The Cloudbase Mayhem podcast is dedicated uniquely to Free Flight and your generosity makes it possible. These extra segments, Ask Me Anything Shows, and other bonus material is a little extra to thank you for your support. I’m tremendously honored to have a community of people who value what we do. Your support enables these conversations and I believe they go a long ways towards helping our community.
If you can’t support us financially that’s TOTALLY OK, we get it. We will never put any content behind a paywall. Just email me and I’ll set you up with a lifetime account, no questions.
Thank you,
Gavin McClurg
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On iPhone: Open the Podcasts app, select Library. Tap Edit in the upper right corner, and then select “Add a Podcast by URL.” Enter the RSS feed URL above, then select Subscribe. You will be asked for your username and password for the Cloudbase Mayhem. You will now see it in your library.
On Android just click this link: https://subscribeonandroid.com/www.cloudbasemayhem.com/feed/ask_me_anything/
Veteran PWC pilot, long-time paragliding instructor, Red Bull X-Alps competitor and 2025 US National Champion Mitch Riley explains how to climb more efficiently during a weather day of the Red Rocks Wide Open this September 2025. He covers ground from the basics to the expert and everything in between. Looking to fly faster or farther? Tune in.
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French pilot and serious adventurer Antoine Girard has laid down some of the boldest lines on Earth, and he’s been doing it for a long time. Antoine competed in the Red Bull X-Alps four times, starting in 2013 where he found himself on the podium (3rd), again in 2015 (4th), 2017 (badly injured), and 2019 (retired due to continued trouble with the injury sustained in 2017). He’s pulled off some of the most extreme expeditions in paragliding and mountaineering in Pakistan on 6 different trips, flew from west to east across the Andes, was nearly killed in Eritrea (by people, not flying), flew the length of the south island of New Zealand, and is currently traversing the United States from the Mexico border to the Northern Canadian Rockies.
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In this bonus episode your host Gavin McClurg sits down with Red Bull X-Alps legend, Red Bull athlete and world adventurer Paul Gushlbauer. Paul and Gavin became friends during preparations for the 2015 Red Bull X-Alps (Gavin’s first of 4) and have had some pretty remarkable adventures together, including during the filming of North of Known, when Gavin and Dave Turner crossed the Alaska Range by foot and paraglider in 2016 (Paul was one of the film crew’s bush pilots).
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The bonus episode on leaving the nest with Calef was such a big hit we decided to do another show, call it the “201” version, or the next step. At this stage pilots are a couple hundred hours in. They are chasing cross country, getting more comfortable with bumpy air, they’ve hopefully done an SIV and are actively trying to decode the invisible. We take a deep dive into finding the special sauce of flying XC.
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Right after Calef and I recorded the #201 Podcast he reached out to say he thought he’d missed an opportunity to talk about instruction, namely that very fragile time in a pilot’s career when they first get their license and are sent off on their own to figure it out. So here it is, a veritable primer on leaving the nest.
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I’m doing a 5 part YouTube series of deep dives on certain chapters of my new book “Advanced Paragliding” with Ari Delashmutt (“Ari in the Air”). This third one is on Safety and Progression. Hope you enjoy!
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I’m doing a 5 part YouTube series of deep dives on certain chapters of my new book “Advanced Paragliding” with Ari Delashmutt (“Ari in the Air”). This second one is on the dark art of Gliding. Hope you enjoy!
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I’m doing a 5 part YouTube series of deep dives on certain chapters of my new book “Advanced Paragliding” with Ari Delashmutt. This first one is on Thermalling. Hope you enjoy!
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st of the “Soaring the Sky Podcast” dedicated to sailplane flying, but he reached out to me recently to talk all things flying to get a paraglider’s perspective on doing what they do but with a very different aircraft. We had a blast and the conversation went into some really fun directions, including the Red Bull X-Alps, Alaska and a few scary moments I’ve had over the years.
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Logan Walters (creator of USAHIKEANDFLY.com) has been sitting down with pilots who have good stories to tell in a YouTube series we are going to release as bonus content for our subscribers. His latest is with Mitch Riley. Mitch raced in the 2019 Red Bull X-Alps, represented the US in the Worlds in Macedonia in 2019, is an Ozone team pilot, and is an excellent advanced paragliding instructor and very passionate pilot. Enjoy this fun talk!
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