The Red Bulletin UK 03/22

UK EDITION MARCH 2022, £3.50 SUBSCRIBE: getredbulletin.com

BEYOND THE ORDINARY

LEAPING OFF How motocross ace Tom Pagès BASE-jumped into a new life TALLEST MOUNTAIN The true calling of Everest’s first all-black climbing team KING OF COOL Spine-chilling snow sports photography

by Grant Gunderson

It’s ! t a c r e Thund s ta r r e p u s c i s u The m i ng n r a e l d n a s o n l i f e, l o s s e l f to love him

Editor’s letter

A leap into the unknown. That’s one way to describe innovation.

It’s something Tom Pagès (page 42) has done his whole career – innovating death-defying freestyle motocross tricks no one else had ever dreamed of. But his latest – a historic moto-BASE jump – took the concept to another level, launching him into a sport as a mere rookie, but landing him in a world of new horizons.

Cover star Thundercat (page 30) is one of the most innovative musicians around today, but as the bass maestro details in our candid interview, tragedy forced him to seek new ways to rediscover his groove. For climber Phil Henderson (page 68), scaling Everest is not a new challenge; however, as expedition leader of the first all-Black climbing team to face up to the task, what he hopes to achieve this time is greater than any mountain.

Snow sports photographer Grant Gunderson (page 54) shows that whatever the future for his own craft, the art of capturing the greatest action moments will always remain the domain of those who reach further. Then there’s Lewis Pugh (page 24), who’s hoping to wake up the world to climate change by swimming our coldest seas; Orla Gartland (page 26), the singer-songwriter who turned her back on a successful YouTube music career to rediscover her creative freedom; and Jesse Larios (page 28), a man who ran across America dressed as a bear, because... well, why not?

Enjoy the issue.

CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE

WILL LAVIN

With almost two decades of experience writing for the likes of Rolling Stone, XXL and NME, the music journalist has sat down with everyone from Sting to The Jacksons.

And yet he describes talking to Thundercat for our cover story as “without doubt, one of my all-time favourite interviews. His colourful character shines even in the face of adversity”. Page 30

TRISTAN KENNEDY

An adventure journalist based in the Italian Dolomites, Kennedy was more than familiar with the work of Grant Gunderson when he interviewed him for this issue. “He’s a legend in ski photography,” says the writer whose work has appeared in VICE, The Sunday Times and Wired. “But I was struck by how much he obviously still enjoys his job, more than 20 years on.” Page 54

Laying king: photographer Wolfgang Zac shoots Thundercat for our cover story Page 30

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THE RED BULLETIN

WOLFGANG ZAC (COVER), CLAUDIA DELPIN

INNOVATE TO SURVIVE

CONTENTS March 2022

54

Shining light: the spectacular ski photography of Grant Gunderson

8 Gallery: Dakar Rally winner

Sam Sunderland rides underwater (kind of) in Dubai; skating on empty in Latvia; playing for time in Utah; paragliders flock to Switzerland

15 Dancehall of fame: Jamaican star

Sean Paul selects four tunes with game-changing riddims

16 Lunark: the foldable living space

that feels like a home from home – even when you’re on the Moon

18 Come outside: the podcast that

GRANT GUNDERSON

says, “Let’s talk about sex… and its relationship with nature” 20 Get the picture: how the pioneers

of information graphics changed our world for the better 22 Splitting images: Ugur Gallenkus,

the artist highlighting societal inequalities through collage

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24 L ewis Pugh

77 Life’s a crag: sport climbing on

26 O rla Gartland

82 Giant steps: the best bike pedals

Cold facts from the polar swimmer Making connections with her music

28 Bearsun

Get suit. Wear suit. Walk

30 T hundercat

With basslines as funky as his style choices, everyone wants a piece of Stephen Lee Bruner right now

42 Tom Pagès

How France’s king of freestyle motocross nailed the stunt of his life

54 G rant Gunderson

A masterclass in mountain sports photography from the US legend

the Greek island of Kalymnos

84 Players gonna play: the enduring

appeal of video games

85 Trigger happy: Halo gets Nerfed

– in a good way

87 Clean-up crew: setting sail with

ocean activist Emily Penn 88 Beam me up: bike lights with brains 90 Going the distance: all the gear

you need for your next ski tour

92 Ride, crash, repeat: practice makes

perfect for MTB ace Jaxson Riddle

94 Essential dates for your calendar 98 Outdoors wisdom from Semi-Rad

68 Phil Henderson

Meet the veteran adventurer guiding young Black climbers to new heights 07

DUBAI, UAE

Riding with a full tank British rider Sam Sunderland’s preparations for this year’s Dakar Rally reached a whole new level.

The 2017 winner was given the keys to his adopted home city, Dubai, and took the chance to race to the top of the world’s tallest building, the 828m Burj Khalifa, via many other local landmarks. “It was challenging,” says the project’s photographer, Naim Chidiac, of shooting in the Dubai Aquarium at The Dubai Mall. “The light was very low, the divers could only communicate via hand signals, and the fish… well, they didn’t respond to direction.”

Scan the QR code to watch Dakar ace Sam Sunderland’s spectacular ride to the top of Burj Khalifa in January this year

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NAIM CHIDIAC

DAVYDD CHONG

RIGA, LATVIA

Street dreams It’s the stuff of fantasies for a skater: endless asphalt, ready to ride. Fittingly, this image of Arturs Bogdanovich skating a deserted city street at sunrise is a semi-finalist in the ‘Playground by WhiteWall’ category of Red Bull Illume 2021. “There were many challenging climbs,” says lensman Volodya Voronin, “but the [rooftop] view and unique shooting angle were worth it.” volodyavoronin.com

UTAH, USA

Melting point

VOLODYA VORONIN/RED BULL ILLUME, BOB PLUMB/RED BULL ILLUME

DAVYDD CHONG

In the wilds of Utah in spring, patches of melting snow can be found futilely clinging to arid rock. So, when looking to create an image highlighting the climate crisis, local pro snowboarder Griffin Siebert and photographer Bob Plumb knew just where to go. As well as provoking thought, this shot won a semi-final place in the ‘Innovation by EyeEm’ category of Red Bull Illume. bobplumbphotography.com

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DISENTIS, SWITZERLAND

If the world of paragliding had rush hours like those experienced on terra firma, this is what they might look like. Much more attractive than an earthbound gridlock, we think you’d agree.

This uplifting image – another semi-finalist in Red Bull Illume’s ‘Playground by WhiteWall’ category – was captured by Andreas Busslinger at the start of the 2021 Paragliding World Cup Superfinal last August. “Many people ask me if it is not dangerous to fly with so many paragliders in the same thermal,” admits the Swiss photographer. “It is demanding indeed, and often stressful… I’m constantly busy looking in all directions to avoid the risk of collision.” andreasbusslinger.ch

ANDREAS BUSSLINGER/RED BULL ILLUME DAVYDD CHONG

Flight attendance

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A R T I FICIAL D I S -

W22

photo by Theo Acworth

O R D E R

SL ASHSNOW.COM

SEAN PAUL

Riddim and dues The Jamaican hitmaker on the dancehall cuts that shaped the genre and his own career

CHARLOTTE RUTHERFORD

WILL LAVIN

Dancehall music first emerged from Jamaica in the late 1970s, but it was in the late ’80s/early ’90s that this subgenre of reggae really took off, as digital production transformed its sound with faster rhythms and a strong focus on instrumentals or ‘riddims’. One of its most successful exponents is singer/ songwriter/producer Sean Paul Ryan Francis Henriques, better known as Sean Paul, who broke through in 2002 with his Grammy-winning second album Dutty Rock. The 49-year-old Jamaican has popularised the dancehall sound with his innovative style, eye-catching music videos, and collaborations with the likes of Beyoncé, Sia and Nicki Minaj. Here, he shares four dancehall tracks that showed him the way. Sean Paul’s latest single, Dynamite, featuring Sia, is out now; allseanpaul.com

Little Twitch

Buju Banton

Louie Culture

Beenie Man

Respect Due (1987)

Bogle (1992)

Ganga Lee (1994)

Old Dog (1996)

“Respect Due came out a few years before the golden era of dancehall. The riddim is more of a one-drop reggae style, with a heavy bassline and crazy phrases over it. It highlights the importance of respect and manners, and being honourable, which was a big thing when I was in high school.

I’ve always been a respectful person, and when I first heard this song I knew I was on the right path in life.”

“Dance moves are a big part of dancehall culture and this was the first time I heard a song someone made about a dance.

It’s inspired by a guy called ‘Bogle’ [aka Gerald Levy], who created this strange and crazy dance [moving the body in a wave-like motion and the arms up and down] that’s influenced our genre massively. The first time I saw it, I was like, ‘What is everybody doing?’ The next thing I knew, it exploded.”

“This was quite unique, because at the time dancehall tracks were mostly about partying, and it was a conscious song on a party riddim. Louie Culture was talking about wanting to be free from anything that tied you down. As kids, we didn’t know exactly what a ‘ganga lee’ [rebel/freedom fighter] was, but we understood the message: it’s about being your own person, forging your own path.

It’s a very powerful track.”

“Riddim sections in dancehall are what really get me going, and this one is prolific. It’s a really fun record that laughs at those who take issue with men having a lot of ladies: ‘Old dog like we, we haffi have dem inna twos and threes.’

I remember being at a dance once when this song was played and the three selectors got down on all fours and started walking like a dog.

It was a good lickle vibe.”

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Living space Architects Sebastian Aristotelis and Karl-Johan Sørensen have taken cosy Nordic hygge culture and applied it to a foldable, off-world habitat

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What will life look like on the Moon? This is a question that architects Sebastian Aristotelis and Karl-Johan Sørensen have spent the past few years attempting to answer. As co-founders of Copenhagen-based space architecture company SAGA, the pair have developed and built Lunark, a foldable habitat that enables humans not only to survive on the Moon’s surface but to thrive.

The 1,700kg ‘Moon habitat’ expands from a compact 2.9m3 to 17.2m3 and can withstand temperatures as low as -45°C and wind speeds of up to 88kph.

Its origami-inspired design allows for maximum living space when erected, yet it retracts to a size small enough to easily transport. To put their creation to the test, last September Aristotelis and Sørensen took

THE RED BULLETIN

LOU BOYD

LUNARK

it on a three-month unassisted expedition to one of Earth’s harshest landscapes – Northern Greenland. “We wanted to make the most realistic simulation mission possible,” Aristotelis says.

“Greenland offered extreme cold and isolation, as well as similar lighting to the surface of the Moon.”

When considering how to design their lunar habitat to support astronauts psychologically as well as protect them physically, the team looked for inspiration closer to home. “There are design elements from Nordic countries that work in space,” says Aristotelis. “Their winter season is brutal – it’s dark and everyone stays inside – so Nordic cultures have found ways to make it comfortable.”

Taking elements of hygge – the Danish notion of creating cosiness to benefit wellbeing – the team added a circadian lighting system to the habitat, which imitates Earth’s natural daylight. “You wake with a sunrise, have a normal day of light, then go to bed at sunset, which massively helps your mental state and cognitive function,” explains Aristotelis.

“We found that we could trigger natural sleep hormones by lowering blue light and light intensity towards the evening, exactly like nature does for us on Earth.”

Lunark won’t be heading into space just yet; Aristotelis says the Greenland expedition demonstrated that the habitat needs more home comforts added before it’s ready to go off-world. “We’re changing a lot of things,” he says.

“We’re planning to create other senses like the smells and sounds of Earth, along with improved lighting. I hope we can synchronise them all so that the simulated sunrise inside Lunark smells like a sunrise. We can even create the feeling of a thunderstorm.” saga.dk

SAGA

Lunark in Greenland: one day, all collapsible egg-shaped mobile homes will look like this

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.”

Come to the dark side - thrudark.com

Adventure specialist and now podcaster Laura Borichevsky is asking the outdoors community to get down and dirty It’s physical and usually a lot of fun. Sometimes you get a bit dirty, but it always feels completely natural. Are we talking about a day of outdoors adventuring, or something a little smuttier? Sex Outside, a podcast from American adventure broadcaster Laura Borichevsky, argues that it 18

THE RED BULLETIN

LOU BOYD

The birds and the bees

doesn’t matter, insisting that the connection between sex and the great outdoors is not only obvious but also incredibly important, and that we should all start talking about it.

Featuring a different expert guest each episode, the bi-weekly podcast aims to normalise conversations about sexuality, gender and love, all through the lens of nature and the outdoors, with a mix of diverse perspectives.

Sex Outside has delved into a variety of topics, from the physical fundamentals of getting hot and heavy in the wilderness to abstract musings on the intersection between sex and the natural world; it has featured introductions to naturism and polyamory, an investigation into why

JANETTE CASOLARY @JANETTECASOLARY

SEX OUTSIDE

people are attracted to mermaids, advice on buying environmentally friendly contraception, and even pointers on the hygiene considerations of sex in a river.

“Sex is literally all around us outside, from pollen and fungi to the mating behaviour of animals,” says Borichevsky (pictured). “We all see it as a part of the natural world, but we don’t give ourselves the same freedoms with our own bodies.”

The former host of the Women on the Road podcast, Borichevsky, now 33, spent part her early twenties working in sexual-health advocacy for young adults, before switching careers to work in adventure media. It was these two experiences that inspired her to create a sex education podcast that could not only educate but also change the discourse in the outdoors industry itself.

“There are so many ways that sex and the outdoors go together, but the way sex permeates the outdoor industry can honestly be pretty toxic, and that hasn’t been addressed yet,” she says. “It’s not just a lack of information. With many individuals, their sexuality is not purely heterosexual, or they just don’t feel like they have a standard body shape and they don’t feel represented by the industry. Sex education isn’t the whole answer, but starting the conversation will make a big difference.”

Sex Outside has now grown out of Borichevsky’s recording pod and into a wide online community, with thousands of devoted followers across social media.

“We’re not going to be for everyone, but that’s not a bad thing,” she says. “The more comfortable people get with openly talking about sex, the easier it will become to have the important conversations.

A lot of us find solace in the outdoors in a very primal way, so why not start there?” sexoutside.org

RVX WITH SWIFTLO C K 2 .0

MIKKEL BANG

EDO LUMALENS GOLD ION ©2021 Marchon Eyewear Inc.

INFORMATION GRAPHIC VISIONARIES

Off the charts GRAPHIC VISIONARIES/DAVID RUMSEY MAP COLLECTION, INFORMATION GRAPHIC VISIONARIES

LOU BOYD

Take a deep dive into the history of infographics – it might change the way you view the humble PowerPoint pie chart for ever

Top: Florence Nightingale’s Diagram Representing the Mortality in the Hospitals at Scutari and Kulali (1859); above: Emma Willard’s Picture of Nations or Perspective Sketch of the Course of Empire (1836)

Data visualisation. It’s a scary term, and one you’d probably claim not to know much about.

But the truth is, you likely experience it every day.

From sharing funny online infographics to checking our fitness trackers or using the Uber app, human brains understand information quicker and more concisely when it’s neatly visualised.

Yet few of us appreciate the history or importance of this field of communication. San Francisco-based author and data storyteller RJ Andrews is aiming to rectify this with a series of books that chronicle 20

the epic story of data visualisation, focusing on three visionaries who changed the way we present information.

“The thing about data storytelling is that charts, maps and diagrams help us understand invisible things in a very visible way,” says Andrews. “They physicalise things that aren’t physical and make data real.”

Published by Andrews’ own company, Info We Trust, the Information Graphic Visionaries series examines the life and works of French scientist Étienne-Jules Marey, American feminist educator and

map maker Emma Willard, and British social reformer and statistician Florence Nightingale – all 19th-century pioneers who used data storytelling to revolutionise the world in some way.

The volume on Nightingale, written by Andrews himself, dispels myths around the famous statistician’s life and shares why her contribution to the subject was so important to her goal of transforming the nursing profession in the UK. “Nightingale has one of the largest – and some say most complete – records of any historic figure,” explains THE RED BULLETIN

In The Temple of Time (1846), Willard maps out history – including rulers, laws and major events – in the same way that a conventional map shows geographical information. “It is as scientific and intelligible to represent time by space as it is to represent space by space,” she told readers

Figurative Map of the Successive Losses in Men of the French Army in the Russian Campaign 1812–1813 (1869)

by French civil engineer Charles Joseph Minard. “Its brutal eloquence… seems to defy the pen of the historian,” proclaimed data graphics advocate Étienne-Jules Marey THE RED BULLETIN

Andrews of an iconic heroine whose nursing work during the Crimean War is more commonly discussed than her efforts to abolish British prostitution laws, improve the country’s health system for all classes, and increase a female presence in the workforce.

“Information graphics in Nightingale’s London were used as weapons of war, slung back and forth,” explains Andrews. “I was able to put together a history across several years, mapping out her correspondence. When a [propaganda] pamphlet would come out, Nightingale

would respond to it with a chart, to show everyone that her information was correct.”

By sharing the ways these key players changed the world for the better, Andrews’ books hint at ways people today can use data storytelling to shape a better future. “These people were committed to this idea of bettering life not just for the elite but for the masses, too,” says Andrews. “If we can make invisible inequality visible, and understand it through data storytelling, then we can make life more prosperous, healthy and enjoyable for everybody.” infowetrust.com 21

Picture yourself in the position of someone less fortunate. This artist’s harrowing work will help you do that – and perhaps help them, too On a September morning in 2015, Istanbul-based visual artist Ugur Gallenkus woke to see a harrowing image on the news. That day’s coverage of the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis centred on a photo of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old boy who’d drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. Alan’s body washed up on a beach near Bodrum, Turkey, after the boat in which he and his family were fleeing capsized en route to the Greek island of Kos. For the Turkish artist, it was impossible to observe the tragedy of that image and not 22

THE RED BULLETIN

LOU BOYD

Alternate realities

YASIN AKGUL, GMB AKASH

UGUR GALLENKUS

take action. Gallenkus found a stock photo of a child playing with a bucket and spade on a beach, replaced its subject with the image of Alan’s prone body, and posted the collage online in the hope that it would rouse more people to act on the ongoing emergency. “It was the most important thing I could do,” he says. “I used visual art to draw attention to their problems.”

Six years later, 31-year-old Gallenkus has created close to a hundred collages in the same way, blending stock images of everyday life in more developed countries with photos of those struggling in areas blighted by war, hunger and conflict. His aim: to highlight the widening divide between the privileged and the oppressed. “We don’t understand the problems we see in the news from other parts of the world, and what those people are going through, especially if we live in a developed country,” says Gallenkus. “One of my collages [pictured below] shows children who work as labourers with a monthly income of a few dollars.

They only eat one piece of bread for lunch. On the opposite side is an obese kid eating a big burger.

This is how I remind people of our world’s great inequalities, in a way we can empathise with.”

Gallenkus’ work might seem bleak, but he believes art has a key role in getting the world communicating emotionally on matters as important as this.

“Visual art is the master of languages,” he says. “It is easy to understand, and you don’t need to know another [tongue].”

Gallenkus hopes to specifically draw attention to children’s rights; last November saw the release of Parallel Universes of Children, a collection of his collages, for World Children’s Day. “I aim for people living in developed countries to see these problems and realise the value of the beautiful lives they have,” he says. “To create a collective social action so that the lives of others can become better.” ugurgallenkus.com

Go anywhere, do everything.

The all-new Roll Top. The pack that has your back, whatever the conditions.

Lewis Pugh

Polar opposition The distance swimmer recently made a daunting 12-day crossing of Greenland’s Ilulissat Icefjord. But far scarier, he says, is the impact of climate change on these regions Words TOM WARD

Photography KELVIN TRAUTMAN

At 52 years old, Lewis Pugh admits that nothing quite compares to his first swim. Born in Plymouth to Navy parents, he moved to Cape Town at the age of 10; from his school, he had a view across the sea to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. In 1987 – five years after Mandela had been moved to nearby Pollsmoor Prison – a 17-year-old Pugh swam the 8km from the island to the mainland. It was an epiphany.

“I’ve been swimming for 35 years, but nothing has quite replicated the sheer joy of that first swim from Robben,” he explains. “The feeling of putting your feet down on the sand… I immediately knew this was something I enjoyed.”

For Pugh, the essence of the elation he felt was in the difficulty of the swim; what he refers to as the “beauty in the struggle”. He’s been subjecting himself to that struggle ever since: in 2006, Pugh became the first person to have completed a long-distance swim in each of the world’s oceans, and seven years later he was inducted into the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame.

It was in 2005 that Pugh had taken his swimming up a notch and begun braving the freezing waters of the Arctic and the Antarctic. He did this to draw attention to the effects

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of climate change on these fragile landscapes. In 2013, he was appointed the first UN Patron of the Oceans.

Then, in September last year, just weeks before of his appearance at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow – where he called for 30 per cent of the world’s oceans to be declared Marine Protected Areas by 2030 – Pugh completed one of his most difficult journeys yet. Clad only in Speedos, googles and a swim cap, he braved 7.8km of 0-3°C water and icebergs for 12 days to become the first person to complete a multiday swim in the polar regions. For Pugh, it was a daunting mission with a simple message: “No ice, no life.” the red bulletin: You’ve completed many swims in the polar regions. How does one prepare for that? lewis pugh: Cold-water swimming is the only sport where the more experience you have, the harder it gets; when you’ve been really, really cold, you never quite thaw out. It remains deep in your memory, so with every subsequent swim you have to forget about that experience first and be absolutely present. Each one of these swims is exponentially harder than the last. They’re so painful. It’s pure survival.

How do you stay safe in the water?

We measure the temperature and work out how long I’m going to swim for. When I was young, I just used to dive in and go for it. That doesn’t work any more. You need to lower yourself in slowly. This tension occurs. You think to yourself, “Shit, I just want to get going,” but you need to control your breathing

and the cold shock response. After about a minute, I start swimming.

Your mind is telling you, “Get out, get out,” but you just keep on going.

How do you warm up again after the swim?

I swallow a temperature capsule beforehand to measure my core temperature. Then, as soon as I’ve done the necessary 10-15 minutes of swimming, I get out and immediately dry off and climb into two sleeping bags with three hot-water bottles and a hot chocolate. It takes about 30 minutes for my temperature to come up, and about two hours to recover before the second swim.

Why keep doing it?

I’ve spent my whole working life in the ocean. I remember swimming in the Indian Ocean a few years ago – you’d swim over a coral reef and look down at sharks and rays, vibrant coral and tropical fish. I’ve been back recently and the reefs are dead and the fish are gone. Around 25 per cent of life in the ocean lives in coral reefs. During my lifetime, we’ve lost almost 70 per cent of the world’s wildlife. Similarly, when I did my first swim in the Arctic in 2005 the water temperature was 3°C. I recently went back to the same place and it was 10°C. At COP26, I was urging everyone to take extreme ownership. By which I mean taking 100-per-cent responsibility for the situation we now find ourselves in. There’s something fundamentally wrong about leaving the planet to future generations when it’s unsustainable.

Knowing that, do you still have hope for the future?

Without hope, you slide into apathy.

Hope is essential, but we have to earn it. We have to take action every single day. What makes this so difficult is that we aren’t trying to fix one country or industry, but we need a complete change of 196 nations. The greatest threat to the environment is the belief that someone else will fix this problem. lewispugh.com

THE RED BULLETIN

“Hope is essential, but we have to earn it”

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Orla Gartland

Access all areas The Irish singer-songwriter on the lessons that early success as a teenage YouTuber taught her about creative freedom Words LOU BOYD

Photography KARINA BARBERIS

Orla Gartland has never allowed anyone else to decide how she makes music. The Dublin-born singersongwriter found her audience at the age of 14, when she began uploading videos to YouTube. With just her voice, her guitar and her endearing personality, Gartland soon gained a burgeoning fanbase; she now has 271,000 subscribers.

Conquering the internet might have been enough for a less ambitious artist, but for Gartland it was just the start. After finishing school, she packed her bags and relocated to London, intent on releasing her songs into the real world. With more than 24 million views on her YouTube channel, Gartland could have approached record labels in the capital, but instead she set up her Secret Demo Club on the online membership platform Patreon, where fans could buy her music directly for a monthly subscription fee. This set-up provided both an income and complete creative control. “It’s funny, because Patreon is a lot less niche now, but it was basically unheard of when I started,” she says.

“It’s cool because it allows people to keep ownership of their work.”

After releasing two EPs – 2019’s Why Am I Like This? and 2020’s Freckle Season – in August last year Gartland finally brought out her debut album, Woman on the Internet, on her own record label, New Friends. Now, midway through a UK tour and receiving rave reviews for the album, the 26-year-old tells The

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Red Bulletin about the moment she realised she had to leave YouTube behind, and why she has never been interested in being a typical recording artist. the red bulletin: Why did you decide to upload your music to YouTube when you were 14? orla gartland: I was too young to play any open mics! They’re all in pubs in Dublin, so YouTube became the place for me to share my music.

It was so exciting, because it felt like the complete antidote to the X Factor culture of the time. At that point, YouTube was one big showand-tell. You could be like, “Hello, here’s my song,” and other people were like, “Here’s my poem, here’s my drawing.” There was something innocent about it.

How has your music changed since then?

I made a real effort on the new album to include my band. Making Freckle Season I was so guarded, but this time I’ve loved giving space to my amazing bass player and drummer to own their parts of the songs. These were written to be played live as a band.

Why did you stop your YouTube posts after moving to London?

I found myself at a crossroads where I could either be a YouTuber who does music and went into vlogging territory, or a musician who uses YouTube. I knew that the [viewer] numbers I’d been building for years would nosedive when I stopped nurturing my channel, but I didn’t want to play the game that’s necessary to stay relevant online.

Tell us about Secret Demo Club…

I like the idea of releasing [music] independently, and the control it gives me. No one can tell me what my single will be, or that my guitar has to be louder. But, along with all the good stuff it brings, there are also huge amounts of money needed for recording, videos, marketing, live shows, and everything else.

I was working in a café at the time and could barely sustain myself, let alone put up the thousands of pounds needed to release a record.

I started a Patreon where people could pay to be a member and I could share my demos and working ideas with them. It was a simple equation: I needed money to make my album, but I already had the music and also the people who wanted to hear it.

So, subscribing to Secret Demo Club is essentially just a different way for fans to buy your music?

Yes, but it’s also like getting to sit and have coffee with everyone else who bought it. I did a show in Dublin at the end of 2019 and 20 people from Secret Demo Club actually travelled there and rented a house together. People came from America, from all over Europe… there was even someone from Australia. They’d communicated and organised a trip to the gig.

That, to me, is the best thing ever.

If I can be the reason all these people come together and have a great time, that’s amazing.

Creating a global friendship circle, linked by your music…

That’s what I want. I don’t care about Spotify streams; all that stuff can feel so arbitrary. What I really care about is when I get messages from people saying that my song is special to them and their friend, or that they’ve passed it on to someone else. Human connection has to be at the heart of it all.

Orla Gartland’s latest album, Woman on the Internet, is out now; orlagartland.com

THE RED BULLETIN

“No one can tell me what my single will be, or that my guitar has to be louder”

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Bearsun

Grin and bear it

today – let’s go, dude!” There were maybe only one or two per cent who were negative. I was expecting it – I’m in a bear suit.

Jesse Larios walked from LA to New York dressed as a huge cartoon bear to “make people happy”. But, as Bearsun’s fame grows, where does the man end and the character begin?

Words TOM WARD

Photography LUIS RODRIGUEZ

It’s not every day you find yourself talking via Zoom with a giant bear.

But, in November 2021, this is the situation The Red Bulletin is in, staring into the hollow brown eyes of Jesse Larios, the 33-year-old who has made a name for himself walking from Los Angeles to New York dressed in a giant anime-style bear suit of his own design. Or, to be more accurate, peering into the flat, furry eyes of Bearsun, the persona the Californian adopted for his grand perambulation, and an entity whose identity, Larios says, is increasingly superseding his own.

Last April, Larios (and Bearsun) garnered headlines with a two-week trial trek from LA to San Francisco.

Then, three months later, he set out from LA on a longer, more epic trip – to New York, arriving there on November 14. Along the way, his legend has grown, and Larios has used this increasing notoriety to raise money for various charities.

During the walk, hundreds of well-wishers joined Larios along the almost 4,500km route. All encountered Bearsun, but very few – if any – met the man behind the bear. “I would only take off [the suit] if I was completely alone with the windows shut and doors closed,” he says. “I could be anybody under the suit. Age, race, religion don’t matter. I want to bring people together using art. Showing myself creates a sense of separation.”

So successful was Larios’ art that he now has more than 137,000 followers on Instagram and has

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become as much a public figure as an adventuring inspiration. “I do it to make people happy and smile,” says Larios, who worked “a series of dead-end jobs including data work for an insurance business” before landing on Bearsun as an extension of his artistic interests.

But as he admits that Bearsun is “devouring” his own existence, how does Larios separate himself from his alter ego, and what’s next for the pair? the red bulletin: Where did the idea for Bearsun come from? jesse larios: I’ve always loved animation and I wanted to create my own unique character. I worked with a friend who’s an illustrator from Japan, and this is what we ended up with. The inspiration came from my old dog, who I’d call ‘bear’.

You walked from Los Angeles to New York in 2021, and starting in January 2022 you’re trekking – as Bearsun again – from Miami to Seattle. Why? I wanted to challenge myself mentally, physically and spiritually.

I wanted to do something outrageous. I just thought it would be fun, and at the same time it seemed like a huge challenge. How many people get to say they’ve walked across the country? It gave me the opportunity to discover something new about myself.

What was the toughest part of the trip, bear suit aside?

There was a lot of pain, mentally and physically. As I walked, my body was eating itself. I was burning too many calories and I didn’t know how to combat that because usually I don’t really eat a lot of food. I had to force-feed myself. I was also carrying a 70lb [32kg] suit. My shoulders would start to bleed because all the weight was on them.

Thank God I had the suit on and people couldn’t see my facial expressions. They saw happiness, but inside I was miserable!

What were the most uplifting moments of your journey?

A lot of people offered to take me into their homes. The Native Americans of the Navajo Nation would not take no for an answer. I was in the Navajo Nation for almost 400 miles [640km]. They walked with me and shared their stories.

Where does Jesse Larios end and Bearsun begin?

Good question. He doesn’t have a mouth, because animals can’t talk.

He’s more active than verbal, but I can’t stop talking. The rule is that I can never take the suit off; I have to live as my creation. The character has pretty much devoured my whole personality now.

What’s next?

I want to make an animated film.

But in terms of adventures, when I go to Seattle I want to run the whole way. I want to do anywhere between 60 and 80 miles [around 100-130km] a day. I’m not an athlete, but I’ve learned I have more in me than I thought. I want to keep creating, pushing myself, and helping others.

Instagram: @iambearsun

What did you learn along the way?

I discovered there are a lot more good people in the world than bad. People were really kind. I’d encounter them and think, “I’m gonna do 30 more miles [48km] THE RED BULLETIN

“Bearsun has pretty much devoured my whole personality”

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Roar emotion

A beast on the bass, the jaguar of jazz-fusion, a feline fashion icon – music superstar THUNDERCAT is all these things. But beneath that fuzzy, funny, funk-tastic image is a complex human who fell hard and fast. Here’s what it took for this cat to land on his feet…

Words WILL LAVIN

Photography WOLFGANG ZAC 31

Thundercat

“Being able to laugh is one of the best feelings ever.

It’s an important part of life, maybe more so than music.” This is a surprising statement when you consider its source – Stephen Lee Bruner, the bass maestro, funk virtuoso and genre-bending producer better known for his alter ego, Thundercat. It’s November 2021 in St Louis, Missouri, and Bruner is enjoying a rare day off from his five-month North American tour to wax philosophical with The Red Bullletin. But, as they say, time flies when you’re having fun – and this man knows how to have fun.

The 37-year-old Los Angeleno is a musical genius with a sound that flits between jazz-funk fusion, electronica, soul, hip hop, R&B, psychedelia and genres even further afield, and is impossible to categorise, even by his most devoted fans, of whom there are many worldwide. Just as chaotic and creative is his personality; Thundercat is known for his eccentric fashion taste – he’ll team haute couture with a Pikachu backpack – along with pop-culture geekiness, scatter-brained humour and farcical japes: he once played an hour-long jam session with Canadian indie rocker Mac Demarco where both were stark naked. And he announced the tour for his 2020 album, It Is What It Is – arguably his most complex, emotionally raw and personal release to date – with an online video in which he simulated making passionate love to a Pokémon Snorlax toy.

Our interview takes place a decade after the release of Thundercat’s debut album, 2011’s The Golden Age of Apocalypse. “It’s crazy to think it’s 32

been a solid 10 years,” he says of the anniversary.

“It’s trippy because of all the places I’ve been to, psychologically, over the last decade. I remember when it was just me and Austin Peralta rolling around with his keyboards and my bass.”

Many things have changed in Bruner’s life since those days spent lugging instruments around with Peralta, his jazz pianist/composer friend who died in 2012 from viral pneumonia, and about whom much of Thundercat’s 2013 album Apocalypse was written. But his loveable, eccentric persona remains present and correct – outwardly at least. He’s still more interested in sitting on his couch, bingewatching cartoons, than attending Hollywood’s hottest showbiz parties. “I’m a huge anime nerd,” Bruner says of his obsession with Japanese animation. “That hasn’t changed, and it never will.

It’s just now I have money to spend on the things I’m passionate about. Although I have to be careful I don’t blow all my cash on anime.” This low-key approach to celebrity life checks out – when asked about his rider for our cover shoot, Bruner didn’t demand expensive champagne, or M&Ms separated by colour; he asked for a bowl of blueberries. If only all rock stars were so unpretentious.

It’s easy to forget that beneath the vibrant outfits and the fluffy cat’s-ear headbands, Bruner is one of the most sought-after instrumentalists, collaborators and producers around. A two-time Grammy-winning artist who has released four albums as Thundercat,

Adorned to be wild: Thundercat is renowned for his eccentric fashion sense, and for this shoot he styled himself from his own wardrobe.

Here, he wears a shirt by Secret Heart, sweater by Gucci, and custommade sunglasses.

Previous page: Louis Vuitton Cyclone sunglasses

by Virgil Abloh; necklaces by IF & Co, Gucci and RockLove (Star Wars Edition); sweater by Pendleton; shirt by Lazoschmidl; pants and shoes by Adidas THE RED BULLETIN

Thundercat

“I have to be careful I don’t blow all my cash on anime”

Tooned in: (left) Thundercat wears a custom-made backpack and Dragon Ball Z tee, glasses by Christian Roth, bracelets by IF & Co; (right) Bricks & Wood beanie adorned with Gucci brooches, glasses by Alpina, and Mutsu jacket by Prospective Flow

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Thundercat

“It’s crazy to think it’s been a solid 10 years since that debut album” he also boasts a client list that reads like a who’s-who of popular music – Snoop Dogg, Childish Gambino, Ariana Grande and Erykah Badu are just a handful who have made the call. In 2015, he collaborated with Kendrick Lamar on the rapper’s To Pimp a Butterfly album, helping to deliver what is widely considered to be Lamar’s masterpiece (it’s ranked 19th in Rolling Stone’s ‘500 Greatest Albums of All Time’ list) and winning his first Grammy, for his work on the track These Walls. “How [Lamar] spanned the walls in the verses, and where he took it – he went from prison to pussy – I was overwhelmed when I first heard that track,” says Bruner of the song’s complexity. “I didn’t know how to process it, let alone the idea that it was up for a Grammy.”

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Laid-back style: Thundercat reclines on a Kapital rayon satin quilting bomber jacket (it folds up into a pillow), wearing Louis Vuitton Cyclone sunglasses and a sweater by Pendleton

runer was born to be a musician. His father, Ronald Sr, is a veteran drummer who played with the likes of The Temptations, Gladys Knight, and Diana Ross and the Supremes; his mother, Pamela, is a flautist and percussionist.

Older brother Ronald Jr is also a drummer and won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Album in 2011 with The Stanley Clarke Band. And his younger brother, Jameel, played keyboards for LA music collective The Internet and is now a solo artist under the name Kintaro.

Growing up in the ’90s, Bruner would fight with his brothers for the TV remote. They’d want to watch VHS tapes; he wanted ownership of the screen to play video games. But in the background there was always jazz playing, performed by the likes of Jimmy Cobb, Vinnie Colaiuta, Tony Williams and Billy Cobham, and Bruner was paying close attention.

“My brothers thought I wasn’t listening,” he says.

“They thought I was just being an obnoxious kid.

But music is all-encompassing. I got the message quite early about what it can do. There’s always been something about music that has touched base with me mentally, psychologically and emotionally.

Probably even spiritually.”

Bruner first picked up a bass guitar at around the age of four, and as he became more proficient he’d practise by playing along to the soundtrack of the 1991 action-comedy film Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: Secret of the Ooze. It was his love of cartoons and anime that spawned his stage name – a reference to ThunderCats, the popular ’80s US cartoon about cat-like humanoid warriors. By the early 2000s, he was touring the world as part of “multicultural pop 37

Thundercat

Hero in a half-shell: Thundercat wears a custom-made backpack and tee, glasses by Christian Roth, bracelets by IF & Co, Gucci brooches, and a Rolex watch

THE RED BULLETIN

group” No Curfew, and in 2002 he joined thrash band Suicidal Tendencies (his brother Ronald Jr was their drummer at the time). After that, Bruner became a bass player for hire, rising through the ranks of the LA music scene alongside childhood friend and jazz paragon Kamasi Washington, who drove them from gig to gig in his beaten-up 1982 Ford Mustang with parts of its interior held together by duct tape. “It’s like we’ve just been big kids this whole time,” he says of Washington. “Like we’re still 15. It’s always been fun for us. We see each other, we laugh, we’ve always got some funny shit to tell each other about life.”

It was a chance meeting with LA rapper and producer Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, at South

by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, in the late 2000s that pushed Bruner’s music to the next level.

Ellison signed Thundercat to his independent record label, Brainfeeder, and has released every one of his albums for the past decade, but he’s proved to be far more than just a label boss. The two producers have become a formidable musical pairing, collaborating on a variety of projects over the years, including their own individual albums and the score for Donald ‘Childish Gambino’ Glover’s hit US TV show Atlanta.

“Music is allencompassing. I got the message early about what it can do” “We’re like Batman and Robin,” says Bruner. “I’ve been swinging around doing a bunch of weird shit while he’s just in the shadows.”

Popping his head out from the shadows for one particularly crucial moment, Ellison encouraged Bruner to start singing. “He saw something that I didn’t,” says Bruner. “I had a conversation with [US rapper] J Cole recently. He was picking my brain, and there was this moment where I realised just how much I trust Lotus. When I think back to that moment, that’s what I felt: I trusted my friend, and he was right.”

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wards, money, creative projects pouring in from every direction, a long list of music icons he can now call friends – to an outsider, Bruner’s life would appear to have improved with each passing year. But nothing is ever quite as it seems, and the reality of the last few years has been hard for him. As well as releasing an album during a global pandemic and ending a long-term relationship, Bruner mourned the loss of one of his closest friends, Mac Miller, the Pittsburgh rapper and producer who died from an accidental drug overdose in September 2018.

The pair were not only fierce friends, but frequent collaborators. Their most memorable team-up was a performance for US National Public Radio’s Tiny Desk Concerts series, recorded just a month before Miller’s death. The story surrounding the session is now legendary: Bruner was on a European tour when he received a message from Miller asking him to fly over and perform. This would mean Bruner not only cancelling multiple tour dates but flying from Eastern Europe to Washington DC for what was essentially just a 17-minute gig. He did it. “[Mac] wanted to feel comfortable in front of everybody,” Bruner has since said. “He wanted me to be there beside him.”

When you watch the intimate performance, their love for each other is clear – acutely in sync and in their element, they joke back and forth like blood brothers. Thundercat, sporting red-and-gold Muay Thai boxing shorts and pink braids, switches between rattling a shaker and playing his custom Ibanez sixstring bass. Miller adopts an almost Frank Sinatralike persona; a suave operator with a nervous disposition, he playfully fumbles through segues with a clownish temperament before snapping back into performer mode to deliver the vocal parts. “That was a special moment,” Bruner remembers. “I never 39

missed a chance to tell Mac I loved him. And that’s because I really did.”

But as magical as the moment was, it’s one Bruner admits he struggles to rewatch. He does, however, find solace in the appreciation others have for it: “Whenever I see photos or clips from it, it makes me happy. I saw that someone got a tattoo of the moment where Mac was like, ‘Thundercat on the shaker!’ That made me smile. That concert is like my own personal photobook. It’s the one moment I got to share with my friend that the whole world could see.”

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hundercat’s 2020 album It Is What It Is provided an opportunity for Bruner to channel his grief over Miller’s death through his art. A space-age fusion of jazz, funk, hip hop and pop, produced in collaboration with Flying Lotus, the release is an “open-ended love letter” to his friend. “Albums are always an intense, painful 40

“I’m still learning about myself, and I’m going to continue to get better” experience,” says Bruner, “but that particular one changed my life.”

The title represents an acceptance that death is an unavoidable reality for us all. It’s also a nod to Miller himself, who used the phrase in the lyrics of What’s The Use?, a track on the last album the rapper released in his lifetime, 2018’s Swimming, which features Bruner on bass. On the title track of It Is What It Is, Bruner sings, “Hey, Mac,” right before Miller’s voice responds with a lonely “Woah”. “It was all I had,” says Bruner, THE RED BULLETIN

Thundercat

recalling the recording process. “I had something to say in that moment, but to hear [the track] was so polarising for me. I couldn’t listen to it without emotionally breaking down every time. But that’s just what it was, up until the last minute of saying goodbye to Mac.” The album’s creation took a huge toll on Bruner, both mentally and physically. He had fallen into depression. He wasn’t eating or sleeping right, and he was using alcohol to numb the pain. The funloving, Gucci-sporting boy wonder who could light up any room was almost unrecognisable. It wasn’t easy to turn to music – the thing that connected him and Mac – for solace. “It almost felt like a ghost in the machine, or muscle memory,” Bruner recalls.

“Making music through that period, I don’t know how I did it. On one hand it’s what I do; on the other it was a lot to process.”

Bruner was forced to face some hard truths about his lifestyle. “Drinking had given me comfort for years,” he explains. “I would often just wash over it, and the degree to which I did scared people. I’ve watched multiple friends who’ve died in front of me, all in such a volatile way – from Austin to Zane Musa [the famed US jazz-funk saxophonist who died from a fall in 2015, aged 36] to Tim Williams [Bruner’s replacement as bass guitarist of Suicidal Tendencies, who died in 2014] to Mac. I had to take it seriously. I could see what was going to happen.

It felt like if I washed over it again, I was going to die.

I had to hit the reset button.”

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Feline fashion: ever the brand junkie, Bruner breaks down the labels that comprise his unique outfit THE RED BULLETIN

fter this crucial realisation, Bruner introduced some vital self-care measures into his daily routine. First, he stopped drinking. “I only had two options: turn to the bottle or not,” he explains. “It felt like that decision was already carved in stone for me at that point.” He also went vegan and started therapy. Then, when the pandemic forced the world to shut down, Bruner took up boxing and kickboxing. “I’ve never been a person to participate in physical activities. This is maybe the first time that I’ve ever been this serious about something other than illustration and playing bass.”

Something else that helped was listening to Drake’s most recent album, Certified Lover Boy. On the day of its release in September last year, Bruner tweeted, “Sometime it take a Drake album to get you back in focus.” The Toronto-born star has often faced criticism from hip-hop fans who view his emotional, introspective brand of rap as ‘soft’, but Bruner recognises a kinship in that vulnerability.

“Drake will always remind you that you’re not alone,” he explains. “Some cats put out an album and you know what to expect – it’s going to shoot the club up.

Drake will pour his heart and soul into his music, and you can hear it. It’s why people make fun of him.

But he’s baring his soul in his music.”

Certified Lover Boy proved to be just the motivation Bruner needed to reignite his own sense of purpose.

“It knocked me out of the weird flight pattern that

I was in with trauma,” he says. “Every time I’d look at stuff, I’d see it with this damaged set of eyes.

It’s hard to find a way out of that emotionally.

Hearing Drake’s album, it felt like, ‘I feel you, bro.’

It was a reminder that I’m not alone.”

Now three years sober, Bruner is in a much better space. As he readies himself for the start of his European tour, which kicks off in Glasgow at the end of March, the enigmatic goofball persona has returned. But beneath it all, Bruner is a changed man. Does he think he’ll ever drink again? “I don’t know,” he replies. “It’s been a long three years.

I don’t feel the same about it any more. There’s a part of me where it’s still related to the trauma, but at the same time I’m just kind of like, ‘I’ll deal with that when I get there.’”

Just a few days before Bruner’s interview with The Red Bulletin, Silk Sonic – the funk supergroup comprising Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak – released their debut album, An Evening With Silk Sonic, which features a collaboration with Thundercat. His velvet-textured bass licks and crooner-like vocals can be heard on After Last Night, a love-drunk ballad that also stars ParliamentFunkadelic bass legend Bootsy Collins. This was Bruner’s first time working with Mars, but one of many collaborations with .Paak, whom he met over a decade ago when the two of them played together in the backing band for progressive neo-funk trio The Sa-Ra Creative Partners.

As for Collins, the innovative bassist who rose to prominence in the ’70s, playing alongside the likes of James Brown and George Clinton, Bruner says working with him was “a full circle moment”. He recalls one of the Silk Sonic sessions where he got to hold Collins’ iconic rhinestone-encrusted, starpatterned ‘Bootzilla’ glasses, as featured on the cover of the 1978 Bootsy’s Rubber Band album Bootsy? Player Of the Year. “They’re iconic not just because they’re Bootsy’s,” says Bruner, “but because of where they come from and what they represent in the art. To be able to hold the original pair was really good for my soul. They inspired me to be more myself and not be shy about it at all.”

They say a cat has nine lives. At the age of 37, Bruner has certainly experienced enough to fill that quota, and along the way he’s lost more soulmates than many people would be fortunate enough to find.

He’s also achieved more in his career than many artists could ever dream of. But Thundercat isn’t ready to rest on his laurels just yet, nor to surrender to the arrogance that can plague those who have become wildly successful, especially given everything he’s endured in recent years.

“I’m still learning about myself,” he says, “and I’m going to continue to get better.”

Thundercat has given himself a second chance, and he’s not about to squander it.

Thundercat’s It Is What It Is European 2022 tour starts at the Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow on March 29; thundercat.lnk.to/eurotour 41

October 14, 2021: in the ski resort of Avoriaz in the French Alps, Tom Pagès performs his third monumental moto-BASE jump.

This was the result of two years of preparation and untold hours of parachute training, self-doubt and contemplation for the FMX star. But more than just the achievement of one man, it was a shared success for a whole team

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Leap into the unknown How the king of freestyle motocross, TOM PAGÈS, walked away from champion status in order to learn from others and pull off one of the most incredible stunts in motorcycling history Words PH CAMY

Photography ANTOINE TRUCHET and OLIVER GODBOLD

Tom Pagès

“In motocross, to win, one has to constantly innovate... and do tricks no one has ever seen before.” So says Tom Pagès at the beginning of his new film, Flight Mode. No one could accuse Pagès of failing to innovate. Ever since the 36-year-old Frenchman built his first ramp in his backyard, in 2005, he has turned the sport of freestyle motocross (FMX) on its head – literally. In his first FMX show, that same year, he was already capable of performing

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a backflip on a 100kg dirt bike. Two years later, he became the first motocross rider to achieve a Double Grab Backflip on dirt. Each year, more tricks were pioneered: the Volt, the Special Flip, the 540 AlleyOop Flair, the Bike Flip. “At some point you have to ask yourself, ‘What is the next trick?’” he says in the film. “What if I mix two things I love: FMX and BASE jumping? What if I jumped off a cliff?”

What you see in Flight Mode is the breathtaking answer to that question, achieved last October in the ski resort of Avoriaz in the French Alps, at an altitude of 1,800m. In a matter of mere seconds, Pagès executed a trick the likes of which has never been witnessed before: a Double Front Flip off a ramp into thin air before ejecting from the bike; both descending on separate parachutes before safely landing 170m below.

THE RED BULLETIN

“I had to learn from others – people better than me. In my sport, I set the agenda. Here, I was nobody” Pagès sits on the ramp that launched him into thin air, the history books, and a new era of his life – one that saw him walk away from competitive FMX

Tom Pagès

Vince Reffet: the mentor and inspiration for Tom Pagès’ Flight Mode project. The feat was dedicated to his memory

But before Pagès could arrive at that day, he first had to make the jump from undisputed master of his own sport to mere apprentice in another, learning to parachute with his friends Fred Fugen and Vince Reffet of world-leading aeronautics team the Soul Flyers. At first, he didn’t dare tell them his reasons, but when Reffet himself suggested combining motocross and BASE jumping – a trick inspired by a similar feat by fellow Frenchman and stunt legend Alain Prieur in June 1985 – Pagès knew the time had come to reveal his plan.

The motocross champion was accustomed to training alone in his pursuit of FMX ingenuity, but here he knew he’d need the help of others.

What followed was two years of training under the tutelage of expert parachutists such as Loïc JeanAlbert – who took him on his first bridge BASE 46

jumps on the remote French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean – before heading to Magland in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of south-eastern France to learn mountain BASE jumping from a pioneer in the field, Aurélien ‘Bras Noir’ Chatard.

Other mentors included the master of speedriding – small-chute paragliding on skis – Valentin Delluc.

Pagès completed his education with humility and, following one tragic event, an increased sense of his mortality; in February 2020, midway through his coaching, he learned that Reffet had died during a jetwing training flight.

What Pagès finally accomplished was undoubtedly monumental in terms of sporting endeavour, but on a personal level it meant far more. It proved his commitment to an idea he was forced to question many times during those two tough years he was learning a new skill set, but it also saw his position in the world of pro-FMX – as a five-time X-Games winner and the most successful Red Bull X-Fighters competitor of the last 10 years – drift away, perhaps for good. It also became a personal journey to honour a fallen friend who had become central to making this dream come true.

But, as with every choice Pagès has made in life, this wasn’t ever about what he was giving up, but what he was gaining. “I had to adapt to new demands, open myself up to a new sport, new techniques.

I had to learn from others – people better than me.

Whereas in my sport it was me setting the agenda, here I was suddenly nobody; I didn’t have a say, I had to follow their instructions.”

And when Pagès finally took his hands off the handlebars, he was taking a leap into the unknown – into a new life with new challenges. the red bulletin: How is your bike doing? tom pagès: We’d planned three jumps. On the first one the bike came out fine, not a scratch. On the second, the bike’s parachute tore, but not very high, so there was a small fall and it broke a few parts. It was a little bit harder than what it usually gets in freestyle.

When you look at that bike, what does it symbolise for you?

A crazy memory. An opportunity. Will this bike end up in my living room, like those from my four victories in Madrid? I don’t know. What’s certain is that I don’t want to use it [again]. It’s so beautiful as it is.

In the documentary, when preparing you for freefall in Dubai, we hear Reffet say to you, “You’re doing it wrong.” As someone used to hearing you’re the best in your own sport, how did that feel?

I didn’t take it negatively. He meant there’s still a whole lot left to learn. He was there to coach me, to make me do it right, to learn quickly. The slightest error would be unacceptable, and he’d make me pay for it. That he’s my buddy didn’t make it any nicer to THE RED BULLETIN

MAX HAIM/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, ANTOINE TRUCHET, OLIVER GODBOLD

“This was a dream I shared with Vince Reffet. Without him, I couldn’t carry on”

Aerial reconnaissance (from top): the day before his epic trick, Pagès takes his bike to examine the landing site – above him is the cliff he’ll launch himself from; a helicopter practice jump with one of his instructors, BASE-jumping pioneer Aurélien Chatard, aka Bras Noir. Pagès wears his full FMX set-up, including the heavy helmet and boots, to familiarise himself with what it’ll feel like to perform a mid-air parachute ejection from his motorbike THE RED BULLETIN

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Tom Pagès

Throwing out the numbers FLIGHT MODE JUMP STATS Ramp height: 7m Ramp length: 15m Cliff height: 130m from the ramp to the base Height reached during Double Flip: 15m above the ramp, 170m above the landing zone (which is lower than the cliff) Jump time: Three seconds of tricks, two seconds of freefall, 25 seconds with the parachute open, 30 seconds in total Forward projectile distance in relation to the cliff: 55m Speed at full throttle in fourth gear: 80kph Speed of Pagès’ descent before parachute opens: 150kph

“Everyone had questions, and we had only three jumps to get the answers”

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“My heart was pounding and I said to myself, ‘This is serious’” the man who founded the Soul Flyers. All of these people are legends and I had the good fortune to learn from them.

During his rotations, Pagès had to ensure he was the right way up when releasing the chute or he’d launch it upwards into his bike

hear. So, yes, given I was there to learn, it was no joking matter. But once the parachutes were off, we were back to being best mates again.

How does it feel to learn from an expert like him?

It’s a privilege, so I listen. I’d known Fred and Vince for a few years – we started skydiving together – but I saw them as mates, so I wasn’t really aware of how good they were. It was only when I went to skydiving centres with them, seeing the way people looked at them, that I realised. And the more I jumped with them, the more I saw the gap between them and others. I became a Soul Flyers fan.

Did Reffet’s death give you reason to question the project?

As far as I was concerned, the project was over when that happened – I couldn’t carry on, because it was a dream Vince and I had shared. People told me to take my time, and Fred approached me. If he wanted to continue, then I was willing to go through with it. He was the only person who could get me there, because the Soul Flyers are Vince and Fred.

What happened next?

Fred put me in touch with one of his best mates, Aurélien [Chatard], who’s an absolute authority on BASE cliff jumping. I also met Loïc Jean-Albert, 50

In FMX, you’d spend all year creating new tricks almost alone at your base. Then suddenly you were away from home, working with people you didn’t know, in a community that wasn’t your own...

It was crazy to enter a world completely different from my own, with these guys who spend their lives flying – learning from them, but also from nature.

The environment can lead you to make mistakes, depending on the wind and the weather conditions.

My sport, FMX, I know a lot about, but here everything was new to me. I was in conversations where I didn’t understand a thing; I couldn’t even enter the discussion. What were they on about? It was a bit like when I discuss motorbikes with people who don’t know about FMX. I had a lot to learn.

Was it a pleasant change?

I was so happy to be part of that scene, to meet new people and open up, to leave the comfort zone of my training camp where I spent the whole year behind closed doors and working on moves with just my mechanic. All of a sudden, I was moving around, going to the mountains, to skydiving centres, and there were people everywhere. I worked a lot and learned a new sport, but it was much easier than being locked up at home. I discovered a new aspect to daily life, combining performing and being sociable. I think I’d reached a stage in my life where I needed that. Getting where I did in freestyle is down to the solitude I’d imposed on myself, but life at home had been getting harder. Getting out of that COVID period where we were all at home was crazy, like starting a new life.

You don’t jump off a cliff with Bras Noir without getting to know him a bit first…

In a sport like BASE jumping, you have to know the people you jump with. I was the rookie and I’m still a rookie. They guide you, but if you don’t take it seriously, don’t listen, or if you’re hot-headed or stubborn, they won’t work with you, because if you don’t do as you’re told, that’s it – in a few fractions of a second you kill yourself. When you jump off a cliff with someone, it creates a strong bond. You share something.

There’s another ‘character’ you shared things with, and which you bring up several times in the documentary: fear. You talk about managing THE RED BULLETIN

Tom Pagès

“We couldn’t anticipate how it would turn out.

Even on the day we didn’t know if it could be done” When engaging the parachutes, Pagès went from 150kph to 15kph in a split second. Although the bike’s parachute tore on the second descent, he says it still took comparable damage to that of a regular FMX session

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Tom Pagès

“I had to wait to deploy the parachute. I was already much lower than I’d planned. The ground was too close” Left: Fred Fugen of the Soul Flyers with Pagès moments after his second landing, where he was forced to front-flip his bike twice in mid-air before he could release his parachute.

“I could hardly breathe,” says Pagès, “and Fred sensed it”

stress while competing in FMX, but this jump was more of an unknown quantity…

Stress is something I deal with on a daily basis when training for freestyle. I’ve learned from it, but it has evolved as my level has evolved. Taking on greater doses of stress is what you’re looking to do – you’re constantly on the lookout for adrenalin.

It seems that the adrenalin was higher on that second jump of the three…

Indeed. I made a mistake on that jump. I gauged my speed wrong. I should have been doing a Front Flip, then opening my parachute and the one on my bike, but I did a Double Front Flip because of the inertia of the bike. I had to adapt very quickly.

I couldn’t deploy the parachute during the Double Front Flip, because at that moment I was still on the ascent phase of the parabola. In fact, I did the second flip to bring myself back to safety – I had to wait to deploy the parachute. But I was already much lower than what I had planned – the ground was already too close. It isn’t funny seeing the ground coming at you, but I landed fine.

What was your state of mind when your feet touched the ground?

Not good. I’d had a big dose of stress and fear. My heart was pounding hard and I said to myself, “This is serious stuff.” The jump could quickly have become critical; the slightest error and it would have been fatal. I could hardly breathe, and when Fred arrived on the scene he sensed it.

What did he say to you?

He told me that I did the right thing, that I managed the situation well. He was super-positive, but I didn’t want to give it another go. As far as I was concerned, we were done – we had the footage we wanted and that was that. We sat for a while and Fred said, “What do you want? A jump where we can see that you’re in trouble or one that’s true to your vision, that brings you joy?” We left it at that, and I slept on it, telling myself that I’d see how I felt the next morning. And the next day I was super-motivated to get going again. With all of the experience I’d THE RED BULLETIN

accumulated in my FMX career, I trusted myself and went back for another jump, telling myself I’d be able to correct all those things from the previous attempt and get it all just right.

And that’s what happened – you only have to watch the documentary to see that. But it seems your flying buddies also learned a lot from that jump. As Fugen says to you in the film, “We’re all learning…”

That’s because he and everyone else involved in the project – Bras Noir, Loïc, even Stéphane [Zunino], who developed the parachutes for me and the bike – were involved in a new discipline, bike BASE jumping. I was learning by jumping off a 7m ramp, not a 3m one like normal; and by going at 80kph, not 40. Stéphane was learning every time my bike parachute deployed, and from all the impacts; even if he had factored in all the margins and safety measures, he couldn’t predict the exact consequences they’d have for the parachute. We were all there to learn, and even if there was only one person jumping, everyone had been involved for two years. Everyone had questions, and we had only three jumps to get the answers. We learned a lot with each jump.

In order to learn, you had to sacrifice something very important to you: your FMX routine – the daily training sessions, the innovating, the things that gave you that extra edge at every competition. By dedicating yourself to the project for two years, you kind of said goodbye to competing. Was it worth it?

I’ve had some great years in competitive sport.

I devoted myself to it. I’m not going to say I became jaded about winning competitions, because it’s a priceless feeling – you train for it every day and when it pays off it’s the best thing ever. But I think it was the right time for me to change course. The environment, the training, the competition – they’d been my comfort zone whether I won or not, and I was safe there. But when we embarked on this BASE bike project, we couldn’t anticipate how it would all turn out. We didn’t even know on the day if it could be done, because of the weather or the local authorities deciding against it or something else. It was an important stage in my life and I’m happy with the results, and to have lived all these moments with the guys.

Did this teamwork bring you anything else?

For once, I was able to say, “We did it,” rather than “I won”. That was a big change. It’s something I’m proud of, and I want to continue working with others. I feel like I’ve discovered a new side to life.

My life.

Scan the QR code to watch The Red Bulletin’s behind-the-scenes account of Tom Pagès’ world-first bike BASE-jump stunt 53

King of the hill

GRANT GUNDERSON is one of the world’s greatest mountain sports photographers. The role requires not only skiing prowess but also a healthy working relationship with three restless collaborators: his camera, the athlete, and nature itself Words TRISTAN KENNEDY

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Grant Gunderson

Previous page: Bryce Phillips in Alta, Utah, March 2008

B

orn and raised in Washington State, USA, an area renowned for its heavy snowfall, Grant Gunderson learned to ski almost before he could walk.

So, when he picked up a camera as a teenager, the mountains became inevitable subject matter. Today, at 42, with more than 250 magazine covers to his name, he still finds them eternally fascinating. The reason is simple. “No two days are ever the same,” says Gunderson.

“To shoot skiing is dependent on the weather conditions.”

But the founding photo editor of The Ski Journal and senior photographer for Powder magazine also likes to mix up his technique – dragging studio flash set-ups into unforgiving alpine environments, or braving angles that other photographers wouldn’t dare – in a bid to create images as unusual as they are arresting. “I like to try ways of shooting that haven’t been done a lot before,” he says. Sit back and let this master of his craft take you through some of the most thrilling – and unique – mountain moments ever caught on film.

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“This photograph was all done in-camera, combining flash – for the split-second action of the skier – with a three-hour exposure to get those star trails. It was shot for the Ski Salt Lake Shootout contest, where photographers from across the country were invited to take photos at resorts near Salt Lake City for a week.

This shot won and became a gatefold cover for SKI Magazine.

The challenge with a photo like this is that you only get one chance. You’re standing there for three hours, in very cold temperatures, and you don’t know if you got it right.”

Cody Townsend in Seward, Alaska, April 2013 “I was working with [ski film outfit] Matchstick Productions and it turned out to be a unique trip, but not necessarily for the right reasons. We had the best conditions I’ve ever had in Alaska: stable snow, good temperatures, everything was perfect. Then, in the first couple of days, two out of three skiers, including Cody, got injured. The day after this was shot, he blew out his knee. What looks like an avalanche is actually slough [the snow a skier disturbs as they move]. The stuff in Alaska that these guys are skiing is so big, what’s a little slough at the top is quite significant by the time it gets to the bottom. I sat on another spine to shoot this.

That was awesome, because I got to ski down afterwards.”

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Grant Gunderson

Mark Abma in Revelstoke, British Columbia, February 2013 “When I started out shooting skiing, I told myself that as long as I can create images that get people stoked to spend time in the mountains, I’ll be successful. When the crew and I saw this pillow stack, I knew it would be one of those – we all wanted ski it. I shot in black and white because it does a really good job of bringing out the texture in the snow. For me, this photo was pretty straightforward, but for Mark it was hard – the pillow line rolls over quite a bit, so he was pretty much blind going in. He threw a bunch of snowballs so we could see which way he was thinking of going, but with pillow lines, once the athletes drop in, they’re more like a pinball.”

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Grant Gunderson

“I’ve lost a few friends to avalanches over the years. It’s always in the back of my mind”

the red bulletin: What first drew you to ski photography? grant gunderson: I started shooting my friends skiing in high school, back when I was 16 or 17. What got me then is what still gets me today. Every time I go out, even if it’s a ski run I’ve shot a thousand times, it’s always different.

The snow’s different, the wind’s different, the temperatures are different, so it’s always a new challenge.

How does being a skier shape the way you look at your subject?

I’m a firm believer that you need to be an active participant in what you want to shoot. I look at the mountains as a blank canvas: the athletes, with their skills, are the paint brushes; and the photography is more of a collaboration than anything.

You need a lot of trust between athlete and photographer, especially as a lot of the time the athlete is sitting on a cliff or slope and doesn’t know where they’re going – they’re blind. They have to trust the photographer to line them in and not put them in a spot that’s going to get them hurt.

a few friends to avalanches over the years. It’s something that’s always in the back of my mind. When I look at the risks I take now versus when I started out, it’s a lot easier now to say no and walk away from something. It’s also easier for me to tell the athletes, “No, we’re not doing it.”

How has your method of working changed over the years?

When I switched from film to digital, I couldn’t get the same effects as I had been able to with my ‘cookbook’ for film, so I started dragging these studio flash units into the backcountry.

I probably started doing flash photography in the backcountry before anybody else. I really enjoyed

Have you had any narrow escapes?

I was caught in an avalanche a few years ago. It was the opening day of the season at my local hill, Mount Baker. I was helping the ski area with their set-up and I got out onto a cliff edge and the whole thing gave way beneath me – I went for a pretty good ride through cliffs and rocks, about 100ft [30m] or so. I was only buried up to the waist, but I broke my ankle in seven places.

Did that experience change your attitude to risk?

It’s a stark reminder of the dangers. I’ve shot skiing for so long that I’ve lost quite 60

THE RED BULLETIN

that, but the way the market’s changing it doesn’t really pay to do it as much as it used to.

You mean tastes have changed?

Yes, but also the market itself. When I started out, as long as I got one or two really good photos a week, I’d do well, because it was high-end advertising for magazines. Now it’s shifted to volume – I’m selling more photos than ever, but it’s a couple of hundred dollars for social media versus a couple of thousand for a magazine ad.

Has that shaped how long you spend on a shot?

Yes, and also the quality. Back in the day, if I picked up a magazine I could remember almost every single photo in it. Now, if I’m going through Instagram, THE RED BULLETIN

I’ll scroll past 1,000 photographs and I don’t know if I’ll remember even one.

Curated content is always good, because it separates out the crap. That’s why a lot of people get burned out from social media – because you’ve got to shift through a lot of stuff to see anything that, to my mind, is worth seeing.

Are there ever days when you wish you could just ski and not worry about getting the shot?

Yes! I try really hard to have days when I just leave the camera bag in the truck, but it doesn’t happen as often as I’d like.

I can’t really complain. When someone asks me what’s the worst part of my job, I say, “I have to ski with a camera bag.”

But the first part of that is, “I have to ski,” which is pretty good. grantgunderson.com

Amphibious approach in Portillo, Chile, September 2012 “Portillo is high in the Andes, right on the pass between Chile and Argentina. The previous year, the lake was frozen, so we could access all that ski-touring terrain in the background. But this year there was no snow, and the lake wasn’t frozen, so we had zero access anyway... until we talked the resort into loaning us kayaks. When I took that photo in the morning, it wasn’t so bad, but coming back was sketchy. It had warmed up and there were big slides coming into the lake, creating waves. I was just thinking, ‘Don’t roll the kayak with your camera bag in it.’”

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Grant Gunderson

James Heim and Michelle Parker in Bariloche, Argentina, August 2012 “On this day, our whole game plan was to just hike up to this cool mountain hut, but the clouds parted and I thought, ‘I’ve gotta take a photo.’ The perspective of James and Michelle, the mountain and then the resort with the tiny skiers on the slopes below is what makes it.

I like ski resorts, but what’s even better is using them to access other areas – to get away from the crowds.”

Joe Schuster in Whistler, British Columbia, December 2012 “Sled skiing [using a snowmobile to access otherwise unreachable backcountry] on a rare bluebird [sunny and cloudless] powder day in the Northwest. We don’t get many days like that here, but they’re spectacular.

Because we’re close to the Pacific, we have this maritime snowpack, with a lot of moisture in it – snow will stick to steeper things here than anywhere else.

You can get away with skiing stuff you’d never dream about in Europe or the interior [of the US].”

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Mark Abma at Mount Baker, Washington State, February 2011 “Every snowboard crew builds a kicker at this spot, and a lot of ski crews do it now, too.

The area is usually called ‘Grandma’s’, but every time a new batch of college kids move in, the names get changed.

We built this jump a week prior and went off to do a stormchasing trip. We were across the other side of the state when we saw it was set to go clear at Baker, so we beelined back and rolled up right as the sun was going behind the mountain. I pretty much took just this one photo, but the next day was just epic.”

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Grant Gunderson

Adam Ü in Revelstoke, British Columbia, December 2009 “Because the ski area is above the Columbia River valley and there’s so much vertical drop, you get different weather conditions up high to down in the valley.

In seven days, we got something like 30 magazine covers. This shot alone featured on about 15. We were getting ready to ski and I said, ‘We need to take a photo,’ because it just popped. Adam and I have a really good rapport – and yes, his surname is literally a U with the two dots over it.

Apparently his great-grandfather was an opium importer and he got tired of writing out his last name to customs officials, so he just started drawing a happy face.”

Dana Flahr at Mount Baker, Washington State, January 2008 “The Mount Baker road gap is a superfamous spot at my home mountain. As far as I know, the only other time it’s been shot with a skier hitting it at night was by my buddy Sean O’Gorman. He did it over a full moon and broke his hip socket, so not the best precedent. This time, we’d just had a killer powder day, Dana was on a bit of a tear and he wanted to hit another big air. We set up the flashes just as all the vehicles from the ski area were driving down for the day. The run-in is so long you can’t time it. It’s just luck that the truck was in the perfect spot.”

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Grant Gunderson

Mattias Evangelista at North Cascades Heli-Skiing, Washington State, March 2016

KC Deane at Mount Baker, Washington State, April 2011 “I duct-taped my camera to my buddy KC’s hand, sent him over the Mount Baker road gap, and triggered it remotely. He stuck the landing, but his hands went forward and clipped his knee brace, so it cost me a lens.

It was about 800 bucks to replace, but that didn’t stop me trying it again. KC is also a pro mountain biker, and I did a similar thing with him and [British mountain biker] Sam Pilgrim jumping the castle at the Nine Knights contest [in Austria]. This was a magazine cover in Europe, but it never ran as a photo in the US. I was surprised, but I think magazines in the US didn’t like all the branded stickers on his helmet.”

THE RED BULLETIN

“There are these really cool couloirs [steep gullies] at North Cascades, and here Mattias is chasing his buddy down one. There was no good angle to shoot it from, so I took my Canon [EOS] 1DX and strapped it to his chest. I skied behind, triggering [the camera] remotely. You see similar video angles with GoPros, but I’d never seen a good still photo like this – at least not one at the resolution I’d want. The 1DX is pretty heavy [1.34kg, plus lens] so it’s more weight for the athlete than a GoPro. It’s also more of an investment for the photographer – you’ve got to trust the athletes not to fuck it up.”

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The pioneer PHIL HENDERSON is a groundbreaking adventurer, and this spring he’ll be leading the first all-Black team on Everest. He’s not seeking glory or redemption — he’s looking to share a dream Words MARK JENKINS Photography GREG MIONSKE 68

Phil Henderson, photographed in Cortez, Colorado, last November.

“This expedition is not just about the summit,” he says

Phil Henderson

“I grew up as practically the only Black kid in a white neighbourhood”

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THE RED BULLETIN

MARK JENKINS

P

hil Henderson and I were alone together at Camp One – around 6,000m up – on Mount Everest. It was May 2012. We were scooched deep inside our fat sleeping bags in a two-person tent staked to the ice. Crevasses large enough to swallow a freight train surrounded us. To get here, we’d climbed through the Khumbu Icefall, the deadliest jumble of apartment-size ice blocks in the world. Two years later, 16 Sherpas would die when a portion of the icefall collapsed.

We were high enough to be in the clouds, and wind was rushing snow over our diminutive nylon dome. “Sounds lovely, like a waterfall, doesn’t it?” said Henderson, making me imagine a waterfall in Hawaii, the diametric opposite of our ice-encrusted home on the edge of oblivion. For the next 12 hours, throughout the night, we’d periodically bang the tent walls to keep the snow from burying us alive.

Henderson saw the bright side of every situation; it’s part of his character and what drew me to him on Everest. He and I were tent-mates, climbing partners and confidantes. Camp One didn’t have Sherpas, so we took turns cooking in the flapping vestibule. Graupel [soft hail] blew into our tent as we melted chunks of snow into water. Rice and a few fresh eggs carried up from base camp, hot Gatorade, a Swiss chocolate bar split in half for dessert… We were comfortable and content, both of us having spent big chunks of our lives in small tents in cold, inclement conditions.

At that point, Henderson had been an instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) for almost 20 years, had spent months training Sherpas how to climb at the Khumbu Climbing Center in Nepal, and led expeditions from Africa

Henderson was the sole Black climber in the US team making the 50th anniversary ascent of Everest in 2012

MARK JENKINS

“This expedition isn’t just about the summit. It’s about sharing a dream with a community that has been held back”

Phil Henderson

Black Americans have been climbing their own Everest for centuries

At Camp Two in 2012, Henderson fell acutely sick and had to descend the mountain THE RED BULLETIN

to Alaska. He’d played football in college before an injury put him out of the game and he shifted to outdoor sports. He was the only Black climber on our team, the 50th anniversary expedition of the first American ascent of Everest.

We lay back in our bags and talked. There’s one thing most people don’t realise: on a typical twomonth, high-altitude expedition, more time is spent talking than climbing. You can only acclimatise so fast; the weather frequently leaves you tent-bound, and nights are long. So you talk, share stories.

Often we talked about our families. Henderson’s wife Brenda is from Kenya, and their daughter Bahati (‘luck’ in Swahili) was four. I had two daughters in college. It’s not easy to leave those you love for a grandiose act of self-indulgence. We mountain climbers always feel guilty, but then we leave anyway.

We’re called, drawn. Mountains are that magnetic.

But that night we were on a different subject: the Black experience in America. Although I’d spent years reporting from Africa, I was a white male from the white-bread state of Wyoming. Henderson was from California, but at that time he lived in Vernal, Utah, a state almost as white as Wyoming. This was years before the murder of George Floyd, and the BLM movement, finally woke up many white Americans to the systemic racism in our country – but all we really had to do was listen. It wasn’t like cops weren’t beating or killing Blacks more than a century ago – we just didn’t have smartphones to bear witness. The 1928 Illinois Crime Survey found that although Blacks made up only five per cent of the population, they constituted 30 per cent of police killings. The late great representative John Lewis was severely beaten by police while leading the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights on what came to be known as ‘Bloody Sunday’.

“I grew up in San Diego, practically the only Black kid in a white neighbourhood,” Henderson said.

“John-John and I were always getting hassled by the police.” John Williams Jr was his boyhood best friend. They did everything together, including getting into trouble. “It was either jail or getting out,” said Henderson. “I got out.”

But when I asked what he meant, the climber pulled down his red-and-black Rastafarian bandana over his eyes, withdrew a yo-yo-sized speaker from inside his sleeping bag – he’d been keeping it warm – and placed it between us on the icy tent floor.

We listened to the big-band jazz of Ghanaian Ebo

Taylor’s Love and Death album. We listened to the cool jazz of Nigerian Fela Kuti’s Water No Get Enemy, then the dark Sorrow, Tears and Blood. Before the speaker died from the cold, we fell asleep to the loping reggae of Jamaican Bunny Wailer’s Liberation and its lead track Rise and Shine: “We’ve been down in the valley much too long. We’ve been down in captivity oh so long. We’ve been down in humility much too long. We’ve been down in slavery oh so long. But we’re gonna rise and shine! And win our liberation, for now is the time. When all nations must be free. So rise and shine! Restore your strength and power, waste no more time, remember your history.”

A

lmost 10 years later, Henderson is leading the first all-Black expedition to Everest this spring. Called the Full Circle Everest Expedition, it already has some big equipment sponsors and has raised more than $100,000 (£75,000) via GoFundMe. “Philip is a natural leader,” says Larry Berger, a colleague and close friend of Henderson. They both worked at NOLS for years and now live near each other in Cortez, Colorado. Whereas they used to climb together, now they go fishing. “Philip didn’t have it easy at NOLS,” says Berger. “Back then, the school was run by entitled white people for entitled white kids. Philip tried to change that, but he was largely ignored. He was ahead of his time.”

As I had witnessed on Everest, Henderson has fine-tuned leadership skills. He’s thoughtful but decisive, driven but not egotistical. He’s a good listener but always speaks his mind, often in a quiet yet profound way. “Philip inspires people because he believes in making a positive difference in the world,” Berger says. “That’s just who he is. I can’t imagine anyone else leading this expedition.”

The Full Circle Everest Expedition comprises an eclectic team of Black climbers, men and women, from across the US. Their goal, says their website, is to “showcase the tenacity and strength of these climbers, and highlight the barriers that [still] exist for Black communities in accessing the outdoors”.

When you look at the résumés of the climbers, they’re not loaded with first ascents or cutting-edge alpinism. Instead, the team members reveal a deep commitment to their respective communities. Abby Dione founded the Coral Cliffs Rock Climbing Gym in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and has taught clinics at Color the Crag [a festival celebrating diversity in the sport] and the Flash Foxy Climbing Festival [for women and genderqueer climbers]. Kenya’s James ‘KG’ Kagambi – the first Black African to summit both Denali and Aconcagua – has been a teacher his whole life and trains Kenyan mountain rescue teams. Eddie Taylor, who has climbed El Capitan in a day, is a high-school chemistry teacher. Fred Campbell, a data scientist with a PhD in statistics, teaches free climbing classes for beginners. Demond ‘Dom’ Mullins, an Iraq War veteran with a PhD in sociology, researches the benefits of outdoor 73

Phil Henderson

Henderson will lead the Full Circle Everest Expedition, tackling the world’s tallest mountain this spring

recreation to combat vets. What distinguishes this Everest team from most others is its desire to give back to the Black and Brown community, rather than just tag the summit and start bragging.

“This expedition isn’t just about the mountain,” says team member Rosemary Saal. “It’s about building community, relationships, and most importantly about changing the narrative about Black people and the outdoors.” Primarily focused on backpacking, Saal is a NOLS instructor and a mentee of Henderson, who took her under his wing while climbing Kilimanjaro. “Phil doesn’t just make suggestions – he actively looks for opportunities for young people of colour,” she says. “Our expedition is about showing that Black people do climb, Black people do camp, Black people do ski!”

When I speak to Saal, she’s driving across Utah to teach a NOLS course. We keep getting cut off, but she keeps calling back. When I ask what she hopes to communicate to the Black community about climbing Mount Everest, she doesn’t mention the conventional tropes of challenging yourself and conquering fear. “Joy!” she exclaims. “The joy that comes from being in the outdoors. Many people of colour have never been given the opportunity to experience the joy of mountain climbing. It’s a feeling of liberation. I want to share this with the Black community, a community that has historically been excluded from the outdoor experience. I see practising joy as an act of political resistance.”

When I call Henderson to congratulate him on putting together the expedition, we don’t talk about climbing. Not a word about crampons skittering on blue ice, or altitude sickness; we talk about giving Black people a different perspective of what they can be, what they can achieve. “Do I want to see someone on our team summit? Damn right I do!” he says. “But this expedition isn’t just about the summit. It’s about sharing a dream with a community that has been held back, and sometimes held themselves back.”

Henderson reminds me that the first US team to summit Everest did so in 1963, the same year Martin Luther King Jr gave his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.

“Were any Black Americans dreaming of climbing Everest back then?” he asks. “That was during the civil rights movement. That’s when things were finally starting to change. That movement never ended. Black people are still fighting.”

It occurs to me that Black people in America have been climbing their own Everest, battling dangerous

Henderson is thoughtful but decisive, driven but not egotistical THE RED BULLETIN

conditions for uncertain results, for centuries. I remember the conversations about race and equality Henderson and I had on Everest back in 2012. We reminisce for a few minutes about that bittersweet expedition. Henderson had got deathly ill at Camp Two, his lungs filling with fluid. His blood oxygen levels had dropped to 60 per cent by the time we got him on an oxygen tank. That night in the tent, I listened to him struggling to breathe through his oxygen mask. The next morning, his expedition was over. He had to go down, and I lost my wingman.

“That was hard, man,” says Henderson.

“But you were so calm about it,” I reply.

I can see Henderson shrug and smile right through the phone. I don’t ask why he’s going back to Everest.

Only non-climbers ask such stupid questions.

“Bahati must be 13 now,” I say.

“She is,” says Henderson. “And she’s growing up in a different world than I grew up in.”

As I did years earlier, I ask him about his own childhood, but he again demurs. “You’d have to talk to John-John,” Henderson says.

J

ohn Williams is now an electrician and pastor in California. “Philip was the best athlete I’d ever seen,” he says. “As a running back, he would just run right over the defence. He could have gone pro if he hadn’t been injured.” Williams acknowledges that they drank and smoked pot in high school: “Phil knew his limits, but I ended up taking it way too far.”

Williams has been clean and sober now for 14 years, but back then it was a different story.

One night someone started a fight with Henderson.

“Philip was not aggressive,” Williams says. “But he was a damn good fighter. He knocked this guy out.”

Later that night, after Henderson had gone home, Williams encountered the same guy again, got into another fight, and stabbed him. Both Henderson and Williams went to jail. “I know that really got to him,” says Williams. “He couldn’t be cooped up like that.”

Henderson’s football coach got him out of jail, but Williams went into juvenile detention for a year.

A similar incident happened again a few years later. “Phil was always protecting me,” Williams says.

“But he saw where this was all going and got out.”

Williams ended up in and out of prison for the next two decades: “I spent 12 years in total behind bars.

I think I was Philip’s cautionary tale. He wrote me many letters while I was in prison. I think he felt like he’d abandoned me, but my life was my fault.”

Williams believes this is why Henderson has focused on mentoring Black youth for his entire life.

“He saw what happens,” says Williams. “I used to put the pictures he sent me up on my cell walls.

Pictures of him climbing mountains. He was outside, I was inside, and he knew I needed hope.”

This spring, Phil Henderson and his Full Circle team will be attempting Everest, giving hope to a new generation of climbers along the way. fullcircleeverest.com 75

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Sport climbing in Kalymnos, Greece

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VENTURE Travel “My body drops into space, and as I twist in the breeze I’m afforded an incredible view of the Aegean Sea” Matt Ray, travel writer

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Traveller info How to get there Fly to the neighbouring island of Kos from London, then head to Mastichari Port (via a bus or taxi from the airport) for the 30-to45-minute ferry to Kalymnos.

Where to stay From the boutique Massouri Beach Hotel to larger options such as the Elena Village hotel, and numerous climbers’ apartments, accommodation is available in both the village of Masouri and others close to the crags.

elenahotels.com THE RED BULLETIN

MATT RAY

own accord and a single cry escapes my lips. “Falling!” I shout.

My body drops into space and the rope attached to my harness goes tight, caught by the carabiner clipped to the bolt in the rock. I’m swinging helplessly, and as I twist in the breeze I’m afforded snapshot after snapshot of incredible views: the roof of an orange bowl of rock seemingly scooped out by some enraged ancient titan, meadows of wild thyme, and the sparkling azure water of the Aegean Sea. Sport climbing in this magical corner of the Dodecanese only began in earnest in the 1990s, with the discovery that Kalymnos’ profusion of tufas – limestone deposits that provide handholds – presents a unique challenge to even experienced outdoor climbers.

The island’s latest (2019) Climbing Guidebook lists an astounding total of 3,400 sport climbing routes – almost 700 have been added since 2015 – across sectors (crags) with names such as ‘Secret Garden’ and ‘Spartan Wall’, and more are being added all the time.

As well as steeper overhanging climbs, there are many vertical and slabby (off-vertical) routes dotted with pockets and crimps. These are often more approachable for novices, which means it’s not unusual to meet indoor climbers here who have travelled from the UK for their first experience of outdoor climbing.

For me, Kalymnos is a chance to put my own skills to the test. Sport climbing is the safest of all climbing variants, using pre-installed stainless-steel bolts to clip the rope into. In the French grading system, which ranks the difficulty of climbs with numbers and further categorises them with additional letters and plus symbols depending on their severity, Kalymnos’ routes vary from four to nine. There are plenty of climbs for beginners to improve on, while for me, with a few years of sport climbing under

MATT RAY, GETTY PREMIUM

M

y chalked-up hand has a death grip on a rail of orange limestone. I can feel the lactate burning in my forearm as I press my feet down onto the table-sized stalactite below me.

I lean out into the void above a 30m drop and stretch up my left hand to grab the next stalactite. To maintain tension, I’m bracing my core muscles so much that I forget to breathe.

We’re scaling Axium, a grade 6c+ (or medium-high difficulty) route to the top of the Ghost Kitchen crag, just one of an incredible array of evocatively named sport climbs on the Greek island of Kalymnos that, until recent years, formed a semi-secret playground for the cognoscenti and serious pro-climbers.

I suck in a ragged breath and my fingers lock into a tiny pocket in the rock.

To make the next move, I have to lift my right foot high onto a dubious, sloping foothold and rock my weight over and onto it. But my body feels horribly compressed and my arms are going numb. My fingers begin to uncurl of their

VENTURE Travel Clockwise from far left: Matt Ray scales Omiros (7b) at Sector Odyssey; 2021 World Cup lead climbing winner Stefano Ghisolfi on Atena Wall (6b+); sunset at Masouri Beach.

Opening page: Ray tackles Axium (6c+)

my belt, Ghost Kitchen (6c+) provides plenty to think about, as over the past two years I’ve either had to stop climbing or been forced to head indoors and climb in gyms. Kalymnos’ eights and nines, meanwhile, prove testing enough that the climbing elite view the island as a perfect proving ground.

Italian Stefano Ghisolfi is the current IFSC World Cup winner in lead climbing and is considered to be one of the top three climbers on the planet, alongside Czech Adam Ondra – the 2014 IFSC World Champion in both lead climbing and bouldering – and Germany’s Alex Megos, the first person to climb a 9a route onsight (without prior practice).

Ghisolfi, a 15-time World Cup medal winner, is on Kalymnos to climb Sector Odyssey – a crag just outside the island’s climbing epicentre, the village of Masouri – which has everything from rookie climbs to the 8b Gaia route. Before tackling that daunting task, the 28-year-old takes time out to climb with me and impart advice on how to overcome the fear of falling and the self-imposed pressure to succeed.

“Even when I’m trying to finish a route, I will set an intermediate goal,” the La Sportiva athlete says. This might be as simple as ‘get to the next bolt’, but it provides an immediate focus and breaks down the challenge into manageable phases. “When you’re focusing on a goal, you cannot feel the fear and it helps with your motivation.”

For seasoned climbers, there are experiences unique to Kalymnos. Michael Piccolruaz, who competed at the 2020 Olympics, admits that on his first climb among the forest of stalactites in the roof of the natural amphitheatre of the Grand Grotto cave, he got lost. “It’s so steep and overhanging that you don’t know whether to traverse the stalactite to the left or the right,” says the Italian. “It’s a real adventure.”

Having gained a deserved reputation among elite climbers and enthusiasts, THE RED BULLETIN

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VENTURE Travel

Five insider Kalymnos tips Hire a moped. Get a ride from rental service AutoMarket or another provider. All the climbing crags are reachable via moped then a walk If you need climbing gear, there are several specialist stores in Masouri The Kalymnos Climbing Guidebook (2019) features most of the climbs on the island and includes a free topo download from the Vertical-Life app If Masouri is fully booked, there are plenty of other options fairly close to the crags, including Arginonta and Panormos Pack a heavy fleece or puffa jacket – in autumn and spring, temperatures can drop in the evenings and early mornings

Turkey Greece Bodrum

Kalymnos

Kos

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are very specific and quite large,” explains Dourdourekas. “Outdoors, we have a lot more options for moves using the feet, and you need to learn to trust the small footholds.”

I start to look for previously dismissed opportunities and I’m surprised to find I can actually support my weight on a small hold protruding from the rock, using what amounts to a single toe. After I attempt to charge up a 30m route without pausing, Dourdourekas spots another classic error. “You need to learn how to rest on the large holds, shake your arms out and slow down.”

“The island’s latest (2019) Climbing Guidebook lists an astounding total of 3,400 sport climbing routes”

Learning from stronger climbers is an age-old tradition, and it’s something I remember on my next attempt at Axium.

This time, I actively look for anywhere to pause and shake out on the 35m-high puzzle of tufas, while using good ‘tufa technique’, turning sideways to the wall, to keep my arms as straight as possible.

By the time I get to the crux, I’ve turned back the ‘pump clock’, and I now have the strength and endurance to pull through, stepping past my previous fall and clipping safely into the anchor with a whoop of triumph. My body floods with endorphins and I turn, smiling, to take in the view of the sea. And from the top it’s all the sweeter.

Matt Ray is an adventure and action sports writer/photographer who has climbed everywhere from the gritstone of the Peak District to the deserts of Wadi Rum; adventurefella.com THE RED BULLETIN

MATT RAY

Kalymnos has a buzzing climbing scene.

It’s chiefly centred around Masouri and its beach, but stretches across the whole island and beyond, taking in post-climb swims at ‘Pirate Beach’ (Kalamies) and extending to the crags of Telendos, an islet that sits off the west coast.

And there’s no need to worry about arriving solo. Even if you travel by yourself in the peak autumn and spring seasons, you can usually find a climbing partner via Facebook Groups, Telegram chats, or even chalk your details on the message board outside Sofrano Snack Bar. All the crags are just a hired scooter ride and a walk away.

Back at Sector Odyssey, climbing coach and rescue team member Loukas Dourdourekas (the first Greek to achieve an 8c+ climb) is also on hand with advice on converting indoor climbing instincts to outdoor rock. “Indoors, the footholds

MATT RAY

Kalymnos rocks: postcard-perfect views from the island’s crags as night falls

VENTURE Equipment RIDE

Pushing ahead Whether you’re riding muddy trails, fire roads or steep downhill routes, these MTB pedals will help you get the most out of every stroke

Love downhill and freeride?

A lightweight pedal with a thin, wide platform, like the SPANK Oozy Reboot, offers plenty of space underfoot, adding power to your stroke

TIM KENT

Made for enduro racing, the TIME Speciale 12 clipless pedal has adjustable tension for smoother disengagement, and is robust enough to protect against rock hits

SPANK Oozy Reboot, spank-ind.com; TIME Speciale 12, sram.com

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VENTURE Equipment

From top, left to right: RACE FACE Chester, raceface.com; DEITY Deftrap, deitycomponents.com; CHROMAG Dagga, uk.chromagbikes.com; NS BIKES Radiance, nsbikes.com; GUSSET Slim Jim, gussetcomponents.com; LOOK X-Track Race Carbon, lookcycle.com; NUKEPROOF Horizon Pro Sam Hill Enduro, nukeproof.com; GARMIN Rally XC200, garmin.com; HT PA03A, ht-components.com; DMR V11, dmrbikes.com; SPECIALIZED Boomslang Platform, specialized.com; FUNN Funndamental, funnmtb.com THE RED BULLETIN

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VENTURE Gaming Pac-Man Museum+, out on various platforms this year, lets players experience 14 versions of the game inside a virtual arcade

Mario into a level you shouldn’t be able to get to – the Minus World. Amazingly, it takes the colour palette from one level, and objects and enemies from another, all created by player interaction with the game in a particular way. Decades later, new discoveries are still being made about these games.”

Fine-tuned

Why do we enjoy video games? A look at their past may help us better understand the present You know video games have hit it big when Christmas movies are made about them. The 2021 comedy 8-Bit Christmas is about a 10-year-old trying to secure a hard-to-get Nintendo Entertainment System in the late ’80s – a tale drawn from the childhood experiences of screenwriter Kevin Jakubowski.

Of course, video games have long been a big deal: in 2020, the market had a global value of £120 billion; that’s more than the movie sector in pre-pandemic 2019 (£76bn).

But a closer look at those 8-bit days could tell us exactly why we’re so hooked on gaming, and Professor James Newman has spent the past quarter of a century doing just that. As a senior curator at the National Videogame Museum (NVM) in Sheffield and professor at Bath Spa University, Newman has authored numerous books on the subject, including 2018’s A History of Videogames, and conducts lectures furthering its academic study. “A lot of it is working out how we talk about video games,” he says.

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“Are they like films or TV? Or more like traditional games, with rules and goals? You have to think about the audience and their relationship with the creator, and it’s constantly evolving.” From Pong and PacMan to Fortnite and Forza, Newman has discovered some interesting clues to gaming’s enduring appeal…

Routine behaviour

Today’s gamers might find it hard to imagine the popularity of Pac-Man on its release in arcades in 1980. Within a year, more than $1 billion of quarters had been loaded into the machines, surpassing the movie Star Wars (1977) in revenue. The pill-gobbling main character was gaming’s first superstar, but the ghosts that chased him played just as vital a role, and it comes down to our

“We’re still finding out new things about these games”

trait for finding personality in everything we see. “The ghosts have colours and names, but their characters weren’t really created through image,” says Newman. “Take the red one [Blinky]. He’s often said to be the leader because he’s ‘mean’, but that’s entirely down to the algorithms governing how he moves. He takes the most direct route, so you’ll often find him in your path. It’s called ‘expressive AI’. Personality can be projected from what, in this case, is just a simple routine.”

Breaking good

A game glitching is usually a bad thing, but not for Newman.

“I’m interested in games going wrong,” he says, highlighting the human desire for finding faults – or cheats, as they’re sometimes known in gaming.

“One fascinating example is the original Super Mario Bros.

Mario’s world is built like Lego, and at the end of one of the stages, if you jump at a green pipe just right, it’s like getting wedged between two Lego bricks. The game then drops

Hidden talents

Video games can often appeal in ways far beyond how they’re designed to be played. “Animal Crossing [on Nintendo Switch] confounds expectations about what a game can be. There are no explosions; it’s about weeding and mortgages and remembering a giraffe’s birthday.” But players found the game – released at the start of lockdown – offered something else. “It became a space where you could spend time on other players’ islands and connect in the same way as a Zoom quiz.

It wasn’t designed as a place to hang out, but it transformed into this social space.” Newman and the NVM recently launched the Animal Crossing Diaries project, cataloguing the various ways the game was played during lockdown. “Hearing how players have used these games, compared with what was intended, is fascinating.”

thenvm.org THE RED BULLETIN

STU KENNY

Love bytes

BANDAI NAMCO ENTERTAINMENT

DISCOVER

The very tech a game comes on can impact our relationship with it. The Legend of Zelda (1986) on the NES was the first cartridge with a battery to save progress, allowing for longer narratives, but disc-based games levelled us up further. “It enabled moviestyle cut scenes and CD-quality soundtracks,” says Newman.

“You got games like Wipeout [1995], a futuristic racer with music by the likes of Orbital and the Chemical Brothers. It was video-game music that sparked my interest in [this field].”

VENTURE Gaming BLAST

Bullet time Halo Infinite’s firepower just got real

TOM GUISE

If you’re up on your gaming jargon, the term ‘Nerfed’ will be a familiar one. You’ll hear it exclaimed – most often in disgust – whenever the effectiveness of a weapon or any other feature of a game is reduced to balance out gameplay when that element becomes OP (overpowered). It’s inspired by the sponge-pellet-firing toy guns, but as anyone who has fired a Nerf blaster knows, those bad boys are anything but underpowered.

Rather than take umbrage, Nerf manufacturer Hasbro has embraced the term, releasing Nerf replicas of popular video-game guns. Its latest models celebrate first-person shooter Halo Infinite, which was released on Xbox and PC last November. The Nerf LMTD Halo Needler (pictured right) is a perfect facsimile of the in-game weapon of alien race the Covenant (although it is Nerfed, firing 10 soft pellets rather than 26 exploding plasma crystals). The Nerf Halo Bulldog (below) and MA40, however, literally Nerf the in-game weapons; they come with codes that unlock the Nerf skins inside Halo Infinite and let players – to use more video-game parlance – turn opponents into ‘bullet sponges’. That term, we think, is self-explanatory. nerf.hasbro.com

HASBRO

The Nerf Halo Bulldog pump-action blaster holds 10 darts. That’s as many as it comes with, too, so expect to go fishing under cushions for ammo (an experience not replicated in the video game) THE RED BULLETIN

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VENTURE How To

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NINA ZIETMAN

A

ccording to research conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme, every year 300 million tonnes of plastic waste are produced worldwide, and a staggering 79 per cent of all the plastic created has ended up in either landfill or in the natural environment. Most of us have changed some part of our lifestyle in recent years to combat this, but few have gone to the same lengths as Emily Penn. The Swansea-born ocean activist has spent the past decade sailing the planet in search of ways to reduce plastic pollution.

In 2010, aged 23, Penn cofounded Pangaea Exploration, a project that enables scientists and filmmakers to reach the most remote parts of the planet by boat. During their travels they discovered huge areas of ocean filled with microplastics. “I was worried they were getting into the food chain and impacting human health,” she says. To check the validity of her concerns, Penn had a sample of her blood tested for 35 chemicals that are banned by the UN, many of them found in plastics. The results were shocking; 29 of these were in her bloodstream.

Many of the toxins detected were endocrine disruptors, which interfere with hormones.

As a woman, Penn found this particularly disturbing: “We can pass these onto the child in the womb. I realised this was a female-centred issue.” Spurred on by her findings, in 2014 she founded eXXpedition, a nonprofit that organises sailing trips focused on researching plastic pollution and its effects on women’s health.

Each eXXpedition voyage has a diverse crew of 10 women. “Everyone is from a different background, from filmmakers and artists to packaging designers and scientists,” says Penn. “We need women from all over the world with different skill sets to help solve the problems in their industries.”

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CONSERVE

Clean up your act

Emily Penn takes crews of like-minded female activists across the world’s oceans to tackle plastic pollution. Here, she shares how we can all contribute to their goal Diversity is key: “We all share the same oceans and we need to work multinationally to address this global problem.

By experiencing the challenges first-hand, [the crew] then go home and implement change.”

So, what actions can we implement to help solve the plastic problem in our oceans?

Ask for alternatives

“Encourage companies to offer the products you want,” says Penn. This could be anything from biodegradable toothbrushes or alternatives to the chemicals used to waterproof clothing. “From there, governments will be able to legislate. If we just focus on cleaning up, we’ll never win. We need to drive change as close to the source as possible.”

Dig around in your bin

“Take a look around your house,” says Penn. “What’s filling your bin? Food packaging is really hard to avoid, but there are solutions.” In 2020, Penn set up Shift, an online platform that offers convenient ways to reduce single-use plastic, from using loose tea to getting milk delivered in glass bottles.

“We’ve pulled together brilliant innovators from all over the world who are coming up with amazing alternatives.”

“We’re helping women to be the change makers the world needs” Emily Penn

Join eXXpedition

More than 300 women have taken an eXXpedition voyage on board SV TravelEdge – and you don’t have to be a scientist.

“By building this community, we are encouraging women to be the change makers the world needs,” says Penn.

Micro actions matter

“We don’t need to do everything, just something,” says Penn. “Our micro actions add up. You might think, ‘What difference will one more plastic bag make?’ It makes all the difference if everyone changes their behaviour.”

To learn more about Penn’s initiatives, go to emilypenn. com. For details on how to take part in eXXpedition’s work, visit exxpedition.com 87

VENTURE Equipment RIDE

Shine on

Picture the scene: you’re cycling down a beautiful woodland trail on a dark night, with an hour’s ride home ahead of you. Suddenly, your bike light flickers and goes out; with no other light source for miles in any direction, you’re plunged into blackness. The cyclist’s fear of this nightmare scenario is what makes high-end bike lights so popular, even though some cost as much as the machine they’re fitted to.

Your lights are not the place to scrimp.

Pumping out 3,600 lumens of light – boosted to 5,000 at high speeds – the Exposure Six Pack Mk11 uses AI tech to take the worry out of night

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riding. Reflex Technology measures activity, gradient, temperature and acceleration data to provide more light in darker surroundings and switch to power save in brighter areas. The Six Pack Mk11 even remembers your riding style and learns how much light you’ll require the more you use it.

Its battery lasts 36 hours on a full charge, but tell the light how long you’ll be out for and it’ll ration any remaining power until you reach home.

Who says that cycling is a daytime sport? Head out when the sun goes down and keep pedalling till daybreak.

exposure-use.com

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TIM KENT

Night-time cycling needn’t be hazardous. This AI-driven light tracks the darkness, learns how you ride, and won’t quit until you’re home

VENTURE Equipment

Outward bound Resort skiing is great, but there’s nothing like escaping to the backcountry to ride virgin powder and walk lessertravelled trekking routes.

Ski touring – a combination of cross-country ski trekking and alpine downhill – is the perfect way to explore the mountains, but requires different skills and equipment to your average day on the slopes.

Here’s some of the best gear to take out with you…

Ski touring involves uphill climbs as well as downhill rides, so a ski with hybrid binding is essential. BLACK DIAMOND’s Impulse 98 Skis offer both smooth resort riding and bindings for when you have to go cross-country

ROXY Celesty Beanie, roxy-uk.co.uk; POC Devour Glacial Sunglasses, pocsports.com; HELLY HANSEN Odin 9 Worlds Infinity Shell Jacket, Powderqueen Bib Pants and HH Fleece Touch Glove Liners, hellyhansen.com; K2 Mindbender 110 Alliance Ski Boots, k2snow.com; BLACK DIAMOND Cirque 35 Pack, Expedition 2 Ski Poles and Impulse 98 Skis, blackdiamond equipment.com

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The most important word to remember when dressing for ski touring? Layering.

Wear a good base layer and pack a mid-layer in your bag. A shell jacket, such as HELLY HANSEN’s Odin 9 Worlds Infinity, offers protection against extreme wind and snow without bulkiness, and its underarm vents are a must-have for intense treks

A pole with a long grip and a wide basket is perfect for the backcountry.

Choose adjustable poles that can be extended for uphill travel and shortened for downhill turns.

BLACK DIAMOND’s Expedition 2 Ski Poles are made from a lightweight aluminium – stiff enough for trekking and skiing, but not too heavy to carry

Stiff boots make hard work of ski trekking, but footwear specifically designed for touring will alleviate some of that effort. In walk mode, K2’s Mindbender 110 Alliance Ski Boots give power and flexibility on backcountry treks, and more control on downhill turns

DAVID EDWARDS

EXPLORE

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VENTURE Equipment

If you can’t see where you’re going, you can’t navigate the mountain.

ZEAL OPTICS’ Lookout Ski and Snowboard Goggles offer anti-fog protection for maximum visibility on the murkiest of days, as well as Observation Deck Technology, which expands your vertical field of view by 20 per cent

Trekking up the side of a mountain is sweaty business. The Brage 2.0 Salopette from KLÄTTERMUSEN has two-way ventilation zips on the outer thigh, to cool down your legs on a sunny snow day

BBCO Roam Recycled Beanie, bbcoheadwear. com; ZEAL Lookout Ski and Snowboard Goggles, zealoptics.com; KLÄTTERMUSEN Brage 2.0 Shell Jacket and Brage 2.0 Salopette, klattermusen.com; K2 Mindbender 130 Ski Boots, k2snow.com; POW Alpha GTX Gloves, powgloves.com; POC Dimension VPD Backpack, pocsports.com; BLACK DIAMOND Expedition 2 Ski Poles and Impulse 104 Skis, blackdiamond equipment.com THE RED BULLETIN

Ski touring requires a lot of gear, but you don’t want it to become a burden. Take a backpack that will distribute the weight evenly and give extra protection to your back during a full day on the snow. POC’s Dimension VPD Backpack makes its maximum 22L load feel as light as possible through the use of multiple straps and pockets, and it has a Quick-Access avalanche pocket for added safety

Long days in the backcountry can be rough if you don’t have waterproof kit.

Among the most important areas to keep cool and dry are your hands.

Try a hardwearing glove like the POW Alpha GTX, which has top-notch insulation and a fleece lining for warmth, with a Waterproof Fly Vent zipper to keep you dry

Just because a ski is built for uphill travel, that doesn’t mean it can’t still charge through the powder on the way down. BLACK DIAMOND’s Impulse 104 Skis are all-mountain hardwear for freeriders who love speed and like to stay nimble on sharp downhill turns

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VENTURE Fitness spend a set amount of time on the bike. I’ll go out to either Virgin or the skatepark, then ride dirt bikes or skate.

I just got into skating – it’s awesome because it keeps everything fresh. You expect to be good at something new because you’re good at riding bikes, but that’s not how it works. There’s always something you can learn.”

Dig for fitness

“Digging is like strength training – and a rest day. I go out to Virgin with an open mind and find features that draw from motocross and BMX. It usually takes three or four days to build a new line, depending on if it rains or it’s super-dry. We attack a line for three days in a row, from sun-up to sundown. In the summer, when it can hit 110°F [43°C] in the middle of the day, we go out there at 4am.

That’s super-draining.”

PRACTISE

Crash course Freeride mountain-biking prodigy Jaxson Riddle on what it takes to send big lines on the wildest trails The first time Jaxson Riddle went out to Virgin, Utah, to ride the terrain of infamously tough freeride mountainbiking (MTB) contest Red Bull Rampage, he was only 15 and took his BMX – the only bike he had. After that trip, Riddle promptly sold it and invested the money in his first downhill rig – he’d found his sport.

MTB requires not only the strength and cardio fitness to conquer steep, challenging climbs but also the skill and dexterity to send it on technical, rocky and difficult descents. A typical day for Riddle, now 21, might include hitting jumps at the Snake Hollow Bike Park in his home 92

city of Saint George, Utah; digging a new line in Virgin; mastering a high-risk aerial manoeuvre; or maybe offering friendly advice to kids at the local skatepark. “I take inspiration from freestyle motocross and try to bring those tricks to mountain bikes,” he says, Here, the freeride MTB star details the training needed to ride faster, climb better, and descend quicker.

Mix it up

“I have a lot of respect for people who have a routine and can stick to it,” says Riddle, “but for me it’s different. I try to ride every day, but I don’t

Wrong makes right

“I have to be as good at crashing as riding” Jaxson Riddle

“I have to be as good at crashing as riding. With repetition, you learn what not to do. It helps to know how to push your bike away so there’s no chance it lands on you. I won’t try anything I don’t know will work, but I do [prepare by thinking] of all the things that could go wrong. Then I’ll breathe three times and just try it. Usually it works out.”

Instagram: @jaxsonriddle THE RED BULLETIN

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“I’ll just watch a video, like, a hundred times, then visualise it when I’m out there. I do it in steps. If it’s a Superman [hands on handlebar, feet off pedals and stretched out backwards], I’ll do a no-footer first, then inch my way to it. I ride the jump a couple of times and envision myself doing the trick. I work it out in my head at the top of the run-in, then try to do what I just visualised.

If I keep making the same mistake without progress, I’ll take a break and come back with a different mindset.”

JEN SEE

Picture it

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February DROPPING IN

8 February to 18 April BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE EXPERIENCE Robert Nesta Marley died from cancer on May 11, 1981. He was just 36 years old, but the reggae pioneer was already a global superstar, and his legend has only grown with time. This 10-week exhibition celebrates Marley’s legacy as a musician, a voice of unity and love, and a man and a father. The multisensory experience features rare vinyl and photos, a silent disco, a fan-art gallery, and exhibits representing Marley’s inspirations and passions – from the scents and sounds of a simulated Jamaican forest to an interactive football room. Saatchi Gallery, London; bobmarleyexp.com

Paddy Graham is more than just Britain’s top freeskier – he’s also a damn nice bloke to hang out with. And in this four-part series he uses both these qualities to full effect, meeting and carving epic backcountry powder lines with some of his sport’s greatest trailblazers, including French freestyle pioneer Julien Regnier, US freeskier and 2008 quarterpipe height recordbreaker Simon Dumont, US bigmountain competition freeskier Jackie Paaso (once voted one of ESPN’s ‘Top 50 Women in Action Sports’) and New York-born, but now full-time freeskiing nomad, Ahmet Dadali. redbull.com

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February to 21 March OUT AND ABOUT!: 40 LGBTQ+ MOMENTS FROM BISHOPSGATE INSTITUTE Today, London has a proud and vibrant queer nightlife scene, but as evidenced by this photo of a 1992 protest against the criminalisation of consensual sex between gay men aged under 21 (lowered to 18 in 1994), this hasn’t always been the case. It’s one of the many images in this exhibition showing the struggles and celebrations of those still striving for social and political change. Also on the programme are talks from those involved in these moments. Barbican, London; barbican.org.uk 94

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February SNOWMADS: A FOREIGN NATIVE

ADRIAN BOOT, PALLY LEARMOND / RED BULL CONTENT POOL, GORDON RAINSFORD/BISHOPSGATE INSTITUTE COLLECTION, FLORIAN BREITENBERGER, TIBERIO SORVILLO, PAT NOLAN/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

As an Austrian big-mountain freeskier, Fabian Lentsch is used to going off the beaten track, and two years ago his quest for fresh snow took him to Iran. What he discovered was incredible skiing and a rich and beautiful culture.

But in February 2020, when the pandemic shut down borders, he stepped out of his sporting bubble, learning to speak the local language of Farsi and even a traditional musical instrument, the tanbur. This is a story about adventure, but also friendship and community. redbull.com

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February LIFE OF KAI

March to 20 March SONICA FESTIVAL It’s difficult to describe exactly what your senses are in for at this boundary-blurring audiovisual arts festival, but perhaps the opening act sums it up best. Working under the name Kistvaen (a type of Neolithic granite tomb), electronic musician Roly Porter and visual artist MFO team up with Gaelic singer Anne Martin to deliver a technologydriven spectacle exploring our pagan roots. Other performances include Maotik’s Erratic Weather (pictured), which uses global weather data to conjure up a ‘storm’ of a light show, with music from cellist Maarten Vos. Across Glasgow; sonic-a.co.uk THE RED BULLETIN

Born and raised in Hawaii, world-famous waterman Kai Lenny is always on the lookout for the next big wave. In this second series of his show, we follow the fearless and charismatic 29-year-old as he tackles the 2021-22 Big Wave World Tour. But it’s not all fun and games, as a behind-the-scenes glimpse at Lenny’s punishing training regime reveals. redbull.com 95

GLOBAL TEAM

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The Red Bulletin is published in six countries. This is the cover of our US issue for March, featuring NBA star and social activist Jaylen Brown.

For more stories beyond the ordinary, go to: redbulletin.com

The Red Bulletin UK. ABC certified distribution 145,193 (Jan-Dec 2020)

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Head of The Red Bulletin Alexander Müller-Macheck, Sara Car-Varming (deputy) Editors-in-Chief Andreas Rottenschlager, Andreas Wollinger (deputy) Creative Directors Erik Turek, Kasimir Reimann (deputy) Art Directors Marion Bernert-Thomann, Miles English, Tara Thompson Designers Martina de ­Carvalho-Hutter, Kevin Faustmann-Goll, Cornelia Gleichweit Photo Editors Eva Kerschbaum (manager), Marion Batty (deputy), Susie Forman, Tahira Mirza, Rudi Übelhör Digital Editors Christian Eberle-Abasolo (manager), Marie-Maxime Dricot, Melissa Gordon, Lisa Hechenberger, Elena Rodriguez Angelina Head of Audio Florian Obkircher Managing Editors Ulrich Corazza, Marion Lukas-Wildmann Publishing Management Ivona Glibusic, Bernhard Schmied, Melissa Stutz, Anna Wilczek Managing Director Stefan Ebner Head of Media Sales & Partnerships Lukas Scharmbacher Head of Co-Publishing Susanne Degn-Pfleger Project Management Co-Publishing, B2B Marketing & Communication Katrin Sigl (manager), Katrin Dollenz, Thomas Hammerschmied, Sophia Wahl, Teresa Kronreif (B2B), Eva Pech, Valentina Pierer, Stefan Portenkirchner (communication), Jennifer Silberschneider Creative Services Verena Schörkhuber-Zöhrer (manager), Sara Wonka, Julia Bianca Zmek, Edith Zöchling-Marchart, Tanja Zimmermann Commercial Management Co-Publishing Alexandra Ita Editorial Co-Publishing Raffael Fritz (manager), Gundi Bittermann, Mariella Reithoffer, Wolfgang Wieser Executive Creative Director Markus Kietreiber Senior Manager Creative Elisabeth Kopanz Art Direction Commercial & Co-Publishing Peter Knehtl (manager), Erwin Edtmayer, Simone Fischer, Martina Maier, Andreea Parvu, Carina Schaittenberger, Alexandra Schendl, Julia Schinzel, Florian Solly, Dominik Uhl, Sophie Weidinger, Stephan Zenz Subscriptions and Distribution Peter Schiffer (manager), Marija Althajm, Nicole Glaser, Victoria Schwärzler, Yoldaş Yarar Advertising Manuela Brandstätter, Monika Spitaler Production Veronika Felder (manager), Friedrich Indich, Walter O. Sádaba, Sabine Wessig Repro Clemens Ragotzky (manager), Claudia Heis, Nenad Isailović, Sandra Maiko Krutz, Josef Mühlbacher Finance Mariia Gerutska (manager), Simone Kratochwill, Klaus Pleninger MIT Christoph Kocsisek, Michael Thaler IT Service Desk Maximilian Auerbach Operations Alice Gafitanu, Melanie Grasserbauer, Alexander Peham, Thomas Platzer Assistant to General Management Sandra Artacker Project Management Dominik Debriacher, Gabriela-Teresa Humer Editor and CEO Andreas Kornhofer Editorial office Am Grünen Prater 3, A-1020 Vienna Phone +43 1 90221-0 Web redbulletin.com Published by Red Bull Media House GmbH, Oberst-Lepperdinger-Straße 11–15, A-5071 Wals bei Salzburg, FN 297115i, Landesgericht Salzburg, ATU63611700 Executive Directors Dkfm. Dietrich Mateschitz, Dietmar Otti, Christopher Reindl, Marcus Weber

THE RED BULLETIN United Kingdom, ISSN 2308-5894 Acting Editor Tom Guise Associate Editor Lou Boyd Chief Sub-Editor Davydd Chong Publishing Manager Ollie Stretton Editor (on leave) Ruth McLeod Advertising Sales Mark Bishop, mark.bishop@redbull.com Printed by Quad/Graphics Europe Sp. z o.o., Pułtuska 120, 07-200 Wyszków, Poland UK Office Seven Dials Warehouse, 42-56 Earlham Street, London WC2H 9LA Tel: +44 (0) 20 3117 2000 Subscribe getredbulletin.com Enquiries or orders to: subs@uk. redbulletin.com. Back issues available to purchase at: getredbulletin.com.

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THE RED BULLETIN Austria, ISSN 1995-8838 Editor Wolfgang Wieser Proofreaders Hans Fleißner (manager), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek Publishing Management Bernhard Schmied Media Sales & Partnerships Thomas Hutterer (manager), Michael Baidinger, Franz Fellner, Ines Gruber, ­Wolfgang Kröll, Gabriele Matijevic-Beisteiner, Alfred Vrej Minassian, Nicole Okasek-Lang, Britta Pucher, Jennifer Sabejew, Johannes Wahrmann-Schär, Ellen WittmannSochor, Ute Wolker, Christian Wörndle, Sabine Zölß

THE RED BULLETIN Germany, ISSN 2079-4258 Editor Maximilian Reich Proofreaders Hans Fleißner (manager), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek Country Project Management Nina Hahn Media Sales & Partnerships Thomas Hutterer (manager), Michael Baidinger, Franz Fellner, Ines Gruber, ­Wolfgang Kröll, Gabriele Matijevic-Beisteiner, Alfred Vrej Minassian, Nicole Okasek-Lang, Britta Pucher, Jennifer Sabejew, Johannes Wahrmann-Schär, Ellen WittmannSochor, Ute Wolker, Christian Wörndle, Sabine Zölß

THE RED BULLETIN Switzerland, ISSN 2308-5886 Editor Stefania Telesca Proofreaders Hans Fleißner (manager), Petra Hannert, Monika Hasleder, Billy Kirnbauer-Walek Country Project Management Meike Koch Media Sales & Brand Partnerships Christian Bürgi (team lead), christian.buergi@redbull.com Marcel Bannwart, marcel.bannwart@redbull.com Jessica Pünchera, jessica.puenchera@redbull.com Goldbach Publishing Marco Nicoli, marco.nicoli@goldbach.com

THE RED BULLETIN USA, ISSN 2308-586X Editor-in-Chief Peter Flax Deputy Editor Nora O’Donnell Copy Chief Catherine Auer Publishing Management Branden Peters Advertising Sales Todd Peters, todd.peters@redbull.com Dave Szych, dave.szych@redbull.com Tanya Foster, tanya.foster@redbull.com

THE RED BULLETIN France, ISSN 2225-4722 Editor Pierre-Henri Camy Country Coordinator Christine Vitel Country Project M ­ anagement Alexis Bulteau Contributors, Translators and Proofreaders Étienne Bonamy, Frédéric & Susanne Fortas, Suzanne ­Kříženecký, Claire ­Schieffer, Jean-Pascal Vachon, Gwendolyn de Vries

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Give wings to your career

Jason Paul, Professional Freerunner

“My greatest strength is my drive.”

Explore what you're naturally good at and get the tools and coaching to be even better.

redbull.com/wingfinder

Semi-Rad Adventure philosophy from BRENDAN LEONARD

“A few years back, a couple of different companies created elliptical bikes, which I thought was just mind-blowing, because all the other gym cardio exercise machines that humans had invented up to that point simulated a real-world activity: rowing machines, cross-country ski machines, stationary bikes, treadmills for walking or running, etc. Now, we had an elliptical machine – which was basically a device that simulated running but on the spot and indoors – and someone had taken this exercise machine and incorporated it into something that actually propelled the user forward, outdoors. So you were running in place, but your running in place powered a bicycle. It was exercise that had gone indoors and come back outside again. How cool is that? I eagerly await the invention of a treadmill with wheels on it that I can use to ‘run’ to work.” semi-rad.com

The next issue of THE RED BULLETIN is out on March 8 98

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WILLPOWER BRAVERY WE MEASURE GRAVITY BEAUTY

R E C O R D I N G O LYM P I C D R E A M S SINCE 1932 Time is only part of the story. At the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022, OMEGA will be measuring every part of what it means to be an athlete. As Official Timekeeper, we have spent 90 years witnessing the most determined competitors achieve their dreams. While their bravery, excellence and precision continues, we will be ready to record many more.

omegawatches.com

PRECISION

BEYOND THE ORDINARY

THE RED BULLETIN 03/2022