X-Alps Team Canada with James Elliott

West Coast saring club uh tonight we have the much anticipated um recap of the Red Bull XLS finally a year later just just a year later it’s okay um just before we get started though I just want to mention to everybody that next weekend uh weather providing there is an event at Mount Woodside for anticipated it’s it’s a paragliding recap of the red finally just be aware that it does just just a year later just so we can be aware that they’re probably going to be a little bit extra room and time and weekend now without further Ado there is an Advan for James is almost ready to set up and get this talk going finally be aware I hope everyone’s got a lot of questions we are going to be monitoring for uh your questions online for people that are not here and then we’ll ask James for you now James you know completed this Epic Journey uh in almost record time he was also the only Canadian to actually place and finish in 22nd freaking awesome and we’re all super proud and you know the team that helped him was just also epic so yeah big Kudos that goes out to his supporters and James all right buddy let’s get this going right on thanks Greg uh Jeremy are we good with the uh with everything good okay okay yeah so thank you everybody for coming out tonight this is uh as Greg mentioned uh been a long time in the works uh hard to believe it was about a year ago that I got back from the ex Alps and uh my plan was to right away do a big presentation when it was still fresh and I was excited still excited but uh you know there was a lot of excitement around it and um just life has gotten crazy I have two young kids and uh basically in 2023 I front loaded everything for the ex Alps and I got home and I was on Daddy Duty for about six months so pretty being pretty full on um so just out of curiosity how many people have had a chance to watch the documentary the xals documentary on YouTube it’s uh okay cool and just to give me a little bit of context I know I can kind of shape some of the commentary here um but uh quick uh you know presentation format closer like a shake weight better okay okay perfect um yeah so format wise I was trying to come up with an idea you know what what could convey the chaos of this race and PowerPoint just wasn’t really cutting it so I have a few videos it’s it’s mostly videos that I’m going to be narrating and that’ll also keep me on track because I think the last time I was here I went about two hours for the XP presentation so this is going to be an hour I promise and um and yeah hopefully we’ll be able to break all that down and and show you guys a little bit of the chaos it was definitely uh totally boners race um yeah I I can’t I can’t really do it justice all I can say is do it yourselves um to really get the full experience and uh yeah any takers we’ll we we’ll see okay uh slide J thanks so let’s get into it who who was Team Canada um unfortunately I can’t even start this presentation without mentioning uh Jonathan Kau uh many people I think probably everybody knows he passed away in Mexico uh in December from a paragliding accident so it’s a good reality check for us um and a very you know sobering um unfortunate event that just really uh for me put this race into perspective some of the risks we took um and uh yeah it was tough going through despite the fact that I had nine months to put this whole presentation together almost a year um you know going through all these videos recently is really tough uh Jonathan was very uh very you know he he was I credit him with so much of our success as a team in the xals and it’s um you know a huge loss to the paragliding Community a huge loss you know to us and um yeah it’s it was really tough um so I’m going to try to keep it together uh and um and and yeah but in a way on on a on a positive note I think having this experience with Jonathan and I’ll get into his role in a sec which I’m trying to do uh was just it was amazing having him here in the last year of his life because I think that the xals for him was one of uh if not a or the Highlight uh in his life he was so passionate about paragliding everybody knew from the videos he put together and and like I mentioned he was just such a a positive influence in paragliding across Canada um and down in Mexico so Jonathan supported me in the xer uh he supported me um or I raced with him down in the X Al or the uh X Red Rocks down in Utah a couple times and he was uh becoming a pretty proficient hike and fly pilot himself um so he was my primary supporter uh he was the race liaison he um basically was who I was talking to every couple minutes uh during the entire race for 12 days I was talking to Jonathan he was always in my ear he did my primary navigation primary uh Logistics um strategic support and you know pretty much all my roote planning and everything like that um so yeah it’s yeah it’s it’s tough uh but like I said he’s he’s probably you know the reason we got to the finish uh wasn’t myself as a flying this race is all about strategy um yeah absolutely yeah yeah yeah to Jonathan and Y yeah so uh also Dan um he was uh integral everybody was integral uh Dan did a great job um basically backup nav backup strategy uh he did all the cooking which is actually quite a bit and uh he was also my Sherpa unfortunately for him quite a few times a lot of hiking up a lot of vertical meters on a lot of these Hills uh Norm uh was primarily tasked with driving the RV around those very tight European roads and this was a maximum stress job I can’t overstate that it was very yeah very maximum stress and he handed it handled it very well uh only took off a mirror actually minimal minimal damage to the rest of the RV so everybody survived there and then Gom was kind of an allrounder so we pitched in in a lot of different areas did a lot of hiking carried a lot of my gear I remember I was doing multiple uh you know thousand meter hikes every day and I would be like y here’s here’s my you know four liter Camel Back here’s all this stuff and pile about 10 kilos on them and he you know complained a little bit but not too much um and then myself uh you know bit of a background on me I’ve just always been incredibly I just wonder what the rules are about that like obviously car your harness or GL just elor yeah you just had to carry uh a minimum equipment list so harness glider helmet reserve and pretty much everything else was um you could just hand off to your supporters yeah we’re kind of like princesses all that yeah yeah so my flying gear was like 6.5 kilos yeah so it wasn’t too bad um yeah so my background uh as many of you know you know I’ve just been crazy about paragliding for a long time and then I learned about hike and fly relatively early uh you know 13 or whatever years ago when I started flying and I just thought it was amazing to be able to combine my passion for physical fitness and hiking and um you know this hike and fly aspect of our sport into into one you know into me so the EXs was always something that I wanted to do and you know this kind of seemed like a good time to do it even though I had two young kids and probably not the best point in my life to actually do it but I did um and then couple honorable mentions um as well uh it wasn’t just us there were so many people behind the scenes um I got to mention Trevor Kessler who followed us around in uh in through the the Alps in an RV as well with his girlfriend I don’t know how he convinced his girlfriend to do that um David techuk up in pton did a lot of our software and some programming that we were able to integrate our live tracking into Google Earth and Jonathan could watch that and make sure I didn’t hit airspace it was pretty amazing and um uh Tom keto who I think may be coming tonight uh did a lot of my software in my app my navigation app that I was using so I could actually yeah navigate around so there was a ton of people contributed it wasn’t just us as a team uh Jeremy can I get next slide so again it’s it takes so much to put on a race like this um we had a lot of luck with sponsors um you know the club here West Coast Waring Club obviously I consider a lot of My Success as a pilot and where I am now um to the club it’s uh just amazing to have events like these and to get together share knowledge share expertise I wouldn’t be at the level I’m at if it wasn’t for the club um and the West Coast soaring Club contributed a bit of money and I was absolutely thrilled uh to you know have the logo on my wing it was amazing um just as importantly the moral support through that WhatsApp chat that we had for those of you were following was it was amazing to be able to check in and and uh and see everybody following everybody’s comments every day I didn’t always have a chance to reply back to those but it was really cool when I was walking down the road or up over a mountain pass and and actually see that so that was that was great uh my primary sponsor was Advance uh Advanced paragliders I was flying the Omega uls and their X Alps gear which was amazing because this is gear you cannot buy it’s it’s specifically made custom for each athlete um the uls athlete version is a lighter version of The Omega uls and their athlete harness weighs just over a kilo and it’s you know these grams make a big difference in in races like these so uh it was great to have them on board um a financial sponsor was Pathfinder asset management and they’re a specialized investment firm downtown and uh uh is here tonight thank you nud um so they were they were the biggest Financial partner and and I also grew up together as a side note so yeah it was great to have have them paraglide Canada Norm kmar helped with Advance uh setting up that and was also my same Norm as my supporter skysight saring weather they were providing us uh multi- uh times a day daily updates for weather um Canada SIV Adam Chapelle uh put me through the ringer over a lake uh just prior to going over there so I had my SIV skills tuned up um myo detox if you guys are ever in Vancouver I need an rmt when I was doing all my training and just punishing my body beyond what you could imagine Val at my detox was doing my rmt stuff and she volunteered all her time it was amazing XT Tracer uh hilks Christopher Bates riet these are all great companies that um I think somebody else could approach and probably probably get some support again if there’s anybody else thinking about doing this and not but last last but not least the GoFundMe um again through the West Coast sing Club you know we raised it was um the GoFundMe was just under $9,000 and a bunch of people contributed around that just e transfer and whatnot so it was about $10,000 that we um raised that Jonathan set up um Jonathan and Tony I believe for the go find me so that was that was amazing and direct yeah directly related to the club again so yeah pretty amazing next side so race overview this um yeah there’s probably not much introduction needed for any any paraglider pilot the Red Bull xels have been around you know it’s been around for the 20 years now build as the toughest Adventure Race in the world which I I tend to agree with in the sense that there are many elements of this race which may be surpassed in other events but when you combine everything together logistically physical challenge the Strategic challenge uh I think that it probably is one of the toughest Adventure races in the world if not the toughest and this is the second year that the Red Bull X Alps has not gone to Monaco it used to go all across the Alps down to the to the Mediterranean and now it is a out and back so it’s about 600 kmet to the um Southwest around Mont Blanc and then back through Northern Italy primarily and it’s obviously a you know pretty pretty crazy uh pretty crazy distance but looks pretty easy right yeah um quick note on rules so this year was one of the 23 was the first time that athletes could choose when they had a rest period there was a minimum seven hours every night that you had to be resting for from a safety perspective uh but we had a bit of wiggle room you could choose to start it later or you could start it a little bit earlier but you had to be not moving for 7 hours a night and then uh the eliminations on the third day and every second day thereafter the last athlete got eliminated so we thankfully didn’t have to worry about that uh no spoilers but um there were a lot of people that uh that did get eliminated uh from that one so I have a quick video just to highlight this a little bit more Jeremy if you could bring up that one the route is one massive loop around the Alps it starts at kitu goes east through Austria North into Germany then quickly Cuts back into Austria before heading west through Switzerland the athletes navigate some of the country’s highest mountains before turning anticlockwise around Mont Blanc and start heading back East through Switzerland then into Italy across the lakes and back over the Alps one last time to finish at Zam there are 15 turn points so these are places where athletes have to tag um some of them are on the ground um and they have a sign board and they got to sign their name others is a virtual cylinder and they can just pass them in the air from here the athletes can only make progress by hiking or paragliding the route is one massive loop around the Alps it starts at kitur goes east through Austria North into Germany then quickly Cuts back into Austria before heading west through Switzerland the athletes navigate some of the country’s highest mountains before turning thought I just heard that one many uh all of them the only one I didn’t walk through to take a different take on that question was France I flew all the way through France around mon Blan no never yeah to totally totally unfamiliar terrain yeah just send it just just go there should be a uh next slide uh still it’s certified yeah all the gear is certified but they only make uh for each of the advanced team athletes what about the the weight range they try to Target it to your weight or they’re still standard sizes um but yeah they they they will basically they’re still based on the production uls but it’s uh they still use the same sizing I should say um but yeah it’s all just lighter internals and lighter Fabric and everything uh Jeremy can you get the next slide there the RO is yeah so here’s a more detailed look at the route and I won’t get too bogged down in the details but we have some of the uh daily distances we managed to do the um longest day as in the farthest distance we covered was day two and all these purple and blue spots are uh airspace and it’s a lot more complex than flying in North America or you know any anywhere around here for sure because there’s so so much airspace the red is do not land or do not take off or both um and for the first time uh in the Red Bull EXs all of Germany was um was was no takeoff so you had to if you landed in Germany you had to walk to an existing designated takeoff and that could be 20 or 30 km away from where you land if you bombed out so this posed a very big problem uh for us and I guess the Germans in previous editions of the x-alps just got tired of X Alps Pilots you know just falling out of the sky everywhere and running up a hill and launching off and wreaking havoc in their country or something um so so they said nobody takes off from anywhere except a designated launch the longest uh leg was uh just between the Turn Point at D for speeds down here and uh catosa and it was about 235 km and that puts everything else into perspective again it’s about 600 km to Mont Blanc on the far left and all the way back which is about straight line distance I think it’s about here to Calgary and and back so a lot of a lot of terrain to cover uh we never know really where we’re going to be at the end of the day which makes it extremely challenging for supporters just to try to keep up in an RV and some of these days were big days you know a couple hundred kilometers so you know being a supporter is not uh it’s not easy are they always there for you always literally yeah so radio commun so they know where yeah yeah exactly any questions just at at this point any other ones Jeremy can I get the next slide so oh sorry this is the day one video Jeremy so enough of all the Preamble this is the uh race yeah so it’s been uh it took a couple years of training to get to day one of the Red Bull X Alps um we started in kidpool and basically had a lap through town and then started up the legendary honeycom uh ski hill and this is me in front of creal I want to highlight that it’s the only time it happen probably ever will and uh you know a lot of nerves obviously on the first day of the race but we we were we did really well with the prong so we as a team were confident we thought we could do pretty well and um and yeah nobody was really running up the mountain because it took a while for the day to turn on weather was you know it looked great but it was actually quite slow to get started so once I got up there I um you know geared up again you know supporters literally everywhere I went these guys were here I don’t know how they did it and huge crowd on launch um pretty amazing it’s hard to believe that this is year ago there’s the West Club there than great now one thing I really didn’t want to do was bomb out on the first Valley Crossing in the X Alps race so apparently neither did anybody else because the start Gaggle we really just hung out around the start for a long time um and pretty epic thermaling with crego you know Patrick Von canell Otti all these Legends so managed to keep it together and we just you know I just waited until somebody made a move and it was again pretty slow going this is just my track log but of course everybody else is around and the first 20 or 30 kilm of day one uh pretty slow Cloud base was just above Ridgetop height so it was actually quite difficult um and there was a split some of the course went to the north some of it some of us went to the South I chose a South Route but as you can see from the track log you know there’s a couple good thermals but it’s you know it wasn’t a booming day and later on it became quite overcast and uh and quite windy so I ended up getting stuck with a couple low saves and uh Ridge soaring for about 45 minutes with kingom asers and basically just thinking at this point that I might as well be walking which I caught myself doing a couple times during the race and as I learned many times it’s never faster to be walking always fly always fly if you can but couple low saves and then by this time in the evening you know there was quite a bit of wind coming down these valleys and I just got got flushed out but it was only about 10 km straight line distance from uh from the next turn point which was you know had had a little bit of gas in the tank still that was one day yeah there are some suffering moments for sure so uh tag the turno uh Vine and uh then we went a little bit late that night made it about 30 km towards kimy uh before we shut it down for the night and we ended that day the first day in 20th position which I thought was pretty good and most importantly was a serious uh buffer from being eliminated which going into this race was my number one thing don’t get eliminated that was that was my number one concern and wound up uh at the next to the Australian team for uh you know at the end of day one so only 11 more to go there were quite a there actually were were a few people who bombed out um and it took them days to catch up some didn’t catch up uh and um yeah yeah there were some some people bombed out nobody got eliminated though the first elimination was day three so Jeremy can I get to the day two video so day two again um day one we made it from here Vrain there for the night day two was by far the biggest Day made thankfully all through Germany which was that uh no Landing no takeoff Zone that I mentioned earlier day two uh good start to the day basically first thing in the morning hiked up and over the hill had a short little Valley Crossing in order to get into a better position um yes and this happens a lot in the in the XLS roads are great there’s they’re straight they’re smooth always power lines around but you can dodge those most for the most part um so what we wanted to do and what we were you know our our goal was to try to test our decision making at this point in the race day two morning at day two we knew the weather was going to be good but we hadn’t scouted this terrain we had no idea um you know really what the day was going to be like so we we just we had to make a right call we had to get in a good position in order to make the maximum flight possible so I think this was about 8:30 in the morning we after that short flight Jonathan and I hiked up to the hotch coning Massif and um kind of validated our decision-making process yes we’re in a good spot you know 8:30 in the morning or4 to 9: in the morning launching and it was just this epic you know massive that we were in front of literally thermaling up at uh before 9:00 in the morning oh you should have been a supporter yeah so absolutely spectacular and um this is Jonathan’s Drone footage which I watch all the time obviously so from here we are head Northeast towards or sorry Northwest towards kimy and I feel like these track logs always make it look very easy uh when you’re flying it’s not quite that easy um but we managed to basically use this entire Ridge line and there were a couple rough spots in here but we also had the benefit of following uh Paul gabauer who was only about 10 km in front of me at this point and that happened to be one of the worst thermals of my life actually um but by this time it’s almost noon there was this predominant North Wind that we had for the basically the entire first half of the race it was quite strong and it was coming up from the Northeast so it’s kind of coming in this direction and we were able to follow Paul gush Bow’s track and use the Lee of all these Hills in this Plateau to fight that strong North headwind and managed to fly right into uh kimsey you can see a bit of the the wind still you know it’s pretty windy on the ground there as well so this was you know great again another validation of our decision-making process what’s working um I hadn’t totally bombed out at this point which the Australian team did just earlier just before kimy so we were dropping a couple people and making a lot of progress so I did the mandatory sign uh team was already there again these these guys were amazing that RV I think the the gas pedal was never not on the floor with Norm driving it was pretty amazing so I think yeah Norm smacked my ass here didn’t he so here’s kimsey down here there was about an hour hike up out of town and he was still blowing 30 km an hour and managed to do this most of the other athletes in front of me had gone to this launch so I knew where they were going Jonathan was monitoring you know their tracks and we could see exactly what they were doing but it was so windy that you know you can tell from this track there’s you could not fly forward and we were trying to figure out what the most effective route would be um whether we go deep and like for those of you that are familiar flying that’s not a nice thermal you’re just literally hucking over over the back and and kind of praying I think my ground speed was like 70 km hour going over the back there and this um turned out to be a really good line through the northern Alps heading into Lous which is the next turn point because Logan Walters the American uh Team he had chosen a safer route and went farther out in the flats and and bombed out so I actually was able to put about 100 km or 60 or 70 km between myself and him at this point we later in the race uh leap frogged a few times so had a few low saves in here again the track log here does not show you the sky obviously so it was it got quite Shady um and heading up into the uh zuk’s beats Arena there’s this really famous tall mountain there with that North Wind that means that all of lose was in the Lee so getting up high it was about 4 me a second sink for about a 10 m 10minute Glide then got into L moose just ahead of the German team and again you know Norm Jonathan Dan GS Porters are just they’re there everywhere it’s like the ultimate paragliding you can just go wherever you want and you land and there’s a land there’s a b there and there just people to look after you so that’s maximilan Lo he’s uh the German team and this guy gu is hilarious I spent quite a bit of time flying with him and I asked him at the end of the race and said would you ever do that again he said no so getting out of lose was a comically short hike literally about 100 met from the Turn Point uh there’s this very shallow sloping field which I never would have thought would have worked but one of the uh cross country photographers uh Felix walk I think is um this is his home site he he he was assuring me he said no no this will work this will work and I thought there’s no way there will work so it was a bit of a dicey thing you know trusting locals uh but this time it it worked and literally just levitated up and out of L moose this is about 7:30 almost 8:00 at night and there was this weird Valley convergence that just allows you to literally just levitate up and out of this one area you know just in front of high tension power [Music] lines but we were hoping for a much bigger flight uh out of Lous but it was getting too late thermals weren’t really working at this point so basically got as high as we could and then used the valley wind to just do fish Downstream and and get as far as we could maximilan Lo who you saw earlier I saw him land in a very very bad spot he was fine but it was definitely uh one of the The sketchier Landings I’ve ever seen what was that that was just day two yeah so total distance for day two was 230 something kilometers so oh it was quite a quite a long time yeah I think uh it was a couple couple couple months yeah but it honestly didn’t help us that much I mean we you know we’re not over there we can’t Scout uh we were there a week in advance and you can’t cover that much terrain scouting um and i’ never flown over any of it well a little bit of Northern Italy but um you can spend a lot of time on Google Earth and everything trying to you know scope out some some Crux points but uh at the end of the day just got to go Jeremy can I get the next video please 4:40 a.m. nice start in the Alps Moon’s still out so we started very early I think I just heard myself saying it was 440 something a.m. and what we wanted to do this is day three and this video is going to be basically days three through uh the finish of the race so we wanted to get into a good position to tag pis buan and it was a just about to tet 39 3800 M pretty nice so this is one of the highest I got in theps and managed to tag pis and cross a couple really gnarly passes before Davos flew over Davos to chur which is a very very windy part of the Alps all right here we are and there was a there was a thunderstorm just over CH together socializing a bit socializing a bit after five hours full speed bar five hours crazy crazy flying there’s a CH down there it’s only gusting to about 50 km an hour so we top landed up here and uh this sky is getting bright I think it’s uh I think it might be flyable so hopefully a little bit of Team flying so that’s Maximillian again and yeah we just had to land and wait out the thunderstorm it was there was literally lightning bolts shooting out of this cloud in front of me and I figured okay I think that’s not a good idea idea so this is day uh four we launched just above dentus and I quickly got washed straight back down on the ground after about a 1500 meter hike and um yeah managed to relaunch out of that small little Meadow you just saw and did another one of these like valley wind convergence levitations up to 3,500 met and managed to fly over andat this is just approaching trim Point fish where I got stuck uh with some airspace that I just could not get over so I had to hike the last 10 kilometers into uh fish turnpoint um and I should have known but there was this notorious weather phenomenon called The grimsel Snake which Alex told me about like 10 times and I still didn’t listen apparently because I just yeah I was at 3600 meters thinking I must be above this wind coming off this crazy Glacier I’m fine I’m going to be totally fine and no 5 minutes later I’m on the ground around so tagged um tagged fish and then hiked up and spent the night on the mountain the team brought up all the all the Sleeping gear and all that kind of stuff and launched on the morning of day five at uh reader Alp at this point I was hoping for a nice flight into I don’t know if you guys can see my phone flopping around on the left side there but uh had Grand plans to fly into Fruit again but ended up getting shot down Jeremy do you mind just pausing the video [Music] ended up going in a little bit low into the valley um the loin pass Valley and probably one of the most turbulent times of the xels decided from this other time I’ll tell you about it soon but decided at that point I I just had enough I was I was low in this Valley literally in a washing machine and decided that if I wanted to live I should be on the ground but that involved about a 1,200 met hike up and over the loan pass which I was hoping to launch off of but it was just too windy it was about you know 50 kmers an hour at the top and you know clouds are ripping by it was a little bit overcast and just just gnarly so I decided to hike down a little ways and I found this little Gully Jeremy if you want to start the video again where the last thing I wanted to do was actually walk into food again I think it’s out of this little Valley here going to lot R up and hopefully get the hell out of this Valley so made it after one of again another one of the most turbulent plates in my life and landed in uh in Fruit again I remember Alex was in the air while I was flying out of that can that shady Canyon and when I got into Fruit again it was amazing had uh you know this great welcome party and yeah that was yeah right that was a good time I was so glad not to have to walk into food again turn so night of day five e y we go oh that was a tough day when you’re over the LZ you can put the brakes on and easily back up every day in summer and uh just as you get to the ground it’s like enough that you’re not but the old dud sit there in the hanger on the Airfield and drink beer and watch people get dragged at the problem you guys were thec land where he I landed where Inc on that flight and it was it was windy but it was fine but further up the valley where James came from would have been like the difference between landing at Woodside or Landing in Hope man I don’t know how you got out of that Valley into the when I saw you come out of the valley I was like I was watching I was trying to fly and watch theone figure out where J come out I was quite surprised to see you man to get out there it would have been like flying from to Woodside on a very it was a it was a huge battle and uh my motivation was not walking your tolerance starts to dramatically increase when take a rest that’s right which was turned out to be really good advice actually so at the end of day five uh we hiked halfway up to Nissan turnp point it’s uh I can’t 2,000 meters or something it’s a it’s a huge hike uh so we hiked halfway up day uh the night of day five and finished it off in the morning of day six where we had the one possibility one of the possibilities where we could have gotten a serious penalty in the race I had somehow grabbed the supporter’s GPS tracker and they had the Pilot’s GPS tracker so as soon as they started driving down the road everybody thought that I was in an ambulance people messaging from here from you know Canada you friends from the xels uh organization and you know they’re saying what’s going on um but it I was fine I was just carrying the supporters GPS and you know they they thought something seriously went wrong so we managed to actually switch that on the back end um and we didn’t get a uh we didn’t get a penalty so it’s yeah pretty good Jeremy can you start the video again yesterday and the day before they identical yeah yeah so conditions at this point were still still flyable but it was like Exel flyable it was not in Pleasant flying so I’m going to I’m going to let paltic cats give a little bit of info here some of the most fearful flights of my life I think today was probably the most fearful and this is something you actually expect on the xops but so far we didn’t have it and then finally bam you know like some those days where you would wish you would be on the ground but anyways you try to reach the next turn point so actually it’s very yeah emotionally um difficult and you know we had 12 days for to to do this course and this was day six so if everything was well tomorrow I will reach goal which is in one week 1,200 plus kilomet that’s quite something you know so we saw limits who which have been pushed very high and we saw no accidents because only those athletes were pushing so high who really have been able to do so they have to to take the right decisions whether they land or continue flying since like 2 hours we are flying in really Furious wind like it was 40K per hour at Cloud Bas or more than this sometimes and at one point I decided to to say okay stop it’s too much if I go further than this it will be difficult so I decided to I I had some height so I wanted to Glide and just I succeeded to keep my glider open and just going in between the trees and land so yeah wasn’t so nice at one point Maxim was being interviewed and he was literally as white as a ghost and I think he had gotten stuck in a narrow Valley that was just really windy and he uh yeah he he said that he was actually never going to fly in the ex elps again but I think he might have changed his tune we we’ll see at the next Edition so this is an interesting uh and one of the biggest mistakes we made in the race where um it’s Martin e um and I had an erroneous track point in my in my navigation file so I actually went in the total wrong direction uh briefly into this really terrible leide Mountain Area thinking that I was going in the right direction and I wasted about an hour trying to reorient myself um so made it over martiny and then got stuck in this area and there was this Lake right down here which was totally white capped because of all the north wind dumping over and it was totally overcast but I managed to use that North Wind just to survive until the sun came out again there it is Mont Blanc cruising by it 3,300 MERS sh right down there it’s very very nice very nice to be flying past and not walking past this massive massive mountain now I just have to get around the corner it’s relatively smooth flying around the north side of mon Blanc but once from the north wind but once I got around heading into uh turnpoint petite St Bernard this was where I almost gift wrapped myself it was some of the most tribulant flying I’ve ever been in in my life I think I was gift almost gift wrapped right around here and it was um it was just bizarre you know just absolutely bizarre thankfully it smoothed out a little bit going into petite St Bernard so tag that turn Point uh hiked with Jonathan um up a little hill behind and we’re using that North Wind behind mon wan to kind of fly up and it settled down a little bit because this is just before the cut off of no flying um which is at 9:00 and you know we managed to quite a nice little Valley Glide and then landed uh rather High um about 3 minutes I think before the cut off um at 9:00 p.m. so day seven uh we covered quite a bit of territory as well we uh flew down the um aasta Valley which which is a very notorious windy area tagged D Force beats and then got into uh Northern Italy and basically wound up um near larno at the end of the day right around here was a particularly interesting part of my flight where I got funneled into a little Valley and started kicking Treetops and chimneys basically for five minutes with a Glide perfectly matching terrain and I thought if I was ever going to wind up in a tree in the xals that was going to be it but it was just a literally pure luck that kept me out of it so another 150k flight on day 8 this is kind of along the lake KO Range sreo Valley area and at the end of this I landed right near the catosa Turn Point around here but what was really nice was right at the beginning there was uh a big Valley Crossing and the Japanese team that I launched with uh he didn’t make it by really nice I mean good for me Shen fr um so I put a nice 100K gap between myself and the Japanese team and and managed to cover some some serious distance so to put the big race into perspective uh at this was the day that kgal made goal and I just don’t know how that’s possible it’s totally totally insane so day nine uh started with Jonathan and I hiking up the catosa turn Point Italian dolomites it’s some of the most picturesque uh terrain ever and once we were over the pass we basically walked into a white room so there were clouds early morning clouds kind of building and dissipating but that launch was down that Rocky Canyon with big rock walls on either side so aside from race rules I wanted to be able to see exactly where I was going uh to top it off the launch was this tiny little helip pad with a sheer drop on the other side and with a bit of Jonathan’s help there holding my wing I was able to get off but my wing was far from actually pressurized by the time I got to the edge and uh managed to pull it off but it was a pretty pretty epic day and went on for another 70k flight after that day 10 uh was not a big day distance-wise but very cool as we uh passed the Via fata section and I got to give a huge shout out to Scott FLL from pton he had gotten to the Via ferata a couple days in advance and scouted the whole route and basically acted as my tour guide when we showed up there so Scott’s um leading leading the pack here uh Trevor Kessler is right behind me taking this video and pretty epic part of the race these are World War II era tunnels and from here it was uh just a short Glide down into uh seon and by this point in the race I was feeling pretty Haggard I’m not going to lie it was uh you know I earlier in this day I had launched earlier did a sled ride and knew I had to run about 25 kmers to get to this Turn Point instead of waiting an extra couple kilometers um or waiting a couple extra hours to wait for the day to turn on but Logan Walters was right behind me so he actually caught up to me at this turn point he managed to fly in but I had ran about 30 km in total BR so maintained my lead but didn’t didn’t really make anything more that so day 11 I think I set a new distance record for the shortest distance covered in in the X elps uh 24 kmet or something like that along course line and I had big plans for a flight into the finish at this point you know we’re getting within Striking Distance but the weather just wasn’t cooperating uh big hike up in the morning and got to the top and it was you know 50k wins so day 12 where are we day 12 basically uh I could walk it in at this point so I knew I was going to finish the xels uh Dan and I at this point had to hike up and over the gross glockner pass which the peak is about 3,000 M or or so Bud um so serious hike up and this is an interesting launch because I’m actually facing towards the mountain on on that one this is just a little knob I’m launching off of so now the predominant wind was from the south it was just ripping down there there’s no way we could launch higher up had to height quite far down and um launched and then had a had a sled ride to get me within walking distance of schmitten which was the second and last turn Point ni and this is the final Glide down into the raft at zmc earlier in the day uh as in like an hour earlier there was a big thunderstorm and still just dumping wind through the zmc valley and on a half bar my ground speed was about you know 8 to 10 KET an hour so it was extremely windy and I didn’t quite make the raft very close literally with couple meters uh but it was yeah it was quite windy Jonathan came in and landed a little bit later and he made it on the raft so you know yeah showed me up and um and that’s it there we were it made [Applause] it I was uh I was very stoked to still be alive and I got to admit at the beginning of the race all the training and everything leading up to the race I never actually thought I was going to finish uh the Finish rate previously was like 10% or something and I never really acknowledged this this consciously to myself but it was always just kind of subconsciously back of the mind like oh I’m going to do the ex Alps but I’m not actually going to finish so getting here to the Finish was just you know it was it was pretty epic and um yeah again I got to say thank you to everybody who supported because even though I’m the only one flying there’s no way I would have made it past day three without incredible supporters and you know and everybody back home you know financially advice equipment all the all the support that we had was just was amazing so to wrap up who’s next goodes J it was great it was totally easy uh yeah I I I won’t do the next Edition just not so much due to the race but just due to my um my life situation right now you know with two kids um you know even this race I picked literally the worst phase of my life to actually do the ex elps uh you know when I started the race my youngest was three months old and you know I it obviously offloaded a lot of my you know Daddy time and all responsibilities professionally personally and everything onto my partner and she did you know she had to do a lot so if you it’s better to ask her if I can do the ex helps again in reality in a couple years maybe for 2027 I I don’t know but at the same time I would like to be a supporter I I would like to support somebody whoever wants to do the exls um maybe not anybody but I I would extend uh my offer as a supporter because I I know what is like as the pilot Side and being a supporter doesn’t require the same time commitment and energy commitment leading up to the race for the the year before the race but knowing what I know now I could I could show up obviously do you know scouting do a bit of you know core studying and everything and and be I think a good supporter so that’s an offer I’ll extend to anybody and uh hopefully there’s a taker yeah so the race originally uh there was 35 uh athletes selected and now it’s almost entirely professional athletes there are very few people like myself whose job is not paragliding related and who are just privateers uh you know amateurs rookies you know in in this race so there was 35 um and then I think by the time the race started a few dropped out so there’s 32 in the race race uh 23 finished and um yeah there was some injuries and eliminations and and uh whatnot along the way there’s no takers yet come on yeah nutrition obviously is really big you you’re you know you’re burning 7,000 calories a day and I at the beginning of the race tried to eat as much as I could and I asked Dan who was doing all the cooking I said basically just make me pasta pasta every night by like the fourth night I could not stand to look at pasta and I instantly regretted that that direction so kind of switched to a lot of smoothies a lot of shakes uh easier to digest you know by day five I think my appetite was just you know not not there but you have to eat so it’s just more of kind of forcing the food in uh but shakes are a lot easier easier than you know solid food to get in so I was by the end of the race I was primarily doing shakes and quick side note I was doing a lot of protein shakes and we ran out of protein powder so I you know at one point Dan went and just got some random protein powder and um I didn’t really agree with everything so tip uh Pro tip you know if anybody’s training you you got to dial in your training so you know exactly even what you’re eating because Minor Details like that can throw an interesting wrench into your race and uh Dan was never walking behind me uh at any point after that yeah I don’t know K’s insane like his his ability to just keep uh himself cool calm and collected through some of the most gnarly conditions U you know Pino paltic cats you know paltic cats is the acro world champion you know he if anybody can handle rough conditions and you know he obviously got scared a few times decided to land a few times got too rough and you know creal essentially can fly in anything and and he when he lands he’s he’s fine he’s not shoting bricks so you know but this is also his backyard figan one of the turn points is literally where he’s from so he’s extremely familiar with the terrain and and just you know the best hiking fly pilot in the world I mean yeah I it might be Terminator or something I’m not sure did this he was practicing flying W in a par he had some special he was trying to fly in wave with some glider we do 70 plus km an hour like gliders struggle with this he he practices in the the stories about him practicing are just crazy yeah so the question was how do you how did I realize when I had a false uh Turn Point in my track log and uh it was Jonathan who was doing flight following he basically asked on the radio like where are you going what are you doing I was like well I’m I’m 5 kilometers from this turn point or from the the the Waypoint in my in my navigation uh track log and he said no you’re not and I said yes I am and there was this long discussion relatively I guess short discussion and we quickly realized wait a minute you know there is I was flying along and flying along and then all of a sudden you know I got my one Waypoint and and you know I’m going 90° which I knew there was a turn in that area so it seemed somewhat logical but um that area around martiny it was uh it was very windy and I was in a I was over top high high enough over top of that gnarly Mountain that I was okay wasn’t totally in the Lee but it was it was still extremely extremely Rowdy so I was struggling trying to get out on the windward side of the mountain and um simultaneously trying to use my phone trying to figure out what’s going on and IID spent so much time just staring at my cockpit in these crazy conditions that I got a little bit disoriented and I was I was literally looking at five valleys and saying okay I think it’s that Valley and it took a long time for me to get the another the the updated track log that had that point that erroneous Point um you know deleted and um yeah it was quite a process but side I note DAV tema wrote this script um that basically was this little software tool that allowed us to update these track logs so fast and basically when I was flying I could I could get a WhatsApp message with the track log file just click it and it would automatically open up into what uh XC track and I would instantly have you know my bearings so before that I would be literally trying to plot a course uh while flying or Jonathan would be trying to figure it out on the ground and then sent it to me and it just became this this total cluster of trying to navigate but David KCK was able to do this like Wizardry which was amazing um yeah it was a huge help so it was a quick solution to issues like this where we need to update um my navigation file really quick and you know it took a little bit of time to figure it out but it could have been a lot worse so are you flying along yeah so question is am I flying alone a lot and yes yeah flying alone the vast majority of the time around the Southern Alps so Northern Italy uh due Force Pat seasta Valley and everything you know there was nobody flying because nobody would or should be flying it was just conditions were just brutal and there’s a saying in the Alps where if you don’t see any any other paragliders in the air like why are you in the air you know this is this is not a place you want to be and yeah very very rarely saw any other parag gliders on on that section and very rarely saw other parag gliders at all you know uh once we were kind of past the start um and out of the the German area we’ve got a question from uh online sorry uh from YouTube which is um did you ever get get sort of lost when you were on the ground like about root finding on the ground a few times for sure yeah and there’s a funny story of me like wanting to throw my phone into a field full of thorns and prickles because uh I was in that field full of thorns and prickles trying to you know that were about 10 feet high so I couldn’t see anything and I was messaging uh I think it was Dan or Jonathan at the time and I I kept on saying like where’s I need a track log get I need to get out of this field I’m literally bushwacking through prickles and I started to get more and more agitated and uh after about 5 minutes I was just you was probably the one point I was seriously they did an amazing job and and they like you know for every wrong decision we made we made 10 good ones so in the whole it was it was it was great but this one time I was like you know I was I was Furious because I think it was Jonathan said well just take that one path and he was looking at a satellite map that had clearly been you know taken months before all these prickles had grown and I’m looking like I’m like what path I can’t see anything and he’s like just take the path on your left I’m like well what if I turn this way you know then then we’re yeah there were there were a couple moments um but again I mean the 99% of the time we we were pretty dialed in with with navigation but in total my distance covered on the ground was almost exactly 450 kilometers over the um 11 or 12 days so that averages out to a marathon a day and uh few wrong turns here and there but generally yeah gener we did okay everywhere cover yeah for flying surprisingly we had cell coverage I would say 80% of the time we had yeah 80% of the time well flying and on the ground we had cell coverage there were a few times where we were using inreach which those of you know it’s um you know it’s painfully slow sometimes to get or send a message so that was our backup and the Red Bull the the race organization was sponsored by uh cat cell phones and their claim to fame was that they you know had this satellite messaging that was very reliable and available in almost any area well it turns out in the race they really did not work so that was supposed to be our primary means of communication and it ended up just yeah we we never really used it at all um but it’s for that reason is because cellular coverage is is not absolutely everywhere but is in most most spots smell in the van at the end of the trip was really bad oh yeah I was going through you know six or seven pairs of running shoes every day just leave I would Huck him in the van close the door those poor guys yeah like psychologically you’re not doing like you just finished this you work towards this and then what happens after yeah it it was uh there’s definitely you know coming off a race like this or an event like this was is is a lot uh I didn’t really have much time I we basically we finished the race we packed up returned the RV jumped on planes came back home and I had two kids you know throwing on my lap and said um I could not complain I was like whatever I said like just do not complain do not complain um so I yeah it honestly wasn’t until putting this presentation together recently that uh I really processed everything you know this is N9 months or 10 months or whatever later that um yeah that I kind of relived everything because I I literally got off the plane to get home and I I I didn’t fly for you know I got a couple hours in a few months basically so yeah it was it was good it was a little bit therapeutic to do this presentation because it was yeah a chance to relive everything and like I said you know since Jonathan’s death you know going through this whole process has been um yeah it’s being good um but I didn’t have the Blues in the sense of you know some people say oh coming off an event like this you know you’re actually depressed or anything like that um for me I just kind of Switched gears and went into like you know normal normal life um yeah Alex if you were doing it again and like you going into the same race but you had some of the knowledge you have now what would be the big things you change yeah not much I would I would say that I would have somebody remote behind a computer screen or 10 you know and chilling at a desk not bouncing around in the back of a van and I I don’t either and Jonathan literally spent 18 hours a day in the back of an RV staring at two computer screens and and he was that was the strategy role you know he had to he had to be there giving all this information um so I I think having somebody remote that role didn’t necessarily need to be in the RV that role could have been somebody anywhere in the world preferably in the same time zone but just feeding feeding data you know and you know roote planning and all that kind of stuff where they’re comfortable um I don’t know if I needed four supporters um you know even if you remove that one I think you could probably do this race if you wanted to keep costs down uh with you know two supporters I would say is a minimum I think three is probably more ideal um yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah um but not much I mean I would wouldn’t there’s not too many major changes I I would have made uh maybe a smaller van as well and and definitely if life situations permitted I would I would do more scouting because 95% of that race I had never flown over that terrain so ideally spend a couple months in the Alps and just do the whole course yeah I don’t think so there’s basically two races within the X Alps one is the Europeans and they’re Racing for Podium or for position and everybody else is essentially just trying to survive and you know like I mentioned earlier just you know making it to goal is is amazing and and that is a goal but I never really thought that that was going to be possible in my case so the fact that we made it based on having some flyable weather pretty much almost every single day made that possible but the Europeans are just on a different planet you know it’s their home turf they know the terrain they know the weather systems you know we had these valley wind Maps there were huge PDF files that we’re trying to look at and you get these convergence areas and if you’re on you know on one side of the valley versus the other side of the valley it’s a difference between going down at 4 meters a second and and bombing or you know or can carrying on for another 200 km flight so it’s you know local knowledge is invaluable and I think that yeah the more familiar you are with that that area is is obviously a huge huge asset so I mean if you made it a full-time job and you spent a year training studying the course all these little nuanced uh Transitions and everything that you have to do um you know I I would say that there’s potentially a chance of a non-european placing top 10 yeah thanks thanks yeah so maybe a couple more questions if we have them but if if not happy to happy to wrap it up and thanks everybody for coming out this was again a long long a long time coming so yeah thank you and we collectively need to get somebody else to do this so let’s uh let’s make it happen what’s that yeah we we have a Canadian in the xer this year yeah and uh I I’ve talked to him a bit and I think that he he has the skills and I think he has the majority of the crazy Factor that’s required to do this kind of stuff uh cuz it’s yeah who we’ll see I hope he does I think it’s a goal of his after the xer and um May well be supporting him in the next one I heard a funny I think it was uh one of the head Advance guys he said uh somebody asked him you know if he would ever do the xals and he was like no way I’m not depressed enough I was like oh it might be never considered myself really depressed but I think you have a might have a point yeah going once going twice okay guys thank you uh everybody for coming out it coming to do that uh super awesome achievement man freaking epic you should be super proud of yourself all right guys well that’s it um there might be one more at the end of this month I don’t want to say who what where but we will let you know other than that we’re going to be breaking right into our flying season and hope to see everybody out on the hill all right so thank you again for coming out that’s it you