Zen of Hike and Fly

by KINGA MASZTALERZ

She's flown across the Dolomites and spent a month bivy flying in the Himalayas. Next stop: the Redbull X-Alps! Kinga checks in with USHPA Pilot on what it's all about.

There is an old Chinese story about a wise peasant. His son was the apple of his eye, and he owned a fine horse that everyone admired. One day the horse escaped from his grounds and disappeared. The villagers came to him one by one and said, “You are such an unlucky man. It is such bad luck that your horse escaped.” The peasant responded, “Maybe it’s bad; maybe it’s good. Who knows?” The next day the stallion returned, followed by 12 wild horses. When neighbors visited the peasant again, offering congratulations on his good luck, he replied, “Maybe it’s good; maybe it’s bad. Who knows?” The next day, while his son was attempting to train one of the wild horses, he fell down and broke his leg. Once more everyone came with their condolences: “It’s terrible—such bad luck.” Again, he replied, “Maybe it’s bad; maybe it’s good. Who knows?”

Maybe it’s bad; maybe it’s good. Who knows?

A few days passed. As the peasant’s poor son limped around the village, the emperor’s army entered the village and announced that a war was starting and they were enrolling all the young men of the village. However, they left the peasant’s son, since he had a broken leg. Everyone was extremely jealous of the peasant. They talked about his sheer good luck, while the old man just muttered: “Maybe it’s good; maybe it’s bad. Who knows? “ In the modern world, we can control so many factors of everyday life that if anything adversely affects our plans, we easily get anxious or upset. The weather, sickness, a broken-down car, other people’s behavior—so many factors are beyond our control. Since we can do nothing about them, we need to stay calm and centered, as the old Chinese peasant advised, even though that’s easier said than done. Last season, I had a number of opportunities to practice this calm Zen approach to events I couldn’t control. This doesn’t mean I was sitting on my hands waiting for fortune to turn around.

What I could control was my attitude, effort, and actions, and this made a world of a difference. I realized then that controlling these behaviors could actually turn bad luck into some beautiful adventures. I planned to participate in three hike-and-fly competitions in Europe in the summer of 2018. The first, Bornes To Fly, is a 2.5-day race in May, starting and finishing in Talloires next to Annecy Lake. A closed-circuit route is announced only 30 minutes before the start, so if you aren’t local and don’t know the area by heart, there is no time to prepare. Of course, that makes the race easier for locals and harder for tourists. At this race, I made a couple of mistakes—the worst being landing low and on the wrong side of the lake on a first day, forcing me to complete a long hike to goal. This had nothing to do with luck; it was the result of my “complete lack of imagination,” as my awesome supporter Sebastien stated. I finished 20th out of 46 and was praised as a first woman, which wasn’t too hard to achieve, since I was the only woman participating. I learned that I should try to “use” other pilots more, which is difficult for someone who usually flies alone and is not used to following others. However, the race was great fun and a nice warm-up before two longer events: St Hil AirTour in June and Dolomiti Superfly at the end of August.

St Hil AirTour, a weeklong race with start and finish in Saint Hilaire, is in a spot famous for the huge costume festival, Coupe Icare, in September. For me, it’s a very special place filled with memories, as I lived there for a few months and flew my first +100km from there. I couldn’t wait to go back and race in a fun hike-and-fly event. Every year, I spend the whole European summer living in an old camper van. It slowly and surely rolled through the Alps without any problems…until the day before the start of St Hil AirTour. That’s, unfortunately, when a clutch in my van broke, and, even though it required a cheap, easy repair, I didn’t have enough time to participate in a race. Bad luck. We spent a few days searching for a new clutch and following AirTour on live tracking. I was very upset not to be there. On the other side it was raining nonstop for four or five days, so my wonderful team of Chris and Sébastien started joking that the good old van chose a perfect time to break down. When we finally managed to repair the van, we celebrated with a bottle of champagne and an immediate check of the weather. Since it looked like a big day in South Tiroso, we spontaneously went 550 km, all the way from Maurienne in France to Antholz in Italy. And the very next day, I flew a 215km triangle from Grente and, even more important, helped a pilot who threw his reserve and went down in high alpine terrain. Maybe it was good after all. The following weeks passed with our driving through the Alps, taking beautiful flights, and enjoying some spontaneous vol-bivouacs. Then, Dolomiti Superfly time approached. A few days before the start of the race, I lost my phone, after which DHL lost a phone I had bought online. Finally my friend Carmelo lent me his old phone at the very last moment, so I could participate in the race.

Consequently, I spent the last night before the race downloading all the musthave apps. In the morning, I woke up with a fever, sore throat and runny nose. Talk about bad luck! I decided to participate anyway; I just couldn’t give up the idea of racing in the Dolomites. If you have ever seen these stunning mountains, you surely understand. Even though I knew I couldn’t compete as I would like to, I felt I could still have fun in the mountains and test my body’s limits. The first day, because of the strong wind from the north, most of the competitors chose to hike all the way from Levico to Canazei on the road, around the mountains.

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A few of us decided to climb up and fly over. I’m always keen (sometimes too keen) to try to fly in borderline conditions, so, obviously, I was in the second group. We completed four hours of hiking, where we were rewarded with a beautiful high-alpine takeoff and turbulent flying with a strong headwind. It was all as expected, but at some point, I got really confused in the air (maybe because of my cold and fever?) and followed another pilot who chose a bad line. We both ended up in a little bowl-valley with only one good, obvious landing field. As we were heading towards landing, I imagined a nice obvious landing approach, but at the very last minute, the other pilot turned right downwind and straight into me!