Topic Author's Original Post - Mar 29, 2013 - 01:34am PT
Dean Potter may have sparked the vision with the parachute, but Ueli Steck is taking it to the next level. Once Honnold can solo with a paraglider maybe the triple crown will go down with a single digit time??? Either way this is sick.
This was the dream way back in 1985, when John Bouchard was climbing and flying. However, now the gliders are solid, safe, very flyable, and small enough to really carry. The climbing knowledge base and the flying knowledge base are both really high now.
It's gonna be really interesting to see what "The Swiss Machine" can do. Very inspirational if you ask me. Spectacular things will be done.
He's doing it at a cutting edge, but many can do this at a more mello level.
Volbivouc and X-Alps is really, really cool also. More climbers need to fly. I'm surprised that the numbers of flyers in the US hasn't reached the numbers in Europe yet.
Do Europeans have more cajones? Or is it just that they have more lift served grassy mountains and take responsibility for their own actions?
Maybe they're less likely to get thrown in the slammer than in gringolandia. Is paragliding illegal like base jumping? Seems a lot easier to get into than base.
I have been trying to get a similar thing going with my own 5 pound paraglider for the last 3 years... but i have definitely NOT been sending (read low speed crashes on take off). Dave Turner HAS been sending - http://vimeo.com/user5961980
Paragliding enchainment went through a phase back in the nineties.
Bouchard came out to Bishop in 1986 when I was living there. We flew every day using different experimental designs that he had. I kept telling him to patent one design, and it ended up being the type now used by skydivers.
It was a lot of fun. I tried it on my BASE canopy and ended up going head over heals down a hundred feet of talus and came up with only a bunch of scrapes.
The thing that Dean dominates in BASE is distance and freefall time. He is built like Kevin Durant from the NBA, with a huge wingspan, and he can really milk out the distance. At the same time, everyone else seems to be into proxy flying.
CMac would probably know more about this than me. I'm pretty disconnected from the whole scene now. Too old.
Bouchard was the US pioneer of paragliding (called "parasailing" back then, before we knew that was the name for the tourist sport of being towed by boats). He supplied me and a team with some of the first paragliders in the US in 1986, and after a couple hours of pretty haphazard training (due to lack of time and non-ideal wind conditions) in Bishop, we climbed and flew a few peaks in Baffin Island.
Bouchard's first imported paragliders were simple 7-cell square gliders--actually they were much better designed for the kind of stuff Uli is now looking at. I saw the dream of climbing and flying (as the descent vehicle), and I pioneered and practiced "cliff-launches" with paragliders. I had several successful flights with the old 7-cells off cliffs in the southwest desert--the Moki dugway being my favourite launch. With those old gliders, with lower flying speed, I could start on the edge of a cliff, launch the glider with a firm tug and practiced timing on the controls (a little pull on front risers), take the step off the cliff edge, and fly.
I made a near-fatal mistake with the next generation of gliders, which had a higher flying speed (meaning they will stall at lower speeds), in an attempt to cliff launch at a site in Chamoinix. My glider stalled on my cliff launch, and I found myself free falling with the glider below me off a 2000' cliff. It then caught some wind, popped up and open above me but facing the cliff, and I slammed into the cliff, was knocked out. When I came to, alive only because the glider cords had hung up on little knobs on the cliff, I was able to climb off the side of the cliff into a gulley with a cracked ankle talus.
I tried to work with the manufacturers to build the ultimate descent vehicle--small, light, square shape glider with 7 or 8 larger cells, to pursue this dream, but by that time the paragliding community was looking for increased performance, and the gliders were getting bigger, with higher glide ratios, and higher stall speeds, heavier--but not suitable as a descent vehicle. Liability was a prime concern in the fledgling sport of paragliding back then.
Good to see this dream might come to light sometime in the future. It will take the combined wisdom of some bold climbers and some bold designers/manufacturers.
Here's some pics of one of my Moki Dugway flights:
Here was the second generation of paragliders available in the US (1988 or so)--larger, slightly higher performance (though glide ratios still not much better than 1:1), and completely unsuitable for cliff launching, which I had to learn the hard way...
(this is just a 'normal' flight at the Flagstaff craters)
Apr 5, 2013 - 07:54pm PT
Looking for old notes, couldn't find 'em, but I had made some modifications to my gear, and had sketched some design ideas for ultimate descent vehicle:
--glider clips onto climbing harness with minimal modifications (i.e., super light chest rig--attachment points between breast and collarbone each side).
--preference flying speed requirements over performance (lowest stall speed).
--Shape: relatively flat square design with larger cells (the elliptical tip paragliders are designed to reduce vortex drag--not really a concern with with cliff launching).
--Packs small and 2-3Kg max.
Like kiteboarding, one might have a "quiver" of kites, dependent on expected launch conditions.
The cliff launches I was doing were best in light (less than 5 knot) winds, but no-wind cliff launching was also an option with those old first generation parasails. I did a few in winds that were close to the max flying speed of the glider as well, but the flying speed range of the old ones were quite low compared to today's versions).
I always reckoned you could somehow design a glider with variable wind speed ranges (at the expense of some performance)--perhaps with a simple adjustment system of the foil shape of the wing.
Disclaimer: even back then, no one else was trying this kind of cliff launching, and most people legitimately thought me crazy to be pushing the sport that way, but the dozen or so extreme flights (in addition to a few hundred 'normal' paragliding and hanggliding flights) are still a highlight in my memories of seeking maximum intensity in my youth...
Pretty cool. I started taking paragliding lessons last summer. There's a much larger body of knowledge to learn and master than I imagined. I would almost compare it to learning to fly and getting a private pilot's license.
Supposedly the modern wings are a lot safer than they were even a few years ago. Wings are certified and fall into different classifications based on how they react to different input, canopy collapses, how they recover without input, etc. The lower classifications are much safer and forgiving to novice pilots than more advanced wings.
Wow, looks so cool. I know some guys who launch off of Sundance Mt. 30 miles away. they said they got extra gear, but kind of afraid I may like it too much.
A lot of amazing history and new steps forward. Thanks for posting the wild stories and great pictures John et. al!
I didn't realize how widely influential John Bouchard was in early paragliding here - weren't his wings `Feral'? He really made breakthroughs in multiple realms. I had a really fun afternoon doing RecomBeast with him in the 90s after he hadn't climbed for several years. He said he'd broken all his biners and slings testing gear! So he called up Rick Wilcox and bought a rope and a rack and he was so joyful he kept saying how much he realized he just loved climbing from being away from it. It was a real treat to share that fresh appreciation of nothing but the pure joy of climbing. Very pioneering in gear, business, accomplished in the Andes, Alps, Himalayas (Shivling: http://www.markrichey.com/who_we_are/mountaineering.cfm )
And Ueli Steck's visionary technical and endurance feats are surreal. It is great to live in a time when those ascents are being done in great style and when we can actually see Ueli in motion in such nicely produced videos. Even the filming must be extremely difficult and potentially dangerous.
I was mainly posting to give a nod to another group of pioneers in the early days of when paragliding met climbing, Jim and John Yates. My first paraglider was one of their Summit Magic wings. I don't think I would have ever flown but the personal care and passion in their workmanship and their own flying was really inspiring. It is nice to still see them at the Yates booth at the OR show.
Great stories from the early days. Always enjoyed the vision in your A5 ads in the mags. Nice pen drawings with big wall climbing and paragliders flying off the summits. Very cool. Very forward thinking.
I would take images of John Bouchard, Ken Baier, Fred Lawley, and others flying off of Little Black here in San Diego before I got into it, that was the early 90s. 1997 I finally could afford to do it and got my P3 and I continue to fly today. It's a great sport. Things are finally working out to do the things we always dreamed of doing. The equipment and knowledge today is superior.
New issue (April 2013) of Hang Gliding and Paragliding mag for USHPA has a great ad by Ozone inside the front cover for a mountain descent paragliding harness/backpack "The OZO" and a mountain glider "The Ozone XXLite" all together = 3.7 pounds! Amazing. Harness plus glider at 3.7 pounds and high quality/safe!!
Then there is an article called "Sierra Safari: A Paragliding Journey" by Gavin McClurg, with Jody MacDonald, Eric Reed, Nick Greece and Antoine Laurens flying Volbivouc from Horseshoe Meadows, just south of Mt. Whitney to all the way to Lakeview, Oregon in 18 days. Incredible adventure. It's happening now. Amazing.
When you're hanging from a parachute
The whistling wind might play your flute
So forget it
Lost traffic
Someone said you couldn't fly the plane
So I guess this journey's all in vain
So forget it
Lost traffic
We're on a lost plane
Should've taken the train
We're on a lost plane
So forget it
Flying high but your fuel is low
How far can a missing plane go
So forget it
Lost traffic
Tell you that you're flying radar
But it's that much safer to take that car
We're on a lost plane
I should've taken the train
We're on a lost plane
So forget it
We're on a lost plane
I should've taken the train
We're on a lost plane
So forget it
We're on a lost plane
I should've taken the train
We're on a lost plane
I should've taken the train
We're on a lost plane
I should've taken the train
We're on a lost plane
So forget it
So when you're hanging from a parachute
The whistling wind might play your flute
So forget it
Lost traffic
Tell you that you're flying radar
But it's that much safer to take that car
We're on a lost plane
I should've taken the train
We're on a lost plane
So forget it
We're on a lost plane
totally would have been worth it and potentially quite doable for my last 4 alpine objectives. could've done 4 goodies IAD rather than over 3. and think of the potential for cutting down on downhill exit hikes from the backcountry.
anyone here have experience with this/wanna show a noob how to fly/let me just watch your technique?
Fly the length of the Alps from Austria to the Mediterranean more or less. Hike, Fly, and climb. The first person to finish wins.
Pretty awesome competition over the years. Wish we could do something like this in the USA or Canada. We could. But only a few pilots could really do it. We need to step up our game in the US. Very inspirational race.
I started taking paragliding lessons last summer. There's a much larger body of knowledge to learn and master than I imagined. I would almost compare it to learning to fly and getting a private pilot's license.
Yes that is my experience right now and yes you are. I feel like I'm getting a new degree. The early pilots were nuts! But their experience allowed for the current design.
“I don’t have a death wish,” Steck wrote in 2010. “On the contrary, I’m hanging onto my life like never before.”
Steck died last April after suffering a fall on Nepal’s 25,791-foot Nuptse, where he was climbing alone in preparation for an Everest bid. We may never know what happened that day, but his posthumously published English-language biography, Ueli Steck: My Life in Climbing, offers revelations about the climber’s later years. One troubling takeaway: Steck’s relationship with risk had changed dramatically since 2008, and not for the better. At his darkest moment—which coincided with one of his most remarkable climbing achievements, in 2013—Steck makes clear that if he did not have a death wish, he also did not care if he lived.
My Life in Climbing isn’t a canon-worthy work of mountaineering literature so much as it is a bound collection of what feel more like journal entries. It first hit European shelves in 2016 as Der Nächste Schritt, or The Next Step; Mountaineers Books released the English translation in February 2018. Billi Bierling, assistant to the late Himalayan climbing historian Elizabeth Hawley, was just wrapping up the translation when she learned that Steck had died.
What the book lacks in overall narrative grace, however, it makes up for in the access its 224 pages give into the mind of one of the planet’s best mountaineers. We see Steck race up summits in order to be back at a mountain hut before the cake sells out. We see him team up with über-athlete Kilian Jornet for a leisurely ten-hour door-to-door ascent of the Eiger from the valley floor—a 10,000-plus-vertical-foot day. All the while, death swirls around him. On a 2014 climb in Tibet, two friends are swept away in avalanche on Shishapangma, just feet from where Steck is standing. “I felt like crying,” Steck writes rather flatly.
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