Jake Holland is a British filmmaker and adventure pilot based in Chamonix. In this episode we discuss his totally wild experiences this season and last in Pakistan with professional climbers Will Sim and Fabi Buhl, and pilots and adventurers Aaron Durogati, Antoine Girard, Veso Ovcharov and others, and the challenges of capturing these high altitude adventures on film. We discuss the mission of using paragliders as an access tool to explore remote mountains, the economics of filmmaking in the paragliding industry, and the risks and safety considerations involved. Jake shares his background in flying and filmmaking, as well as the logistics of traveling with heavy equipment. We touch on the impact of paragliding on the climbing community and the accessibility of paragliding adventures in Pakistan. Jake discusses various themes related to adventure flying and filmmaking. We discuss the importance of understanding the sky and weather conditions and the importance of backcountry knowledge. The conversation touches on Jake’s Tanzania trip with Tom de Dorlodot and Horacio Llorens, as well as the challenges of filmmaking and maintaining creative control, and the difficulties and rewards of flying in Alaska and Pakistan. The conversation concludes with a discussion on the value of slowing down and embracing the adventure of being out in nature. Enjoy!
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Paragliders can be used as an efficient and lightweight tool to access remote mountains and explore new lines.
Filmmaking in the paragliding industry can be challenging due to the economics involved, but there are opportunities to collaborate with outdoor brands and create marketing films.
Paragliding adventures in Pakistan offer unique flying conditions, with high cloud bases and the potential for long-distance flights.
Flying with skis and landing in high-altitude environments requires careful piloting skills and consideration of the weather conditions.
Traveling with heavy camera gear and equipment can be a logistical challenge, but airlines like Turkish Airlines offer free ski bags for international flights. Understanding the sky and weather conditions is crucial for adventure flying.
Backcountry knowledge, especially about snow conditions, is essential for safe flying.
Drones have revolutionized aerial filming, providing filmmakers with unique perspectives.
Adventure flying is gaining popularity, attracting more people to explore remote and challenging locations.
French pilots are known for their daring and innovative approach to adventure sports.
Filmmaking in remote locations requires careful planning and balancing creative control with budget constraints.
Flying in Alaska presents unique challenges due to unpredictable weather and flying conditions.
Pakistan offers incredible flying opportunities, but conditions can vary, requiring adaptability and patience. Unplugging from technology and immersing oneself in nature and community can be a deeply fulfilling experience.
Exploring the Grand Canyon during the winter offers a unique and less crowded experience.
The Grand Canyon offers a wide range of activities, including hiking, camping, and whitewater rafting.
Dreaming and planning for future adventures can bring excitement and anticipation.
Chapters
00:00Introduction and Background
02:58The Mission and Filmmaking
05:27Using Paragliders as an Access Tool
08:01Personal Flying Background
10:09Transition to Filmmaking
12:20Economics of Filmmaking
13:56Risk and Safety in Paragliding Filmmaking
16:06Collaboration and Project Development
19:08Impact on the Climbing Community
21:06Flying Conditions in Pakistan
23:00Top Landing and Challenges
25:07Gear and Equipment
28:32Flying with Skis and Challenges
31:44Logistics and Traveling with Equipment
35:04Risk Factors and Accessibility
38:28Understanding the Sky and Weather
40:09Backcountry Understanding of Snow
41:32Flying and Filming with Drones
45:19Increasing Interest in Adventure Flying
47:17The French and Dreaming Big
49:19Tanzania Trip with Tom and Horacio
51:47Filmmaking Challenges and Creative Control
56:59The Challenges of Filming in Alaska
01:01:46Balancing Filming and Flying
01:06:45The Struggle to Complete the Alaska Expedition
01:10:05Unpredictable Flying Conditions in Alaska
01:13:39Flying Conditions in Pakistan
01:14:32Flying in Pakistan and the Potential for Bigger Flights
01:15:38Conditions for Cross-Country Flying in Pakistan
01:16:38The Potential for Even Bigger Flights in Pakistan
01:17:11Flying in Remote Areas of Pakistan
01:17:52Future Plans and Exploring New Possibilities
01:19:17Use of Oxygen in High-Altitude Flying
01:21:16Closing Remarks and Appreciation
01:21:25Final Question: What Wasn’t Covered in the Conversation
01:21:46Discussion on Filmmaking and Future Projects
01:22:19Working with Pablo and Filming in Alaska
01:23:17Flying with Oxygen and Acclimatization
01:24:17Flying in National Parks and Emergency Landings
01:25:42Future Project Ideas and Flying in the Rangel Range
01:27:04Comparing the Rockies Traverse and Flying the Length of the Alps
01:28:21Using a Helicopter for Filming and Logistics
01:31:33Kenny’s Role as a Bush Pilot Mechanic and Recovery Specialist
01:37:19Appreciating the Slower Pace of Filmmaking and Enjoying the Wilderness
01:40:41The Value of Slowing Down and Embracing the Adventure
01:44:05Desire for a Raw and Less Polished Film
01:45:06Enjoying the Experience of Being Out in Nature
01:45:50The Joy of Unplugging and Connecting with Community
Gavin McClurg (00:00.217)
That's the riverside side of things. And then I've got pro gear here and I'm going to sit up.
jake holland (00:06.802)
not got anything recording at this end. I can do... do you want... it's just plug straight into the computer. If you want I can try to record something else but yeah. Okay. And this Riverside application is recording now.
Gavin McClurg (00:09.165)
Okay. Oh, so that's just your microphone going into the computer. Perfect.
Gavin McClurg (00:16.769)
Nope, I think that'll be great. Let's just leave it like that. It sounds awesome. So let's do that.
Gavin McClurg (00:25.881)
Yeah, it's like zoom. It's I've got it all in its backup. It's going in the cloud. The only thing we have to watch is, you know, see down at the bottom, you're like 99% uploaded right now. So when we when we finish and by the way, when we finish, just don't hang up. We'll do a very natural goodbye. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it. My editor just needs some silence to cut on. That's about it. Miles talking to Jake Holland. Watch your ears here for a second. I'm just seeing things up.
jake holland (00:41.102)
Okay.
jake holland (00:47.534)
Sure.
Gavin McClurg (00:55.937)
All right, let's do it. Jake, thanks for reaching out, man. I appreciate it. It's kind of fun to explore a little different topic as we head into 2024. I just watched your terrific film, which I realize hasn't been released. So I don't know how much we can talk about that, but the magic of freedom, gorgeous with you and the boys over in Pakistan this summer with Veso and Mehdi and Will and...
And I really enjoyed your other film as well, which is out. I understand doing the touring a bit with the project from the summer before. Is that right? It was two different summers or?
jake holland (01:37.274)
Yeah, that's right. Well, yeah, firstly, thanks for having me on. I'm looking forward to chatting with you. But yeah, as regards to the film, we went to Pakistan in 20... Well, I went to Pakistan in 2022. Obviously, a lot of people have been going there for much longer than that. And we made a film called The New Way Up, which is kind of like a paragliding, climbing combination movie.
with Fabby and Will. That's actually available on YouTube and it's been sort of touring around at some festivals. And then from this year and 20, well, last year, I guess now because we're just into 2024, but last year in 2023 we went back with a slightly different crowd of people and made another film called The Magic Freedom which is what I guess you were just watching maybe before this.
Gavin McClurg (02:29.497)
Yeah, it was brilliant, man. It made my head cold feel a lot better. I told you I'm fighting a pretty heavy cold right now, but it made me smile, man. It's an amazing place every time I see images. I got addicted to Pakistan back with Sylvester back in the day and his tandem films. And he was really what got me into Bivvy all those years ago, you know? So he's a legend.
jake holland (02:54.414)
I mean, yeah, that guy was wild. Total legend. Have you
Gavin McClurg (02:58.845)
Legend. Yeah. And to see this kind of next step of what, well, let's start there because a lot of the listeners might not even know what we're talking about. What are you guys doing? This is, you know, those who haven't seen your film with Fabian will, that kind of rocked the world, but there's probably people that haven't seen it. And it's pretty remarkable what's going on. Just take, it gives the summary of
of kind of the mission in these projects. And we're gonna talk about your filmmaking a lot, but what are you guys doing?
jake holland (03:36.27)
Sure. So I think Fabby and Will both come at paragliding from perhaps a different side of the coin to a lot of people. They're both exceptional mountain athletes sort of firstly. So Fabby was very well known as a climber, originally as a boulderer, but he's gone on to do some really amazing alpine climbing.
Um, and then will sim who's a British guy, Fabi is a German that lives in France and will is British and he lives in, in Chaminade and was an amazing character. I mean, he, I think before we went to, to Pakistan the first time he had maybe been flying for like three years or something like this and the kind of flights he was doing in, in Pakistan. And I could be getting that wrong. It could even mean less.
But Will has an amazing amount of ability combined with thoughtfulness. And I think that's why he's such a great alpine climber. But he's also a mountain guide. So that's what those guys have a background in. And myself, I'm a skier and I wouldn't call myself a great climber by any means, but I like being in the mountains and I've done a fair amount of climbing over the years.
And I think through probably not really, we definitely can't take credit for it because people have been using paragliders to get off mountains in the Alps since back in the eighties, I guess. But with the sort of relatively recent advance is in paragliders becoming such efficient machines for flying and how light they are, what we wanted to do in Pakistan was to start to use the paragliders as a way to.
be able to access these amazing mountains and take enough gear with us to then sort of play in that playground that's there. So that's what we've been doing over there.
Gavin McClurg (05:40.437)
And it looks, what is your own personal background with flying? Is it, you know, from the films, these are big peaks. It's, you know, strong climb, strong flying. I haven't flown in Pakistan. I understand, you know, a lot of ways it's similar to people that have gone to beer in terms of you very often are flying without a ton of wind. Obviously, sometimes you get you get in bad situations as we do everywhere. But.
jake holland (06:09.334)
Hmm
Gavin McClurg (06:10.402)
I understand that for the most part it's, I don't know, would you say reasonable? A reasonable flying, even though that's really big mountains.
jake holland (06:17.146)
Yeah, I mean, I feel like the best way to describe Pakistan is a bit like the Alps, but bigger. I really feel like it's working kind of like the Alps, which is the place I know, well, at least I know the area around Chamonix pretty well. I don't know all of the Alps well, but I feel like it's just a bigger version of that. That's not to say that it can't get windy and scary, just like the Alps can get...
totally terrifying, you know, on the wrong day. But when it's working, it kind of just feels like a bigger version with higher climbs. Yeah, but going back to your previous question, flying for me, my dad's a sailplane pilot. So from a young age, I've always been kind of interested in flying in the sky. And I did a little bit of that when I was, you know, kind of maybe in my mid teens or something with him.
Gavin McClurg (06:51.865)
Just makes sense.
Gavin McClurg (07:00.711)
Mmm.
jake holland (07:14.038)
but never really fully got into it somehow. And then I did a ski season when I was 20 and my roommate, a guy called Michael Mondoon, he's a South African guy. I think he lives in New Zealand now, acro pilot. He was going off and doing acro flights and stuff. And I was immediately like, wow, that looks amazing. And I persuaded him to sort of literally push me off with a friend's wing. And that was how I got into it.
Gavin McClurg (07:40.551)
Yeah.
jake holland (07:44.182)
And then I kind of left it alone a little bit for a few years. And then when I moved to Chamonix in France for skiing, um, I really kind of got back into it then and bought all the gear and since then have been, been pretty hooked.
Gavin McClurg (07:58.501)
and how long ago was this? So when did you get into it?
jake holland (08:01.658)
Well, I probably... hmm, that's a good question. I think I must have done that first ski season maybe 14 years ago when I was 20. I'm 34 now. And then I guess probably nine years ago being back in Chamonix was when I started to, you know, fly more. And I was working as a whitewater kite guide, which I know we have something in common there.
Gavin McClurg (08:10.659)
Okay.
jake holland (08:26.374)
in the summers. So I wasn't actually getting to fly all that much for the first few years, at least not in the good cross country sort of days. But I was flying quite a lot in the winter and we have a very reliable like lift and we can fly a lot in the winter and I was getting to do some good springs and good flights in the spring. But then probably, I don't know, the last six or seven years, I guess I've been putting a lot more time into my flying and
Gavin McClurg (08:26.521)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (08:34.065)
Mm-hmm.
jake holland (08:54.946)
trying to fly a lot around the Alps and enjoying the various different aspects of flying. So I'm a terrible acro pilot, but I like to dabble with that because I feel like it gives you a good base. And I love to use the wing in any way I can in the mountains because I think it's a great tool. And with these single skins, how small and light they've got now. Like I recently got a new air design Ronin and
Gavin McClurg (09:15.997)
Hmm.
jake holland (09:19.474)
And that thing there is no reason to take out the ski bag. It's so tiny. You can just leave it in there and you never know. You know, you can just take off whenever you, whenever you get bored of skiing and the ski, the snow line runs out.
Gavin McClurg (09:27.377)
Wow. Right. Yeah, right. The, you said you moved to Chamonix for the skiing. Was that to guide or was that just to ski? Or is that, is this a profession in any kind?
jake holland (09:42.202)
No, not at all. I mean, my original sort of first career was in outdoor education. So taking people climbing and hill walking and kayaking in the UK. But I really got bitten by the white water bug since I was young. That was my main sport to start with. And that took me on loads of adventures around the world and lots of amazing rivers and the Himalayas and in Canada and Africa and all sorts of stuff.
Gavin McClurg (10:09.121)
Oh wow, you're a serious paddler.
jake holland (10:11.366)
Yeah, I mean, we, I got to do a lot of kayaking. That was, that was really good. I didn't do so much anymore. Probably because of the paragliding, I guess, but I would like to occasionally break the boat out and wash off the cobwebs as it were. But no, coming to Chamonix, I was my first season, well, probably my first five seasons, I was just driving a bus from Chamonix to Geneva airport. And I would normally do two days of that.
Gavin McClurg (10:25.628)
Mm.
jake holland (10:39.402)
and I was living in my camper van in the winter and just trying to ski as much as I could. And that, yeah. No, those were great years, definitely.
Gavin McClurg (10:51.961)
And when did the filmmaking come along? How long you been doing that?
jake holland (10:56.258)
Well, I first, weirdly enough, my parents both trained as photographers. Um, and my mom carried on working as a photographer, but in a bit of a different sense to a normal, she was working in hospitals as a medical photographer and my dad left the industry like years and years ago when he was much younger, but, um, I first picked up a camera when I was probably 17 or something like that. Um, I didn't know if I was inspired because that's what they're done.
but I was already starting to travel. I'd already been to Nepal with my kayak at that point. And I knew I wanted to try to document these trips in some kind of way. And photos for me seemed like a good way. I'm very dyslexic, so writing wasn't always easy back then, although I enjoy it more now. But yeah, and then I think I have a vivid memory of the first GoPro coming out and thinking that was a cool thing to have on kayaking trips.
Gavin McClurg (11:39.333)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (11:52.198)
Mmm.
jake holland (11:52.534)
and started making goofy little films from then. And then, you know, kind of got a slightly nicer camera that had a video function in it. And we started making more cacking films. And then at some point or another, I finally decided like, you know, I really like this. I'd like to make this my job. And that was probably seven years ago, maybe. And then since then, I've been kind of full-time freelance with the video stuff and sometimes photo stuff.
Gavin McClurg (12:20.665)
So yeah, we talked about this before we started recording, but I think it'd be fun to learn that the economics of filmmaking has always been really hard for me to get my head around. I got very lucky as a, yeah, I got very lucky as a non-filmmaker on the other, you know, the thing that kind of set it off for us was this little short film we did called 500 Miles to Nowhere, and I was very much involved in the production side of that, even though I was in the film.
jake holland (12:33.428)
Me too.
jake holland (12:47.618)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (12:49.649)
That was quite interesting, but we did that for Outside TV. But we had to spend a lot of our own personal money to get that done. Certainly didn't make money. But it led to some cool things. It led to both the Red Bull films that I did, The Rockies Traverse with Will Gadd and then the Alaska, sorry, North Unknown with Dave Turner. And those were funded by Red Bull, so we didn't have to worry about it. That was pretty amazing.
jake holland (13:18.323)
Yeah definitely.
Gavin McClurg (13:19.925)
It was, you know, these days, because that's kind of dried up, that region of Red Bull, I think it was the Explorer series, that doesn't exist anymore. So I'm always fascinated by how you make it work as a job from the, at least from paragliding filming, because it seems hard to get enough money on board to make it work.
jake holland (13:31.399)
Mm-hmm.
jake holland (13:46.938)
Yeah, I think if I just relied on making a living from making paragliding movies, then I would be back in the campervan pretty quick. But I mean, that's not to say that I don't make some money from paragliding films through different ways. As a filmmaker, I mean, for anyone looking to get into the industry, I would say
Gavin McClurg (13:56.91)
Hahaha
jake holland (14:15.202)
definitely go for it if you've got the passion for it. And I'm sure everyone has found their own way in. For me, I really think that I just, I quit every other job I had and I said, right, I'm just gonna make this work somehow. And it did start to work, but it was lots of small gigs of different things to start with and...
Gavin McClurg (14:33.105)
Mmm.
jake holland (14:40.234)
a lot of hustling. It's still a lot of hustling as a freelancer. I think anyone who's a freelancer will be able to relate to the fact that there's always a bit of insecurity and always a bit of a worry of what's going to be next. But yeah, I guess for those last sort of six or seven years, it's always worked out. So a lot of my work tends to be with outdoor brands making films for them, for marketing purposes.
Gavin McClurg (14:43.784)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (14:53.967)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (15:10.013)
Mm.
jake holland (15:10.786)
try to in general take on projects that are more like people and athlete-orientated than product-orientated in its principal form. Yeah, I guess a lot of my work comes from climbing brands and ski brands. That's where a lot of my films are. But I've worked on TV things, I've worked on commercial things, I've worked in cinema stuff.
Gavin McClurg (15:18.03)
Mm.
jake holland (15:37.578)
It's great. I love the variety of it and I love all the people you meet and because especially in the adventure sports world, you get to hang out and meet really cool people.
Gavin McClurg (15:48.758)
Your film New Way Up, when it tours and it goes to Kendall and BAMF or whatever, I don't know what film festivals, the other ones it's done, I'm sure many, but does that lead to a lot of work? Do people end up reaching out?
jake holland (16:06.969)
Mmmm
I would say in principle, no, not really. It always feels like a bit sad, but it's nice to see your work out there. And it's really nice to know that people are getting to watch it on a slightly bigger screen than their phone or whatever. So I think the balance of film festivals, for me it works. For example, that film is kind of, I mean, we just went to Pakistan because we wanted to go to Pakistan.
Gavin McClurg (16:12.774)
Oh.
jake holland (16:38.13)
And at some point in there, we started to realize that was potentially going to be a pretty cool story. And I brought some basic camera stuff with me and I did my best to sort of document it as a one band person. Um, but at first, I mean, that was really just a passion project and it was great because, um, Fabby, who's sponsored by Adidas, uh, Terex and also Petzl, those guys stepped up and they gave them money.
Gavin McClurg (16:56.261)
Mm.
jake holland (17:07.234)
towards helping edit it and make it and stuff. So that was kind of how that was commercially viable, I guess. And it's, you know, as Fabio would say, it's important for him to have someone to, you know, document these things for them to have value as athletes. So your relationship as a filmmaker with athletes is really, really important because often they're the guys that can help find money through brands to, you know, promote the brand, but also get to get these.
Gavin McClurg (17:23.741)
Sure.
jake holland (17:36.21)
wonderful projects off the ground.
Gavin McClurg (17:38.996)
So how did you connect with these guys originally? Was this the first one? Was the new way up?
jake holland (17:44.13)
Yeah, well that was two years ago now that we went to Pakistan there and I had never met Fabi before. I was good friends with Will, but at least I don't think I've met Fabi at that point. But yeah, I think Fabi had been speaking to Will and I think I've maybe reached out to Fabi in the past and said, hey, we should maybe try and do something together at some point because Fabi at this point, I mean, not on the Pakistan trip.
But before that, I had kind of seen his rise to paragliding and I'd seen this cool climber doing a lot of interesting flights. I think I'd even flown past him in Anissey or something like that. And I'd been like, that's Fabi. So we've been chatting a little bit, but up until going to Pakistan, we didn't actually know each other, but Fabi's, he's great. He's so easy to get on with and he's such a nice guy. So we hit it off straight away.
Gavin McClurg (18:38.721)
It's really cool to me that the original paragliders were really seen as a descent tool for alpinism. And now, 40 years later, 30 at least, they're being really used as an ascent tool. And it's really amazing the lines that you guys are opening up. And I mean, this has been done in the Alps
for longer, but it's the lines that you guys are opening, you know, from Karimabad, looks like pretty small little hike and, you know, gaining thousands of meters and just picking stuff off. For the climbing community, is this just blowing their minds? I mean, are we going to see a huge rush of Fabbies come into the end of the fold?
jake holland (19:33.922)
That's a good question. I mean, I think Fabby is a very unique character. And I think, you know, he was probably pretty obsessive about bouldering and got very good as a boulder. And then he really got the flying bug and became very obsessed with flying and he's put thousands and thousands of hours in. And now he's a he's not, you know, just a great combination sort of pilot who's using his climbing skills, but he is an amazing pilot full stop.
Gavin McClurg (20:01.661)
Mm.
jake holland (20:03.49)
And I, I really feel like the descent stuff, you know, it's only going to get more and more popular as wings become smaller, more accessible. Um, and I think in Chamonix already, there's many, many pilots who own a single skin wing, they don't own anything else, um, and they'll use it, you know, regularly to get down off the mountain, be it on skis or after a climb or a quick, a quick flung lap. But then I feel like there's a very
big difference in mindset to the sport to become someone who's, you know, a capable pilot who can fly in a place like Pakistan and use those strong thermals to get somewhere. So I think of course there's going to be more and more people get into it and using the paraglider to do these combos, but it's not the low hanging fruit of the tree. You know, it takes some work to as you...
Gavin McClurg (20:55.781)
Mmm.
jake holland (20:59.182)
more than no to become a good pilot who's safe and skilled and can make good decisions and understand what the hell's going on up there.
Gavin McClurg (21:06.885)
I remember I've said this before, but on my first really bigger Bivvy, this was 2012 in the Sierra. So I'd done a little trip with John, Sylvester and beer and was just, and I got invited to join a group of pilots who were way better than me to try to kind of go from the south end of the north end of the Sierra. We did a little film on this. And I remember one day we had, we were getting ready to take off some peak and, you know, there had been some.
pretty amazing things that had already happened. One guy, Brad Sander, who was one of the legendary Pakistan pilots had gone in real hard. And another guy who was an ex ops pilot had gotten scared by bears. And so the team was getting whittled down. And I remember we were getting ready to take off and Nick Grease, who's a friend of mine and a real mentor and somebody I'd worked with at the time he ran our US magazine.
jake holland (21:51.766)
Okay.
Gavin McClurg (22:03.377)
pilot and I said, Oh, it shouldn't everybody be doing this. He said, are you out of your fucking mind? No, not everybody should be doing this. You know, this is the tippy top. And since then, you know, this was back when we didn't have light gear. And you know, I mean, since then, and then COVID really changed everything in terms of hike and fly, especially in the Alps, cause you know, the ski lifts were shut down. And so, you know, hike and fly has just exploded, which is super exciting. But it's, you say in your film,
jake holland (22:18.357)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (22:33.189)
the magic of freedom that, you know, top landing is really dangerous. It's a really, you know, you don't just stick it in. And especially, I wanted to ask you about that, especially at really high altitudes. I'm impressed that you guys can do that. A lot of the top landing you were doing, I know Aaron, when I had him on the show recently, he was talking about, you know, you guys are taking off, putting your skis on in the air, which is still hard for me to wrap my head around.
jake holland (22:40.102)
It is.
Gavin McClurg (23:00.993)
And that, you know, so you could land on skis when you're up high, which makes a lot of sense. But a lot of the landings, you know, you and Antoine and others, I saw in the film where, you know, you're just sticking in on feet at 5,000 plus, which, you know, your trim speed's really fast. You know, and I have found in my own, you know, when there's snow, your depth is really tricky, depth perception.
jake holland (23:23.896)
Mmm
Gavin McClurg (23:26.957)
I often get in that kind of frame of mind where I'm going to stick it in right here. And then you realize you stuck it in, you have a landing in the footer. That wasn't my best landing where it's actually pretty steep. You could stick it in. Oh yeah, I'll be able to stick this. But then what if it's super icy? You're going for a ripper. You know, anyway.
jake holland (23:36.382)
Yeah.
jake holland (23:44.454)
Yeah, so in the Magic of Freedom, just because not many people have seen it yet, because it's just going around to a few festivals, we're kind of, as I was talking about earlier, we're using the paragliders to be able to kind of thermal up and then fly some distance and land on a peak with our skis and then ski something and then take off. And I think...
Gavin McClurg (23:51.719)
Right.
jake holland (24:11.902)
I would definitely not say that I've been a pioneer in this in any way. You know, there's like lots of people that started doing this. And I remember watching a film from St Helier. I can't remember. Maybe it was called like poor man's heli or something. And it came out years ago, but I was so blown away by this concept that they were basically using the paraglider, like a helicopter and being able to go up. And yeah, anyway, I thought that was the coolest thing that I've ever seen. Um, and we're just basically trying to build on that.
in Pakistan. What's unique about Pakistan is that the thermal, like the cloud base goes up really high. You know, it's not unheard of to be flying at six and a half, maybe even 7,000 meters in, when there's still, you know, a decent amount of snow on the mountain as well. Because that's, of course, the important thing. And in the Alps, it's, I mean, I got to do a little bit of it last spring, but most of the time, by the time the cloud base is high enough that you could land
Gavin McClurg (24:41.498)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (25:07.58)
Mmm.
jake holland (25:10.85)
bad and rotten and it's not going to be good skiing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, but in Pakistan, you know, in sort of June time, you still have potentially pretty good snow on the mountain and you have a cloud base potentially way higher than that. So you can actually, you know, use the paraglider successfully to access this stuff. And for the landings, I am...
Gavin McClurg (25:12.997)
totally isothermic and crap and the stuff we're dealing with in the ex-elves. It's not that fun.
jake holland (25:36.278)
You know, I wouldn't consider myself the most technical pilot in the world. You know, these guys who can put a wingtip on any point of the mountain they want and do these crazy big swoop landings. Like I've been trying to practice that stuff more and more, but I'm definitely not a connoisseur of it. So the top landing stuff does really scare me, I guess. Um, and you got to be paying attention with the winds and like you said, you can end up coming in really fast. So.
Your trim speeds are, well, your just general flying speeds are higher. Um, Anton, I think has actually made a little calculation programs to show it. Um, but rather than often, if you're flying at six and a half thousand meters, and if you went on full bar, you would probably be saying maybe 65 to 70 kilometers an hour. I don't know what that is in miles an hour, but you know, a good
Gavin McClurg (26:31.142)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, you're moving. Yeah.
jake holland (26:34.334)
20% faster probably. But the glider just continues to work somehow and it still flares good and provided you land a bit into wind, it's not normally a problem. The carrying the skis part has been, I feel like that's what I've, well, we've all been experimenting and changing. The first year I went, I really just typically flew in a little string harness, which wasn't that comfortable.
And it's actually string harness is really cold when you don't have that big piece of foam under your bum, you get cold quick. So I was doing things like taking the skins on my skis, what we use to stick to our skis to go uphill and putting them under my bum for a bit of installation and stuff. And some of the days like on the main day that Fabian will did their climb on that day, we were, we needed as much weight as we could get, you know, to get all the climbing gear and the tents and everything like that.
Gavin McClurg (27:08.398)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (27:17.292)
Wow.
jake holland (27:32.322)
And that day I think I didn't even fly with the reserve because I just, like, I didn't have a very good front mounted reserve. I think I'd made a pouch out of a dry bag because I'd forgotten mine on that trip. But you know, you start flying around and seven meters second thermals without reserve and skis hanging from your feet. And you start to think, okay, this is not. Yeah. That's not that clever. Um, so that year I ended up, what would we do? I think we had.
Gavin McClurg (27:48.677)
Ugh.
Gavin McClurg (27:52.789)
in a string bikini? Oh man, that...
jake holland (28:03.146)
We'd put our rucksacks on with the skis between us and the rucksack with one piece of elastic with the binding stopping that from sliding down. And we'd have the arm straps of our rucksack clipped to the carabiners with a bit of cord. So as soon as we'd take off, we'd then like get out of the rucksack and let the thing slide down under your bum with your skis between you and your bag almost. I don't know if that's gonna make sense to people.
Gavin McClurg (28:14.193)
Mm-hmm.
Gavin McClurg (28:32.121)
No, it does it.
jake holland (28:32.31)
but it meant that you didn't have the weight of the rucksack pulling you back. And then you also get a bit of protection. And from that position, the interesting thing is the boys had sort of developed the system where you can pull the ski out and then put it on your foot. And that's pretty cool. Cause then you can land with your skis on. Um, but it definitely involves a bit of yoga flexibility that I don't particularly possess. Um, I don't know, like.
Gavin McClurg (28:37.831)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (28:54.184)
Has anyone ever dropped their skis?
jake holland (28:58.674)
People have been using, some people have been using a little strap on them. I think I never really particularly, or maybe I have one on one season. But the possibility of dropping your skis is definitely like there for sure. And you get good at flying with one hand and you try to do all this when you're a bit out away from the thermals and stuff, obviously.
Gavin McClurg (29:02.223)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (29:11.481)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (29:18.417)
Well, and you're trying to do all this while filming too. That's what I'm, I kept imagining putting myself in your position. Well, I don't think I'd be very comfortable with this. It's.
jake holland (29:27.862)
Yeah, the boys laugh at me because they're like, yeah, man, most of the time you don't even have your hands on the controls. You're fiddling with a camera or you got a ski in your hand or something stupid. But it's amazing how well a Zeolite flies without your hands on the controls. That's what I will say. Yeah, but you get good with one hand. You can do a lot of piloting with one hand with a bit of practice. But this year I was...
Gavin McClurg (29:43.649)
Yeah, yeah, you just gotta trust it.
jake holland (29:56.326)
I was less impressed with the string harness idea. Like the more I did it, the more I started to think this could go pretty wrong. So this year, Air Design made me like a light version of their sock and Will was using like a BV1. And I don't think I flew in a string harness once this year. I just accepted I was gonna have a bit more weight on my back when I was skiing. I was gonna have way more comfort being in a pod harness and way more safety because you have protection, you have a properly mounted reserve.
And then what we do is we hang the skis going down the side of us. Um, so you have one kind of loop on your shoulder strap hanging off that you put the nose of the skis into, and then you have one loop, which is openable by like a buckle or something like that, that you can slide the other part of the skin. And then on the launch, you feel like a total cluster, you know, whatever, like it's, it's horrible because the launch is hot.
Gavin McClurg (30:52.05)
Mmm.
jake holland (30:56.242)
inker of that. It's probably 30 or more than 30 degrees. It's super, super sandy. It's really, it's a bit gusty and unpredictable sometimes. It's not the smoothest place to take off. And then you've got your feet slopping around in plastic ski boots that are just getting super sweaty and you're dressed up in all your down jackets and everything. Because once you get to six and a half thousand meters, it's cold up there.
Gavin McClurg (30:59.589)
Oof.
Gavin McClurg (31:22.597)
Yeah, wicked.
jake holland (31:24.486)
And then, yeah, you're like trying to inflate your wing without getting your skis that are slapping against your leg caught on the lines and ski edges are sharp so you don't want to snap a line or whatever. And then once you get into the air, the skis actually do just hang there quite nicely and it's, it's fine once you're in the air.
Gavin McClurg (31:40.494)
How heavy is your kit on the airplane, getting all this stuff there?
jake holland (31:44.986)
Oh, heavy. Yeah, really heavy.
Gavin McClurg (31:47.125)
Yeah, because you've got drones and cameras and batteries and skis and ice axes and crampons I imagine and you got the whole kit right everything. Jesus.
jake holland (31:55.33)
Yeah, everything. Yeah. So Turkish Airlines, we can very much recommend. They don't publicize it that well, but you get a free ski bag on a lot of the international flights. So as our main bag, I normally take like an ozone tandem rucksack and fill that as much as I can up to the weight limit. And then with the ski bag, then that's the same. And then
I think this year my hand luggage was like 26 kilos or something. I was like desperately trying to weight, lift it up, making it look light. That thing's like heavier than most people's checking bag. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (32:25.137)
Jeez.
Gavin McClurg (32:35.839)
Amazing. How are you keeping all that going in the cold?
jake holland (32:42.586)
Um, I don't know. I feel like modern camera gear and batteries do just work pretty well. And the reality is of what we're doing in Karimabad. And I think this is what I want to talk to you about is we've had very different experiences of the films we've made because the crazy stuff you know, you did on your Alaskan Traverse where you're out there for 38 days or whatever it was. Versus in Karimabad, sure, maybe we'll
Gavin McClurg (32:46.97)
They're fine.
Gavin McClurg (33:05.089)
Yeah, yeah.
jake holland (33:10.346)
sort of sleep out and up there for two or maybe three days at the longest. But normally you can just, you know, fly straight back to Krimvad and you get back to the comfort of the hotel. And I think this is where the paragliders are really revolutionizing things. Because when I, at least from the background I come from with a kayak, I always felt like traveling with a kayak was a great way to see a place, especially in Asia.
Gavin McClurg (33:27.239)
Mm.
jake holland (33:36.642)
where you're putting it on a bus, you're traveling for 20 hours, you meet loads of people, you get on the river, you paddle down the river, if there's any villages along the way, you meet people, you get to eat their cuisine and you get to understand what the culture is. Whereas on a lot of mountaineering expeditions, sure, you fly in and you maybe have a night or two in a town, but then you go to a base camp and okay, you get to meet and know your chef pretty well. But beyond that, you're just sat in a cold
glaciated area, trudging up and down the same mountain until you finally manage to climb the thing. Whereas with the paraglider in Kirrumbad, what's amazing is that, you know, we take a short jeep ride up towards the takeoff, walk for 30 minutes, take off, you know, and that morning you've probably had a really good breakfast that's been cooked for you by someone. Take off, fly into the mountains, make a camp, do what you want to do, and then
Gavin McClurg (34:12.189)
Mm.
jake holland (34:36.022)
come back down and eat curry that night. And, you know, and then maybe do 10 of those in a trip rather than just one thing in a trip.
Gavin McClurg (34:38.285)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (34:43.269)
Hmm. Amazing. Where would you say, you know, scale of one to 10 risk factor? There's a segment of your latest film, The Magic of Freedom with Antoine at the end where he goes up to, you know, he does a very Antoine-esque thing. He goes up summits by himself. What was the name of that mountain? Duran.
jake holland (35:04.47)
Dear Anne.
Gavin McClurg (35:07.277)
Uh, you know, it's over 7,000 meters. He spends the night up there, flies down the next day, right before the gust front, you know, looked like he was pretty unhappy about how that kind of transpired. You know, he was obviously putting himself in a lot more risk than even Antoine wants to be in, which is probably, he probably allows the most risk of anybody. I would think in general, you know, from.
jake holland (35:25.648)
Mmm.
jake holland (35:30.31)
Yeah, he definitely has different risk colorances to a lot of people, that's for sure.
Gavin McClurg (35:34.965)
Yeah, for sure. But how would you compare what you guys are doing? I mean, is this something? Obviously you wouldn't do this But would you go back year after year after year and keep doing this or do you feel like you're really you know? Pedal to the metal every time he goes and do this what I'm what I'm looking for is how accessible is this to the? Listener to the normal pilot to the you know, cuz it doesn't look easy what you guys are doing. I mean it sounds
jake holland (35:55.452)
Mmm... sure.
Gavin McClurg (36:03.381)
easy, but it's, there's a lot to it. You know, there's all this, there's all the gear and the Thai mountains and it's, you know, it's mountains. We've got to, we've got to respect them.
jake holland (36:12.594)
Yeah, I definitely got to respect the mountains and the flying conditions around them. I'm definitely not going to say that what we're doing is totally safe. Like you can't say that it's safe. It's taking several things that are already kind of dangerous and then adding them together and adding all sorts of extra elements in there.
Gavin McClurg (36:24.411)
No.
jake holland (36:39.574)
But I think usually when you go about it in a logical way and you think about what you're trying to do. And I mean, I spent my whole life like you have processing risk and trying to understand risk and make good decisions. You know, I think it's, it's achievable for the, for the right people with the right skillset for sure. But there's always that extra factor with the mountains and, and flying and most adventure sports is. There's.
elements of things that you won't ever fully understand, or there's elements of weather that you won't always entirely be able to predict. And we're human and we're filled with mistakes and we make mistakes. So I don't know, I think that extra factor with the weather probably more than anything can catch you out there in Pakistan.
Gavin McClurg (37:31.154)
Hmm.
jake holland (37:35.09)
I don't know if I would really recommend it as a flying destination for, it's definitely not a place for everyone. It's definitely for advanced pilots who are looking for adventure. I mean, the crazy thing is there's local Pakistani guys who are wonderful, wonderful people who are learning to fly in this place. So it's kind of accessible in that way. But I've not flown a beer, but I don't think it's the place that intermediate people should be going.
Gavin McClurg (37:41.156)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (37:54.437)
Mmm.
jake holland (38:04.802)
to do cross-country flights because it's big. It's really big and it can be really strong. And it can, it's often...
This year it was rare to be flying in less than 15 kmph of wind, and sometimes we'd have 30 kmph of wind up high. So it's not like the winds are always super light, and you get some strange phenomenons that you need to get your head around. For anyone that's seen John Sylvester's film Birdman of the Karakorum, there's a part in this where he says there's like, Hunza's specialty is these cloud bursts.
Gavin McClurg (38:23.812)
Hmm.
Gavin McClurg (38:28.145)
Plenty.
jake holland (38:45.962)
And it really is like they happen regularly and you have to keep an eye on it. And when they go, they just pull like it's just suddenly the sky just jacks up. And now after spending sort of, I don't know, uh, maybe three months in the place, I have a better understanding of when that's going to happen, but you, you need to, uh, you need to be paying attention for those things.
Gavin McClurg (38:52.388)
Hmm.
Gavin McClurg (39:06.105)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, your option A, B, C reduces really fast when you're thousands of meters off the ground. You know, if you're not reading the sky well and get caught out, I imagine it'd be awfully terrifying.
jake holland (39:16.962)
Hmm
jake holland (39:22.118)
It can be, yeah. And I think having the ability to land on those mountains, because there's a lot of top landable places, if you understand snow slopes and crevasses and where's good and where's not. And, you know, we top landed a lot in that thing and skied quite a lot of different lines that are not always shown in the film because you only have so much time. But there's been
Definitely times where it's got quite strong and we've just landed and let the thing blow out and then carry on going again. And if you don't have that sort of mountaineering background then you're not probably gonna do that. Or if you do that, then you're probably putting yourself in a bit of a situation. So more and more, I was just enjoying always flying with skis because it gives you so many options.
Gavin McClurg (39:59.912)
Hmm
Gavin McClurg (40:09.709)
Yeah. How important is a, you know, a real back country understanding of snow there? Then it looked in the film, I was, you know, the most of the skiing you guys were doing looked really stable. Um, you know, just looked like spring skiing. It didn't look, you know, are you guys digging pits? Is it, is it, are you getting a lot of snow in these big storms?
jake holland (40:31.35)
Mmm.
We definitely were getting fresh snow and it is kind of sometimes a bit hard to work out exactly what is going on. But most of the time we are skiing was spring snow and most of your worry is like it getting too hot. So I think if you can understand the principles of spring skiing, you can quite quickly apply them to that. But I mean, on the first...
Gavin McClurg (40:58.211)
So your main hazard is wet slides? Yeah.
jake holland (41:02.158)
wet slides I would say. But that's not to say that we weren't skiing powder at times. And I remember when we went to do the Gullmett Tower with Fabian Will when they climbed it. I didn't go all the way up it, I just filmed it. But it had snowed quite a lot leading up to that and the core had like purged quite big and you're landing amongst loads of crevasses and there's
jake holland (41:29.406)
in as wild a terrain as you could ever want to really. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (41:32.285)
Right? You have a shot in there when those guys are climbing that I couldn't tell, are you flying and shooting that or was that a drone? Jesus, amazing.
jake holland (41:42.222)
No, that was a drone. So yeah, I mean, modern drone equipment is incredible. And on the first trip I had a Mavic 2 and now I had, I think this trip we had a Mavic 3 Pro with us. So it's not the smallest of drones and it's not the biggest of drones. You know, it's definitely some extra weight to be chucking in your bag, which is already quite heavy.
Gavin McClurg (41:49.701)
What are you using?
Gavin McClurg (42:06.914)
Mmm.
Hmm.
jake holland (42:10.902)
But as someone who enjoys making films, I feel like it's worth the trade, because you just get shots you wouldn't otherwise be able to get.
Gavin McClurg (42:18.329)
Yeah, some of that some of that footage was just outrageous. So those that these drones, how what's the difference in flying those kind of altitudes is normal. Are you just burning a lot more battery?
jake holland (42:29.97)
Yeah, I mean, I was really impressed actually how much difference there was between the Mavic 2 and the Mavic 3 When Fabian will climb the gullmett tower and for anyone that's not Sort of seen that film yet. Um the new way up this tower is about 5,800 meters high and it had been attempted by quite a few teams in the past and What had shut down most of the people was actually getting to the route because the glaciated terrain is
Gavin McClurg (42:36.379)
Hmm.
jake holland (42:59.498)
just difficult, you know, it's like really hard to get up there, especially with porters to make a base camp. So many attempts had failed before they kind of even reached it. And what was beautiful with the paragliders was to be able to fly, you know, within like an hour straight in and land at the foot of the glacier, which would maybe take like four or five days of quite treacherous walking. But yeah, so Fabian will climb this tower, which
there's kind of a long snow core and then it leads to some pretty technical mixed climbing to the summit. And I joined them to the coal. I was, man, I was so ill. Getting up to that coal was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I had a really bad chest infection and it's like 5,000 meters we're sleeping that night and I was barely, felt like I was barely breathing. But somehow I made it up to the coal and I was so glad I did.
Gavin McClurg (43:47.174)
Oof.
Gavin McClurg (43:54.468)
Oh
jake holland (43:57.834)
And with the Mavic 2, I was like just about able to get up, you know, a few hundred meters and film them, but you're desperately kind of like realizing that you're running out of battery. So you do a bit, I hope they're in a good position on the climb, bring the thing back down again as quickly as you can, warm it back up again, and then send it back up. And I definitely didn't get anywhere as near as much drone footage as I would like to have, but the stuff we got turned out pretty, pretty amazing. And we were.
jake holland (44:27.538)
Yeah, Will and Fabi were really, really stoked to sort of be able to do this first ascent of a tower and, you know, have this footage and this memento of it. So that was, that was really nice. But the Mavic 3 this year, that definitely performed better in the altitude. It gained height much faster and was, you know, the battery was lasting much longer. So I feel, I feel like each generation of drone that comes is just giving filmmakers better and better tools.
Gavin McClurg (44:55.877)
Are there other teams out there doing what you guys are doing? You know, since your film came out last year, and I mean, I know that your film last year, you had, there's a little bit of footage with Aaron in it. You know, he went, that's when he broke the Asian record. He had those two monster flights. You had a big one yourself, but, you know, is this putting it more on the map? Are you seeing more?
jake holland (45:19.43)
Yeah, I feel this year there was several teams out. So there was kind of like a South African team that went to Baltore that you already did a podcast with those guys. And some of them were in Carimbad when we were and that was really nice to sort of meet them and see them flying. And then there was also a Swiss team that was there and they had a real mixed sort of skill set, I would say. Like some of them were TAN and Pilots and obviously pretty...
Gavin McClurg (45:28.901)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (45:34.4)
Hmm.
jake holland (45:48.578)
pretty good pilots and then some of them are really good climbers and a couple of them were wingsuit based jumpers and yeah, they were trying to do a whole bunch of stuff. They got a bit shut down on the by the weather, which was a shame. So they didn't get to kind of achieve their final goal as it were. But they seem to have a really good time and it's great. You know, it's nice when you go out to a place and you see more people. But I think this year, I've had a lot of people.
Gavin McClurg (45:55.03)
Oh wow.
jake holland (46:16.642)
providing me saying like, I really want to go and I feel like the films are maybe bringing the place more attention with Anton's films and you know, it's not just me that's made films there. So I do think that there's going to be a sudden influx in people this season for sure all looking to do probably similar sort of silly adventures.
Gavin McClurg (46:27.553)
Hmm.
Gavin McClurg (46:41.597)
Tell me about the French. I am always so impressed that it seems to be the French, whether it's slacklining, bass jumping, music. They're just fabulous, aren't they? They really push it and always have. It must be quite lovely hanging out with this group that, well, I mean, but you said Fabi's German. I didn't know that actually, but it's...
It must be quite fun to hang out with folks who are just constantly dreaming.
jake holland (47:17.278)
Yeah, I mean, I think as you kind of already alluded to earlier, Anton definitely has a higher risk profile than most people. And I think probably more than anyone, Anton's flown in Pakistan and just from a flying perspective, you take the mountaineering out of it. He's made tons of amazing flights there. John Sylvester did a line back in the
I don't know when 90s or something like this past Hispanic and Anton went on to repeat that and me and Veso did that line this year. And that's like a wild line. You go out sort of in this train where you know that you'll be walking for four or five days if you have to land there, if you can't even still walk. Um, so I feel like you have these characters like Anton who just have these big ideas and they just, I don't know.
get after it and do it. And somehow I think these, maybe it's people that grow up in these mountains, you know, they're influenced by them on their spirit and it gives them these big dreams to do stuff. And yeah, Medhi who was with us this year, he's a French mountain guide and tan and pilot. He's a
Gavin McClurg (48:31.805)
What a character, what a character.
jake holland (48:33.842)
an amazing character. He's a super nice guy. And a lot of actually just coincidentally this year, a lot of my flights ended up being with Medi. And yeah, you can just see he really loves it. And he's very skilled, you know, he's a mountain guide, as well as a tandem pilot. And he probably is more of like a free ride paraglider in this kind of terrain than anyone I've ever seen he's doing.
wingtip touches everywhere on peaks that you would just try to fly over and survive. And yeah, there's just a, I don't know, a spirit to these people that they bring.
Gavin McClurg (49:12.429)
Yeah. Tell me about your, you just did a Tanzania trip with Tom and Horacio. What went down there?
jake holland (49:19.346)
Yeah, so that was fun, actually. Red Bull got involved to help us with this one. So, you know, this is that's how that's being financed. And at some point, it should become a film on the Red Bull TV. Before speaking with you, actually, I was just doing some of the editing towards it. But yeah, Tom and Horacio, I actually met Horacio in Nepal, two years ago, we had been invited to
climb Manaslu and try and fly from it. Unfortunately, the weather was terrible that year and it was, it turned into quite a disastrous trip with some big avalanches and several people being killed and stuff. It wasn't the best trip by any means, but so we didn't really get to fly unfortunately very much. But I met Horacio there and we hung out a lot together in the base camp and it was super nice and he's an amazing guy.
Gavin McClurg (50:02.233)
Oof.
jake holland (50:18.494)
And they did a big trip. They had this search project that ran for years where they did many great paragliding films. But back in 2011, they drove the length of Africa finding flying spots all the way down. And a place that they had spent a bit of time in was Tanzania. But they hadn't really got to spend as much time as they wanted to there. And they managed to do some flying and it was rowdy.
but they thought the potential would be pretty high if you were to go back and try to do more. And I think probably even more than that, the Masai tribes that they met there, they just found these people really fascinating and they wanted to go back and spend more time with these people and just learn more about their culture. And I think that had been going in their minds for quite some years. And this year we made it happen.
Gavin McClurg (51:14.734)
Mm.
jake holland (51:16.926)
and they kindly invited me to come and film the trip. And it was an amazing experience, man. Like the people that we met there, these Maasai people who just live in this, you know, such a unique way with such unique beliefs that are very different to ours, but really wonderful, kind, loving people. And I mean, Tom and Horacio were even able to take some of them on a tandem paragliding flight, which is really cool.
Gavin McClurg (51:44.898)
Wow cool.
jake holland (51:47.366)
Yeah, I don't know. It was a special trip. It was somewhere between a paragliding trip and a cultural trip. We landed on the Old Dolulungai, which is the only active volcano in Tanzania. It's about 3000 meters and it looks like the kind of volcano you'd draw as a child. You know, it's got that kind of like classic like thing and we were able to fly more or less right over the top of it in the end. And it's got this amazing crater and...
Gavin McClurg (51:52.946)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (52:00.453)
Well...
Gavin McClurg (52:07.595)
Right.
jake holland (52:14.974)
at night time you can see it like bubbling orange lava and stuff so it was a cool trip.
Gavin McClurg (52:20.905)
Yeah, I imagine that'd be really cool. I really like both of those guys so much. They're just amazing. I mean, obviously incredible pilots, but again, the dreamer side, especially of Tom and put these, constantly putting stuff together and he has for a long time. It's really impressive. He's a real dreamer.
jake holland (52:38.01)
Yeah, Tom is a very unique individual. He's a proper adventurer. He likes going off on these big trips. Like you, he's done a lot of sailing, which I imagine must give you a lot of great adventures. But year on year, he seems to keep finding these ideas and doing these big trips. He's got something about him, like a certain level of, I don't know if professionalism is the right word in the industry, but...
He's been able to make it his career, which is, you know, making your dream a career is not, not easy, but Tom seems to be able to do it and it's...
Gavin McClurg (53:10.923)
Yep.
Gavin McClurg (53:17.249)
I think in paragliding, there's got to be less than five. I can't think of too many others, maybe Kregel. There's not that many that can just live on that alone. And that's what he's been able to do. It's very impressive and it's very inspiring. Hmm.
jake holland (53:31.21)
Mm.
Yeah, but I think it's for a lot of hard work and you know, the right personality and he's a lovely guy and I think people believe in him. Yeah, it's good.
Gavin McClurg (53:44.377)
Yeah. You start to develop a track record of pulling stuff off. That was kind of an interesting thing with the Red Bull. The two films we did there were, I was surprised how adamant that they were, that you had to pull it off. It wasn't pressure, but it was the...
They want you to do stuff that hasn't been done before, but they also want you to complete it. It's got to interesting because both of them, with Canada, we knew that line could go. Even no one had flown it. Well, I mean, sailplanes have flown it, but so that gave us enough of the, this is just gonna take the time. We'll get there. But with Alaska, we really had, I had flown quite.
jake holland (54:13.698)
Hmm interesting
Gavin McClurg (54:37.625)
quite a bit up there in a super cub and you know, I'd gotten out of the cub and flown around a little bit and you know, I thought it could go, but I definitely didn't have any, you know, I mean, definitely you see this in the film too. I mean, Red Bull just cut us off. They just said, okay, you got to Denali. That's far enough. You know, we're, we're pulling out. We're not going to keep funding this. And I said, well, I have to keep going. But it was, you know, so that, that was interesting, but yeah, they, uh,
It was just an interesting kind of approach to, because I think in filmmaking, it's great to fail. I think it's fantastic to fail. You know, I mean, we do fail a lot. And it, nothing's guaranteed. It...
jake holland (55:18.542)
Yeah, nothing normally goes first time, especially when you're doing stuff that's on the limit of no one's done it before. Like failing is much more likely than succeeding.
Gavin McClurg (55:27.756)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (55:31.245)
Right, yeah, for sure. That's why Antoine's, you know, the other thing too that I found interesting working with Red Bull is that the option of doing something alone wasn't an option. You know, they just don't think that makes good filmmaking. And I think Antoine has proven that's not the case. You know, you can, you, I think the audience can, it's a more meditative potential film of just watching struggle.
jake holland (55:46.202)
Mmm
Gavin McClurg (55:59.985)
And that can be fun as well. You don't have the conversation. You don't have the dynamic of people. But yeah, it's been interesting since the Alaska one came out that we weren't really able to spend much time after Dave left, but that was still a third of the route, but we only had 52 minutes. So I think that last bit was only seven minutes long, but that was a pretty wild week for me. You're just being totally alone,
jake holland (56:27.701)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (56:29.889)
There was nobody, there was no Dave and there was no film crew, it was just me. And, uh, and it's hard to tell that because there's all this great helicopter footage, but that was actually done after I'd completed it. We went back in there on an epic day. It was pretty, yeah. So that was, it was fate really. Uh, and, but it was. Yeah. I mean, it was, I think it would have been in a lot of ways, a more interesting film to have.
jake holland (56:32.67)
Okay.
jake holland (56:41.782)
Well, I wanted to ask you about that.
jake holland (56:48.264)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (56:59.229)
to have done more of that stuff, to have done more of the being alone.
jake holland (57:04.182)
Yeah, I feel like as a filmmaker, this is always something that, not always something, but something you're often butting your head up against is that, you know, if you want this to be your career, and make a livelihood out of it, there needs to be some give and take, and you need to find, you know, firstly, a company that believes in the project and wants to fund it for whatever reason that might be.
but you're then sort of sharing your vision with them and they're sharing theirs with yours. So you might not get quite as much creative control as you hope for, but also on the plus side, like Red Bull funding your trip and paying for all the helis and stuff. And I think that's like a very different experience to what we've been doing in terms of.
Gavin McClurg (57:50.09)
Mmm.
jake holland (57:51.974)
I feel like the two films I've made, they've been really made on a shoestring. Like we just go and try our best to film with GoPros and I try to get the drone out. And I probably annoying and stick the camera in everyone's face all the time, trying to construct a story, but there's not any helicopter or anything like that. And I think with the most recent film, actually, it was, it was funded by Grant, by Kendall Mountain Film Festival.
Gavin McClurg (57:57.052)
Right.
jake holland (58:20.966)
And, uh, Kylas, which is a Chinese, um, outdoor equipment brand, they, they put some money into this grant and I applied for that thinking not in a thousand years that would, that would win it, but, uh, we did win it and it wasn't a huge amount of money, but it was enough that it paid me my time to then come back and, and think about how I wanted to make that film and, and edit it. And, and I didn't have as much time as I wanted to with other more commercial gigs and stuff like that in the end. But was.
What was really nice was being able to make something that I wanted to make and no one else to tell me like no you can't do that and
Gavin McClurg (58:56.949)
Mm. Yeah, that was something. So, you know, Real Water Productions did both of the Red Bull films. And I could see that there was always a ton of headbutting there. You know, Brian Smith was the director of both. And, you know, so he was in charge of the story. And it's pretty interesting. I never had to deal with any of this, but it's pretty interesting watching him at times be really frustrated with just being told from Austria what to do.
and just, but you're not here. How can you, you don't, I mean, what do you, how can you have an opinion here? But, you know.
jake holland (59:26.098)
That's interesting. Yeah. I mean the-
jake holland (59:33.782)
Yeah, I guess what was cool about the Tanzania trip and I don't know if I think our budget was considerably smaller, like we weren't flying helicopters around or anything like that, you know, they just paid for me to be able to go there and do a bit of filming. But the guy that I was working with from that office, he was super cool. He never really like tried to interfere and even afterwards when I've been like handing off footage and stuff.
Gavin McClurg (59:42.745)
Right.
Gavin McClurg (59:54.563)
Mm.
jake holland (01:00:00.954)
I really appreciated the attitude he was like, Hey man, you did a great job. You're there by yourself. Like even if it had failed, don't worry. Like you just doing your best and we understand these things don't always, always go according to plan. But I wonder when you know, you have more budget in there and the helicopters flying around and lots of recce trips, whether that starts to pull people's strings a bit tighter and
Gavin McClurg (01:00:14.245)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (01:00:25.373)
I think so. I think it's just, you know, there's just more on the line, I guess, from the production standpoint. And, you know, it was fantastic. I learned a lot from Will, certainly, of just, you know, hey, how do we manage ourselves from a risk standpoint because we're making this film? I was really, really glad I did my first big one with him because it was, I learned a lot from him because for him, it wasn't his first rodeo. You know, he'd done a ton of them. And...
jake holland (01:00:44.214)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:00:55.241)
It was quite nice. I'm sure what you've learned from these guys too, you can stick the camera in your face too, but I'm sure there are times where it's just, okay, we have to put the filming aside now. And this is, we have to just be pilots now or athletes or climbers, because this is, we're now on the edge and that we have to.
jake holland (01:01:12.223)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:01:17.462)
Definitely. And you as a filmmaker, that's something you know, as a filmmaker, who's very actively participating, you have to really know where that line is for yourself and be like, Okay, now is time to just focus and stay safe and make your decisions versus like, now's a good time to get the camera out and film. And of course, there's moments that you like, don't capture as well as you want to, but you just can't do everything when you're, you're trying to, you know, fly in these crazy places and
Gavin McClurg (01:01:24.305)
Hmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:01:28.561)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:01:35.063)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:01:46.882)
film. You can't do everything. Yeah, I mean, yes, yeah, for those two films, I was doing all the editing. And I think the way I came into filmmaking by being like this gradual slow process of making little things myself, I feel like I'm a bit of a jack of all trades, you know, I've had to learn a lot of things along the way. And of course, a professional editor probably will do a better job than me.
Gavin McClurg (01:01:48.013)
And you're doing all the editing as well?
Gavin McClurg (01:01:54.033)
Woh.
Jeez.
jake holland (01:02:16.022)
But there's not always the budget for that. And, you know, on bigger productions, I love to be able to pay for an editor who's going to do a great job, but on these fun little paragliding movies, it tends to be all me.
Gavin McClurg (01:02:22.482)
Hmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:02:28.745)
So let's just blow everybody's mind here real quickly. How many hours of footage did you have in say the new way up versus how many hours did you put into editing? Ha ha ha.
jake holland (01:02:40.986)
Oh, I mean, I wouldn't have any, I'm pretty sure I had five. I mean, on that trip in Pakistan, we went away for seven weeks. So we were away for probably the longest I've ever been on a, on a, on a trip. And we also, I mean, we did loads of different, really fun things. Um, and we also went to the Baltoro and flew in the Baltoro and
tons of that stuff just, you know, it doesn't make it into the edit. And it's, it's a horrible feeling because you know, there's like other people on that trip who you would like to include more of their flying and show their skill sets, which they have an amazing skill set, but you can't, you know, you're just trying to make a film that people aren't going to enjoy the most. So as a director or whatever, you just have to kind of be like, right.
Gavin McClurg (01:03:08.547)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:03:25.628)
Mm.
jake holland (01:03:28.982)
These are the main elements of the trip that I think I, you know, got enough footage from people are going to buzz off. And this is what we're going to go with. But I think to make that film, I more or less spent like a month in front of the computer. And sometimes those days were like 17 hour days, you know, you're just like without going outside or looking away from the screen. And yeah, you just go and go. And you never think it could ever take that long when you start.
Gavin McClurg (01:03:48.509)
UGH
Gavin McClurg (01:03:53.213)
Delicious.
jake holland (01:03:58.742)
does somehow you just have to.
Gavin McClurg (01:03:59.409)
It does. It's all that tiny little stuff just a little bit tighter and a little bit cleaner and a little bit better out a little bit better in.
jake holland (01:04:06.606)
Totally, yeah. But I think in terms of footage, I think we had about five terabytes of footage, which is like one, you know, pretty chunky hard drive or whatever. But I'm sure there's loads of that footage, like head cam footage and stuff that you just don't even look at because it's not relevant to the scene that you're trying to make on that, you know. You know, like, I must have hours and hours and hours of jaw dropping, flying from the character room.
sat on hard drives that maybe we'll just never see the light of day. I probably should put some YouTube films together of it because it would be nice to show people, but it's, you only have so much time.
Gavin McClurg (01:04:39.994)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:04:46.137)
That's brutal, isn't it? I mean, when I did a lot of the edit, well, I mean, I sat there watching a lot of the edit because we had a bunch of bad sound for the Alaska one. And I had to I went up to Vancouver and sat with Brian for a couple of days. And, you know, so we had to go out and record some voiceover stuff. And so I watched him make it. And, you know, we had, I don't know, 60 something hours of footage that ends up in a 52 minute film. And man, you lose a lot of darlings. They're so
much there that could be a completely different film. But so much there that's just, like I said, after they left, I filmed everything I could. Our sound guy just gave us, Pablo, he's amazing, just gave me tons of batteries, and he said, just record yourself all day. And I had all the GoPro stuff and all the batteries, and so I recorded everything, everything I did for that last week. And like I said, that's seven minutes at the end of the film. And it's...
jake holland (01:05:19.286)
Oh, totally, yeah.
jake holland (01:05:44.262)
Yeah, it's really just a montage of heli shots.
Gavin McClurg (01:05:45.489)
There were some crazy stuff that went down. Yeah, exactly. It's just a montage. There's none of that GoPro stuff.
jake holland (01:05:50.966)
But you must have, and I mean, I've not listened to every one of your podcasts, so tell me if you've really spoken about this a bunch, but in that like seven, because the first 30 days or whatever with Dave just looked, you know, like a heinous suffer fest for most of the time where you, yeah, looked really hard work. And I think you both had a huge amount of tenacity and to keep going. And I mean, also because it's not.
Gavin McClurg (01:06:08.461)
Mmm. It was heinous.
jake holland (01:06:21.71)
One thing is doing these things in adventure, but another is actually like filming them and turning them into something that people can enjoy and watch. And you guys obviously had helicopter flying around and stuff and probably landing near you, I guess, to film camp scenes and stuff. Were you guys close at any point to just being like, take us out? This is not working.
Gavin McClurg (01:06:45.653)
I will say, I don't know that Dave would like me to say this, but you know, we had, you see, you see some real strife between he and I when we're at that, we're right at the edge of Denali national park. And that was really the crux. We were there for eight days. We got there and we had this amazing flight there. And we had our, we had our cash that was there. And so coming into there, we were really proper starving and we hadn't been with the film crew. You can't tell this from the film, but we hadn't been with the film crew for
jake holland (01:06:57.852)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:07:07.709)
Mmm
Gavin McClurg (01:07:15.057)
days at that point, because we would only, the helicopter was coming from a long ways away, the filming helicopter. And so we could only execute budget-wise, we could execute him eight days of the whole thing, which was really stressful because, you know, you have to execute him the day before. We never knew what the weather was going to be. The weather forecasts up there were, I was going to ask you about that in Pakistan, but we had no idea what we were going to get. So it was often just...
jake holland (01:07:15.999)
Okay.
jake holland (01:07:21.086)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:07:27.058)
Okay.
jake holland (01:07:34.818)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:07:41.725)
Oh God, I hope this works. And then if we would execute him and flying two hours in, which is a lot of money with a helicopter, you know, then you had to get it to get there. Yeah, he was down in Homer, which is a long ways away from the Alaska range. And so it was a big deal and then we had to nail it. And so when we were sitting there at that camp on the edge of the park, you know, basically snowing, it was just obvious that, okay, this is not a flying day that we're gonna have to wait.
jake holland (01:07:48.574)
Wow, so he'd have to fly for two hours to get to you.
jake holland (01:07:55.4)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:08:10.685)
and this is not a fine day, we're gonna have to wait. Well, Dave was running out of time. And so he started really shifting his mindset that we gotta walk out of here. We gotta get to the Denali Road where the bus people come in to see Denali, which was only maybe a two day hike on the North side. So he was really that we gotta get the fuck out of here. This thing, I gotta leave. And I just kept going, no man, that we...
jake holland (01:08:37.032)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:08:40.445)
You don't really, we've got another week. You know, it's only one flight. We only have one chance. And you know, if we get the decent, if we get decent weather, it's a hundred K, we'll make it. We've seen that it works. We just gotta get, yeah. And so it was, but it was with each passing day of terrible weather, he was just getting really, you know, so it was very much a battle of the,
jake holland (01:08:51.006)
Yeah, it's like four hours and you're done. Ha ha ha.
jake holland (01:09:00.518)
Ugh.
Gavin McClurg (01:09:06.121)
solidarity, you know, I was just, I mean, we can't walk out of here. What an epically shitty end for a film. We got to, we got to fly this thing. And then, so when we did, we finally got the weather. Uh, you know, none of that was manufactured. That was just day eight, the sun popped and it looked like it was going to be epic. Uh, you know, but by the time we launched, it was already going really bad. And I actually wanted to stop. I didn't want to fly that day. I wanted to just go.
No, we need to go back down to camp and wait. And so luckily, you know, he said, well, I'm not, yes, the heli was there. And so that was the other thing, the heli was there. And so we had to give it a shot. But I mean, when we took off, it was just, holy shit, we're not gonna get 10K, this isn't gonna work. And it worked. And so we got really lucky. But.
jake holland (01:09:38.754)
Did the heli come in for that day? Was it already, it was there?
jake holland (01:09:47.032)
Okay.
jake holland (01:09:52.193)
Yeah.
That is the thing about paragliding. You never know until you try. Like, I mean, some days you look at it and you're like, obviously this is not going to work, but there's so many days where they surprise you.
Gavin McClurg (01:09:57.401)
You never know.
Gavin McClurg (01:10:02.351)
Yeah.
Yes, yeah, for sure. And you know, the interesting thing about Alaska was that we, I mean, it's, maybe I'm wrong here, but it seems like Pakistan, from what I've seen of your films and the other footage, it seems more, like you said early, that what's supposed to work works. You know, you can, in Alaska, because of the angle of the sun, because it was so low, even in summer, I mean, it would be light all day, but...
jake holland (01:10:24.333)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:10:33.769)
I can honestly say that we never had a clue about how things worked. When things looked like they would be epic, we'd bomb out. And when things looked bad, we'd make it work. It was just bizarre. I didn't really get any decent flying until after Dave left. And then it was incredible.
jake holland (01:10:38.899)
Hmm
jake holland (01:10:50.997)
That was something I wanted to ask you about because you made a ton of progress in that sort of like seven minute part of the film which is not really shown and I feel like you must have had some amazing flights and of course some very scary moments in there and everything else. Like how did that go down?
Gavin McClurg (01:10:59.824)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:11:05.913)
It wasn't that scary. It was, it was, I mean, there was the last day getting to, getting to goal and, you know, and again, that's manufactured where they show me crying at the end of the film. We went in, those guys got on a plane that night after I'd already landed there. And so I camped and then we came back to that field. I had all that on GoPro. It was all totally, that's exactly what happened. But, you know, we had to film that kind of that emotion, but that, that last.
jake holland (01:11:29.319)
Mmm
jake holland (01:11:33.071)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:11:34.865)
flight was proper scary. And again, none of that's in the film. I have it all on GoPro, but it was, you know, the footage of me landing in that baseball diamond is real. That's my GoPro footage. That's from that day, but it was a battle. But there, you know, basically after Dave left, I sat for four days in a tent in horrible weather. And then three days later I made goal. You know, it was, and one of the days after I left,
jake holland (01:12:00.363)
Wow.
Gavin McClurg (01:12:05.837)
I had a flight very late in the afternoon. It was, you know, it stopped snowing and I could see through this coal. And I mean, I only made it 20 K, but I landed in screaming winds going backwards and really scary. I mean, it was just tundra. It was the most gentle terrain you could ask for in those kinds of conditions. But I almost had a, you know, a nervous breakdown. I just thought, what am I doing? I was by myself now, you know what I mean? I was totally reliant on just me.
jake holland (01:12:26.721)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:12:34.781)
And that was spooky. And then the next day, got up to this launch and sat there all day, just throwing rocks at my shoes. Just it was blowing over the back. I couldn't get off. And then that evening made some huge distance. Part of it with an eagle flying over this glacier. And so again, I could never figure it out, but it was, and then the last, and then two days, the last two days were, if I had been...
jake holland (01:12:53.055)
Wow.
Gavin McClurg (01:13:02.701)
smarter about it and knew more about where I was and how things would work. It definitely could have broken state records that it was good. It was really good. It was like the day, I mean, the best day of the whole expedition was after I was done and we went back in with the helicopter and got all that footage, that seven minutes of footage. I could have easily flown 200K that day without even thinking, anybody could have flown 200K that day. It wasn't me. So there are days, we just didn't get them.
jake holland (01:13:09.034)
Hmm Okay
jake holland (01:13:20.655)
Yeah, okay.
jake holland (01:13:25.202)
Wow. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:13:32.465)
there are days up there that really work. I just, we could never figure out how. Ha ha ha.
jake holland (01:13:39.17)
I feel like Pakistan or anywhere really in the world is a bit like that. Like every dog has its day kind of and it shows, I mean, you were there for 38 days or however long your film, you can kind of said and seemed like there weren't many good flying days out of that. And if you do a trip to Pakistan, I would hope to think that, you know, you're going to get quite a bit better ratio than that.
Gavin McClurg (01:13:44.968)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:13:50.257)
Yep.
Gavin McClurg (01:13:54.694)
No.
Gavin McClurg (01:14:04.432)
Mmm. Yeah.
jake holland (01:14:04.462)
but also maybe not as good as you might imagine as well. Like the first trip we did in 2000 or the first trip I was involved in at least in 2022, the first few weeks we barely flew at all. We were just doing like big hikes up into the mountain, maybe a quick glide down, lots of carrying heavy bags and stuff and trying to acclimatize for when the conditions did come good.
Gavin McClurg (01:14:10.134)
Interesting.
Gavin McClurg (01:14:29.492)
Mm.
jake holland (01:14:32.99)
And then at the end of the trip, there was a week where, um, we all flew into Gormit tower, Aaron included, and he did some skiing and then, um, Fabby, Will and myself stayed to climb the tower. Aaron flew out that day. And, and then the next day flew a huge flight whilst we were, uh, climbing. And then the next day, maybe after that, he flew that monster, like 311 or 12, whatever it was.
Gavin McClurg (01:14:59.741)
12. Yeah.
jake holland (01:15:02.43)
And then we had come back out and I think the day after that we were, um, due to be getting on a plane and flying home. So we had one more good day of weather, which is when I made my personal best flight there. Um,
Gavin McClurg (01:15:10.877)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (01:15:18.745)
When I talked to Aaron about it, he seemed to think that way bigger is on the docket there, that it actually wasn't that good. What does that require in terms of, I mean, have you got to be there 40 days every year to get that day?
jake holland (01:15:31.107)
Mmm... hmm...
jake holland (01:15:38.15)
No, I mean, well, interestingly, this year, I never felt like we had as good a conditions for cross-country flying as we did the previous year. It was always windy somehow. There was always 15 or 20 kilometers an hour of wind, which allowed us to do some great combo flights, and you can soar up on things and stuff. But it's not great for then making huge, huge distances. Whereas I felt like the year before,
Gavin McClurg (01:15:47.429)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (01:15:54.561)
Isn't that comfortable?
jake holland (01:16:05.882)
the days that Aaron had for making those big flights, I felt like they were pretty good, you know, for that. But I believe Aaron when he says that he could go bigger or people could go bigger, because ultimately, you know, he wasn't flying full out cross-country gear there. He was flying Volbiv, Harness and Wing. And I'm sure if you give that guy like that day...
Gavin McClurg (01:16:12.166)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (01:16:28.75)
Mm.
jake holland (01:16:31.898)
now with a bit more knowledge on the place and with his mindset to it, he could go bigger for sure.
Gavin McClurg (01:16:38.761)
or put another few exceptional pilots in the air with them and they could really go big, you know?
jake holland (01:16:43.306)
Yeah, definitely, definitely. I mean, I managed to fly 230 something kilometers FIA triangle there. And I wouldn't say I'm, you know, I call myself a pretty good pilot, but I wouldn't say I'm like a pilot that can do huge, huge distances and fly super efficiently. And as a result, that's my biggest personal triangle that I've ever done. So I think the, the ability to go big, there is, is there, but
Gavin McClurg (01:17:08.325)
That's pretty cool.
jake holland (01:17:11.938)
caveat of that is, you know, sometimes you're flying in some pretty out there places, like there's one coal that you fly over on that where you're like, you got to scrape over the snowy coal and then if you don't manage to get over it because it's kind of flat, you'd be a long way from anywhere. And that's not to say that flying in Pakistan is always remote because there's tons of valleys and villages and stuff going up there.
Gavin McClurg (01:17:30.673)
Hmm.
jake holland (01:17:37.942)
But it's not like flying a big triangle in the Alps.
Gavin McClurg (01:17:42.133)
Yeah, you're right. There's a coffee shop and a bus stop and a train stop and everything everywhere. Last question, what's next? What's on the docket?
jake holland (01:17:46.014)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:17:52.622)
Hmm. I actually don't know. Maybe to go back to Pakistan again this year. I'm not sure. I'm like still trying to work that out. But I'm really inspired by trying to use the wings to do other things with, be that skiing or climbing. I think that's interesting. It's kind of new. People haven't been doing it for so long. It feels like you're trying to work it out a bit yourself rather than...
necessarily be told exactly how it works and I think there's a lot of interesting ground to be made there. So yeah, whether that be in the Alps or in other places, I'm really keen to keep doing that on a personal level but I think it's fun to capture and I think it makes interesting stories, so kind of from a filmmaking point of view as well. But yeah, I don't know. For the filmmaking stuff, I...
It's my job, so you're always taking on projects that maybe aren't your passion projects of it all, but that, you know, they're still super cool. But I've got a few ideas of some bigger things I want to try and work out a way of making and, uh, yeah, there's ideas always bubbling up in there. So let's see.
Gavin McClurg (01:18:55.741)
Sure.
Gavin McClurg (01:19:07.229)
Yeah, I lied. One more question. I forgot to ask you. So this isn't in the right order, but oxygen. I didn't see you guys flying with oxygen. Were you using O2?
jake holland (01:19:17.85)
Yeah, not really would probably be the answer. On the first trip not at all. On the second trip we had some supplies for it and Vesio used it a little bit but I think...
Gavin McClurg (01:19:33.841)
Just the weight and the buckiness.
jake holland (01:19:35.418)
Yeah, the weight, the bulkiness, coming from a mountaineering background maybe, like you're less wanting to use something like that I feel and I think the reason we're able to fly at more than 7,000 meters without oxygen is only because we're spending time camping at like five, five and a half thousand meters and acclimatizing a bit. Not as well as acclimatizing on a proper climbing expedition, but
Gavin McClurg (01:20:02.365)
Sure.
jake holland (01:20:03.69)
you know, doing that and Veso who is not a mountaineer, you know, he was putting himself out there and doing that as well. So, um, yeah, I think in order to fly at those altitudes, you either need to probably have a very good idea of how your body will cope at six and a half thousand meters, not being acclimatized and know the signs to look out for when it starts changing, cause it changes pretty quick. I don't know if you have personal experience with that, but
Gavin McClurg (01:20:32.249)
Oh yeah, we fly high here too, so we have a lot of experience with that.
jake holland (01:20:33.206)
Um, yes, you probably know all about it, but otherwise I think oxygen, you know, if you were just going to Pakistan for flying and not too worried about landing on mountains and playing in the mountains, I think oxygen is a really good idea. It's definitely a safe idea.
Gavin McClurg (01:20:52.525)
Yeah, definitely. Jake, fascinating, man. I'm really glad you reached out. Thanks for sharing your films with me. They're amazing and beautiful. For those of you listening, there'll be links in the show notes to those, so check them out if you haven't seen them yet. Well, the most recent I realize is not yet, but it will be soon. Keep getting after it, man. I dig your work. Thanks a lot.
jake holland (01:21:16.106)
Thanks very much and thanks for having me on and yeah, thanks for being that guy in the community that brings people together to be able to talk about this fun sport that we all do.
Gavin McClurg (01:21:25.891)
It's a pleasure. Thanks, man. Talk soon. See you cloudbase
jake holland (01:21:28.406)
Talk soon. I hope so.
Gavin McClurg (01:21:33.365)
Thanks, man. God, I could have gone a lot longer with that, but my editor's been getting really pissed off at me that I keep taking these things way more than an hour. So I wanted to stop there. Is there anything we didn't hit, anything you wanted to talk about that I didn't?
jake holland (01:21:43.858)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:21:49.746)
No, not really. I mean, I feel like I wanted to ask maybe a bit more about your experience of like, being on the other side of the camera. And I guess, as someone that makes films, I'm always fascinated to see how other films are made. And I think you answered some of those questions. Something I've actually worked with Pablo once in Fiji on this thing called, what was it called? It's like a Bear Grylls, like the longest race or whatever, the greatest race or whatever they call it.
Gavin McClurg (01:21:57.469)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:22:09.809)
Oh, wicked.
Gavin McClurg (01:22:15.215)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:22:19.621)
Hmm.
jake holland (01:22:19.947)
Um, and I worked a bit with Pavle there. We were on the same team. He is a, he's a guy.
Gavin McClurg (01:22:22.757)
Oh, cool. He is epic. That guy's, he's like you, he's a one man band. I mean, he could do it all himself. He's truly amazing, but he was kind of our DP on, I mean, he was pretty new to being a DP. Maybe that's going too far for Rockies, but on Alaska, he was really kind of the DP. And also, he's like you, he's hardcore, you know, so you could put him with us while, you know, the other guys would have to go.
jake holland (01:22:43.705)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:22:52.369)
charge or whatever, just deal. And he could just hang with us, which was in Alaska really fucking hard. The terrain was just so gnarly and he's carrying all that stuff. And I don't know if you saw the making of was great. There's a behind the scenes. Oh.
jake holland (01:22:54.258)
Yeah. I'm-
jake holland (01:23:05.518)
How would he... I actually, I never saw that. Maybe I should watch that and it'll probably answer a lot of my questions. But how is he staying with you guys?
Gavin McClurg (01:23:12.921)
Well, you should go to my, you should, I just put all this stuff up on YouTube because I had it all on Vimeo and I was tired of paying for that. I had the pro account. And so, so I got, I just, I've still, all that stuff's actually still on Vimeo too. But anyway, yeah, I'll send you a link. There's actually some really cool, they made four side films. There's a, there's a making of, there's a, you know, there's a little piece on, on Dave and I.
jake holland (01:23:21.11)
Ah, likewise. Yeah, so annoying.
Gavin McClurg (01:23:40.209)
There's there's and that they're all they're all involved now So I'll send you if you go to either one of my channels either the Vimeo one or the YouTube one you can see it But the make the making of is quite entertaining. It's quite there's a whole thing on Pablo there, too but yeah, I mean basically he just had a big pack and And you know his Geez I mean he I think was he running around with the red then too. I mean, it was just insane I mean he had so much stuff and
jake holland (01:23:46.431)
Okay, perfect.
Gavin McClurg (01:24:09.581)
You know his big tripod and the whole thing and he was just you know He would he would walk when we were walking obviously when we'd fly then he'd have to get bumped but You know the first 20 days mostly we just walked anyway. There wasn't a lot of flying going on So he was just with us. Yeah crossing the rivers and you know at camp and You know, the nice thing is he could get resupplied, you know, so he could get food. It wears we couldn't but
jake holland (01:24:11.758)
Mmm.
jake holland (01:24:17.236)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:24:25.238)
So he was just with you a lot of the time, just walking. Yeah.
jake holland (01:24:37.034)
Yeah. Did you guys have, did you ever get like resupplied when you shouldn't? Oh, are you stuck to it ethically?
Gavin McClurg (01:24:39.162)
And then that was just.
Gavin McClurg (01:24:43.577)
No, no, we stuck to the ethics. That was important. And that was another, again, another thing I learned from Will, you know, it was really interesting. So Red Bull actually, it was actually Brian Smith, who, you know, 500 miles to nowhere, it premiered at Banff. And he happened to be sitting in the audience and came over and grabbed me and he said, hey, Red Bull's always hitting us up for ideas. And, you know, we want to do a paragliding film.
None of us know anything about paragliding. We don't know how to film it. We don't know what even what it is, but we'd like to do it. Cause they had worked with Will Gadd on Helmkin Falls and a couple of other of Will's project, but ice climbing. And Will's, you know, obviously an epic pilot. And so they wanted to do something, but at the time they weren't thinking of it with Will. It was just, you know, hey, do you have any ideas? And I said, yeah, I've got tons of ideas. And, but they, they were the ones that said, well, okay, but it's Red Bull. It's gotta be something, you know,
jake holland (01:25:12.62)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:25:21.213)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
jake holland (01:25:34.182)
Yeah. You get lots of them.
Gavin McClurg (01:25:42.329)
longer and bigger than anything that's been done before. And so when I proposed a couple lines, you know, lines, I mean, A to B type of lines to them, I mean, one was in Tibet and they were all over, but the one was in the Rockies. And when Will came on board, which I was really excited about, I'd never even met him at that point, but when Will came on board, he was the one that was all about style.
You know, and he had done the very first X-Hops in 2003, he had done the X-Hops. And so he knew that he hated walking. He just hated it. And, uh, that's not his jam.
jake holland (01:26:18.218)
wasn't it? Yeah, I mean, he, he said that in the film quite adamantly. He's like, we're pilots. We're not like trekkers.
Gavin McClurg (01:26:22.529)
Yeah, you just, yeah. So that was, so all the style of the Rockies Traverse was all because of Will. He said, okay, I don't wanna go from here as far as you wanna go. That's insane. We'll have to walk too much. But I wanna go from here to the border and I wanna only fly it. And at the time, it just, nobody was doing that. You didn't connect it by air. It might still be the longest air connected.
jake holland (01:26:36.63)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:26:45.687)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:26:51.369)
expedition ever. I don't know. I'm not sure. I mean, that was back in 2014. Maybe somebody's beaten it. But that was kind of a cool approach, I guess.
jake holland (01:26:59.474)
Is it longer than the Alps, would you say? Like flying the length of the Alps.
Gavin McClurg (01:27:04.097)
No. Um, but has anybody just flown the length of the Alps? Just the, you know, like connected it by the end? Probably. I don't know. No, it wouldn't be. I mean, that was, that was only, I think that Canada one was only 800K. So, or maybe it wasn't even that. No, it wasn't even that far. So maybe somebody's beating it. I don't know. Like maybe what Paul and Tom did beat it, like their Adriatic thing, but I think they walked, you know, I mean, I don't know that it's ever been just tink, tink with just flying. I don't know.
jake holland (01:27:09.174)
I don't know. Maybe, I don't know, yeah.
jake holland (01:27:18.987)
Mm.
jake holland (01:27:30.439)
Yeah.
Yeah, it's kind of hard to just fly because at some point you normally get bad weather and you... Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:27:33.949)
I'm not sure.
Gavin McClurg (01:27:38.697)
That's it. Yeah. And so that was kind of, it was, it was a cool approach. It was, and, and it's also what made it really dicey because at the end, uh, you know, you don't see this in the film, but we actually went away from the project because the weather just went complete shit. And so he wanted to get back to his girls and in fact his family. And then we came back to it, uh, where we left off and, but it was getting wicked stable. You know, it was getting to the middle of late August, which up in Canada, there's
jake holland (01:27:43.275)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:28:02.343)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:28:05.493)
you start losing the thermals. I mean, your days start going down to, you know, a 30K flight's huge. And so it got hard. It got very hard to complete it.
jake holland (01:28:07.018)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:28:10.835)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:28:14.834)
Yeah. Have you got any like film projects that you want to do more in your head? Have you got things that you're like, I still want to do that.
Gavin McClurg (01:28:21.765)
Well, I, yeah, I mean, that's why I'm kind of excited to meet you and because the, you would be the right kind of person. So where I left, where I ended the Alaska thing, this is a place called Mentasta Lake. And it's the very end of the Alaskan range, but literally right there is the very start of the Rangel range, which again, this is one of these, the Rangel's are way gnarly.
jake holland (01:28:35.758)
Mmm.
jake holland (01:28:50.323)
Okay.
Gavin McClurg (01:28:50.405)
in a lot of ways. They're just more glaciated. They're more remote. And they're not bigger. The Alaska Range is way bigger. But the rain gales are just... So I would... Anyway, you have to look at them on a map. They're pretty wild. But I would love to keep going and do the rain gales. So the rain gales would take you down to Glacier Bay National Park. So there'd be a lot of getting permission.
jake holland (01:29:08.684)
Mmm.
jake holland (01:29:14.094)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:29:19.269)
because in the States you can't fly through national parks. You can do what we did at Denali, but if you land, you're done.
jake holland (01:29:28.746)
If you land, are you getting in trouble or can you just like keep walking?
Gavin McClurg (01:29:31.981)
No, you can know you're just like a you're just like a helicopter or plane. You just declare an emergency landing, which we did. What we did with the park was we just sent them our track logs every day. They could watch what we were doing. And we told them in advance, listen, we will try. We think we can fly across the park in one go. But as in the film, we didn't we didn't make it. We only made it 50 K. And so we told them, we'll just declare an emergency landing and we won't relaunch. Now.
jake holland (01:30:00.51)
And what did you do, like, yeah, did you take off again? Okay.
Gavin McClurg (01:30:00.613)
that's not what we did. We relaunched. Yeah, so we walked, you know, that whole kind of cool scene where I'm in the glaciers and then we met up again because he and I got separated that day and I actually made it quite further than he did. And then we eventually got together just below this coal. I can't remember what the name of it was, but we spent the night and then the next day we got up to this coal and.
jake holland (01:30:09.641)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:30:27.329)
And it was just, it was flyable. And we thought we were just going to fly down into the valley and then walk out of the park. Um, which is what we did. We both bombed out, but as soon as we landed, it started getting better as we landed. And again, we got separated and I walked back up to this launch and waited and waited and waited and waited. And I thought I would see him fly by me, but I missed him somehow. And he flew out of the park.
jake holland (01:30:51.832)
Okay.
Gavin McClurg (01:30:53.293)
and landed on the, there's one road that goes to the Alaskan range. There's only one. And he landed on that road and that was basically where we ended. And, but I didn't know he'd gone by me. And so eventually I just, I couldn't get them on the radio. I couldn't get them. There was no internet anywhere. There was no cell coverage, the whole thing. And so I just took off and flew and made it. And so, so we both, and for both those, we didn't have our in reaches on because we knew that was illegal.
jake holland (01:31:01.643)
Mmm.
jake holland (01:31:07.146)
You... you... okay. Yeah, yeah, sure.
jake holland (01:31:15.884)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:31:22.989)
And that's none of that's in the film. You know, no, they didn't know. They had no idea. And there was nobody around. And so that was all fine. But.
jake holland (01:31:23.065)
Okay. Did the park ever say anything about it or they just... Okay. Yeah.
jake holland (01:31:33.146)
I imagine although there's these park rules, there's probably very few people that are there to enforce them, or to even check. It's only probably when it goes wrong and you need someone's help that you're going to be having to admit.
Gavin McClurg (01:31:43.869)
Yeah, it depends on where you are. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, for the whole up until that place where we spent all those days, eight days on, I forget the name of that peak, but, you know, there was just nobody ever anywhere. But once we got, we went past Denali, we never saw anybody anywhere. We never saw anybody the whole trip, but except that road. But it just depends, you know,
We really wanted to start in Lake Clark National Park, which is at the West end. So it's Lake Clark National Park and then Denali. And Lake Clark just hands down, no way. We will not give you permission to do this. So I think Denali was more flexible because there's just so much use on that mountain. And they thought it was neat. I went in very armed. I mean, that was months before. I went in up there months before we tried to do it because I...
jake holland (01:32:17.954)
Hmm.
jake holland (01:32:24.705)
Okay.
jake holland (01:32:33.469)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:32:41.657)
I knew that if they shut us down, we'd be toast. I mean, how can we get past Denali? We gotta go through there. And they're just way more on top of things because it's Denali. And so I went in there with a bunch of our films and showed them and the Rangers were just, oh yeah, you guys gotta do this. This is super cool. So they were cool, but the rule is the rule. And you're not legally allowed to land or launch, but landing is...
jake holland (01:32:59.886)
Nice.
Gavin McClurg (01:33:10.237)
they're more flexible about, because if you declare an emergency landing, then you're okay.
jake holland (01:33:11.527)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:33:15.814)
Yeah, okay. Yeah, well you have to keep me in mind if you ever come up with something like that. I would love to be involved.
Gavin McClurg (01:33:22.461)
Yeah, there would be, I mean, just cause I've never worked with anybody with paragliding skills, uh, you know, and so you, you know, we could go potentially do that together, which would be really neat. I, you know, it's been, I don't have the Red Bull contacts anymore. You know, it'd be, it'd be either a self-funded or, you know, we could get, you know, little money through outside and through other, other operations that I've worked with, but it'd be, I just like to do it because we've still got.
You know, that helicopter, the little helicopter, you'll see this in the making of, there's a little helicopter that was kind of the, that was bouncing the crew around and that's how we put the caches in. Actually, I bought that helicopter for the project and with the idea, I mean, it's a little helicopter, it's three seater, but yeah, it was a hundred grand, which I didn't have, but it was, I knew it. It is, yeah. I know, well, it's Jody's brother, so.
jake holland (01:33:58.373)
Mmm, okay.
jake holland (01:34:02.767)
No way.
jake holland (01:34:10.999)
That's a story in itself. How did you spend a hundred grand in a helicopter?
Gavin McClurg (01:34:17.817)
You'll see this in the making of two. So Jodi's brother is, you know, Jodi is my ex. And so she and I did a lot of the sailing together and all those amazing images back when I was doing a lot more are all Jodi's. So she's a National Geographic photographer and stuff. And that's her jam is stills. And so she did the still shooting on both North unknown and Rocky's Traverse. And so...
jake holland (01:34:21.154)
Who's Jodie?
Okay.
jake holland (01:34:32.628)
Okay.
jake holland (01:34:43.423)
Nice.
Gavin McClurg (01:34:46.373)
But yeah, she and I dated for 10 years and we're still very good friends. She lives right now on the street from me, but her brother, the whole reason Alaska happened was her brother, he lives off the grid and he's a super cup pilot. He's the one that taught Paul Gush about how to fly. And so he lives up in Willow, which is a couple of hours north of Anchorage and kind of in the foothills of the Alaska range. And it was because of flying around with him years ago, back in the early 2000s that I...
jake holland (01:35:01.695)
Okay, no way.
Gavin McClurg (01:35:14.917)
first got the idea because he's a paraglider pilot too. And I was, you know, a paraglider pilot and we'd fly around and it would be all turbulent. Wow, I think we could fly up here. And so he, but he, he really wanted to learn how to fly a helicopter. And he called me up one day and he said, Hey, there's a helicopter down there in Idaho where I live and you know, you should buy it. Kenny, what? I can't afford it. What are you crazy?
jake holland (01:35:25.82)
This is it.
jake holland (01:35:41.556)
Does he does he fly helicopters himself? Okay Is this thing like a junker is it good Was it like a junker was there something wrong with it or was it fine?
Gavin McClurg (01:35:44.557)
Yeah, now, but at the time he didn't. And, and so, you know, and I said, dude, I don't know anything about helicopters, but what's that?
No, it was just, no, it was fine. It was an enstrom. So, you know, a small helicopter and, you know, like I said, a little three seater, but I mean, I've base jumped out of it. I mean, it's a, it's, it works as helicopter, but it's small. You know, it's not, it's not like an a star. It doesn't have a lot of power. You couldn't put it. You couldn't even put a Cineflex on it. It's, you know, it can't carry a lot of weight. And, and, uh, but he, he talked me into it basically by saying, you know, Hey, I'll learn how to fly it.
jake holland (01:36:11.401)
Yeah, yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:36:23.225)
and we can make money on this thing. We'll have it up in Alaska. And I thought, and he said, I mean, imagine the adventures we could have with a little helicopter. Okay. And then that was a big pitch to Red Bull was basically, hey, we've got a helicopter up there. We can move the crew with this thing. It's way cheaper than an A-star. I mean, what they used for the Cineflex was a, what I don't remember what those things are called, but it wasn't an A-star, but it wasn't a jet helicopter, but it was a.
jake holland (01:36:32.431)
Yep.
jake holland (01:36:41.677)
Mmm
Gavin McClurg (01:36:51.841)
much bigger, more powerful helicopter than our little personal one. But in my mind, I thought, okay, well, this one project will pay for the helicopter. If, I can't remember what we charged them to use it, but it was 500 bucks an hour or something, but we ended up, we actually ended up not using it that much just because the supercubs are still, the helicopters are slow, they use a lot more fuel. The supercub is really how you get around in Alaska. So,
jake holland (01:36:55.371)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:37:07.406)
Thanks for watching!
jake holland (01:37:16.138)
Yeah.
It looks fantastic. I mean, like, you know, part of me thinks if I were to have an alternative reality life would be to move to Alaska and plan to become a supercar pilot because it just looks so cool.
Gavin McClurg (01:37:22.167)
It's insane.
Gavin McClurg (01:37:29.137)
Yeah, it really makes sense. I mean, too, if you get your own super cub, you can do pretty well up there. So, Kenny, so Jody's brother Kenny, he moved up there right after school. He always knew he wanted to be a pilot in Alaska and do that. And this is what he, he lives off the grid. He's got a strip on his piece of land, but he's a bush pilot mechanic. So, he went to school to repair airplanes. And in Alaska, if you go down, which happens a lot, people go down all the time.
jake holland (01:37:56.294)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:37:58.905)
He's the dude that goes and gets the plane. For example, often.
jake holland (01:38:02.707)
What, like he goes in and like fixes it and then, and then who flight?
Gavin McClurg (01:38:06.221)
he'll fly him back. He'll get him out. He'll get them off the cliff out of the trees out of the lakes out of the, you know, totally broken. Yeah. I mean, he's the dude. He's the old, he's the recovery guy. And one of the things get this, man, this is amazing. But one of the, one of the main recoveries he does is grizzly bears that eat planes. So the grizzly bears, they, those Tundra tires that are on those things, they're just jelly beans to them, those
jake holland (01:38:11.958)
No way. So he's like the ultimate like recovery guy.
jake holland (01:38:31.843)
Yeah, there's huge things.
Gavin McClurg (01:38:34.897)
They love those things. And then once they get into that, yeah, chewy toy. And once they get into it, then they start ripping the canvas off. You know, the supercups are just canvas airplanes with an airframe. And so they rip this canvas off and they just basically eat it and play with it. And so he just brings 10 rolls of duct tape and a couple of tires and duct tapes the plane back together and flies it home. Yeah, I mean, he does that every season.
jake holland (01:38:36.246)
They're just like a good chew toy.
jake holland (01:38:46.487)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:38:52.01)
So does he just go back and repair all the canvas?
jake holland (01:39:01.625)
Unbelievable.
And is he the guy who will fly it because no one else wants to fly it after he's repaired it in that way?
Gavin McClurg (01:39:09.497)
Yeah, I mean, and he's not crazy. He's never crashed. He's not crazy. He's just really competent. He's just an amazingly competent bush pilot. And now his son's flying. I mean, when I was up there, his son was seven and his son's 20 now. And he actually helped me build the house, but he's a real character, man. He's amazing. But he taught Paul everything he knows. He got him going. I mean, I used, just like we're on the phone today, I mean...
jake holland (01:39:15.298)
Good, yeah.
jake holland (01:39:30.159)
Oh, that's awesome.
Gavin McClurg (01:39:38.853)
when I was putting together the Alaska project with Red Bull, I wanted to do it with Tom and Paul. And when I started talking to Paul, he just was, wait, tell me more about these supercub. He didn't know what I was talking, he just, wait, what? I mean, that was, yeah, yeah. He was so keen on the supercub thing. So I was the one that set him up with all of that. That's what led to all of his adventures. But flying for Red Bull that summer was what
jake holland (01:39:53.393)
He's like tell me about that I don't want to do walking across Alaska I want to fly a plane. I'm going to go to the bathroom.
Gavin McClurg (01:40:08.313)
for that project was what gave him the hours. He got, I don't know, 300 hours or something that summer on that project. So it was really cool because, no, with the plane, with his cub, that was Paul with his cub. Yes, I mean, that was what gave him the hours to go.
jake holland (01:40:17.518)
with the helicopter, with the plane. Oh, that was Paul. Okay.
So, Paul was coming in and out over you on that project to do everything.
Gavin McClurg (01:40:29.453)
Yeah, you'll see it in the making of, there's a whole scene where he throws us batteries out of his window, you know, so we could keep the sound and the filming going and stuff. So yeah, so he was a big part of that whole film.
jake holland (01:40:38.815)
Ugh, hilarious.
What do you remember what kind of numbers of budget you had to make that thing? Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, to give you an idea of the new way up and the most recent film, the grant I won was 10 grand. And the one before that was the new way up. I think there's maybe a bit more like 15 grand or something. But like,
Gavin McClurg (01:40:46.993)
They were both a million bucks. Isn't that crazy?
Gavin McClurg (01:41:00.738)
Crazy man
jake holland (01:41:09.194)
And I think that's what I like, you know, it's like this filmmaking in quite a sustainable way. I mean, I would like to make more money, obviously, because those projects, they don't cover the mortgage. But I like this idea. Maybe you can edit this in, I don't know. But I really like this idea of. Making films, you know, in like a very small production capacity, doing a lot of the jobs yourself, doing everything you can.
Gavin McClurg (01:41:18.307)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:41:34.896)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:41:36.182)
Sure, the final result is probably not as polished as something that costs way, way more. But I think bang for buck, it's really cool and you're not burning tons of carbon whilst you're doing it.
Gavin McClurg (01:41:47.997)
Absolutely. I mean, you know, there's yeah, I mean there's a even for me. There's a lot of personal guilt even with the two of those two projects I mean they are Incredibly polished and it's amazing getting that footage, you know, remember back then drones were just becoming a thing too So I mean now you can get a lot of that stuff with drones but also Especially with north of known
jake holland (01:42:05.676)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:42:18.993)
I think it'd be really fun to go back to that footage and make a completely different film and a less polished film and a less high production value. I honestly think that there's a film there that could potentially be way better and just raw version of, you know, because we were so set on
jake holland (01:42:25.676)
Mmm.
jake holland (01:42:39.094)
Like a raw version.
Gavin McClurg (01:42:46.705)
52 minutes and a storyline. And I mean, there's just all this undercurrent and there's all these other things happening there that in your style of filmmaking, honestly, I think, you know, could have done much better, both commercially as well as just...
Gavin McClurg (01:43:09.698)
There's not much meditation in that film. There's not much just allowing the viewer to be in Alaska. And there's that one little scene where we're at the cabin and there's rain coming off the roof top. I would like way more of that because it's 38 days we were out there. And there's a lot of just fucking sitting around and.
jake holland (01:43:22.538)
Mmm...
jake holland (01:43:29.422)
It's an insane amount of time.
Did you have some good books? What were you doing?
Gavin McClurg (01:43:35.777)
I had podcasts, I didn't bring books, but I had them on my phone, I did. That's an interesting thing, both the Red Bull projects, but all of my projects, my partners have always been really, really keen to get it done. Start, do it, end. And I'm the opposite of that, which probably drives the...
jake holland (01:43:39.944)
Okay.
jake holland (01:43:56.31)
Mmm.
Gavin McClurg (01:44:05.233)
Filmmakers crazy, but we've, I mean, we're living, for me, I'm living this life to be out there. And so I don't want it. Why are we in a hurry? We're in this insane place that's so special. I don't want to rush, you know? That's what we do in our lives all day, every day is we're constantly rushing. We're constantly, you know, and I don't know. For me, it was...
jake holland (01:44:13.462)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:44:34.093)
I can sit in a tent forever. It's pretty nice. It's pretty nice to just slow down and listen to podcasts and sleep and relax and kind of recover. A lot of it, a lot of in Alaska was recovered. We were truly starving and that's an uncomfortable place to be. And so, you know, it was when we got to that cache and we sat there for eight days, I was in heaven. Dave was miserable. You know, he hated it.
jake holland (01:44:36.974)
Thanks for watching!
jake holland (01:44:42.983)
Yeah.
jake holland (01:44:51.79)
It's easy, isn't it?
jake holland (01:45:01.086)
I mean, eight days is a long time to sit in a tent. I don't know if I would be... It's hard to know how much I would love that.
Gavin McClurg (01:45:06.573)
Well, no, and it wasn't in a tent. It wasn't in a tent. We went fishing. We flew down to these little lakes. We did stuff. I mean, no, we built fires. It wasn't just cooped up in a tent. Yeah, it was just special out there. There was cool animals. There was grizzly bears. It was cool.
jake holland (01:45:12.802)
Yeah. Okay, nice. Oh yeah, you were like living, you were living the life.
jake holland (01:45:24.358)
That is special. And I mean, how often do you get to detach from life in that way these days? You know, it's like it doesn't happen. Yeah. We did, I took my parents and a bunch of my friends. I mean, I say I took, I organized a trip down the Crane Canyon this last year. And, oh my God, that was the best 16 days.
Gavin McClurg (01:45:32.505)
No internet, no cell, no, you know, and it was just, it was.
Gavin McClurg (01:45:45.187)
Mm, mm.
jake holland (01:45:50.262)
probably everyone spent in their lives. It was so nice just traveling down, no internet, just community, hanging out, no distractions. Like, oh, it was so good.
Gavin McClurg (01:45:53.169)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:45:57.614)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (01:46:02.373)
The Grand Canyon Special, man, I did that quite a few years ago. And we did it as a, you know, I think we did as an 18 day trip. We did it in the middle of winter. So it was, you know, it was really cool. I mean, we saw two people the whole time. I mean, in the, in the summer, it's just commercial and it's, there's a lot more people. Nice. Oh, it's the way to do it. Yeah. So bitchin'.
jake holland (01:46:18.638)
I mean, we did it in November, so we were in the winter as well. And yeah, I mean, I think we went past like three teams or something because we were a bit shorter than them. So we were making a bit more progress. But otherwise, oh, that was a good trip. So.
Gavin McClurg (01:46:32.133)
I mean, being in that environment, everybody I was with, I'm not a musician, but we had 10 people and they were all musicians. We'd have these drum sessions and stuff at night. You could imagine the acoustics and holy cow, man. It was, that's a place to be. You know, I've been on the wait list for the Grand Canyon since I was 18, you know, because I'm, well, you and I share the paddling background. And so I'm now at the level, I can go on the Grand Canyon whenever I want, you know,
jake holland (01:46:41.282)
That's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
jake holland (01:46:49.282)
Thanks for watching!
Thanks for watching!
Gavin McClurg (01:47:01.829)
they have these launches, I just have to pick a date. So I'm basically, I'm gonna wait for my daughter to get, she's six, I think about eight, it'd be awesome. And I wanna go do it as a 30, I wanna do it as a Dory trip. I wanna do it, cause the 30 day, we did it at 18, I wanna do it in 30. Cause as you know, I didn't know this until I did it, but it's not about the whitewater, it's about the hiking and the camps, right? Oh, some of those camps, you could stay for three or four days. And so...
jake holland (01:47:06.028)
Okay.
jake holland (01:47:11.966)
Amazing, yeah.
jake holland (01:47:22.814)
So much, so much to do there, yeah.
jake holland (01:47:30.498)
Totally, yeah. Yeah. I would like to go again at some point. It was fun, I mean, I kind of did it the opposite way around. I took my parents who are in their 60s down and yeah, it is a special place to share with people that you like. Like, that's really good. Yeah. Man, I've got to go, unfortunately. I've got some friends coming for dinner, but I could carry on chatting to you all day. But thank you so much, Gavin, for having me.
Gavin McClurg (01:47:31.457)
I want to really take my time and really go slow.
Gavin McClurg (01:47:57.729)
Yeah, thank you, man. I really, thanks for, thanks for reaching out. I appreciate it. That was a really fun talk. And, uh, yeah, I look forward to tracking what you're doing and let's stay in touch. I, you know, I've been, I said, I've been, I've been really buried in this house for the last couple of years, but I suddenly have a lot of time. It's pretty exciting. So I want to get back to my roots as it were, which is doing more cool stuff like that.
jake holland (01:48:07.082)
Yeah, let's...
jake holland (01:48:17.778)
Yeah, I mean if you have some ideas then just reach out. Good, good, I like that. Yeah, cool. Well have a great day and I hope you feel better soon. Yeah, ciao, bye.
Gavin McClurg (01:48:22.761)
Yeah, I will. I've got a lot of ideas, man. Cool. Yeah. Let's stay in touch. You too, man. Appreciate it. Cheers. Oh, wait. Hey, you know what? Hold on. I got it.
jake holland (01:48:35.542)
You have to do something.
