Since the big day Sun Valley has been testing my patience. And the town has been winning. I’d been riding my mountain bike way, way too much. Throwing acro hucks in the morning and evenings. Both very fun activities. Yeah, the town is great too; not even that busy for a bitchin’ ski town. Luckily most of the yahoos prefer to engulf Jackson Hole (Tetons and Yellowstone) and leave us alone.
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Gavin McClurg goes farther than anyone has off a mountain, breaking the world record in a wild 240 mile flight that takes 7 1/2 hours from Bald Mountain, Sun Valley deep into Montana near Helena, Montana. Here is the account on how it went down.
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After my last flight that ended up in a big OD (overdevelopment) Sun Valley has been flushed with serious wind. Beautiful for long mountain bike rides, swimming in the river, enjoying this insanely beautiful town, but totally shit for flying. The tandem boys have been jumping off the hill every morning and sneaking in some super nice evening flights, but going for distance in the daytime hasn’t been possible. I got to toss the new Niviuk F-Gravity around which was RAD, but this is XC season and I moved here first and foremost for the flying potential and going deep, so a little acro was nice- but I needed more.
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We had two super windy days after the Riederalp/Interlaken flight so I trained down to Verbier to pick up my bags, spent a night with Mike and Stu and celebrated with their graduating group of new pilots, who were all pretty thrilled with their new-found sky skills. Then the next day I carried on to Geneva to meet with Patrick Roser, the Swiss Niviuk dealer who had a couple very special presents for me- the new F-Gravity 2 acro wing, and the Peak 3 X-Alps (ie light weight version). I tried to control myself from just ripping open the bags right at the train station.
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I’m going to hell for my carbon footprint, of that I am sure. After our two days in Bassano and more rain in the forecast Bruce and I broke 8 straight nights of culinary extraordinaire at the Abbazia and headed for the Dolomites. Figured we might as well take some walks if we couldn’t fly.
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When Bruce and I got to launch on Monday at Bassano we were encouraged to have Nicole Fedele and Damiano Zanocco on launch. A good sign that we were in the right place on this most difficult of springs in Europe for finding decent weather. A lot more cloud was showing early, but things looked like they would work.
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Arrived Paris two weeks ago with Nate Scales, my Sun Valley flying buddy with huge plans of massive triangles in the Alps. Spring flying in Europe is spicy, strong and when you get the days completely RAD, but the days don’t come often. Patience is the key. My flying partner Bruce Marks arrived in the middle of April, got three back to back days of 8 hours+ in the air in the Wallis area (Fiesch, Riederalp, Zermatt, etc.) but since then it’s been…challenging.
Been thinking about getting a flying blog going for some time now. I’m sitting in Fiesch, Switzerland with my good friend and flying partner slash fellow addict Bruce Marks. It’s raining non-stop, it’s nearly June, the mountains are getting buckets of snow…and we can’t fly. So I can dream about things like our trip last fall across the Sierra Mountains. Hope you enjoy.