Cloudbase Mayhem Podcast

I am convinced that with a good winch and good tow-technician, launching via tow is much safer than foot launching and gives the free flight world access to incredible flying in conditions when terrain flying would be too risky. If you are currently doing any tow launching, or plan to in the future, give this podcast a listen. Towing has risks, but they can all be mitigated with proper techniques, crew, good piloting, and equipment.

The post Episode 123- Best Towing Practices and Safety first appeared on CLOUDBASE MAYHEM.

James "Kiwi" Oroc is a journalist, photographer, artist and pilot born in the small South Pacific nation of Aotearoa (New Zealand). Since 1998 he has been pursuing and reporting on the cutting edge of extreme sports in more than 40 countries around the globe and has written three books- the non-fiction cult classic Tryptamine Palace, The New Psychedelic Revolution and the just-published fictional Under the Influence, 20 Tales of Psychedelic Noir and has been flying paragliders since the mid 80's, when gliders had 7 cells!

The post Episode 122- Storytime with James “Kiwi” Oroc first appeared on CLOUDBASE MAYHEM.

Stefan Bernhard has only been racing paragliders for a short time and...

The post Episode 121- Stefan Bernhard and Mindset first appeared on CLOUDBASE MAYHEM.

Lisa Verzella flew hang gliders for over 20 years (many of those competitively), has been flying paragliders also for over 20 years and is a professional meteorologist based in Salt Lake City, Utah. She competed on the US World's team in 1998 and 2008 in hang gliding. This show is in two parts. The first is our typical audio podcast that goes into Lisa's vast and fascinating history of chasing airtime, and the second is a video tutorial of a deep dive into XCSkies and Lisa's full weather flow (ie all the stuff she uses before she gets to XCSkies to identify good days to go flying).

The post Episode 120- Lisa Verzella and Understanding XCSkies and Weather Forecasting first appeared on CLOUDBASE MAYHEM.

Yael Margelisch began flying ten years ago at the age of 19. She's an Ozone and Swiss national team pilot, has been on the podium ten times on the world cup, is the first woman to fly over 500 km and owns the current female distance world record of 531 km as well as the current women's FAI record (263 km) and is gunning hard for a 2021 Red Bull X-Alps campaign (she supported Michael Witschi in 2015).

The post Episode 119- Yael Margelisch and building confidence first appeared on CLOUDBASE MAYHEM.

Charles Cazeaux began flying when he was 15 years old. Shortly after that he became the first person to enter the French juniors program that was created to build exceptional pilots who would represent the country on the world stage. Needless to say the program worked very well indeed for Charles! He's been on the French team every year since 1998, he won the Superfinal in 2009, won the world championships in 2011, holds multiple world records and instructs SIV and cross country with Seiko Fukuoka for the Airlinks Academy.

The post Episode 118- Charles Cazaux and Focus first appeared on CLOUDBASE MAYHEM.

In 2008 Chrigel was heading into his first Red Bull X-Alps Campaign, and mountain guide and base jumper Thomas Theurillat was completing a degree in psychology. Thomas was passionate about figuring out how to help people not just change for the better in sport, business, or life; but transform into something better and stay that way. Chrigel wanted to win, but he didn't really have a plan to make it happen. The two met, Thomas put his wizardry into motion and Chrigel became the best hike and fly competitor and mountain pilot the world has ever seen.

The post Episode 117- Thomas Theurillat and Transformation first appeared on CLOUDBASE MAYHEM.

Charlie Baughman has been flying hang gliders since 1973. That's 47 years...and he's still going strong. In 2011 at the age of 64 Charlie broke the Oregon state record (which still holds) when he flew 218 miles into Idaho, and then did a very styly self retrieve.  We have it on good authority that Charlie was the first person in North American to figure out how to thermal, and possibly the world. Charlie started sky diving in the 60's at the age of 22, then began hang gliding on Lookout Mountain in Colorado when the very first hang gliders were built.

The post Episode 116- Chasing Hang Gliding for 47 years with Charlie Baughman first appeared on CLOUDBASE MAYHEM.

Honza Rejmanek competed in the Red Bull X-Alps 5 times. His last was in 2015 but apparently nutty runs in the family and he and his son Martin have been doing incredible 8 day tandem vol-biv adventures for the past three years in the Alps. Their style is pure- no mechanical support is allowed (ie they fly or they walk), food is collected or carried, where they start and end is fixed so if they don't make it one year they just come back the next! Honza says compared to the X-Alps they move at about one quarter of the speed but with four times the weight and no support crew!

The post Episode 115- Sky Camping with Martin (11 yrs) and Honza Rejmanek first appeared on CLOUDBASE MAYHEM.

This is an emergency episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem that everyone needs to hear. I sat down with two people on the front lines of Covid-19, my sister Lesley McClurg who is a Health and Science reporter for KQED in San Francisco, who has covered the pandemic since early January, when only 6 people had died; and Terry O'Connor, an ER doctor in Ketchum, Idaho- one of the most affected towns in the country (on par per capita with New York, San Francisco, and Seattle). We are in the largest public health crisis of our times. Covid-19 is being compared to the Spanish Influenza in 1918, which killed 50 million people. No one alive has ever seen anything like this before.

The post The Corona Virus- Critical Choices in a Critical Time first appeared on CLOUDBASE MAYHEM.