Cross Country Magazine Issue 145 Preview

Januar y - February 2013 International Free Flying Magazine

145

SILVER SCREEN

Photos from filmmakers Pakistan / UK / India Seiko Fukuoka

... a big step for Mentor 2 pilots a massive leap for everyone else:

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JAN - FEB 2013

Contents

FEATURES

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Pilotage Pat Dower looks at how to continue your training to make you a better pilot

Homecoming Tom de Dorlodot, Yassen Savov and Simon Elias spend three weeks in the Karakoram

Magic Hills ‘The best flying week of my life.’ Hugh Miller and Jérôme Maupoint in England

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COVER Marvin Ogger inside a glacier tunnel, Alaska. Photo: Nicolas Chibac THIS PAGE Open skies in England.

Photo: Jérôme Maupoint

Sikkim This tiny state in India is embracing paragliding. We got to go and have a look

Different Take ‘She turns heads just by lighting a cigarette.’ Felix Wolk talks to new record holder Seiko Fukuoka

Salar de Uyuni Cycling and sailing around the world Olivier Peyre has a brainwave on Bolivia’s Altiplano

Final Glide Remembering Richard Westgate

LAUNCH - Editorial 6 - Gallery 8 - In The Core 14 - BASE - News 16 - Mads’ World 26 - Naked Pilot 28 - What’s On 30 - IQ - Insight 32 - Icaristics 34 - Meteorology 36 - Clouds 38 - XC Files 40 - My Line 42 - REVIEWS - Ozone XXLite 76 - Gin Yeti Tandem 80 CONTENTS Cross Country 145

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LAUNCH In the core since 1988 Editor: Ed Ewing Associate editor, designer: Marcus King Subeditor: Charlie King Columnists: Bruce Goldsmith, Honza Rejmanek and Mads Syndergaard Advertising: Verity Sowden Subscriptions: Verity Sowden & Celine Rodriguez Accounts: Carol Harrison Creative consultant: Greg Gillam Tea-making: Hugh Miller Cross Country International Ltd 5 St George’s Place Brighton BN1 4GA, UK

On the coast in Denmark.

Photo: Louis Garnier

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early two years ago I was lucky enough to be on a beach in Brazil.

From my phone bill’s point of view however, I was unlucky enough to be ringing India from my Europe-based mobile in an attempt to interview US pilots Brad Sander and Eric Reed. They’d flown into trouble in north east India after flying in without the 100% correct paperwork. The hoo-ha that followed for them involved a couple of weeks in ‘jail’ (a friendly military barracks, free to come and go, but with passports confiscated) and a lot of apologising as the chorus of disapproval rose around their ears. Were they simply adventurers as they claimed, or were they spies in disguise? The whole lot was thrown out in court after numerous apologies and much face-saving for all parties. I mention this because I never would have thought I’d end up following in their footsteps, which is what happened in November when Cross Country was invited to the Sikkim Paragliding Festival.

I found myself, as is often the case in India, in a place of seemingly unending potential. New people, new places, new sites, new adventures –it was everything I love about this sport rolled into one. It was invigorating in so many ways, but especially in meeting so many people and pilots who

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Cross Country 145 LAUNCH

carry such a lot of passion for flying, and who are developing it in places and ways we never imagined possible.

There’s a lot of that in this issue: the impossible made possible. We have filmmakers who have travelled the globe in search of the perfect shot that will bring the feeling of free flight back home. We have Hugh and Jérôme, friends for the longest time, who made a week-long roadtrip in England and came back with a hymn to the sport, the people and the places. Then there is Seiko Fukuoka whose approach to flying explains exactly why she is now a world record holder. And there is Tom de Dorlodot and Ramón Morillas who spent the season in Pakistan –they reveal exactly what the cutting edge of paragliding means and where it is. Pat Dower meanwhile tackles training, in an article that is sure to make many of us think, and Marcus King tries out the Ozone XXLight, the single-skin paraglider many thought it would be impossible to make, let alone fly. It’s a brilliant issue, made up of contributions from many good people.

Thanks to all of them – enjoy the magazine, and Happy New Year.

Ed Ewing editor@xcmag.com

Tel: +44 (0) 1273 256 090 Fax: +44 (0) 1273 784 976 Editorial: editor@xcmag.com News: news@xcmag.com Advertising: advertising@xcmag.com Customer Service: office@xcmag.com

CONTRIBUTORS

Cross Country relies on contributions from pilots around the world. Please send us your news, story ideas and photographs to editor@xcmag.com. We’d love to see them.

SUPPORTING US

Cross Country is a reader-supported international publication and is available through subscription and shops. We publish six issues a year, in print and digital. Thanks for helping us make this happen.

Visit www.xcmag.com for details.

ONLINE

Search ‘XCmag’ to find us online

THE LAW

Cross Country (ISSN No: 03.1080, USPS No: 024-612) is published bi-monthly by Cross Country International and distributed in the USA by by SPP, 17B S Middlesex Ave, Monroe NJ 08831. Periodicals postage paid at New Brunswick, NJ. POSTMASTER: send address changes to Cross Country, 17B S Middlesex Ave, Monroe NJ 08831. Global copyright laws apply.

The opinions in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Cross Country.

PRINT AND PAPER

Cross Country is printed on paper sourced from sustainable forests managed to strict environmental, social and economic standards (ISO14001). We use ISO compliant vegetable-based soya inks which are better for the environment and make the paper easier to recycle. Printed by Williams Press, UK.

Hike & Fly Pleasure range Mountain Intense range Glider weight

19 50–75 kg 70–95 kg 2.45 kg

23 65–95 kg 90–115 kg 2.85 kg

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CROSS COUNTRY 145 GALLERY

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In-Flight MOVIES

veryone’s a movie-maker these days, but only a few do it well. These guys get it spot on. These pages showcase three films either already made, or in production. First, you must have seen this one: Light Line by Jean-Baptiste Chandelier. The photos were shot by pro ski photographer Louis Garnier and and feature Jean-Baptiste in the air, with Adrien Nisan and Jean-Baptiste Merendet filming. The site is Loekken, Denmark. Louis’s favourite photo is the one of touchdown on the lighthouse. “It was sunset, around 10pm, and JB managed to touch the top. I used my flash ... and I got the most amazing shot!”

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Cross Country 145 PILOTAGE

Do the

Right Thing Pat Dower considers how safety training and skills clinics can improve your flying

D

istilled to its basics, paragliding could hardly be simpler: two main control lines, one to go right and one to go left. Despite that elegant simplicity, if there was nothing else to it, it wouldn’t be half as interesting and fun as it is. We all take different routes during our flying career. Many get into thermal flying and XC; some get serious about acro; some are happy with gentle soaring on the dunes; hike-and-fly amongst the big peaks of the world; competitions; vol-biv. Whatever and wherever you fly, having a good skill level is central in helping to keep us safe and enhancing our enjoyment.

At some stage we could find ourselves in a situation where we need to draw upon skills of a considerably higher level than we emerged from school with. How should we set about making sure those skills will be there when we need them? In this article we will consider how pilots develop the art of glider control. We will learn from some of the world’s best – and there may be a few surprises.

Attitudes to training

Analogies may be misleading but let’s consider parallels between driver and pilot training. When most people pass their driving test, that is the end of formal learning. No more training, no more instruction, no more tests. Just as with driving, we all learn ‘on the job’ and there is probably a lot of truth in the saying that the learning really starts after you get your licence.

The approaches that pilots take vary

enormously. For some, informal learning is everything. Flying and ground handling lots, talking, thinking, reading and watching.

Other pilots use a more organised approach involving analysis of their strengths and weaknesses and planning a strategy to fill in the gaps which could include further formal training. A mighty fine example of this is Paragliding World Cup winner and current World Champion Charles Cazaux.

Charles does SIV over water at least twice a year. Not that he needs a lot of supervision but he does it under the watchful eye of one of the world’s top instructors, Fabien Blanco of Flyeo. At a recent training session in Annecy, Charles was having an end-ofseason workout. Watching his taming of a two-liner was hugely impressive. At the same training session was French team pilot Lucas Bernardin. On this occasion, rather than using his XC glider, he was throwing shapes on his acro wing and having a ball. There is little doubt about the benefit that his acro skills bring to his all-round flying.

In XC racing competitions, hugely sad, high profile incidents have led to serious upheaval and the dust still hasn’t settled.

A quite shocking level of ignorance about the latest wing-control techniques has been apparent even at the highest level, including 2011’s World Championships. The Paraglider Manufacturers’ Association (PMA) has been tasked by CIVL (the body that oversees international competitions) to come up with a set of recommendations to improve safety in competitions. A significant element of the draft proposals is for pilots to do more SIV training and be better prepared for what their wings could throw at them.

PILOTAGE Cross Country 145

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Cross Country 145 PAKISTAN

Homecomin

In July 2012 Tom de Dorlodot and Ram贸n Morillas combined trekking, climbing and flying to complete a stunning 300km three-week expedition through the Karakoram. Words by Tom de Dorlodot, photos by both

PAKISTAN Cross Country 145

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The

Magic Hills

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Cross Country 145 UK

SUMMER MAGIC Parlick, Lancashire

Sometimes, the UK delivers exactly what you need. Hugh Miller (words) and Jérôme Maupoint (pictures) head north

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his is a low. Eating a few bananas just aren’t going to do it this time round. My serotonin levels are seriously down. I guess I’d been properly starved over summer. I was hooked early by a mad sunny March, then it rained pretty much ever since, for three months solid. When the flying eventually came in August, it came strong and hard, like an overdose.

Now, my nerves are jangled, my brain tired from so many chemicals pumping around, my mind scrambled from over-stimulation. Six am starts, three-hour drives to the best sites, long walk-ups, five-hour flights, retrieves that get us back to the van just before the fish and chip shop shuts…

Write about what you know, they say, well, this is what I know: I’m coming down from one of the best week’s flying of my life.

God’s Own Country

“It’s God’s own country,” says Dean Crosby of the Dales and Pennines, where he has lived, flown and taught all his life. The neighbouring Lake District might be more picturesque but it’s often teeming with tourists. The Dales, even on the sunniest day, has a more spacious feel, and the fields glow green. There’s a sense of medieval history to the patchwork of tiny walled fields and cobblestoned village streets. The people are earthy, too.

Hitching back one day, a dry-stone waller stops to give me a lift. He’s only going to the village, but offers to run me up to the top of the hill in his seriously under-powered one-litre Ford Fiesta.

“You’re very kind,” I say.

“You’re very right,” he replies, smiling, dry as you like.

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Cross Country 145 HIGH LIFE

Treasures of the snow

Tucked between Bhutan, Tibet and Nepal this tiny state is embracing paragliding. Ed Ewing discovers Sikkim

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t was 4am. Jim Orava was still asleep next to me, wrapped in two sleeping bags and afloat on a very fancy looking Thermarest. He looked warm. My sleeping bag, a North Fake from China, complete with broken zip, had done the job, but I’ve had better nights in the mountains.

I climbed outside into the cold. In front of me lay the 8,586m Kanchengjunga massif, the third highest mountain in the world. It was black and white in the pre-dawn light.

I shuffled up the slope. Our campsite – a cook’s tent plus four A-frame sleeping tents and assorted tents for porters – was starting to stir.

Parvin, a photographer from India Today was up, his black woollen balaclava pulled down against the cold as it had been for the whole trek. At a small rise above the camp I looked east through silhouetted trees to a sea of cloud. The sun was not yet up. I fumbled with my GoPro, trying to organise a timelapse of sunrise over Kanchenjunga. The morning before I had seen Jim prop his in a tree and coolly smoke a bidi. My effort ended up balanced on a small piece of yak dung.

Suddenly the top of Kanchenjunga lit up.

Sunrise. The pink light slowly spread down the mountain, touching the other tops around it, before spreading out and turning yellow. Dawn in the Himalaya.

I was in Sikkim for the inaugural Sikkim Paragliding Festival. The Paragliding Association of India had organised it, a four day celebration limited to 60 pilots from across India and Nepal, with a handful from overseas. Sikkim is one of India’s tiniest states, but surely one of its most rugged. It has Tibet to its north, Nepal to its west and Bhutan to its east. To get here you must drive up from the Indian plains in West Bengal, along mountain roads that snake along the forested hillsides above tumbling mountain rivers. The 650,000 people in the state speak Nepali or one of a dozen local languages and are mainly Buddhists.

The country only integrated with India in 1974; before that it was an independent kingdom like Bhutan is today. Because of its position between China and India visitors are fairly tightly controlled and foreigners need a visa extension called an Inner Line Permit (easy to get) while trekking is only allowed with guides and more permits.

The local government however, sees the benefit of tourism, and has gone to some lengths to establish various forms of adventure tourism in the state. The latest is paragliding in Gangtok, the state capital. Gangtok clings to a hillside about five hours drive from the nearest local airport in West Bengal. Its main road, Mahatma Gandhi Marg, is that rarest of things in India: pedestrianised. It is

tPHOKTEY DARA, 3,300M Kanchenjunga, ‘Five treasures of the snow’, is the backdrop to this early morning fly down from a high viewpoint on the border with Nepal.

Photo: Parvin Singh pSNAPSHOTS Chillies, some of the hottest in India are found in Sikkim; A porter on the India/ Nepal border; The flag of Sikkim. Photos: Ed Ewing

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Different Take A From Acro World Cup to PWC, and now a new world record. Felix Wölk meets Seiko Fukuoka

few years ago Seiko Fukuoka dropped out of the international acro scene. For years she’d been a fixture, carving her own path. She was a breath of fresh air who somehow defied the image of the cool, death-defying extreme sports pilot who likes to fly and party hard while covered in sponsored functional wear.

Instead, Seiko always had her own individual style in the middle of the hip acro community.

With a penchant for evening dresses and handbags she would turn every other head in the room just by lighting a cigarette.

Nowadays, Seiko hasn’t changed much. When she walks onto the international paragliding stage today she still brings with her Japanese elegance and French flair in equal measure. What has changed a lot though is Seiko’s way of paragliding.

For her, flying now is not about tumbling an acro wing down to the float in less than three minutes anymore. Instead, she is an XC pilot, travelling the world to fly comps and chase distance.

In November she set a new women’s world record for open distance, flying 338km from Quixadá in north east Brazil. How, I wondered, did the 35-year-old Queen of Acro become an XC Champion?

In the beginning

SEIKO Photographed in Quixadá, Brazil by Felix Wölk shortly after her world record flight.

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Seiko’s career began 12 years ago when her father started paragliding. He booked a course close to Mount Fuji and took Seiko with him. Seiko didn’t actually want to go. Paragliding looked boring to her, XC flying even more so. For Seiko, carrying the glider up the training hill was more torture

Cross Country 145 PROFILE

than fun. She remembers that she seriously asked the school for a taxi.

None of the classic things worked to trigger her enthusiasm: neither the experience of leaving the ground for the first time, nor the task of dealing with the invisible power of a thermal. It just wasn’t adventurous enough for her.

Seiko needed something more, and that more came straight from the Spanish heart of acro: a film from the SAT Team featuring Raul and Felix Rodriguez made it to Japan. The most innovative pilots of their day, their style struck a bullseye with Seiko instantly. From that day on, paragliding meant acro-flying for Seiko.

Although she was still flying under supervision in a Japanese school, she started practicing straightaway. Several times the radio screamed: “Rescue! Rescue!” Seiko remembers, amused. She gave her instructors a hard time, she says. “They were angry non stop,” she remembers, “but they didn’t see I had control.”

After earning her licence, Seiko continued flying acro, and started collecting bans from official flying sites like other people collect stamps. It became, she says, a “complicated” situation.

Acro life

The flying scene in Japan soon became too small for Seiko. The first chance she could, she joined the international acro circus. This happened when the SAT team crossed her life again, performing at a show in Asagiri, close to Mount Fuji.

Spontaneously, the SAT Team invited Seiko to join them in their travels across the globe flying acro.

PROFILE Cross Country 145

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