our minds to the possibility that it is possible like then all of a sudden we do do it like i never thought that 270 was possible until galen did it like i convinced myself maybe i could beat farmer's old record by like 3k i was like maybe i could do it by 3k go 240 and then galen did that flight and then within 24 hours i convinced myself last year i was like i can go to 75 i i know you know and
it's just that's that's sometimes all it takes yeah
it's so cool though it's so cool to play that game with ourselves and to inspire each other i really love it
totally thanks dude it was a great seeing you great talking to you and uh thanks for the stuff you got
it thanks if
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