Pete Thompson had a hell of a summer in Colorado. After years of planning and trying to fly big, epic FAI triangles across the highest terrain in the lower 48 he finally beat a record set only last year by Galen Kirkpatrick when he put down a 275 km FAI in early August. A week later he went even bigger with a 292. Then just two days later he did it again, this time cracking the vaunted 300 for the first time in North America with a 305 km perfectly drawn FAI across some serious Colorado deepness. Pete shares his journey in the sport which began in the early 2000’s, including his recent vol-biv across the state and flying competitions and tandems. We discuss the challenges of flying in Colorado’s unique terrain, the preparation and gear needed for long flights, and the mental and physical endurance required to stay in the air for 10+ hours. Pete also reflects on his past experiences, safety measures, and future aspirations in paragliding, emphasizing the importance of belief and community in achieving great feats.
Pete’s track logs from this summer can be viewed here.
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Pete Thompson has been flying in Colorado for 16 years and has a total of 21 years of experience in paragliding. He completed a Cross Colorado Bivvy Flight trip that took about eight days, combining flying and hiking. Colorado’s weather poses significant challenges for long-distance flights, making it a unique environment for paragliding. Pete achieved a new North American record with a flight of 275 kilometers, showcasing his dedication and skill. He emphasizes the importance of mental endurance and preparation for long flights, often feeling exhausted yet accomplished after each flight. Safety is a priority for Pete, who uses oxygen tanks and carefully assesses risks during flights. He believes that the potential for longer flights in Colorado is still growing, with opportunities for further records. Pete’s journey reflects the importance of community and support in the paragliding world, inspiring others to push their limits.
Sound Bites
“I had a dream” “There’s a fine balance” “It’s just the belief”
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background of Pete Thompson 02:47 The Bivvy Flight Across Colorado 06:06 Challenges of Flying in Colorado 08:59 The Big Triangle Flights and Records 11:47 Gear and Preparation for Long Flights 14:53 Mental and Physical Endurance in Paragliding 17:47 Safety and Risk Management in Paragliding 20:40 Future Aspirations and Goals in Paragliding
Gavin McClurg (00:07.79)
Cool, we're good. Pete, awesome to have you on the show. We should have done this live when you were out at the wide open when we were doing acro yoga and getting freaky, but you had to peace out and go hunt some elk. So, but good to see you, man.
Pete Thompson (00:19.796)
You
Pete Thompson (00:24.552)
Thanks, Gavin. Thanks for having me. I've been watching your podcast for a long time and thought maybe one day I'd do something worthy of chatting about on here. So it's good to be here.
Gavin McClurg (00:34.552)
Well, damn dude, you certainly have. Yeah, let's talk about some of that. So I just found out before we started recording, you've been flying out in Colorado for 16 years, is that right? You had about five years under your belt and you went out to do Tannems. Take us back, back a ways.
Pete Thompson (00:53.874)
Sure, I have been flying in Colorado for 16 years and about 21 years total. I learned right when I got out of high school, my buddy in Pennsylvania, my buddy AJ Fry introduced me to the sport. And we did some renegade flights there, took a couple lessons, went to college in Bozeman, Montana, met Andy out there who was really supportive with Bozeman paragliding and...
spent about five years in college and spent most of those summers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And those are big formative years for me as a pilot because back, I Jackson still has a good crew of pilots, but back then, man, it was one of the epicenters of the country where you had, you know.
Gavin McClurg (01:36.734)
Yeah, hunting grease and JP and...
Pete Thompson (01:40.729)
gosh, and 10, 15 guys on takeoff on a good day, all trying to fly a hundred miles with oxygen. And a hundred miles was a big flight back then. And then right after college, I came here to Carbondale Glenwood Springs and started working as a tandem pilot.
Gavin McClurg (02:00.12)
And that's in Aspen or you do tandems in Cleveland Springs.
Pete Thompson (02:04.212)
I did Tandems in Glenwood and it's like 45 minutes down the road from Aspen.
Gavin McClurg (02:08.302)
Okay. Okay. And then you and I have been flying comps together for longer than I can remember, but you you started going to Monarka about the same time, right? Kind of 2010, 2011, is that right? Or is that too early?
Pete Thompson (02:24.07)
Yeah, that's, no, that's probably accurate. When I worked as a tandem pilot, I couldn't fly any of the comps in the US, so I was missing out on that scene for about a decade. But I would always go to Monarca and fly there, and that was kind of like a one comp a year kind of a guy. And then I stopped doing tandems five years ago, and that's freed up my schedule. And now I get to fly about four comps a year.
Gavin McClurg (02:51.03)
Okay, you, it would be remiss if we're talking about these big FAIs you threw down this summer just over and over and over again. I got a funny story about that actually, being over, where were we? We were in Turkey at the World Cup, Bill and I, and I said, hey, did you see Pete's flight? And he goes, yeah, of course I saw Pete's flight. I go, no, no, dude, yesterday's big flight, he did it again. We just like, what? my God. But so we'll get to that.
Pete Thompson (03:14.043)
You
Gavin McClurg (03:18.252)
but it would be remiss of me to jump over your bivy. You made this really cool film. Mutual friend of ours, Michael Behar, who did a bunch of writing for me back in the days with the boat trip. know he covered, he did some writing about your bivy across Colorado, but let's spend a few times there. What was the mission? What did you do? Where can people find out more about it?
Pete Thompson (03:44.511)
Sure, so it was a number of years ago now that that project went down, but it was finally in 2020 I did a Cross Colorado Bivvy Flight trip and it took about eight days. It was four days of flying and then four days of walking in a row. Starting down south in
Mancos, Colorado, so really close to the New Mexico border, and then I finished by going up through the Wyoming border to the north of Rocky Mountain Park. And I've been trying that project for three years.
and gave a good swing at it every year but just never really had the weather. The weather in Colorado is really challenging. And that's right, I forgot you connected me with Michael. He did that article for the first year. I was out there for like nine days just like getting stormed on on mountaintops and took a lot of footage of that and then finally the third year I was successful and that has been commemorated in a film that my friend Dylan Brown has made and the film is Wingman.
and it's on your normal streaming services. And yeah, it's pretty cool. It's about an hour long. It's a lot of me, but it was cool. It was quite the adventure. It was cool to kind of cap off that series of seasons of trying that experience. A lot like how this year was the accumulation of a lot of effort over a couple of seasons to try and do some really, really big triangles.
Gavin McClurg (05:03.885)
you
Gavin McClurg (05:10.478)
dream.
Gavin McClurg (05:23.446)
And were those the big triangles that you did this year, was that on your radar even back then or did that, did this kind of grow out of in some ways that trip? And you know, as you were marching across Colorado by air and by foot, were you kind of piecing this together or had you already?
Pete Thompson (05:45.18)
I didn't have the full vision for the big triangles back then. like at that time I had the Colorado triangle record. It was like 170 K. Um, but I was still doing tandems back then. And so my schedule was always a bit restricted, mainly that I would fly tandems in the morning. And then we had this great site by Glenwood where we could go launch at noon. It worked perfect with our schedule and you could still go crank out a hundred or 150 mile flight. Um, and it wasn't until
I stopped doing tandems and I started flying in the mornings in Aspen and catching those really early morning thermals. I started realizing like, gosh, like you could fly for 10 or 11 hours in this state on a good day. So it was four seasons ago.
started trying to do some big triangles in Colorado. And I've always loved to do triangle flights, whether we're in Valle or Columbia or Brazil. And just the concept is, yeah, getting home is so cool. And the added challenge of piecing together the different legs of it. And then here in Colorado, though, it's hard to find the light wind days. It's almost harder to find a good open distance day because
Gavin McClurg (06:44.536)
getting homes cool.
Pete Thompson (07:03.974)
If you're going to fly 300Ks here, you end up running into overdevelopment somewhere. To get a day where it's not just nice here, but it's nice in New Mexico seems to be impossible or more rare.
Gavin McClurg (07:16.096)
Right. Try to explain to those listening who haven't flown in Colorado, which incredibly is me as well. I've done one speed flight in Colorado, can you imagine? It's so ridiculous. But how does it differ from the Alps? How does this triangle, these triangles that you did, and they weren't all the same, but when you look...
Pete Thompson (07:26.452)
You
Gavin McClurg (07:42.005)
at X contest and you switch over to satellite view, you know, it looks pretty tiger, not all of it, but it looks pretty tiger and it looks in some places incredibly committing. What are you dealing with there? What are the heights of the mountains? What are the heights of the valleys? What are the road systems? Try to explain it for those who haven't been there.
Pete Thompson (08:08.508)
Yeah, I think that Colorado is an amazing venue for big flights, but there are some inherent challenges as well. So the state is covered in, know, the center of the state is covered in really big mountains with fairly narrow valleys. It's fairly dry. And yeah, there aren't a ton of roads.
we're not generally dealing with areas where you're gonna have a three day walk out. I think some people think that, but it's just not really what you run into around here. But you're going over a lot of terrain where you're still pretty far from a road, 10 miles or 15 Ks from little quiet dirt roads. So there's a lot of boonies out there. There's, you just, you know, might see a dirt road down below, but you could watch it for two hours and not see a car go by.
and it's it's committing. There's the valleys are generally open enough where you can land in them. It's not like the Pacific Northwest where you're going to get choked in some valley and there's not even going to be a trail. So there's a lot of wilderness. The bigger of those two triangles or the two larger ones
crossed over a big section of desert as well, and low terrain by the Colorado River, and there's high plateaus, jagged mountains. It's really got it all. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (09:36.758)
And there's how many 14ers in Colorado that, is it 50? 54, okay. How many of them are you ticking off on these big flights?
Pete Thompson (09:40.436)
54. Yeah.
Pete Thompson (09:47.961)
on the smaller of those three flights is the most mountainous line and you're in the good proximity of probably eight or nine of them. Yeah, it's cool. It's cool. But you've definitely got to be pretty strong willed to, or you just have to have a really good ability just not to think about the fact that there aren't a lot of people down below you or a lot of roads and a lot of rough terrain.
Gavin McClurg (10:01.87)
Wow, that's pretty cool.
Gavin McClurg (10:17.432)
Just keep believing and making the moves that make sense. Just trust in your skills.
Pete Thompson (10:20.756)
Yeah, but that's what we deal with here. Yeah, trust in the day, trust in the skills. I only go for big flights on really good days. And the deal is around here, if you wanted to follow the roads and you had that as a condition with what you're gonna try and do in your flight, you'd never get anywhere. So it just comes with the territory, like where you live.
Gavin McClurg (10:43.468)
Yeah, yeah. It's just interesting because I need to get there to see it. you know, for when I first moved here, what we always just talked about is, it's so deep. And it's really not. It's exactly like you say. It's there are places to land and there are places that, you know, there's going to be hunters or people out there recreating. Someone's going to come along. You know, knock on wood, I've yet to have to spend the night. You know, usually you're going to get out. But it's just
Pete Thompson (11:10.11)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (11:13.256)
but it sure looks remote. It sure feels remote when you're doing it. And some of the stuff we do out in Nevada is, that's more to me life-threatening because there's no water and it's hot and you really do need, there's not much shade, you need to get to somewhere. But what are your biggest, what's the biggest shit factor? Is it trying to stay below 18?
Pete Thompson (11:15.527)
Yeah.
Pete Thompson (11:18.984)
Yeah, it is.
Pete Thompson (11:30.312)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (11:39.07)
Is it, you what are the things that you're battling the most? Is it the cold? Is it the altitude? What is it?
Pete Thompson (11:45.266)
Yeah, getting up too high or too low, guess. Yeah, avoiding breaking the 18,000 foot airspace is a challenge and you have to be really on it. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (11:47.832)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (11:54.191)
That sucks, doesn't it? This is the one. mean, when I look at your big days, they're the same as out here. You we often have these 21, 22, 23,000 foot days. And that's actually more of a pucker factor for me than the other things. I mean, I hate fighting to stay down. That is hard. I mean, it's just hard. It's hard on your head. It's hard to do when you're cold. It's the last thing you wanna do when you're crushing out distance. That sucks.
Pete Thompson (12:20.262)
Yeah, yeah, I'd say that's a major challenge. then it's managing that with being over the deep terrain. So you do want to be as high as possible. You don't want to spend too much time having to go around clouds and obstacles like that. And then when...
when you're trying to go to these maximum maximum distances and have the highest average speed for the day, you're also kind of having to race. So you're not going slow. You're not. You're having to go as fast as possible. So having that perfect recipe in every moment of those different factors.
Gavin McClurg (13:03.512)
take us through quickly the six flights. What was the first one and then just take us down through it then we'll dive in a little bit deeper. But what were they?
Pete Thompson (13:17.342)
Sure, well, I had one early season flight where I connected a new line out to what we call the Grand Mesa. It's a huge 10,000 foot high mesa that covers an amazing convert. The mesa connects the Colorado River Valley and the Gunnison River Valley and.
In June, I had a flight where I stretched out to that Mesa and I'd never made that connection before. I never thought that it would work.
that early in the morning connecting the crux crossing to get to it. And I finally did that and I landed at like hundred, I bombed out this day, but it was a huge day. I bombed out at a hundred Ks at 1 p.m. after four hours. And that kind of lit a little bit of a light in my head where I realized, man, maybe I could do a huge line out there. But I had another line I'd been chasing.
the last three seasons and it's just pure mountain flying. It goes to the south first and then northwest and comes back to Aspen and I had done 270 on that line last year and that was the first really big triangle of the year and that was in early August. I managed to stretch the last turn point of that flight and get I think 275 kilometers and get the
the North American record, which I'd come really close to, best in Galen's incredible flight last year. And, and that was just like an incredible achievement. Like I'd been trying it for four seasons and I finally got the full expression of that liner. And.
Gavin McClurg (15:05.208)
So that was the line. mean, this line was the one you'd planned, you'd looked at, you had it sussed out and it finally went.
Pete Thompson (15:10.452)
Yep. Yep. It finally went, it finally went like bigger where I got into the big mountains at the end of the day and was able to extend it a little bit further. But then on that day, you know, I, I'm extending the last point and I'm looking at going further and I'm looking at the numbers and I thinking, man, I could get 300 today. I could do it. And I hedged my bet in the safer direction and turned back and just got
275 and closed it and I was really thrilled with that but that left this hanger of probably could have gotten it that day like 300 the benchmark because that was the really the bigger biggest goal was to get 300. So eight days later the forecast was on again and I went out and I tried this new Grand Mesa line.
that I'd just done the first leg of previously. Only one time had this line really been even tried. And I ended up going 292. I didn't quite close it, I could have. The end of the day was slow, and I came like, I don't know, 6K short of the...
coming all the way back to the landing field. And I just needed to extend it a little bit. And I had it there in my fingertips. And it was a nine and a half hour flight. But it was a new record. So it was this kind of bittersweet thing. I'd come so close to 300, but I got a new record and did it.
Gavin McClurg (16:27.576)
proper clothes.
Gavin McClurg (16:36.931)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (16:41.794)
but you left a little on the table.
Pete Thompson (16:43.73)
Yeah, but I did it with a good, like I got the record by a good margin. So I was just thrilled. I mean, that's when people were like, what, what the heck is going on in Colorado? Like it's, it's happened again. That was like the first he did it again. and then the next, after that flight, I told myself and I told my partner, Caitlin, said, I'm, pretty much done with the big flights for the season and the fork.
Gavin McClurg (16:52.47)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (17:07.182)
Because you were just, because you were physically smoked, mentally smoked or? Yeah.
Pete Thompson (17:10.588)
I was just pretty smoked afterwards. Yeah, yeah, less smoke than the first big one, but I felt like I was in better shape after that flight. And then I was at home the next day and I'm looking at the forecast for the following day. was like, man, there's so much less headwind for the first leg and the lifted index looked a little bit better. And so that Wednesday, two days after I'd done.
the previous flight, I showed up back on takeoff and everyone was pretty surprised to see me. They said, what are you doing here? I thought you were done. And I just, you I had a dream. had what I wanted to accomplish and...
And I went out and did it. The things just went a little bit more smoothly and I was able to extend the last leg. And it was a little bit different of a flight with just some added challenges in one area, but some ease in another. The end of the day was really fast on that flight.
Gavin McClurg (18:02.05)
Was that the one I was gonna say, was that the one that started really slow and you were thinking, this isn't working?
Pete Thompson (18:07.796)
Yeah, was some slow parts in the first leg, but on the last leg, I had an hour where I had a 55 kilometer an hour average speed. I finally caught a tailwind and I was throwing my anti-G out to just glide under clouds and getting sucked up. The clouds weren't even that big, but they were just pumping. And it was able to get the flight at the end of the day.
Gavin McClurg (18:35.79)
And that was three what?
Pete Thompson (18:38.644)
305. I think 305.
Gavin McClurg (18:39.882)
Okay. And then there was another one.
Pete Thompson (18:43.924)
Then about two weeks later, did Jared Scheidt came out and we got to do a really cool flight together where we did a similar line. We went a little further on one leg, a little shorter on another, but we went like 260 and didn't quite close it. But you know, by that point, it's like 260 was a small flight it seemed. It's crazy. I know.
Gavin McClurg (19:04.494)
It's just nothing. It's crazy. Scary moments or was it all pretty straightforward?
Pete Thompson (19:18.452)
There is, in each of those flights there were some really heads, kind of heads up moments. I like the triangles because you're not really flying in a ton of wind, but it seems like in Colorado you always find some spot that's windy. so, I'd say on each of those flights there was a moment where I had to like.
tuck tail and go straight downwind off course line to either get out of a big leaside or just to go downwind to to find that climb and go off course line which is something I've gotten better at doing instead of just headstrong pushing until I'm on the dirt like realizing when you got to slow down and and you know do what you got to do to get back up and getting back up is the the most important thing.
Yeah, there's certain cruxes on the big triangle line crossing a low zone at about 45 kilometers into the flight. It seems to always be tricky the four times I've done it, where you get kind of stuck there. And then the second leg has a really incredible but really challenging section where you're flying this big high plateau and you've been up there for like two or three hours.
and the plateaus at 10,000 feet, 3,000 meters or a bit higher and it has 5,000 feet of relief above the valleys on either side and so you know 1,500 meters and finally when you leave the plateau you've kind of felt low all day because you've had all this high terrain and you glide out over the Colorado River Valley and you have all this height to deal with which is
absolutely incredible, but you're going over this really low valley and suddenly you're really worried about finding a climb and you have to start kind of scraping stuff together and...
Gavin McClurg (21:17.41)
Is that kind of like going out into the swell? It's just, you get a lot of sinky air for a while coming off the mesa.
Pete Thompson (21:25.748)
Yeah, it can be like that and it can be stable. And then when you do find there's climbs in there and when you find them, they seem to be really rowdy. lost on the first time doing that crossing, I lost the glider one time, which I haven't had a full blow up in years. And yeah, so there are moments, I mean, crossing the big plateau, there's another big plateau that you cross at the end of the day and you're really deep.
and it's the end of the day, you're like 6 p.m. and you still have 60 K's to go and you're over this just no man's land of a plateau and very few roads and a of lakes up there and it's like a three hour maybe drive from my house so you you're just looking at spending the night if you mess up and um yeah.
Gavin McClurg (22:16.302)
what was the longest in terms of time?
Pete Thompson (22:21.908)
Those the longest was 10 hours and five minutes and each of those flights was were 9 20 9 50 10 0 5 and 9 23 so there I did. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (22:35.822)
So your average speed, help me out with the math. That was your kind of average speed of if you put them all together.
Pete Thompson (22:41.56)
The average speed is always right around 30 kilometers an hour. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (22:46.264)
So not that fast. I mean, it's...
Pete Thompson (22:49.012)
Pretty good for a triangle, but no, I mean on each of those days I feel like we could be going faster. Things could just go a little more smoothly. I mean you have the yeah headwinds, you know, you could just have a day where yeah having a day without any headwind.
Gavin McClurg (22:58.134)
just getting stuck in a couple of places and digging out headwinds. I mean, it's not slow, when you start thinking about, mean, can you, does this happen in July, closer to the solstice when you've got more sun or is that just usually too much OD, too much monsoon?
Pete Thompson (23:20.18)
Yeah, there's a lot of monsoon. There's a lot of monsoon in August as well. We just got really lucky this year. mean, in general, Colorado is such a overdeveloped monsoonal place in the summer. yeah, getting a flight in July is the dream. The first time I tapped into that Grand Mesa line was in July. It was July 6th. And...
Yeah, I mean, that time of year you have an extra hour of daylight, probably stronger climbs.
Gavin McClurg (23:50.51)
So maybe an 11 hour day. What time are you taking off in Aspen? It's a morning site, right?
Pete Thompson (23:55.357)
Yeah, it's a morning site. You're taking off at nine-ish.
Gavin McClurg (23:59.439)
Okay, so wow, cool. Pretty early. Tell me about your gear. I mean, you do a ton of racing on the Enzo. I know you're flying the Zeno for this. I want to hear about your oxygen setup too, because you got a new, know, forever and ever you've been a little Pete, now you're two tank Pete. I don't know if you knew that. But yeah, that picture of your two tanks is awesome. So tell us about those two things. What's the reasoning behind your gear and this tank setup?
Pete Thompson (24:01.426)
Yeah. Yeah.
Pete Thompson (24:16.391)
Yeah.
Pete Thompson (24:29.66)
Yep. yeah, flying the Zeno, which I love to fly in Colorado, just for the little bit extra passive safety, even though I love the Enzo, I love the CCC gliders. Flying a big GR5 harness for those flights.
I've modded that harness with some extra pockets so that I can get to the oxygen easily. I can have space for more snacks and just kidded it out a little bit more. And one thing that's really helped, think, with these big flights in the gear are these big sub harnesses. One, you get a little bit of extra performance, but the...
amount of protection that you get from the elements is incredible. mean, now you just have your full face helmet sticking out of this net gasket and then my arms. You're not like my hands don't get cold anymore. It's unless it's a really cold day.
Gavin McClurg (25:17.72)
Hmm.
Gavin McClurg (25:31.15)
What are you using on your hands?
Pete Thompson (25:33.555)
I have a pair of fleece liners and then I have a pair of black diamond stance gloves. they're like a puffy coat for your hands. They're not super thick with the leather or anything. They're like ripstop nylon. And I really like them. They just make my hands feel cozy. And then I have a pair of over mitts that I can put on if I need, but I haven't had to. I'm also doing this season game changer is that I've.
cannibalized an old down jacket. So I have an extra set of sleeves that I wear on top of my normal down coat and it's in those they're sealed off from the arm gaskets on the harness and it works really well. So you don't have to wear too much on your body and you can have these over insulated arms. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (26:20.899)
wow, do you wear down pants too or is that too much in the sub? You don't need that, you're just wearing jeans.
Pete Thompson (26:25.332)
No, just, I'm just wearing, yeah, I'm just wearing normal pants. They're good in there. Yep. And then, yeah, the two tanks. you know, starting to stretch these flights of eight, nine hours in Colorado, I realized that even my larger oxygen tank, I fly with like a...
Gavin McClurg (26:29.048)
Yeah, okay.
Pete Thompson (26:45.892)
AL-248, it's a mountain high tank that's larger than the one that most people fly with. But I'd still run out at about hour seven, seven and a half, and have to kind of...
Gavin McClurg (26:55.554)
What kind of regulator are you on? Are you using the on-demand pulse?
Pete Thompson (27:00.368)
I've been, yeah, I've been on the man pulse. just seems to be, I know that's what everyone says. I don't know if I'm just up there, just taking little, too many little breaths or what, but, but I realized that I need to figure out an option for that. And I can fill my own tank. really try and overfill it, but I was still running out. I mean, it's not like I'm running out at hour four. I'm running out at hour seven, but, but so I just started flying with a second tank and I realized that I could.
Gavin McClurg (27:02.99)
And you were still running out, wow.
Gavin McClurg (27:07.992)
to happen.
Gavin McClurg (27:22.296)
Yeah.
Pete Thompson (27:28.172)
have it on in my cockpit and pinch the little red tube. since I made this extra pocket in my harness, whenever the one tank runs out, I can just unplug the one red tube, plug in the other red tube, and undo the little rubber band that I have pinching the tube closed. And I keep on rolling because I need all the help I can get out there.
Gavin McClurg (27:47.887)
Huh, low tech, but that's sweet. That works, that's kind of cool. I mean, I saw your post about it, but that's, yeah, that's neat. I mean, on my big flights, I always run out. That's a great solution, but I'm not flying with that. I saw that. I've never actually seen that big tank that you used. We'll put up a picture in the show notes for those of you listening and a link to all these flights, because they're really inspiring. When you did the 292,
Pete Thompson (27:54.579)
Yeah.
Pete Thompson (28:05.62)
Mm-hmm.
Gavin McClurg (28:16.974)
we've got this Telegram chat channel over here in the States for kind of the XC group and people immediately were, oh, can you do 300? Can you do 300? And you've got that one pretty quickly. So now the question is, obviously over in Europe, they had another big year. Edouard Patel did the what, 350 something. so they've...
They're doing a lot of them over there. What's on the table there? Do you feel like you're just tapping it? Do you feel like this is, know, obviously for us, weather's always the thing. And one of the reasons I haven't gone and flown in Colorado is it seems even less reliable than here, if that's a thing. But, you know, was this just an extraordinary season and have you really tapped it out or was this just, this is just the seeds of a dream that you're,
you see a lot more that can be done there.
Pete Thompson (29:14.964)
Yeah, I think the crop is still growing over here. August was good this year and some of those days, they were really good days, but I could imagine better days. And I would definitely like to go further. It's just so cool to me to have that challenge. Like I really like goal-oriented flying. And these previous flights, they came after four years of trying and...
Gosh, like countless days of me like sitting in the winter on like the flight planner app, like drawing it out and you know, just trying to use my imagination and convince myself that bigger is possible. And I definitely think that bigger is possible. And to justify that, I've just used math. Like I'm not a big math guy, but if I just think about, okay, well, we can launch a half an hour earlier.
we can land a half an hour later, you could increase your average speed by two kilometers an hour over 10 hours. I mean that's 20 Ks right there. So I think that we could go significantly bigger which is hard to imagine because these flights aren't really in the North America. They're not really going down that big anywhere else but I think that there's other there's potential for other
launching starting spots, definitely in Colorado, there's probably better spots to start than where I'm starting. Flying off of Aspen Mountain, it's a really great early morning climb out spot.
but it can get shut down by any little bit of wind. And it's not like this high spot above treeline. It's maybe a little more than 2000 feet AGL, beautiful East face, but you you could just, think you could just start higher and a little bit deeper in the mountains. There's just nothing that seems quite as convenient, definitely for me. Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (31:07.904)
What about, what do you think you could bump your speed up to if you had 10 people?
Pete Thompson (31:14.25)
yeah, I mean, that's the other thing. It's like, I'm doing it all alone. So having a team would be incredible. Yeah, I mean, you know.
Gavin McClurg (31:20.172)
it would maybe just help erase some of those stuck moments, right? And it would just, you're pressing, you're pushing more bar. When I fly alone, I don't use as much bar. It's impossible. I try, I always think, I use the same kind of bar we're using when we're racing, but I find that hard to do when I'm by myself.
Pete Thompson (31:39.76)
Yeah, it's much easier when you have your buddy beside you and he starts pushing a little more. So you push a little more and then vice versa. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if there were a group of us out there probably 10 % faster, 8 % faster, just three kilometers an hour at 10%.
Gavin McClurg (31:46.222)
Yeah, you feed off one another.
Gavin McClurg (31:58.159)
That's a fair bit. There's 30K right there.
Pete Thompson (32:01.459)
Yeah, yeah, no, I think the sky's the limit. You just need everything to work out a little bit better and the data be a little bit better. But then you look at these record flights in Europe and it's like, you consider the numbers there, it's like there's 200 incredible pilots that are ready to go every single day and trying and.
50 guys going from the same launch and one guy eking out that extra stuff. I mean, think if we had that going on here, no one ever missing a day. think who knows?
Gavin McClurg (32:25.998)
It's a numbers game.
Gavin McClurg (32:34.72)
Yeah, I think Matt and I have talked about this a lot, Matt Beecher, Farmer, we've been talking about it a ton. what I saw over there in Europe, I tried the Antholz one a few times and what they have there is really early launch, you're launching at 8.30, nine o'clock in the morning and you're not really turning for the first 60K, is incredible in the morning. You're not flying fast, but you're just...
Pete Thompson (32:39.304)
Yeah.
Pete Thompson (32:56.871)
Mm-hmm.
Gavin McClurg (33:02.774)
right on the terrain. just enough air coming up on these beautiful Northeast faces that you're flying all the way into Austria to whatever that glacier is there, the Glossglockner. You're doing the first leg without turning, know, before it's really on. And I used to think, well, that's, we just don't have that. We don't have that kind of terrain. We don't have that kind of aspect. You actually do in Colorado in a sense of when I looked at your track logs. But what we do have is eight,
Pete Thompson (33:04.21)
Mm-hmm.
Pete Thompson (33:23.731)
Mm-hmm.
Gavin McClurg (33:32.237)
meter climbs. We spend a lot less time, we go up faster than they can in Europe. so by that we also glide farther and faster. I mean, so we've got some pros that they don't have. And I think it's a combination of just putting it together that, I think these really big FAIs are there for the taking, but it's just a different approach or it's a different.
Pete Thompson (33:33.713)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (34:02.552)
I guess.
Pete Thompson (34:03.923)
Yeah, yeah, definitely seems different. I've never done any big flights in Europe, but I know what they're doing over there and it seems lovely. It just cruising some real long ridge here in the central Colorado Rockies. The ridges aren't that long. We do a lot of little crossings in the morning, but kind of a wild thing with the mountains here in the morning is that they're just on like you'll be you'll be catching. I mean, I've had eight meter climbs at 1030 in the morning.
Gavin McClurg (34:27.182)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (34:33.698)
That's a beautiful thing. Tell me about your mental, Farmer always talks about, after these big flights, eight hours in the air kind of thing, you land and you're in this kind of alien world. You feel so good and you touch the ground and you're, whoa, I can barely stand up. How tired are you? What does it take to kind of recharge? What does it take to...
Pete Thompson (34:34.279)
Like, so there's that.
Pete Thompson (34:55.997)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (35:04.216)
get ready mentally for these big flights. What's the head space you're trying to find?
Pete Thompson (35:11.963)
Yeah, it takes a lot. just the pure physical endurance and the mental endurance of nine, 10 hours, doing it by yourself. Gosh, that's a huge difference. mean, you to do a...
eight, nine hour flight with some friends, like maybe we'll do in Chelan, doing some triangles there, some open distance. And it's so great. It feels so casual, but being by yourself, I mean, there's a, you're mentally processing so much more and you just don't feel any support around you. I do feel the support of people cheering me on and all of that, but.
They're really exhausting. Through the course of those three big flights, I felt myself progressively get in better and better shape and my comfort level go up and up. On the first big one, gosh, I had all of these like forearm cramps, right?
right below my elbow on my forearm, just from like over gripping the bees. And on that flight, my harness wasn't adjusted properly. I actually had an abdominal cramp when I was making a low save. Like my whole stomach felt like someone like was clawing into me. It was really incredible. And then it was, you know, by the third one, I actually felt pretty good when I landed. Like I could have done another hour.
I think having your gear, your harness and everything just at the maximum level of dialed in and just having that mental space, I...
Pete Thompson (36:49.245)
doing the flights with the really, really big goals, it kind of feels like racing where you were so driven and you were so pulled by the goal in front of you that it doesn't seem like it takes that long. it just, like, if you told me to stay in the air for,
even two hours over one mountain, would just, I would get, I'd feel all the turbulence. I'd every little bump and the wind I'd say, oh, it's too windy. It's too turbulent. I'm getting thrown around here. But whenever you have this huge goal in front of you, it's like turbulence is just an obstacle between you and your goal. Just like racing, you know, you're just on that bar, just crushing through it. And whatever happens, it's just, you know, if you get low on some ridge, of course we want to stay safe and keep our margins. like,
that low surfing that ridge, you're just getting slowed down. it's just an obstacle and I'm just so driven to just overcome that, get the speed up, let's go, go, That it helps with the mental space. It's cause you're just, you're so hungry and you're just sitting around here in the winter.
dreaming about doing some huge flight and in this case, being able to do some big records, that drive stays with you. I feel like in my months that I'm not doing this, which are most of the months, it's like a dam that's just filling up with water and filling up with water and filling up with water and come July or August, I'm just so ready to go. We'll go to Chelan in July, end of July, or sorry, in the end of June.
and just get primed up and I come back here and I'm ready, man. Like, let's go. And then, though, like even on that day, like you've got to be in the right spot. Like I've had days where I don't go flying because I just don't get a good night's sleep. Like I was too excited maybe the night before and slept like shit and just said, it's not for me here. You know, but when you see the day.
Gavin McClurg (38:54.638)
You've had, so that's a long time flying, 21 years, we're pretty similar there. You had any accidents?
Pete Thompson (39:06.771)
I have, yeah, I have like a couple, two.
The two injuries I've had in the sport were somewhat self-inflicted. Like I crashed launching on my first year flying in Bozeman when like it was just 15 mile an hour, dead cross, steep slope, you know, 40 flights or 50 flights, whatever. you know, so I had that one and then one year after I got out of college, so like 15 years ago, I was doing, I was down in Arizona, I was towing and I was doing a ground.
spiral and I just there were some obstacles in the way I'm on a ground spiral pilot and I ended up just nicking the ground but hard enough to break a vertebrae in my back so I've had that I didn't have to have a surgery but it was a I almost did I felt really lucky to get out of that one and then the one in Montana I'd broken my tip fib outside of that
No, I've thrown my reserve once in live action in Colorado and that was probably seven years ago. And yeah.
Gavin McClurg (40:18.936)
So how do you, I mean that's a long stretch and flying in lots and lots of big air. How do you approach your own personal safety risk balance?
Pete Thompson (40:36.071)
Yeah, I...
I want to do flights that feel good. Like I don't want to go out and do something and fly around some crazy overdevelopment or in too much wind where I land and I feel like I really got away with something. You know, we have, it's not worth it to me. It doesn't leave a good taste in my stomach. And so I try and fly in really good, in good conditions. And I think probably
in action like not flying the absolute hottest glider I can in these Colorado flights and stepping that back a little bit for the passive safety is something that I do to help mitigate the risks. Carrying all this oxygen is something that I do to help mitigate the risk, just to stay sharp. But inevitably, there are always, I'd say on nearly any big flight that you do, there's some moments that feel a little bit hairy.
And you're just, you gotta be honest with yourself and know when to hold them and know when to fold them. But there's such a fine line there because if you backed out and flew out every time that you got low, probably none of those flights would have happened. it's great to have half of my life.
of being experienced paragliding to have that to lean on and to have a good objective lens about what's going on and not to let that ambition of wanting to do the flight like lead you to do something dumb or too risky. But there's a really fine balance there. What was it?
Pete Thompson (42:31.481)
It's an apocalypse now quote, the crazy AWOL general says, a snail walks along the edge of a razor. That's my dream. That's my nightmare. I might be butchering that, but yeah, there's a fine balance. Surely some of those flights, the biggest risk would have been like pushing it over some trees.
like in some foresty areas where you're looking at your glide out and it's looking a little bit not great if you don't get it. But I like to look at that with a conservative lens. So I'm not looking at my glide out thinking like, in best case scenario, I'll be able to glide out and try to be good and honest. yeah, these last two really big triangles are over a new line in.
Gavin McClurg (43:13.038)
Yeah, what's the worst case here? Go ahead and out.
Pete Thompson (43:22.355)
A nice thing about that line is that it's not big jagged mountains the entire way. You have like 40, 50 Ks of big mountains in the beginning. And then it's, it's a lot of forest. They're mountains, but it's like this high plateau area. There's more landing zones and it's a little bit warm and fuzzy feeling than just being over the jaggedness all day.
Gavin McClurg (43:39.009)
Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm. You said that there are times where you just wake up, it's a good day, but you don't really feel like you have it. Do you have a way to check in with that? I are there certain kind of red flags that you try to pay attention to, or is this just a gut feeling? I'm not feeling it today.
Pete Thompson (44:05.497)
Yeah, I would say that, you know, kind of measuring my sleep is a good one. And just trying to get a good night's sleep, or at least like try to get a good night's sleep two days before and like have the cumulative number on that.
Gavin McClurg (44:14.976)
Mm. Mm.
Pete Thompson (44:30.151)
I don't know. think I never turned down any good condition this year for flying. So I was always feeling pretty good. So it's not something I do that often, but like, I don't really drink, which I used to like have a couple beers, like pretty much every evening. And like that really messed with my sleep quality. And like, I used to like maybe wake up and be like, man, I think I...
Pete Thompson (44:56.369)
They had one too many beers last night. I'm just not going to go do it because it's just so demanding here. It's not like you're out flying over the flats. Like you just have to fly, feel tip top and yeah.
Gavin McClurg (44:59.288)
Mm.
Gavin McClurg (45:04.654)
Yeah, you gotta be tapped in. You're going for a big day. Do you any training outside of flying for flying? What I mean by that is, are you doing any?
reading, studying, going out for little short flights, doing little training flights to try to push up wind. you doing stuff outside? You were saying four comps a year, that's certainly training. We always have to view those as training because sometimes we do good and sometimes we suck. yeah, talk about that side of things. Obviously you put a lot of...
Pete Thompson (45:30.963)
Mm-hmm.
Pete Thompson (45:42.993)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (45:49.527)
time and effort into these lines? Thinking about them in the winter and planning them out and looking really closely at certain aspects and is this going to work? I know you put a lot of time into, four years into these big FAIs, but talk about that side of things.
Pete Thompson (46:03.005)
Mm-hmm.
Pete Thompson (46:07.101)
Sure. mean, since I was young, I've been a rock climber. I don't do it as like the biggest thing that I do now or the most main thing. But to short answer your question, I feel like I do a decent bit of cross training. Rock climbing. I used to practice highlining a decent bit. And like that was a really great one just for like your mental space.
It's definitely one of those spaces where you can be where you gotta slow your mind down even though it's telling you you're nuts. know, a of mountain biking, bit of strength training. So some of that, I know that I can't go out and fly an eight hour flight or a nine hour or 10 hour flight off the couch. Though I can fly pretty well off the couch like a lot of 20 year pilots can. So I definitely try and...
leading up to these flights to try and get out and warm up. It's great that the Chelan Comp is always kind of right before our season kicks in. So I usually come back from there. I usually go there feeling really unprepared and then come back from it feeling really good.
So like before going to Chelan this year, I did like a 190 kilometer triangle and there's a lot of headwind on the second wind leg of that. And I normally, if I didn't feel like I needed to train, I would have just gone down and landed, but I pushed for like eight hours and made it back in that one. And I remember going to Chelan and people said, wow, that was a really good flight.
And I looked at it and said, no, no, I was just training. Like I didn't even think of it as like a really good flight. Like, I mean, it was good, but. So yeah, being ready. Yeah, you can't be doing that fully off the couch for sure.
Gavin McClurg (48:04.352)
If my math is sorta right, I'm not very, I'm like you, I'm not great at math either, but half of your life has been dedicated pretty closely to the sky crack, as Cedar likes to call it. If you could rewind the clock, you've heard this one before, if you could rewind the clock to that Pete.
Pete Thompson (48:17.565)
Mm-hmm.
Gavin McClurg (48:25.388)
you know, five years before you moved to Colorado and you're just getting started, maybe you're 50 hour self, you're 50 hours in to that first year or second year. What would you tell that Pete?
Gavin McClurg (48:40.238)
And it doesn't have to be about paragliding, it could just be life, but either way, whenever you want.
Pete Thompson (48:45.713)
Yeah, mean, at 50 hours it would have been to slow down a little bit and to like make sure to get out and go flying.
with other people that are better than you or other people that are the same skill set as you. Cause I definitely would get out there a lot by myself. I've always been pretty independent in that respect. And yeah, to surround yourself with, with great pilots, which I was fortunate enough in my career to have some really good mentors. But I'd say at that point it would be, it would be that. then after that, I would say to, to
only fly because you want to when you want to. I used to feel like every summer that I'd spend in Colorado like I've got to do 100 flight or sorry 100 mile flight otherwise people are gonna forget who I am and I'm gonna lose my namesake or someone's gonna take this record and I kind of like that pressure a little bit but it definitely led me to to
push it on some days. Like I know we were speaking earlier about flying in these light wind days and the triangles and how nice that is. know, like 12 years ago, probably I.
up the Colorado open distance record and went like 245 kilometers, which to me was huge back then. I did it in four hours and 45 minutes. was 50k, 51 kilometer an hour average speed over mountains the absolute entire way. And whenever I told people the next day they had been hiking in the mountains that next day, they said, well, you were flying. They said, too, too windy in the mountains. Like, and I knew it and I knew it and I still went out there. And I think you
Pete Thompson (50:40.731)
relate. I think that you've been there where you're like, God, I am so driven for this and the solution is more wind and then calibrate it and then know.
Gavin McClurg (50:54.122)
I mean, my big win here, was a long time ago now, I geez, it was 2013, but I think my average speed, I have to go back and check again, but it was either 54 or 55K an hour, you know, for seven and a half hours. It was almost 400K. But I mean, the whole time was just, I mean, if I was at 18,000, it was fine. But when I was in the train, which thankfully was only twice really, I mean, it was ridiculous.
Pete Thompson (51:13.095)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (51:17.998)
There's no way I would even think about doing that now. Sometimes we get lucky for sure. That's speed that they're doing in Texas when there's no hazards. It's just flat. There's no mountains. There's no lee. We learn and get a little bit smarter.
Pete Thompson (51:19.346)
down.
Pete Thompson (51:25.764)
Yeah.
Pete Thompson (51:40.275)
Yeah.
Gavin McClurg (51:41.955)
Pete, awesome, man. Congratulations. It was just so cool to watch that from afar. Of course, we were all incredibly envious too, but congratulations on putting it together after so many years of dreaming about it and planning and scheming. And just to see it go down over and over and over was, man, I was channeling your stoke for sure. Everybody was around the world, but.
Congratulations and can't wait to see what more you do and I'm hoping I get to come join you next time. I'm gonna put Colorado on the map. Like I said, it's ridiculous that I live so close and I haven't even been out there.
Pete Thompson (52:24.347)
Yeah, thanks so much. Yeah, that was really a dream come true for me. I wanted to show what I can do and express that, but also express what is available here in the state. And after seeing all these big flights go down in Europe time and again, I'm just like, I want to...
show we can do here, man. I know that it's possible. mean, anyone, anyone at a comp after party in the last three, in the last three years has heard me say to them, you got to come, we can do 300, man. Let's go.
Gavin McClurg (52:56.686)
you
Yeah, and it was really inspiring. I we've definitely got it on the table here too. And it's just a matter of we've got to get out, we've got to do it, we've got to make it happen. So we've certainly got the terrain up here for big stuff like that too. So I think you shot us all in the arm with whole bunch of inspiration. That was great.
Pete Thompson (53:05.361)
Yeah, I know you do.
Pete Thompson (53:10.652)
Yeah, it's.
Pete Thompson (53:18.739)
I love it. mean, yeah, it's not just here. It's not just where I've been starting in Colorado. There's other sites and in the down in the San Juans and in Idaho and in Nevada. think that the really the more that we open our minds to the possibility that it is possible, like then all of a sudden we do do it. Like I never thought that 270 was possible.
until Galen did it. Like I convinced myself maybe I could beat Farmer's Old Record by like 3k. I was like maybe I could go 240 and then Galen did that flight and then within 24 hours I convinced myself last year I was like I can go 275. I know you know and it's just yeah it's so cool though it's it's so cool to play that game with ourselves and to inspire each other I really love it.
Gavin McClurg (53:59.032)
Yeah, and that's easy. That's sometimes all it takes. It's just the belief.
Gavin McClurg (54:09.698)
Thanks dude, was great seeing you, great talking to you, and thanks for the stoke, man.
