And it was just the ultimate moment, in terms of the connection for me, from the plane that can take you to a place where you'd otherwise never get to go, and then having that perfect experience with the paraglider on top of that.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.
Stories from the
paragliding universe.
Today with Paul Guschlbauer and Lucian Haas on the mic. Paul
Guschlbauer is known in paragliding circles as one of the most successful participants in the Red Bull X-Alps. He has stood on the podium four times at the hike-and-fly race from Salzburg to Monaco, which takes place every two years, always in third place, most recently in June 2019. However, as a pilot, Paul doesn't just fly paragliders professionally. The 35-year-old Austrian also holds a private pilot's license and owns a small Piper Supercar based in Alaska.
This single-engine propeller plane is very light and, with its thick balloon tires, can also land off-field in the wilderness. At least, if you've learned the craft as a bush pilot. And that's what Paul did in Alaska. Last year, he fulfilled a big dream. He took his wife Magdalena along in the small plane, as well as his paraglider equipment. Then he flew from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego in over 50 stages. So, from the northernmost tip to the southernmost tip of the Americas. And that was in low-level flight across all the landscapes. He called this adventure Project Overland, which lasted around 180 days and covered more than 20,000 flight kilometers. By the end, Paul's perspective on the world had changed, his relationship had changed, and his flying experience had multiplied.
Especially since during intermediate landings, he also took off with his paraglider in places on tempting mountain ridges that probably had never been flown this way before. In this 18th episode of Podz-Glidz, Paul Guschlbauer tells a very special story in which the cosmos of paragliding merges in a fascinating way with that of the bush pilot. Because both types of flying can benefit from each other and cross-fertilize one another. Paul, imagine you had to have a business card printed. With a single job title on it. And you would have to decide, what would you rather put on it? I am a paraglider or I am a bush pilot?
I'm definitely Gleitschirm-Blog, yes. Why? Because from a flying perspective, my development as an aircraft pilot isn't advanced enough yet for me to say I'm an aircraft pilot.
Well, you were actually out there much more as a bush pilot than as a paraglider in 2018, at least if you count it in days—flight hours, I'm not quite sure. Maybe first from the definition: what actually is a bush pilot?
Well, a bush pilot—that's what you call people who just land bush planes in places where you normally wouldn't land. So, not at an airport, but where there's normally no airport or airfield. Maybe there's a bit of a path somewhere that already has some tracks on it, and that can help, but it's just not meant to be a standard airfield or airport. And yeah, if the pilot and the plane are a good match, then you can land in some cool places.
And how did you end up becoming a bush pilot?
Yeah, I wouldn't call myself a true bush pilot just yet. I'm always a bit hesitant about that. I just ended up heading in this direction of aircraft flying because, well, I got my private pilot license here in Austria and then thought, well, somehow flying from airfield to airfield is a bit too little for me and I wanted to gain flight hours and so on, and then I looked around at where in the world you could actually fly with a bit more freedom. And that's how I somehow came across Gavin McClurg and his project with the Alaska Range and so on, and step by step I ended up in Alaska, and then one thing led to another and at some point I was standing there in Alaska with my little plane and learned what people there call bush flying.
Yeah, exactly, that's how it developed. And actually, the whole goal behind it was always just to rack up flight hours, to be in the air, to gain experience, and for me, it was simply this challenge of being able to actually land out there in the wilderness and get to places that you just can't reach otherwise. That's still what's exciting about it. For me, it's also simultaneously this challenge of somehow mastering that machine, just like it can be with a paraglider, you have to
...master. How can you learn to become a bush pilot? I mean, you get your pilot's license here, then you always take off from your runway or something. Now, suddenly you have to learn how to land in completely different places—you say, in wild regions—actually coming down, assessing the ground, or whatever. What kind of skills do you actually need to have as a pilot for that? And yes, who can teach you something like that? How did you learn it? Well, I did it like this...
I learned it because I met a so-called bush pilot in Alaska who has been doing this for 25 years, very professionally, and who also happens to fly a paraglider. And he actually taught me really well. So, finding someone like that was already brilliant. Like you said, having someone like that, a kind of mentor, is just a prerequisite to getting really good in this direction. First, there was Ken, and then later on I met a few others who didn't approach the whole thing as, let's say, a professional bush pilot, but more like a fun bush pilot. And what it takes for that—that was the second question, I think, right? Yes, what skills do you need for that?
Exactly, the skills—well, you need a suitable one, or let's not start with the equipment, let's say every aircraft has certain low-speed characteristics, just as a paraglider has some stall speed. The slower an aircraft flies, the shorter you can land it. Mastering that range of the aircraft is one skill, for example. So, that I can somehow control this aircraft at its physical limits. Once that's working, you've already learned a lot. And when you're out in nature, it's about simply learning the techniques, just assessing the environment correctly, seeing the terrain, how steep it goes uphill, where the wind is coming from—I'm sitting in an aircraft, you don't feel that as much as in a paraglider, for example, because there are no wind socks or anything like that.
And all this information eventually comes together, and then you make the decision, okay, I can land there. And then you have to land there, and in the best-case scenario, everything goes well. And at some point, you also have to consider that you need to be able to take off again. That's part of it too. And yeah, that's a rough overview of what it takes from my perspective.
All that paragliding, of course, helped extremely. And my mentor, Ken, noticed that pretty quickly too. He also said that you can just see it when someone knows how something flies or why something flies and what its basic properties are. Because every wing flies basically the same way, whether it's on an airplane or on a paraglider; in that sense, it doesn't make any difference anymore.
So, you started a very special project last year. You call it Project Overland. What was that all about?
For me, it was primarily about flying a lot and discovering a lot of new things. The whole thing came about because I was in Alaska, and right at the beginning, I talked to another bush pilot about how I got there. And he told me, yeah, he's been flying around there for I don't know how many years, and his dream is just to keep flying further. To keep going and just discover the next spot, the next spot. And then I also flew towards the southeast, along the coast of Alaska, and I thought to myself, how cool would it be to actually keep going and just fly all the way to the end, so to speak, where it just stops. And in this case, on that route heading south, that's Tierra del Fuego. And so, somehow, this dream was born to do that.
And from that point on, it took two years until everything was finally in place for me to be able to take off. And I did it in 2018.
Now, that's a huge dream when you imagine it. Alaska, Tierra del Fuego—I think that's about 18,000 kilometers, so really once halfway around the world if you were to fly around the equator. And then you only have such a tiny plane. It's just a little Piper. If you told that to a normal pilot, they wouldn't say, "Isn't it actually crazy what you're planning?" Yeah,
Exactly. So, the plane is actually just totally unsuitable for a journey. If you look at it in the classic sense, what do you want to achieve? When traveling, you want to get somewhere. That's the normal approach. And it's unsuitable for that because you're basically moving around like you're on a moped, in comparison to road traffic. In that sense, yes, it's naturally unsuitable. But for me, first of all, it was the only plane I have. It wasn't like I thought, "Yeah, maybe it would be wiser to fly with another one." I just don't have another one, for starters. And secondly, it simply wasn't unsuitable for me in the way other people see it.
Because there's just such an incredible appeal to flying with this exact model. And the appeal is more that you don't feel like you have to go way up and far away from the terrain, but rather you have the feeling, like with a paraglider, that you actually want to fly close to the ground all the time and can take everything in perfectly because of that. And that was ultimately my goal. To be able to see the whole half of the earth from a bird's-eye view, from a paraglider perspective. That was actually the big appeal eventually too. And this plane is a hundred percent perfect for that because it's so narrow. You can see two people fit in, sitting one behind the other. There's a lot of glass all around.
You can really see everything—left, right, up, you can look out everywhere. And it was just brilliant from a perspective standpoint. And of course, there's also this option, where I say, okay, if I get the chance to land somewhere that you normally just couldn't land with a regular plane, that I can do that too.
You've documented your entire journey on a website.
It's called Flyoverland, fly-overland.com. In total, I think, at least on that site, they're divided into 42 stages. You can follow a lot of your entire route there—where you landed in between, what you did on-site, and stuff like that. But as always with these big adventures, which I think lasted about half a year in total, from the outside you only ever get these very specific glimpses into certain highlights or something. But the experiences you have along the way are, of course, much more extensive. Are there any stops on this whole trip that you experienced as particularly formative, where you'd say, okay, if you have to talk about one thing from this trip, it's that?
Yeah, and it's funny, if you only want a single point from me, I have to make a really tough choice right now between the beginning of the trip, Alaska, and the end of the trip, namely Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. Those were really the two ultimate experiences.
So to speak of it. Let's do both, because then you might also—and I wanted to ask this too—the beginning of such a trip is completely different; you're a completely different person at the start of a trip than at the end. So that might actually fit quite well. Tell me about the highlight of the beginning of the trip.
Yes, one thing I have to add briefly. I think you counted 52. There were actually a few more in the end. I just opened the page again, and in that first section of Alaska and Canada that we flew over, not all of them are marked on the map. They're all included starting from the USA, but that's just as an aside. There were even many more up there because you can really land wherever you want. And that's exactly why it was so impressive for me right at the beginning, because we flew up to Point Barrow. That's the northernmost town in Alaska. It's really far north, and in the summer, the sun really stays out all day. And yet it's somehow bizarre, because you go to the beach and the sun is shining at midnight, but the sea is frozen solid—there's just always an ice cover there.
And then you can fly out with this plane onto a sandbank that stretches a bit further out into the sea. And then you're really at the northernmost tip of the USA, or rather Alaska. And when you imagine that, it just goes north, there's only more ice, and eventually you're at the North Pole, also on the ice. And that was already very impressive. And from there, we started heading south. That was the start of the journey on June 21, 2018, which was also the longest day, although the whole summer is actually long there, but theoretically, it's also the longest day of the year. And the goal was to fly after the sun until December 21, so to speak, and then arrive back down on the longest day of the year.
And then we flew off from up there, and right at the beginning, we landed on a beach to spend the night where there was really nothing for miles around, and we unpacked our tents there. We landed quite late, around 11 p.m. for sure, but as I said, it was total daylight; the sun was still relatively high. And then I already noticed, yeah, the wind is coming from the north, that actually looks quite good, it must have been about 30 km/h in terms of strength. And then I walked up a bit along this plain and saw a reach, right over the sea. I thought to myself, that would actually be perfect for paragliding right now. So I took out my paraglider and then spent three hours, until two in the morning, paragliding along that coast there in the constant sunset, and it was just the ultimate moment, in terms of the connection for me between the plane, which can take you to a place where you would otherwise never get, and then having such a perfect experience there with the paraglider on top of that.
That was just the real
perfect start to this journey. Then you had very, very many experiences in between. Now let's just jump straight to the end. Now you're in Tierra del Fuego in the Southern Hemisphere, 18,000 km further south. And you say there was something very special there. What was it?
Exactly, 18,000 km, 180 days later, we eventually arrived in Patagonia, and what was impressive was actually how the world mirrors itself all the time, but it became really clear there. You go from flying away from the ice, into the green areas, into the desert areas, into the tropical areas, and then the whole thing goes back the other way, back into the ice. And there, the whole experience actually repeated itself. So I flew over it again with my plane, over the glaciers and so on, and I had the opportunity to land on a gravel bank by such a beautiful river again. It wasn't as perfect as paragliding in Alaska at that moment, but still, the experience was, so to speak, mirrored.
And it was somehow so interesting, after all those experiences in between, where there were so many aviation challenges and so many different flight areas, to just be down there again at some point and experience exactly the opposite or the same thing mirrored on the other side of the world. That was somehow very impressive. But of course, those were just these specific points for me. What happened in between—I'd love to tell you all about it now, because they're starting to make me think about the different experiences again. There was some really cool stuff in there.
Yeah, if you look at your website, there's all sorts of things. Just looking at the landscapes, there's desert. I think you were up on volcanoes at almost 6,000 meters. You flew over jungle areas, and then had corners where it rained terribly. You were stuck there for days. On other days, you could fly great again, and you met all kinds of different people. Especially regarding people. I know that from traveling too. For me, the most impressive things are usually always the people you encounter, where you suddenly think, wow, what kind of person is that? What skills do they have? Or what have they experienced, or something else like that? What other special things did you experience?
Yeah, so the people we met along the way were actually the key to the success of the whole project afterwards. Success in the sense that we actually managed to get down with the plane. Which is not exactly everyday in very many of these countries. And just us as a couple in this plane. I was traveling with my wife. And just traveling through these 14 countries like that, it wasn't that easy. So especially during the preparation, I also wondered, how is this even going to work? It was really hard for me to plan. You could say it was actually unplannable. But I can also say more later about how I eventually did it. But in any case, in the end, it only worked because...
by being passed from one cool person who was excited about what we were doing to the next person who was excited about what we were doing. We always got the right local information and were able to stay overnight with someone, got some tips, and were simply received with extreme warmth all over half the world, so to speak. And that was really the key, because you fly off. And if you land in Colombia as, I don't know, an Austrian in an American-registered plane, it's a bit strange at first, of course. But if you've already talked to people from Panama beforehand and they told you, "Yeah, they have a friend in Colombia and they'll call them right now, and he has the same kind of plane as you there and he can definitely help you out," and then you get there and he's already waiting, then that's completely different and then something like that actually works.
And it was just, yeah, it was an incredible experience. I'm extremely grateful to every single one of those many, many people we met there. But yeah, that was simply the key to the whole thing.
But you really can't plan something like that in that way; instead, you can only say that you basically have to trust in life. Is that something you would also say is one of the core lessons one can draw from such a journey? Like, hey, if you trust in life, then you can make progress with something like this, you can actually reach your destination?
Yeah, that's reflected in so many things you experience while traveling, or very specifically in the things I actually always do. You can never just go and say, "a big goal"—let's take my own example, I know that's not the topic today, but I've done it five times now—where you just have this extremely long distance, and if you just look at it all at once, you think, "Okay, that's impossible, I'll never get there. It's just unimaginable." And the same thing was the case with the 18,000-kilometer journey by plane,
that flies at an average of 130 km/h, so as fast as you'd drive down there, through 14 countries, 11 of which are South American, where you don't really know what's coming next. You can't say, okay, yeah, I'll do this, I'll do that, I'll do this, and it's about trust—yeah, you could call it trust—simply believing in the good on one hand and breaking the whole journey down into individual sections, so to speak. Just like with the X-Alp, trust is probably just as important. I also have to trust that I can do it, personally, that I have the skills, and then just not think about the goal the whole time, but about the next day.
living in the moment, so to speak. It might boil down to saying, okay, I'm living today; I'm thinking right now, considering very carefully how I'm going to fly the next leg to the next airfield, but I'm not thinking about what it will be like to fly from El Calafate to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in Argentina. That
But now, just in terms of understanding, you also didn't know many details when you took off in Alaska, like you're saying, maybe how the entry process even works for me to get into Colombia, but those are also things that only came up during the course of the trip.
Yeah, so right at the beginning, then of course, as I forged this original plan, all the questions started popping up—like, how do you actually do that, and how is it supposed to work? And then I started looking into the details, like what kind of airports are there in Panama, and what kind of airports and rules are there in Chile, and so on and so forth. And then I somehow quickly realized that it wasn't actually leading to anything, and in the end, there's this book lying somewhere here on my desk—a list with four points, I think. That's quite interesting now, I have to check it real quick, but I'm pretty sure there were four points that I sort of wrote down, where I said, okay, if I meet these four points, then I can just take off and it'll work.
no matter what comes up. Which four points were they? That's exciting, isn't it? I'm curious. It's actually totally easy. One thing is, of course, that my plane has to be suitable, so I actually know that by heart, I don't even need to look it up, but I actually just found the right book right here. Well,
You can easily remember the four points. So, first point: the plane has to be up to par.
Yes, the aircraft definitely has to be right. That's why I just looked at it and said, okay, I started a year beforehand with Ken, who is also a mechanic, to say, okay, please get the aircraft ready so that it simply lasts until the end and that the right avionics stuff is inside—so the right equipment, the right devices in the plane, so that I have the right gear in there for every airspace and every situation. For example, it could be that if you unintentionally—so my plane isn't certified for instrument flight—if you unintentionally have to land somewhere after six hours of flying and you're above the clouds, then you have to get through the clouds somehow so you can land there. And there are certain instruments you can install in a plane so that you can do something like that.
So, I just say, okay, this plane will be suitable in every situation. Point two? Point two, the pilot. I as a pilot... that also has to be right. I as a pilot must have the right training and the confidence to handle it in every airspace, in every situation. I had already dared myself to handle and fly the plane in some way, but as for the procedures, let's say, all over the world, which are standardized, I actually wasn't that far along yet. So I went to San Diego for four months in early 2018 and did an instrument flight training there and got a Commercial Pilot's License, just to be really, completely sure that I've learned everything that could come my way in terms of rules and procedures.
So, the standard is just there? The standard has to be there. The standard exists all over the world, exactly, and I just have to be up to it. And that was the second point. Point three?
A credit card with enough money on it. That's not always so easy either. No, that was actually the hardest part in the end, to be honest. It worked out eventually, but that's definitely... Yeah, you can't do much with a plane anywhere in the world if you don't have a credit card that works.
Done, that was point three. Point four? Spanish. From the US border, Mexico, it's just Spanish from then on, easy. That's two-thirds of the route, Spanish-speaking countries, and I had the advantage of speaking Spanish, or having spoken it, before that. I was in Mexico for six months at 18 and learned it quite well back then. And then I just—well, "just" is a good word—I flew to Argentina with Andy Hediger again in January 2018 and was there for two weeks, flew around with him for two weeks, and tried to get to know a bit of that aviation Spanish.
And yeah, those were the four points. It was actually pretty easy to remember them, you were right, I still know them.
And yeah, if you have a passport—okay, I'm assuming you have one—then you can basically take off and go on this trip, I dare say.
Okay, and apparently you really make it through all the ups and downs and probably some official disputes and whatever else you encounter. Exactly, that's why the Spanish. Now, moving on to the flying part, what was the most exciting thing you experienced where you thought, "Now my plane is hitting the limit" in terms of altitude, maybe weather, turbulence, or something else? Yeah, that happened...
In a pleasant way, sort of piece by piece, the further we moved south, they were set up so that it became increasingly difficult, but at the same time, our experience grew as well. So in that sense, it was always manageable. For example, by the time we got towards Guatemala, Central America, Costa Rica, Panama, etc., it had become really difficult just with the weather and the thunderstorms—really massive thunderstorms that just popped up everywhere every day. And the challenge there was simply finding that one specific moment to somehow navigate through this labyrinth to the next destination, so to speak. And that was really, really difficult.
So it wasn't like, "Great, we're flying somewhere," in the sense of, "We're flying to the Caribbean, the Atlantic coast, somewhere in Panama, it's super beautiful, we'll hang out there for a week and then just keep flying." It was more like, "Okay, we're flying there now, and then every day from morning until night, it's just, okay, when could this next moment be? When can we fly on? When is this one weather window where it works out?" And that kept escalating. It got harder and harder until Panama City, and then the "king stage" arrived, because in that sense, the king stage was definitely from Panama City to Cali, Colombia. You fly over the densest jungle on Earth, where there are no road connections either; so anyone traveling the Pan-American Highway, at the latest if they're traveling by car, has to switch to a boat because there's simply no land crossing, because the jungle just takes over everything there.
That means, at one point in my plane, we sat in the aircraft for six and a half hours, really flying slalom through the thunderstorms over what was basically nothing, out of the jungle, and that was definitely the biggest challenge in terms of dealing with the weather. Then, of course, we came out of the desert, out of the dry area, and then into that region, and then back into the desert, and the problem was solved again. But then other challenges came up, like the altitude you mentioned. I mean, the Andes are just extremely high.
How high can a Piper actually fly, officially speaking?
normally? Yes, well, normally they state more than you can actually fly. That's quite funny in that case. Unless you happen to catch... somewhere else...
It's actually pretty annoying when you think you can go higher, but then your plane just won't cooperate, right?
Yeah, of course, you can't rely on that. But yeah, it flies at, I don't know, ten, eleven, maybe 12,000 feet max. So that's somewhere between 3,000 and 3,500 meters. And that's not particularly high, because I mean, the Andes are on average 5,000 meters high. So of course you have no chance of getting over them anywhere. And that's why we had to stick pretty much to the coast, heading down along it. But there are some countries and some airports where you can't just land on the coast. It's just not possible. And then there was, for example, Panama City... sorry, Guatemala City is also an airport like that. It's at 2,200 meters, I think.
And it's an extremely long runway. I think four kilometers. So, seven, four, seven, and whatever, it takes off from there very easily. And we are there... I mean, altitude is one thing that affects such a small plane. The other thing is the temperature. When it gets really warm, the air density is naturally lower and then... Then the
...doesn't have as much lift.
Yeah, but it's not just the lift; the engine's performance also gets massively worse. And combined with the lower lift at altitude, that's doubly bad. And for example, Guatemala City, we really wanted to take off at six in the morning. We also had about a six-hour lag ahead of us. That means the plane was relatively far over the maximum allowed. We were loaded with a take-off weight that was unavoidable. So that's... it still flies. Everything fits. It's just not planned to be a hundred percent. And we couldn't take off because there was fog in the morning. And then they also have... one runway goes towards the mountains, the other runway goes down towards the sea. For me, that's naturally preferable, somehow towards the sea, where I can just sink immediately instead of having to climb.
It didn't work out then because the wind shifted. In any case, we took off there sometime just before ten, or between nine and ten, when it was already over 30 degrees. And you take off pretty quickly. There's also the ground effect and so on. We then flew past there for about four kilometers at tower height—meaning from the tower past the controllers—at 60 knots, so just under 90 km/h. We flew past like that for ten minutes and just didn't climb. And then eventually, Guatemala City comes into view with some skyscrapers. And yeah, we just barely made it through the skyscrapers until we finally managed to turn around and the terrain just sort of dropped away. But those were already challenges that were very exciting.
But it was also very educational. I just don't start in the wrong direction anymore. There might be a bit of a tailwind even on the long runway. But of course, I didn't have that on my glider at the time. And those are things you just learn over time. And then, in total, it just kept escalating until it reached the point where we were actually flying through Patagonia. And the east side of the Andes, the Patagonian Andes, is simply stormy there as a rule. And corresponding lee waves and lee turbulence. And I have to say, without all those experiences beforehand, it would have certainly been stupider there than it was. Even with the landing afterwards in strong wind and those kinds of things. You don't have any of that in Alaska. The glacier basically starts at sea level, mostly.
That means you're never particularly high up. It's always relatively cool. And wind—if there's a strong wind, since I'm not landing at an airfield anyway, I just pick a landing direction so that I land into the wind. That means all those things in Alaska that I never learned there, I actually had to learn during the trip.
So, learning by doing then. Exactly, yeah. You had your paraglider gear with you throughout the whole trip. What kind of possibilities does a bush plane open up for paragliding? What great experiences did you have?
Yes, there are two aspects to that. Well, one aspect of the trip—I'm not sure exactly how you meant the question, but one aspect of the trip—was, of course, actually getting to all those flight areas that just exist between North and South America on the West Coast. The official flight areas? Those were the official ones, of course, but also the unofficial ones. So, I mean, we were already in many corners, as I told you before, with that Alaska experience. It didn't just work there. So, simply wherever you get to and say, okay, this actually looks like a place to fly. And then I just flew there. I actually did that very often. I generally really like doing that and I do it very often, finding new spots somehow. But the second aspect—I don't know if that was your question, you can tell me later—
The second aspect is definitely that every hour in a plane like that brings experience, even for paragliding. You might not believe that because you think, okay, you're sitting in a plane, that has nothing to do with paragliding at all. But just as an example, I flew with Simon Oberrauner in a Cessna yesterday. Everyone probably knows a Cessna, it's not exactly a small plane because it's relatively heavy. But he also said, there's no way. There was some Föhn with us yesterday, or it's right here in the Alps right now. And he said, there's no way. You can feel exactly where the lift area is and where the sink area is and so on. And my plane is about half as heavy as a Cessna. That means, in terms of flying, it was really like with a
almost like with a paraglider. So the experience of really flying around half the world, and always feeling where there's lift, where there's a sink, how strong a thunderstorm is right now, how strong the lift really is, how the lee feels, how the air feels. So it was an incredible learning experience for me to cover this distance with this aircraft as well.
Are there things from paragliding, which you had already been doing for years before that, that really helped you directly with this task, where you might say, you really benefit from that as a bush pilot? Yes,
I have a very good example of that. I flew in Alaska at the beginning of my bush pilot career, so to speak, and back then we were supporting Gavin with his North of Known project with the plane too, so we flew out to meet him every now and then. And there was a bush pilot with me, in his plane, also a small aircraft, and we landed somewhere on the other side of the Alaska Range, and then it was like, yeah, we have to get back over the Alaska Range to the other side now. We started at the same time, and I didn't just fly straight toward the mountain, but instead I looked, yeah, where could there be some lift now, and then I went toward this wall where there was a bit of the sun hitting it and then maybe caught a bit of the wind as well.
Anyway, five minutes later I was up somewhere above the mountains, crossing the Alaska Range, and he radios me—this guy has been a bush pilot in Alaska for about 15 years or so, so he knows his stuff—and he's like, "I can't get up properly and I have no idea how you even managed that, there's no way you made it over the mountains, that's not normal" and all that. Well, it's nothing different. In an airplane, lift and sink affect you just the same as they do with a paraglider. There's no difference, and the experience I have—that I know really accurately where it goes up, where it's uncomfortably turbulent, and where it goes down—that has proven useful for me on every single flight with the plane, and that's because of the engine power,
you can basically just take the engine power as a constant and recalculate everything else. So if I have lift, constant engine power, then in the end I save this much fuel because I can simply fly this much faster, because I basically have the power from the lift on top of that, so to speak.
That means you fly the plane almost like a motor, even if you don't have the wingspan with your little Piper. Absolutely, yes. That is
completely, that doesn't matter at all. So it's the same with every aircraft, that you can simply factor in the energy, the energy balance, of these lift areas—and that was often extremely exciting in the Andes just in terms of the safety factor alone. If you just take off in such a light plane and fly through the high mountains in strong winds, if you don't know which side is safe and which side is turbulent and sink,
then in the long run, it just doesn't work well in a plane like that, and that's something you normally have to learn over years, and I've learned that over the years in paragliding, and that has definitely helped me a lot.
Now, looking at it the other way around, are there things where you'd say you've actually benefited from paragliding by flying with this Piper and maybe even flying some lines where you'd say, I don't dare do that with the paraglider yet because who knows if I can even land back there, but with the Piper you suddenly have the possibility to explore new terrain much better and stuff like that. Are there things where you'd say you've benefited, which then really also influenced or improved your way of paragliding, reading the terrain, or doing something else?
You basically just said exactly what I would have said, which is that you can try out a bit more because, firstly, you have stable wings that don't just collapse immediately, and secondly, you have an engine, so you get a second chance if you manage to get out of some sink. That means I've often been able to try things out, like for example with strong regional winds, how does the lee actually feel over there, or is it actually much calmer to fly in the lee, and maybe, yeah, does it still climb well there or something. So, just like I explained for airplane flying earlier, that has given me just as much in contrast to paragliding.
So, if I think about it now, I came back after a year—I was back home in Austria for two weeks in total in 2018, so to speak—and I flew paraglider relatively little. Of course, I flew in every country and whenever it was possible, I flew, but compared to what I usually do when I'm at home, where I actually fly paraglider every day, it was obviously little. And yet, I came home and knew that I'm giving myself five and a half months until the next X-Alps, and I haven't actually prepared specifically for X-Alps for a year now, but I still believe that in that one year I learned at least as much in terms of flying as if I had been flying Alpine routes for a year, and that's also how it felt.
So, I went flying again here in the spring of 2024, and I did some completely normal cross-country flights, and I certainly didn't feel like I could do less than before, but rather more.
That means, no matter what kind of flying, it basically trains your "bird brain" to the point where you just understand the air much better now.
Well, I'd say, I mean, of course, if you're sitting in a jet and you just blast off to some flight level of ten thousand feet—I mean, ten thousand meters—and then fly around there with the autopilot, that obviously won't help, but anything that happens, let's say, below in the lift area with an aircraft that you can still steer somewhat agilely, I'm quite sure that every minute in the air counts, yeah, no matter what.
If we stay with the comparison between paragliding and this motorplane flying, but look at something else. There are these typical aviation communities—paragliders, powered paragliders or non-powered paragliders, motorplane pilots, especially those small sport machines. Are there differences for you between these communities that are very typical to recognize, or is it actually aviation, regardless of which machine or technology they fly, where they are always very similar people? Hm. That's an interesting question now,
the one I can't really answer right away, because I don't want to dare to say, okay, these people are like this and those people are like that. I think that everyone who flies is already, in a way, in the same field, yeah, you could say that. Everyone who flies is somehow perhaps the same kind of person, so to speak, because they fly and because they enjoy seeing the world from above and experiencing these three dimensions by being able to move around like that, but,
Yeah, just like how there might be some differences between power pilots and paragliders, or power-paragliders, or thermals, yeah, there might be some differences there too, but those are, of course, details. Where there are differences, I believe, are the people who really deal with all these air movements, like paragliders do to an extreme, and if there are also people who do that in small planes, that's already interesting. So, I don't think there are many who deal with something like that and also exploit it, because most power pilots don't really learn that in training either, so there's no training for that where it's said, okay, during the power training,
In motorplane training, they don't say, "Now we're flying into the mountains and you're only going to follow the lift," so that just doesn't exist. Yeah, that fits.
probably not in the classical sense, but you have the engine in the front as a built-in lift, so you don't think much about what nature can still provide for you.
Exactly, it's like, okay, I want to go there, I'll climb, then I'm in cruise flight and then I'll go down again—it's simple. But that's it, or maybe you still pay attention to the general wind direction, making sure you're flying at an altitude where you might still have a tailwind,
but everything else isn't really taken into account at all, and that's already an extremely exciting aspect, and I think it's also a major safety aspect for, for the people, because, I mean, I already know from the example of the experienced, in itself experienced bush pilot in Alaska who flies over the Alaska Range all the time, but has no idea that he could save a quarter of an hour every time if he just flew the right line, theoretically.
Because he just gets up there much faster.
Exactly, because he gains altitude faster and can then also fly faster if he can convert that lift into speed.
Let's jump back into the topic for a bit. If you followed the Overland project last year, you were still doing a video vlog regularly at the beginning, constantly putting out new episodes, and then at some point, it stopped. I think somewhere in Mexico or something like that. And what happened there? What was the point? Why did you say, "Oh, the videos, I'm going to leave those for now"?
Yeah, it's actually nice that I'm bringing this up now. Because I keep getting asked, of course, what happened and why didn't you keep going? The answer is just very simple. I just couldn't manage to do it anymore. I mean, editing a video like that just costs, yeah, it just takes three or four days of work, and I just didn't have those three or four days anymore. It was just so much with the countries, every, I don't know, a new country every week. Yeah. Flight planning, weather, everything else that suddenly comes up, and then I still filmed everything else, but I just didn't have those days anymore, and then at some point I also...
I'm just sorry about that, because that was always the plan. I already started making these vlogs with XAlps back in 2017 and built up the community there, and it was always with the underlying intention of doing it for this overland project. So, the YouTube channel—I actually had this idea for this project too, just that everything would be there. Now, that sounds like I didn't want to put it on XAlps, but I did put it there too, that was super cool, I had an extreme amount of fun with it, but in the back of my mind, I always thought, yeah, I'll build this channel so I can tell the story of this trip there. And then I just realized, okay, with the resources—just me alone, with my laptop and my plane, and my wife was there too, okay, she was able to help me with a few things, but let's just say, just the two of us simply didn't manage to travel down there in 180 days and simultaneously film, edit, and put it online, and I'm somehow sorry about that.
to everyone who was waiting for it, but all I can say is that I kept filming everything. We've since produced eight episodes with Red Bull, which will be on Red Bull TV and Red Bull YouTube; those will definitely show the most beautiful images and describe the journey, though of course you can't go into such detail because if you did 50 episodes on YouTube, but the journey is documented. These episodes will be released, and next year there will also be a 45-minute television documentary about it from the footage I filmed. So yes, it will come eventually, but the other thing just wasn't possible, so it was kind of an either-or situation, a bit.
You just mentioned that your wife Magdalena was with you the whole time during the trip; she sat in that little Piper behind you because it's such a narrow thing, it's like tandem riding, you only ever see the other person's back or head, so she was actually... well, you were the pilot, she probably doesn't have a pilot's license in that sense, meaning she was completely dependent on you. Now, that must be a pretty intense phase, probably, flying together for so long and sitting one behind the other, and the other person has to somehow make sure that everything works out. What did this trip actually do to you as a couple? In what form did it change your relationship?
Yeah, well, there,
So, I don't know if I should tell the whole story or just summarize it by saying it's better now than it was before. But it was hard. Okay, that's
the short version, but it
was hard? It was very hard, at times of course, because she was kind of thrown into the deep end. I mean, I already had these plans, like, yeah, and we're making a big film and then some cameraman shows up and sits in the back with me and films everything, and then we produce these videos and vlogs and so on. And in the end, in hindsight, I have to say it turned out the way it was supposed to, but at that moment, it was like, this isn't working at all, I don't have a budget for something like that and it's just not happening, and the space became free for her, because yeah, some people might not find that so cool, but yeah, we're married and she hasn't asked for any money from me,
that she stepped up back there and filmed along and all that.
In any case, yes, she took the spot without really knowing anything about aviation, without knowing exactly what was coming her way, without actually having the specific dream herself, and she just trusted and went along with it. I still find it fascinating and I'm still incredibly proud of her for seeing it through. I believe it made her stronger and it made us stronger, and it was just as perfect for both of us as it went, so that's a very exciting—definitely a very exciting aspect of this journey.
If you imagine that development, then the demand on the person—how to handle this whole thing—was actually greater for Magdalena than for you, because she had basically no experience with many of the experiences coming her way, especially the aviation-related ones. There was no horizon of experience already there where she could say, "Hey, I know what's going on here," but she could only ever say, "Shit, I have no idea what's going on here, Paul has to somehow guide me through this."
Yeah, the good thing is, she learns very quickly, which has already been great because she really picked up on what matters very fast. I was even able to ask her about things like sparks in the air, which often happens relatively quickly and isn't that easy to understand, but she somehow handled it very well because she catches on so fast. I was often able to ask her what he just said, so she's really learned a lot in that regard and has taken over a lot of the organizational stuff—I don't know—while I was flying, she already tried to organize where we'd stay at the next location, who we'd meet, and so on. But of course, in the end, especially regarding the flying part,
You have to trust 100 percent, so we're back to where we were at the beginning—how do you approach something like that? You just have to be in the moment and learn to trust, and I don't know, that's definitely a strength of ours in the relationship, in our relationship as well, that we trust each other like that and that she can trust me like that, and she simply does.
Well, you probably grow incredibly close within about six months like that, you're sitting so close to each other all the time, experiencing all the highs and lows together. Eventually, a journey like that ends—whether it's a journey toward yourself or a journey together as a couple where you find each other. How hard is that return to home and everyday life actually? How hard was it for you to handle? Does a certain sense of pointlessness set in, or did it split for you, like you're saying, "Shit, what do I do now? The big dream is over"?
Yeah. At first, we were actually looking forward to coming home. Right until the moment it was over, we just said, okay, that's it, let's just leave the plane there at Andi's in La Cumbre, at the Aero Atelier in Argentina, and just fly home and celebrate New Year's Eve at home with our friends we haven't seen in ages and all that. And then, unfortunately, there was just no time at all for any kind of slump, because as I briefly mentioned before, there were five and a half months until the start of X-Alps. And I didn't feel ready for X-Alps at all at that moment. After sitting in such a plane every day and so on, that really wasn't the X-Alps preparation per se.
And that's why I just focused on it one hundred percent, training more consistently than ever before, and I prepared myself perfectly. This, this gap, so to speak, that you're talking about, actually only came after that. So, this autumn was really intense somehow. I just sat there and asked myself, what actually happened in the last year and a half or two? It was like, wow. It was really intense, and I think it's cool that you're bringing it up, because people don't talk about it that often—how these are simply the consequences of constantly taking on so many challenges. And when you're actually always just moving from one new thing to the next new thing, you don't have any time to reflect at all.
And then time just flies by and that's what happened. I haven't even gotten around to looking at all the photos from the trip or going through the footage yet—I still haven't. Red Bull did all that and edited the videos from it. So there's just no time at all. And then there was really this moment where I said, what am I actually doing now? What did this actually get me? And I'm just starting to get out of that headspace now, and now some cool plans for the next few years are coming up again.
Let's jump back briefly to the X-Alps in the summer. I don't want to go deep into what happened at the X-Alps, but just from your trip, where you say you prepared for five and a half months. Did you notice that, with these experiences from the Overland project, your attitude towards competition changed in some way? Was it completely different from the other competitions in previous years?
Yes, directly. Before that, it had to change in the sense that I simply had less time in proportion to before. Before, I was actually one of the last ones—well, always. I started racing mountain bikes at 13 and have trained for endurance ever since without stopping. And this was somehow that one year now where I was relatively away from consistent endurance training. And then the circumstances were just different. So I just had to say, okay, now I have this time and I have to prepare for it one hundred percent professionally. That was already very different. And because of that, I naturally saw it differently too. Because of that, the competition simply became a competition, in the real sense. And not just a way of life, so to speak, like it was in the years before, but simply, okay, this is important now and I'm going to approach it professionally and think exactly about what is important now.
And I think the true reflections on it, so to speak, and where it all comes together, that's only happening now that you simply shift your perspectives a bit and say, okay, this is one thing I do in my life. An exciting journey around the world and meeting people, as we've already discussed, and new experiences, new challenges every day. And the other thing is this competition, which you can also focus on one hundred percent if you want to, over many, many years, as others in the scene also show, where you say, okay, you only do that. And yes, that's been great for me too, because it's given me completely new things to think about, including how I view these things.
And yeah, it's certainly not the only 100% most important thing for me anymore, like it might have been at some point between 2011 and 2015.
At the X-Types last summer, there was this one special scene where you, on the last day, ran and flew into the finish line together with Benoit Uters, or whatever his name is, and then basically arrived at the finish line hand in hand, and everyone was saying, "Wow, the victory of camaraderie" and stuff like that. Does this decision to do something like that also stem from the experience of the journey, where you say, okay, if you get somewhere together, then it's actually more?
Could be. I don't know for sure if you can find that connection, but in that moment, to put it simply as it is, there was no other logical solution for both of us. I mean, I don't know, I didn't really know Benoit before that, but in the two or three days before the last day, we kept meeting up like that—not directly, but we had this little battle going on. And then on the penultimate day, at some point in the evening, we actually landed in the same spot, after we had been begging each other the day before not to be a bit ahead again, because he had been a bit ahead, in any case. Suddenly, in the evening, we're standing at the same point and walking for two kilometers until 10:30 PM,
still walking along together and talking, thinking to ourselves, "Wow, everyone is just so happy that it actually looks like we can make it to the finish line." So, for him, he even had this attitude even more. For me, there was still a bit more of a competition element, and he was just really—and I took this from him one hundred percent—like, "I just want to get to Monaco." That was just so, so deep inside him. And I let myself get swept up in that a bit too, and we were really just like two friends who had been doing something crazy together for ten days and were just happy if we could somehow make it to the finish line. And the next day was the same; we went up the mountain together, flew together, supported each other, and pushed each other, and looked at each other, and if one of us had landed early, the other would have obviously taken advantage of that.
But at some point, there was also the moment where we landed and just realized, okay, now it's really just about getting to the finish line without the pack coming from behind catching up to us. And then we were just completely exhausted—I think it was 35 or 40 degrees—walking along, totally spent, and at some point, we both started making suggestions like, yeah, what are we actually doing? Are we going to run the last ten meters? Are we going to do another sprint battle after twelve days of racing, or eleven days of racing? That really can't be. And then we actually just decided, okay, if it's a joint force, we fly together, we walk together, we support each other, share the water we have left or some food, and just head to the finish line together.
And that wasn't some well-thought-out move, like "how could this come across?" No, it was simply the only thing to do given the situation and the background—we've been battling, or we've both been fighting, for ten days to reach the finish line in Monaco, so we just had to make sure we both got to Monaco. Something like that.
Well, you've finished in third place at the X-Alps four times now. Was this the last time you did that, or was the last time you did it with Benoit basically your best third-place finish?
They were all really great, I have to say. Which one was the best? That's a good question. I haven't asked myself that yet. It was definitely cool, it was something different. Funny enough, all my third-place finishes so far have been somehow strange or somehow special. I think the people who follow this will know roughly what happened each time and what kind of third place it was in the end. So there was always some kind of story behind it, funny enough. But it was definitely a super cool...
experience. So, what's next? You just said that new project ideas are coming up now. What's on the horizon for you? Are you going to continue with the bush pilot life, or what are you planning for the future?
Yes, in September, my plane arrived—it first came from Buenos Aires to Seattle in a container, and then I flew up to Alaska and parked it there at my friend Ken's place. So it's still there and it still belongs to me, and I already have these ideas of all the things I'd like to do with it there.
At the same time, I also want to do a bit more in that direction here in Austria and maybe see if we can show a bit more of what you can actually do with such a plane, who knows what else could develop there. Just try that out here a bit too; I have to see how I organize that now, because my plane probably won't come here, it doesn't belong here, it simply belongs in Alaska. That's one direction. And then for next year, I mean I was back on the glider in 2021 myself and next year I just want to see that I'm in good shape again, slowly preparing for it, and I also have a project idea in the Alps with the paraglider, hike and fly.
Yeah, but it's a bit more my style. So that's the idea—what I'd actually like to do during the X-Alps if it weren't a race, so to speak. I might do some things differently than I have to during the race. And I'd like to try that out a bit. That's one project. Yeah, and then, on the family side, things will also be changing sometime soon.
That's a nice way to end it. So I'll wrap up this podcast with that. A few nice outlooks for the future in all directions. Paul, thank you for your great stories and all the details. A great adventure. I think there's so much in there. You could probably talk about it for hours and pick up on all sorts of small and large adventures. The people listening here, some of them will probably look to see what other videos you have on your channel, or the new ones that will probably be added now from the Red Bull stories. So I can only say it's definitely worth taking a look. It's incredibly fun.
Can I just jump in for a second? Yes, please. I just want to say that I'm telling this overland story together with my wife in the form of a lecture. So, we've prepared it now and we want to make sure it's well-distributed,
...to find a few dates in Austria and also Germany, and I hope that if people are still interested in our story, that maybe somehow we can meet in person and tell this story somewhere else.
Yeah, I'd be curious to hear more background on that too, and as far as I know, you're doing this with Magdalena, so she'll probably also tell part of her story, which is probably at least as exciting as yours. It's definitely something worth going to.
Yeah, definitely. I mean, she can explain very well what it was like for her, since you also asked about that. That's nice.
Okay Paul, thank you and I wish you all the best for all the upcoming projects.
Thanks a lot, thanks for the interview.
That was Paul Guschlbauer in conversation with Lucian Haas. If you want to learn more about the Overland project, including images and videos of individual stages, I recommend visiting the corresponding website: www.fly-overland.com. Dates for future lectures about Paul and Magdalena's Overland trip will be announced on Paul's Facebook channel: facebook.com/guschlbauer.paul. If you enjoyed this podcast featuring a story from Paul's world of paragliding, then stay tuned, because there's a little extra coming up right now. Before that, let me give you a quick note that you are welcome to support the Podz-Glidz podcast and the Looglights blog as a patron, as that allows me to continue providing you with more of these interesting conversations and contributions in the future.
You can choose your contribution amount completely freely. For those who are undecided, I recommend a guideline of one euro per podcast episode and two euros per reading month on Looglights. Payments are very easy via PayPal or bank transfer. You can find the relevant details on the Looglights website. And now, as promised, here is the little extra. When we had already finished the actual recording of the conversation, I was chatting with Paul about this and that, and he told me how the journey in that small plane changed his perspective on the world. The main microphone was already turned off by then, so please excuse the slightly lower audio quality. But it's worth listening to again.
I'll say goodbye for now, see you in the next episode of Podz-Glidz. And now, Paul Guschlbauer once again.
One point from the trip that really stuck with me was also seeing that we've actually flown from the very top to the very bottom of the world. I mean, so far that you can really hold the globe between two fingers. That's quite a distance. And when you fly all that so slowly and then see for yourself how the world just kind of disappears beneath you—as I just said, that means glaciers, then forest, then desert, then jungle, and so on and so forth, and the whole thing again—then my thought was, okay, we just have one world. And that one world is relatively small. And when we go to the airport nowadays, get on a jet, and then get off in Thailand ten hours later or whatever, we believe we're in a different world.
Clearly, everyone believes that. Everyone thinks, okay, I'm getting on, this is a completely different world, everything looks different, the people are different, and so on. But in reality, it's not like that. And I believe that if this awareness is ever created—that it really isn't that far and that it's all connected and relatively small, and that you can fly around all of it yourself in a small plane, it just takes a bit longer, but that there is a connection—then that would be a big step for people's perception, I think. So there's a lot behind these flights, not just because of the pollutants, but also because of this feeling people have. Everyone believes I'm flying to another world. Thailand is somewhere else entirely.
It's not another planet, though. So that's what it showed me.