"Gutsy girls skateboard, climb trees, clamber around, fall down, scrape their knees, get right back up — and grow up to be brave women. Learn how to spark a little productive risk-taking and raise confident girls with stories and advice from firefighter, luger, author, paraglider and all-around adventurer Caroline Paul."- TED

This is the most critical podcast episode we've made available to date on the show. As human flight junkies we participate in activities that let's face it- are dangerous. In this episode we sit down with Matt Wilkes, an anaesthesia and intensive care doctor based in Edinburgh, Scotland who specializes in extreme physiology and remote medicine to walk us through best practices when things go wrong. Matt takes us through what we need to be carrying in our first aid kit; how to operate in a wilderness environment; how to assess a casualty and make a scene safe; how to care for a victim including the use of narcotics and pain killers; how having a lack of equipment and difficult access to medicine can be overcome; the affects of cold and altitude on pilots (hypoxia); how an accident scene needs to be managed; best practices for trauma management (including splinting, binding the pelvis, the lethal triad and keeping people warm, pain relief, head injuries, tourniquets...); controversies about spinal immobilization and a lot more.

Benjamin Jordan made history in 2016 flying a 1,000 km bivvy line solo from Vancouver to Calgary across the Coast Range and Rocky Mountains of BC and Alberta, an expedition that took 39 days to complete. To some bold pilots maybe an obvious and tempting line, but there were plenty of reasons it had never been flown, which are in part the subject of Benjamin's new documentary "Strong the Wind Blows". In this episode we talk about the ultimate question- if life isn't worth dying for, is it worth living?

Chris Santacroce has been a pillar in human flight for nearly thirty years. A long time Red Bull Air Force athlete; co-owner and founder of Superfly Paragliding in Utah; founder of Project Airtime which allows the disabled to fly; total air Jedi on anything that flies- from powered trikes to wingsuits and everything in between, Chris has been one of the most requested guests for the show and now here it is.

This content is only available to Members of the Cloudbase Mayhem. If you have subscribed to our newsletter or have supported us in the past through PayPal, Patreon or another way you should have an account all set up with us and you can login below (username is typically your email). If you aren't a member, all we've ever asked for is a buck a show so please if you can join now! Can't afford a buck a show? We want all our content to be available to the flying community regardless of your financial position, so just send us an email and we'll sort you out.

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Antoine Laurens began flying in 1992 when he was just seventeen years old. He's lived a life of adventure and flying has been a way of life for the last two and half decades. One of the world's great vol-biv pilots Antoine crossed over a 1,000 km route of the Himalayas (the film trailer of the "Himalayan Odyssey" can be seen here) and was part of the small team I joined in 2012 when we flew from the south end of the Sierra range to the Oregon border. Antoine has done some of the longest, most wild vol-biv trips that have ever been accomplished.

"If you believe you can do it, you can do it. But that doesn't mean it will happen tomorrow. You have to do the work, nothing replaces mileage (or in this case, air time)." Little nuggets of wisdom like this is why Jeff Shapiro returns to the Cloudbase Mayhem in this amazing follow up to our first podcast a year and a half ago. The first time we spoke Jeff was just learning how to paraglide after spending a lifetime and thousands of hours hang gliding. We catch up to explore how his progression is going, how the new aircraft is opening all kinds of new adventures, we revisit his decision to wingsuit basejump again after losing so many friends to the sport, and in true Jeff Shapiro style- talk about life and joy and wonder in a way that only Jeff can.

Ground handling is the cornerstone of being a good, safe pilot. But of all the most important foundational building blocks you can practice it is often the most neglected. For many pilots "groundhandling" is pulling the wing up and getting off the hill. This is only the first step. Many of our listeners have asked for a specific ground handling episode and now here it is!

"If the conditions are too gnarly, don't land, climb and get to better air!" Thoughts like this from Nick Neynens are what allowed him to finish the 2015 Red Bull X-Alps in 10th place. Nick has an untraditional approach and it works- he's flown vol-biv all over the world and has competed in the X-Pyr and X-Berg as well. In this episode we learn more about his untraditional approach and talk about risk justification, progression, meteorology, and using sandals in the hardest race on Earth. A special episode with a special pilot.

Christina Kolb is the current female world acro champion and one of the few women in the world who has perfected the Infinite tumble. In Annecy this year she won the female class and was 12th overall- an incredible achievement. In this episode we visit and revisit the cause of many accidents and how preventable they are, how to learn acro, the importance of SIV and ground handling, why altitude is more important in many cases than water, best and worst advice, how to reduce stress on launch, and a lot of advice for beginners and how to avoid the "lemming affect."