Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2021 i Cross Country

Can you imagine being a thousand feet above an 8,000m mountain on a paraglider? It makes my heart beat faster just thinking about it. Knowing that if you get it wrong you will be swept over the back towards a jungle of peaks that stretch far into the Tibetan Plateau. Knowing the seriousness of the situation and being pilots we can perhaps understand why Antoine Girard said he “thought of nothing”, that it was “a perfect moment”, and that he was “just flying” when he reached 8,407m in the Karakoram in July. When things get serious in flying we tend to focus on “just flying” – not enjoying it, not shouting with joy, not taking in the view. We just fly. You might be a 10-hour pilot or a thousand-hour…

The Paragliding World Championships will definitely go ahead in October/November as planned, according to organisers. They have confirmed ‘elite event’ status for the competition with the regional and national government, which means pilots and those involved in the teams will be allowed to travel to Argentina without the need to quarantine for two weeks. The World Championships in Argentina is happening after the original championships, which were due to be held in France in May, were cancelled because of the pandemic. Guessing that the world would have started to open up by October, the event team at the flying site of Loma Bola in Argentina made a bid to hold the Worlds – which was accepted. Organiser Matias Fortini told us more. Matias, you and your team in Argentina have…

On the morning of 31 May, a short two-and-a-half weeks before this year’s Red Bull X-Alps Prologue, I had my first serious crash in over 15 years of flying. I was on the second day of a solo bivvy deep in the mountains of Idaho and was loaded down with tent, cold flying gear, oxygen, first aid kit, food, etc. I don’t know if being overweight on my glider contributed to the accident, but on the second day of the trip I launched in what seemed like benign conditions and was on the ground less than four minutes later after losing my wing with less than 30 metres of height and deploying my reserve right before I hit the ground. The sound my body made on impact was terrifying and…

While much of the Alps has seen some pretty average weather over summer, pilots have been living it large in Spain. Alex Loyarte, who flies under the flag of Mexico while living in Spain, logged four 300km flights – 389km, 322km, 327km and 341km – in the south of the country over the space of five weeks in June and July. He launched from Arroyomolinos de Léon and Guadalcanal, both north of Seville, and flew west to east. Flying an Ozone Zeno he logged 2,225km in July alone. XContest.org…

It’s no secret that the Red Bull X-Alps is the toughest adventure race in the world. I lived it first hand and I can confirm it! In this column I will not speak about how to do well or how to win, because I have absolutely no idea how you can do that. Rather I’ll focus on my own experience: and it was rocky, full of ups and downs. Here’s what not to do if you compete in your very first Red Bull X-Alps (based on my own mistakes, obviously)! 1. First, try not to injure yourself seriously the day you are selected for the race. Because when you break seven bones in your body with less than eight months to go your preparation is seriously more complicated. There are…

“Even two days of good flying weather here would have made it a memorable competition, but to have seven is a blessing,” said Seb Ospina about the Paragliding World Cup Superfinal in Disentis, Switzerland, 8-18 August. Seven tasks – 53.9km, 83.9km. 85.1km, 87km, 97km, 62.3km and 52.1km – over 10 days, with the best competition pilots on the planet, ended with competition veteran Luc Armant winning overall. The Ozone designer flew his new, blue, Submarine harness throughout and won three tasks – almost unprecedented. That put him on the top step of the podium, with Aaron Durogati, who had led throughout, pushed into second at the last. Luc loved his harness so much he even wore it to the prize-giving. In the Women’s competition Seiko dominated from the start, also…

The sixth incarnation of the Rush, Ozone’s high end EN-B wing, was in hot demand. So I only had a short time to get to know it. Luckily that included a six-hour flight through the southern Alps using it for what it was designed for – a 100km out-and-return cross-country flight; a flight that gave me a good feel for the wing and what it is capable of. Design and construction The Rush 6 is billed as the baby Delta. It uses the same hybrid two/three-line layout – a first in the B category – with a two-line configuration on the tips and three in the centre of the wing where more support is needed. The new line configuration obviously reduces the total line consumption, but it brings other benefits…

France’s free-flight federation, the FFVL, has done a deal with Spot, the satellite tracking service, to provide all pilots on its official training programmes with a Spot 4 satellite tracker for free. They have also recommended that all French pilots fly with a Spot and have negotiated a discount for Spot services for FFVL members. “We have bulk-bought 75 Spot 4s for use by the young pilots at Font Romeu and the pilots in Pole France,” said Julien Garcia, sport technical advisor at the FFVL. “Like all of us, we were a bit worried about the potential of having a problem during an official training session, or a competition.” There is a sports school at Font Romeu in the Pyrenees for 16-18-year-old students. Students do standard studies, but also get…

Glen Lockwood “beat the odds” by becoming the latest pilot to successfully hike-and-fly from the summit of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. He made his flight on Friday 13 August. At 5,895m Africa’s highest mountain offers one of the longest top-to-bottom flights in the world – landing is at Moshi at 900m. The climb-and-fly must be organised through an agency and Glen’s trip was organised through Altezza Tours. “I originally intended to go on a tour with Paraglide Kilimanjaro, but they had no departures in the narrow time band that I had available, so I organised support from Altezza Travel,” Glen said. “Altezza was great, though without the benefit of having experienced pilots to confer with, so I was on my own for making flight decisions.” Having climbed the mountain the standard…

There is that classic internet meme about what the public think you do, what your friends think you do and how that compares with what you actually do, and it always comes to mind when I try and explain my day job to anyone who asks. I’m a paramedic in London, Europe’s biggest city. I see and treat sick and hurt people on a daily basis. Accidents happen of course, and London has knife crime and gang culture more prevalent in some areas than others, but I typically get to see a lot more of the sick than the hurt. Heart attacks and strokes are what I see most of; then medical emergencies relating to diabetes, epilepsy or allergies. I also deal with cardiac arrests – that’s both unexpected events…

“OUT GETS JILL.IN THE TIME IT TAKES HER TO ROLL AND SMOKE A CIGARETTE WE HAVE LEARNED SHE KNOWS EVERYONE IN THE SHIRE” High. Blue. Alone. Mount Barney, the charcoaled moonscape mapped out below. The range dips in the distance to the hazy plains of New South Wales. Two-thousand metres high on a perfect day sandwiched between a week of work and yet another lockdown. Yes, we’re still having them, Australia is so retro. We woke this morning to the news of a couple of cases in a high-school. Friday morning on launch looked like a comp day as everyone jostled to get one last gulp of sky-juice before the inevitable guillotine. “It’s gonna be good, I know it!” Forty or so thirsty pilots tick off the milk run towards…

In June this year a team of seven paraglider pilots headed to Pakistan for an eight-week expedition with multiple objectives. Their plan, to spend six weeks acclimatising and flying in the Hunza region from the relatively well-known site of Eagle’s Nest at 2,900m in Karimabad, before heading southeast to the Baltoro glacier and the area known as Concordia. Concordia is the name for the confluence of the mighty Baltoro glacier and the Godwin-Austen glacier in the heart of the Karakoram, and is surrounded by 8,000m mountains, including K2 (8,611m), Broad Peak (8,047m) and the Gasherbrum group (6,955m-8,068m). It is here that Antoine Girard flew at 8,157m above Broad Peak in 2016, becoming the first pilot to climb above 8,000m. He returned with Damien Lacaze in 2018 when they completed a…

I have been going to Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico since I was ten years old. Not every year. Not even every five years but often enough to keep it close. My first trip in the 1960s was on an old DC3 that landed on a sandy strip just south of town. I trailered a plywood skiff there in the seventies and camped on Isla Danzante. In the eighties and nineties I flew down with my dad in his Cherokee Lance to fish. We bought our first piece of property in the 2000s and built a vacation home in the 2010s. The first time I flew my powered paraglider in Loreto was 2005. Flying across the three-kilometre channel to Isla Coronado opened up a whole new realm of flying possibilities…

Ian Currer is best known as the author of the classic textbook Touching Cloudbase. In print for over 25 years it follows the British (BHPA) curriculum for learning to fly a paraglider. Ian ran a paragliding school for many years, works for the BHPA, and has worked internationally helping other nations develop their teaching programmes. Now he has moved into digital learning, turning Touching Cloudbase into an online structured programme of pilot development. This is a massive task and was helped by the fact Ian was on furlough during the pandemic, giving him plenty of time to develop the project. “Online learning courses are being adopted by many sports and associations,” he explains in his introduction, “from the royal Yachting Association to Mountain Leadership training. The United States Hang Gliding…