Red Bull X-Alps 2013. Imagine: a July day at 11am and you are standing on the take-off above Interlaken. The sun is shining and the clouds are touching the mountain tops. You would like to fly to the Matterhorn or even better, over Mt. Blanc to Grenoble. With your paraglider, either flying or hiking. Hiking means stress, it’s strenuous – and seven times slower.
On my travels this winter, I was lucky enough to cross paths with Rebecca Bredehoft, an inspirational pilot as well as an awesome photographer.
At only 30 years old, Becca already has more experience than many pilots. But what makes her truly inspirational is the way she seems to enjoy every flying day as much as when she first learnt to fly and her permanent drive to learn from the sport.
I took the chance to quiz her about her long paragliding career, her travels and managed to get a few photography tips at the same time.
Heike Hamann learned to fly in 1992 and recently completed a Masters in Process Oriented Psychology. After a few paragliding incidents she developed a fear of being high and as part of her thesis she started to examine her fears and thought about how she could tackle them. The result is an article called ‘The Seven Steps of Fear Management in Paragliding’. The entire thesis can be read here.
In this podcast she talks about how she came to develop the seven steps, how to use them to control your own fear and what practical things you can do when you feel anxious. This will hopefully lead to you getting more enjoyment out of your flying and improve your performance.
Listen to the podcast below:
There’s still thousands of things to learn and improve!
Chrigel Maurer and Thomas Theurillat have won the X-Alps three times and entered the X-pyr for the first time in 2014. The X-pyr is an adventure race based on the X-Alps, where competitors must traverse the Pyrenees from Atlantic to the Mediterranean by walking or flying. This year the race was 440km. The CTR around the dropzone at the Empuria Brava skydiving centre meant that there was a 30km hike at the end of the race.
Herminio Cordido says he’s been flying in clouds since he started paragliding in 1993. This came in handy when after a year of similar but smaller jumps Herminio lept from his harness at a staggering 6000m ASL.
He told us he wasn’t worried about the climbing too high in the cloud as he knew he could jump at any time. As you’ll see from the video finding his kit wasn’t a problem thanks to a cutaway system which leaves his wing connected to the harness by just one break line.
His sponsors for this project were: Sol Paragliders, Squirrel Suits, Naviter, Atair Canopies, Flysight, Flyte Park and Boost Oxygen.