By Gavin McClurg
Free flight podcast hosted by Gavin McClurg
John Heiney started hang gliding in 1978 and he’s still going strong today. His photographs of free flight have been on more than 50 magazine covers. He broke the Guinness World Record for looping in 1988. And then he broke...
Kinga Masztalerz gets after it. She picked up paragliding not too long ago, but has been pretty fierce about chasing it hard from the beginning. She’s tackled the Red Bull X-Alps twice, flown all over the world, runs her own...
Tom flying the Peregrine “In comparison [to the flying scene] the rest of my life has been a disappointment.” –Tom Peghiny. This quote came into my inbox a few months ago from Hugh Miller at Cross Country magazine with the words...
Something pretty special is happening right now in the US when it comes to competitions. This is of course subjective, but in my opinion we have the most dynamic, fun, inclusive comp scene in the world. And it is being...
Galen Kirkpatrick came into flying just seven short years ago and is the 2023 US National Champion, the first female in the history of paragliding to do so. Not long after her first flights she quit her day job and...
Pierre flying off Everest South African pilot and adventurer Pierre Carter has been at this game for a very long time, and he hasn’t wasted any time chasing thin air dreams. Pierre has been knocking off the world’s seven summits for...
Marcus King has been flying pretty much full time since 1991. He spent many years with the early Ozone team and has been on the design team with Cross Country Magazine for ages. All those gear and wing reviews you...
Jake Holland is a British filmmaker and adventure pilot based in Chamonix. In this episode we discuss his totally wild experiences this season and last in Pakistan with professional climbers Will Sim and Fabi Buhl, and pilots and adventurers Aaron...
Adventure often runs in the blood of Kiwis, and in Louis Tapper it runs thick. Long before Louis got hooked with flying he broke a world distance record in kitesurfing in Brazil and was (and remains) a pretty hard-core paddler....
Thad Spencer returns to the Mayhem to discuss a very different topic than we did in our previous chat. A little over 18 months ago Thad went out with his friend Alex Peterson for what looked like a pretty good...
Phil Hystek “Flat out Phil” Hystek has been instructing free flight in Australia longer than anyone. It began with a fascination of hang gliding in the 70’s, becoming a hang gliding instructor in the late 80’s in California, being “forced” into...
Patrick Von Kanel approaches the Tre Cime Turnpoint in the 23′ race Tarquin Cooper has been the voice of the Red Bull X-Alps the last few editions and this year was joined by your host and four-time X-Alps competitor Gavin McClurg...
Paul competes in the 2011 Red Bull X-Alps Paul in the 2023 Red Bull X-Alps Paul Guschlbauer has been on the podium more than anyone in the Red Bull X-Alps other than of course Chrigel. He began his X-Alps journey back in...
On June 19th this year in the blackness of night Gordon Boettger and his copilot Bruce Campbell donned expedition clothing mountaineers use to climb the highest peaks in the world, stepped into a specialized high performance sailplane, put on their...
Martin wins the PWC in Aksaray, Turkey 2022 Martin Jovanoski has been flying his entire life. Sailplanes, Hang gliders, Paragliders- in any and all forms. He got started in accuracy, moved into cross country competitions and pretty much does it all...
The French own the podium at the Targassone PWC. Maxime Pinot, Honorin Hamard, Baptiste Lambert It’s no secret that the French are operating on a very different level. If you’re French and into flying and lucky enough you can start young...
Jim Mallinson has a lot of titles. Baronet, Sir, Professor, Doctor, Mahant, and of course Pilot. Jim is the world’s leading expert on Hatha yoga and Sanskrit. He has translated texts that go back thousands of years. Jim became fascinated...
Calef Letorney was a professional whitewater kayaker back in the early 2000’s who made the switch to paragliding and has never looked back. When you think of places to fly, you don’t often put the North East US on the...
Welcome to the 200th show of the Cloudbase Mayhem! And this week we’ve got one heck of a story that honors that number. Pilots and friends Pierre Carter, Jeremy Holdcroft, Scott Baker, Richard “Barbs” Barber and legendary mountaineer Andy De...
We have a saying in our sport, “never avoid inconvenience.” But it’s easier said than done. An easy field a kilometer away from the train station, or a really tricky field right next to it? Landing in strong wind across...
Eliya Zemmour is an Isreali-born climber, endurance athlete, hike and fly guidebook author and…formerly incarcerated conman, but that’s another story to be told soon on the podcast! In this show we take a deep dive into his recent 228km flight...
Andrey Kuznetsov has been on the national sky diving team for many years, holds several world records and the genius record (100 way canopy formation record) and has been a long-time test pilot for reserves. He made the transition quite...
The toughest adventure race on Earth starts in a few hours! 32 athletes go head to head in a mind boggling journey by foot and by sky across the Alps for 12 days. I sat down with many of them-...
Honza and Martin on glide, destination: who cares! 5 time Red Bull X-Alps pilot Honza Rejmanek and his son Martin return to the Cloudbase Mayhem this week to recount yet another incredible vol-biv tandem adventure in the Alps. Martin is now...
Austrian pilot Philipp Zellner is a name XContest fanatics know well. Philipp is an acro ace and professional tandem pilot who spends his winters flying monster lines all over the world. We recorded this interview two days after he broke...
Your host getting a little spring action. Photo Matt Beechinor This week we dive into spring with the current World Champion and long-time Ozone test pilot Russ Ogden and multiple US National Champion Nick Greece. Year after year we see accidents...
There are times in a pilots career when things do not go according to plan. This is one of those times. Nikolay Lipko had a rather unusual (but not unheard-of) event flying in Chamonix, France that thankfully ended quite well...
Our Mayhem editor Myles Connolly is about 350 hours into his flying journey and is leaving soon for an SIV course with Jocky Sanderson in Turkey. We thought it would be fun to connect and have him fire questions at...
Gaspard stylishly launches the Gaisberg, Day 1 2021 Red Bull X-Alps Gaspard Petiot is a mountain guide and very accomplished pilot who competed successfully in the Red Bull X-Alps in 2015 (5th, Monaco), 2017 (broken wrist, withdrawn after leading day 6)...
Manu competes in the 2017 Red Bull X-Alps Manuel Nubel has competed in four Red Bull X-Alps, starting in 2015. On Team USA 1 we call him the comeback kid. He often starts in the middle or back of the pack...
Going big in the BIG STUFF Debu Choudhury hails from the small village of Manali, India, a gateway to Ladakh and the infamous Karakoram pass. Pilots the world over know the region because of nearby Bir, one of the most reliable...
I’ve got a head cold and hoarse throat this week which makes interviewing pretty hard, so we’re diving back into the archives to bring you a show that was great then, and better now and an excellent tune-up before spring....
Superfinal, Disentis This episode was first scheduled as a quick primer to be released on the front of a “normal” podcast interview, but as we began recording it became clear it could stand alone as a show on its own. The...
A common question we ask on the Mayhem is “what would you do if you could rewind the clock to your 50 hour self?” One of our listeners reached out awhile back and wanted to know what we should tell...
Jumping into the new year with Eli Egger Elizabeth (Eli) Egger is one of the rookies in the 23′ Red Bull X-Alps. She’s also a paragliding instructor, Niviuk team pilot, high-level competition pilot (we sat down after the Superfinal in Mexico...
Aaron Durogati (ITA) performs during the Red Bull X-Alps near Garmisch, Germany on July 7th 2015 We keep the absolutely nutty going this week with 5-time Red Bull X-Alps competitor, 2 X Superfinal champion, and winner of just about everything in...
We’re continuing the theme of radical stories from radical people this week with Honza Rejmanek, who competed in 5 Red Bull X-Alps from 2007 to 2015. Honza begins the storytelling in 2007 with what has to the hardest start in...
Tom competes in the 2019 Red Bull X-Alps Tom De Dorlodot has done more Red Bull X-Alps than everyone other than Toma Coconea (who has done them all!). The Belgian explorer extraordinaire started at the tender age of 21 in the...
Chrigel doing his thing With the 2023 Red Bull X-Alps quickly approaching I thought it would be fun to sit down with Chrigel “The Eagle” Maurer to take a walk back through his 7 winning campaigns. No one in our sport...
Tim Rochas approaching launch, Day 1, XRedRocks Tim Rochas is a long-time Niviuk Test pilot (he did his first testing for Niviuk at the age of 12!), wing and harness designer, French team member and veteran World Cup pilot. Tim has...
During a weather day of the Red Rocks Wide Open this week, a US Nationals and Pre- PWC race to goal competition in southern Utah we held a panel discussion with some of our most veteran competition pilots- Evan Bouchier,...
Matt Warren is a keen pilot and has been a long-time journalist for Cross Country Magazine and is also a veteran science writer. He and his co-author Miriam Frankel have just released their incredible book “Are you Thinking Clearly, 29...
Baptiste wins in Brazil In the Macedonia PWC this July, which had a pilot level similar to a Superfinal Baptiste Lambert was 1st or 2nd in 5 of 7 days of racing. He didn’t even need to fly the last day...
This week we are diverting from free flight and just going to tell a good yarn. In 2009 your host was about half way through a second circumnavigation when he was suddenly confronted with a rather daunting task- sailing a...
Pierre reached goal in 3rd place in the X-Pyr 2022 Manu Bonte returns to the Mayhem to take us into the French team of Pierre Rémy. Pierre is of course one of the most accomplished competition pilots in the world (he’s...
Can you imagine??? Aaron Durogati is no stranger to thinking and doing big, but this time he pulled off what can only be described as outrageous. He and a few friends spent 40 days in the Himalaya in Pakistan to pursue...
Most pilots who think of flying in Brazil think of chasing records across the Sertão or racing in the land of the lost terrain in famous sites like Governador Valadares and Baixo Guandu. But Brazil is massive and the flying...
Andy Baumelt is a Swiss pilot who reached out to me because he loved the show and said that while he would probably never be one of the top ranked pilots or do something big and wild in the sport...
Daniel Tyrkas is no stranger performing at a high level. He took a passion for gymnastics onto the slopes and soon after competed for Germany in snowboarding in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics after nearly qualifying for Nagano in...
I’m not sure if I introduce Benjamin with “film maker” or “pilot” as he does both in spades. Benjamin makes amazing films about his flying and bivvy adventures in New Zealand and takes the viewer directly into his cockpit, talking...
