#211 – Jake Holland and the New Way Up

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.

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Episode 183- A walk (and fly) down memory lane with Honza Rejmanek

We’re continuing the theme of radical stories from radical people this week with Honza Rejmanek, who competed in 5 Red Bull X-Alps from 2007 to 2015. Honza begins the storytelling in 2007 with what has to the hardest start in the history of the race after eating some questionable food the night before the event even started, puking (and worse) all night, spending the night on the Dachstein because he could barely move, and then the long fight back. We learn about his podium in 2009 shared with Red Bull X-Alps legends Chrigel Maurer and Alex Hofer…

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Into the Lightness- Review of the Niviuk Skin 2 P and the Roamer 2

After 30+ years of testing and innovation I imagine the climbing community is getting pretty giddy. I recently received Niviuk’s new Skin 2 P single surface wing. At a measly 1.9 kg I figured it was going to feel and fly pretty weird but when I learned from Fabien Blanco at Flyeo during a recent podcast that pilots were doing 100k triangles on these certified wings I was pretty excited to give it a try.

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Defining Adventure with Will Gadd across the Canadian Rockies

Vol Bivouac (fly camp) style adventures seem to be all the recent rage in this rather off-route, deeply addicting fringe sport that a friend recently pointed out quite eloquently as “ridiculous”. Flying plastic and strings hundreds of miles without an engine, everything needed to survive on your back. People keep going farther and farther.

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Freefall

We’re talking about all of this and George says, “hey do you want to go skydiving?”. He had purchased a parachute on ebay this winter. It arrived in the mail packed and he got his buddy Jake to take him up to 10,000 feet in his plane and he jumped out and free fell 6,000 feet. He’d never done any skydiving before. It went well so he and his son packed it that night with the help of YouTube and he jumped again the next day. That also went well. Are you getting an idea of who George is?

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