Cross Country June 2022

You know that moment when you’re getting ready to take off and someone walking past starts asking questions? “Are you going to jump?” “How far can you go?” “Can you land where you want?” I had a moment like that at the start of the season. Clipped in, I was watching a friend make good use of the thermals out front, and was going through my checks. One of the things people always ask me is “What have you learned from talking to some of the best pilots in the world for Cross Country?” and I always disappoint them when I say, “That top pilots are extremely thorough in their checks before they leave the ground.” It’s a very mundane, beginner thing, but it’s true. Watching Manfred Ruhmer or Chrigel…

Mario Heller is a tandem pilot and climber based in Interlaken. This issue he tells the story of his team’s flight from the summit of Cerro Torre in Patagonia. “It was quite a thrilling experience to unpack the glider on top of Cerro Torre and get ready to launch on a take-off just big enough for a paraglider.” See p48 Keith Forsyth, 28, has been flying 11 years. Knee surgery and losing a friend saw him contemplating why we take part in adventure sports when he wrote Call of the Wild two years ago. Looking back he says, ‘My thoughts have changed a bit, but it’s where I was at the time.’ It got us thinking, anyway. See p68 Ruth Jessop is the voice behind the text of the commentary on the live…

Guiness World Record Ben Jordan’s epic vol-bivouac migration across the USA in the summer of 2020 has been recognised by Guinness as a new world record. He travelled 2,835km from Mexico to Canada, hiking and flying all the way. A* performance Toni Brügger flew a 214km FAI triangle on his Nova Aonic on 24 March, setting an unofficial world record for the longest FAI triangle flown on an EN-A glider. Toni was in the air for nine hours. “I really appreciate stress-free flying with simple gliders,” he said. Full bar in Bir Austria’s Philipp Zellner flew 272km from Bir in the Indian Himalaya on 7 April 2022, setting a new site record. His flight, on a Skywalk X-Alps4, took him deep into high mountains. He flew for eight hours, reaching…

Brazil’s Rafael Saladini won the Pan-American Paragliding Championships in Brazil in April. The competition was held in Governador Valadares and saw pilots from across North, South and Central America compete for the championship title. Held every two years it’s the fifth time the Pan-Americans have been held. Galen Kirkpatrick (Ozone Enzo 3) from the USA won the Women’s title – the first time in the competition’s history that the women’s championship has been validated as previously, not enough female pilots had entered. Not only that, she won a task overall, beating everyone on task 3, a 55.8km race to goal. Six tasks were flown and scored: 77.1km, 84.5km, 55.8km, 95.4km, 101.6km and 79.4km. It’s the second Pan-American Championship title for Rafa, who was flying an Ozone Enzo 3. He said:…

Gin made a splash at the Paragliding World Cup in Baixo Guandu, Brazil where it dominated the overall podium. Dominik Breitinger, Manuel Quintanilla and Michael Sigel were first, second and third, all flying the Boomerang 12 – the glider with the wavy leading edge. “The wing has really improved, there is something special going on with it now,” Gin test pilot Michael Sigel said. “I flew the first prototype two years ago and it was absolutely not ready yet. Then at the Superfinal we saw it was going in the right direction and now we are at a good point I think. It was a really nice competition.” The competition saw seven tasks out of seven flown, ranging from 79km to 101km. Méryl Delferrière (Ozone Enzo 3) won the women’s…

Denis Chouraqui (FR, Ozone Enzo 3) flew 336km for Europe’s first 300km flight of the season on 3 April. He launched from Jeufosse, just northwest of Paris, and flew downwind for nearly eight hours. This is a classic route now, and pilots from across France regularly flock here when the northeast airflow sets up on those cold-at-base post-frontal spring days. In the Alps, Chris Vuille (CH, pictured) topped the tables in the EN-B class in April with a classic 216km (302 points) flat triangle on 28 April flying from RiederAlp in the Swiss Alps. He was on his Advance Xi and in the air for almost 10 hours. Completing his flight by coming right back to where he’d started he said, “Top-landing was not so easy – the thermals were…