…with Bill to discuss among other things throwing a rescue, what it takes to fly big lines, modern glider development, the history of the sport, the concept of “bringing it”, and a whole lot more. This episode is PACKED with incredible information. Whether you are a novice pilot getting a taste for your first XC, or an expert who flies vol biv or world cups, there is a lot to be learned here. Enjoy.
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Will Gadd and I just completed what we believe to be the longest connected track log that has ever been flown. About 650 kilometers across the Canadian Rockies to the US border. One rule: all forward progress was made in the air. Most of the line had never been flown. All up it took us 35 days to complete, with two long bouts of bad weather that shut us down completely for more than a week at a time. A great deal of media will be out shortly documenting the journey, that is not what this essay is all about. I’m still too frazzled, thrilled, shocked, and exhausted to put into words what the expedition meant. I haven’t even begun to look back and process the risks, the rewards, and ultimately what comes down to a lesson in humility.
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I was very tempted to call this post “Balls Deep” in honor of Tony Lang, who started this rather genital based thread after watching my Spot page and noticing that the flight track did in fact have quite a phallic outline. Of course that was not exactly what I set out to do. Coming off 7 straight days of flying some incredibly awesome tasks (including a 204 km send into the Palouse region of Eastern Washington, a place I’ve always wanted to see), but hardly crushing the US Nationals in Chelan I was in a bit of a funk.
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The French Magazine Parapente just published a great feature about the record flight of 240 miles last summer from Bald Mountain, to Helena, Montana, shattering the North American Foot launch record on the Niviuk Peak 3. If you read French, let me know if it’s any good!
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The Cloudbase Collective has just released the Niviuk version of 500 Miles to Nowhere. We’ve been working hard on the extended edit of 500 for the Film Festival Circuit in 2014 and thought we’d share some more footage from this incredible project with our friends at Niviuk. We hope you enjoy!
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A little shared knowledge of storm avoidance if you’re wandering around by sea or air, as featured on the Red Bull Adventure Channel. Check it out!
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The January 2014 issue of United States Paragliding and Hangliding magazine just got delivered! Yet another one of Jody MacDonald’s amazing shots gets the cover, from back in 2010 in Mozambique, and there’s a fun feature article by yours truly in the mag on my little addiction that is human flight. Hope you enjoy!
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Flying his Niviuk Peak3, Gavin McClurg battled his way across Idaho from Mt Baldy, 387km into Montana, committing to some of the deepest, remote solo flying and turbulent lee-side conditions, to comprehensively break the US foot launch distance record.
McClurg had landed just short of the Idaho state record the day before, and had only had a few hours’ sleep that night. It came in a week where the cross-country ace clocked up almost 1,000km in the air.
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My mom writes a Christmas letter every year and always asks my sister and I to write a paragraph of what we did. For the last 13 years mine has been a discourse on wherever the boat had gone that year. Caribbean, South Pacific, Melanesia, Australasia, Africa, etc. Needless to say, it hasn’t been very dull. As I started writing this years recap I fully expected a somewhat more toned-down account.
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