I just wanted to open it up again, to see what else was there. I didn't want to just keep going until Passion or whenever, just keep going. I'm not really a routine person; that doesn't really suit me.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.
Stories from the cosmos of paragliding.
Today with
Dominic Rohner and
Lucian Haas on the mic.
Mount Ürtli is the home mountain for Zurich paragliders. It's a mountain where you can soar high above the city in an east wind. It wasn't actually considered a good starting point for long-distance flights. But that changed in May 2020. During an unusually long-lasting Biesen situation, Dominik Rohner flew several launch site records in a row within just under 10 days, totaling over 1,300 kilometers of cross-country distance, and flew nearly 270 kilometers as a personal best, all the way past Lake Geneva. Not
It wasn't just the Swiss paragliding scene that was amazed by such achievements. Congratulations also came from flying friends from all over the world, because although Dominik is a Zurich local, he is also a convinced globetrotter. In 2017, the 42-year-old even sold his shares in the successful flight school Paraworld to a partner so he could travel and go paragliding without any worries.
In this 34th episode of Podz-Glidz, Dominik talks about some of his experiences. Including the weather. Flying at volcanoes in Tanzania, para-backpacking in Colombia, kitesurfing on the coast of Brazil, and also how such experiences from other countries help him push the flight limits of the local Oerdliberg. If these conversations from Podz-Glidz provide you with inspiration for your own flying adventures, then help keep it going. Because Podz-Glidz is a listener-supported podcast. In other words, I don't finance this project, nor the Gleitschirm-Blog Lu-Glidz, through advertising, but solely through voluntary donations. How much you might want to give is entirely up to you. For those who are unsure, I recommend one euro per podcast episode and two euros per reading month on Lu-Glidz as a non-binding guideline.
Payments are very easy to make via PayPal or bank transfer. You can find the relevant details on the Lu-Glidz website, specifically on the Support page.
Dominik, help me out, how do you actually say it correctly? Üdliberg or Uerdliberg?
We say Uerdliberg. Uerdliberg. With a bit of melody, the way we Swiss do it, you know.
Yeah, it's always a bit of a sing-song with it. And what kind of mountain is Uerdliberg?
That's actually Zurich's local mountain. It's not that high, it's 870 meters at the highest point. That's about 400 meters above Zurich. The launch site is a bit lower. Yeah, just the classic local mountain. People go hiking there, biking, there's a restaurant, a hotel up there in the winter. So, in the past, you could still go sledding there. A small train goes up. It's actually the local recreation area for the city of Zurich, I'd say.
I took a look at a website, it's the website for the Hotelrestaurant Uto Kulm. And it says there that you can also go paragliding. And it mentions the launch site. The launch site is very small and surrounded by trees. A skilled backward launch technique is recommended. And after the launch, an active flying style is required. What is that supposed to mean?
So the part about the launch site being small, that's exactly right. I mean, with a high-performance wing, you've got about a meter between the trees on the left and right. And that's actually the result of a landslide, let's say, about 15 years ago. That's why it's flat at the top and quite steep at the front. And yeah, a good backward launch technique definitely helps. An active flying technique, well, look, I mean, it's not that bad actually. In the winter, for example, you can just fly dynamically there. That's more on the calm side. And now, in spring or early summer, when the thermals are good, you just have wind and thermals. But it's just wind and thermals.
So, nothing from another planet, but not that either. Definitely not pure laminar flying, no.
That often means that Ürtliberg is a typical "Biesenberg," is that right?
That's how it is, yeah, definitely, yeah.
But isn't Biese per se also a bit of a place where an active flying style is required?
Yes, it's possible, you know, there are situations in winter when you're actually flying under the high fog, then it's really practically, I'd say, more or less, more or less laminar flow, because where the Biese comes from, that's in the lowlands, the Ürtliberg actually stands more or less in the lowlands and therefore the Biese comes in more or less laminarly. I'd say what can make it turbulent, like everywhere else, is when the thermals mix in, then, yeah, of course, then there's wind and thermals. Accordingly, there can be some turbulence. But as I said, it's nothing out of this world, not at all. But it's mainly... For the people in Zurich, it's more like the soaring mountain.
For most pilots, it's definitely a Sohrenberg. It's a very, very popular, I'd say, sort of an after-work flight area. We have quite a few pilots in Zurich, which is the largest city in Switzerland. And many of them go out for a little bit of Sohren in the evening when the Bise is blowing. And it's really beautiful too, when the thermals calm down and the city still gives off a lot of heat in the evening compared to spring or summer. And then you can really, actually... you can soar over the city into the night. It's beautiful, yeah.
Well, this year from mid-May, you were at Uetliberg, Uetliberg—it's hard to say—for nine days almost back-to-back, with just a little break in between sometimes. And you were flying there, and it wasn't just soaring, but you accumulated over 1,300 route kilometers in total. That's more than 140 kilometers per day on average. Yes. Yes. If you take that average, a few years ago, basically every flight would have been, well, at least calculated as an average, a launch site record. Now, with five of these flights, you're basically at the very top of the best list for Uetliberg. Is that something special for you in some way?
Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, I have to be honest with you, I didn't do the math, and I was at the tower at times too and then went back exactly five to ten kilometers. The gliders, right, I don't put those on XContest. That can definitely happen at Uetliberg. But otherwise, no, it's definitely something special because until recently, the record had held for a very long time, from Marcel Schmid flying to Wöwester with, I think, 164 kilometers or something. And I don't even know myself why this specific situation was so special. So I don't consider myself a better pilot at all than the others who fly there quite often too.
I think this Biesen situation, hey, it was really special—almost not every day, but every other day was really good thermically again. And yeah, I have time at the moment, you know. I'd actually be traveling by paraglider, guiding, and doing cross-country flight camps. That's been put on hold a bit because of Corona, as you can imagine. And I've also been flying a lot lately, especially, and over the last year or two, I've had a lot of time to fly. And accordingly, I'm a bit in, how do you say, in good shape at the moment. And I just got lucky. Plus, the conditions were just extremely right. Yeah, it was all just coming together a bit.
Is it maybe also the case that when a Biesenlage lasts longer and you say, okay, I've already achieved something with that one flight, maybe there's more to be done, or that you just get bolder and try even more and say, let's see what happens.
Yeah, I can definitely imagine that. So psychologically, for sure, when I flew that first one, that first triangle, and I liked it—even with 127—I just tried a bit further. And somehow, it just kept working, I don't know, it just worked somehow. But of course, once you've had one or two cool flights, you don't stand on the brake anymore, right? Then there's just a bit more gas, you set the goal a bit higher, and the special thing was that the conditions allowed you to try every day and somehow it still kept working, and yeah, it fit well, yeah.
You've done both at Oertliberg: an FAI triangle over 158 kilometers, which is basically the triangle record, and then a one-way cross-country flight where you flew all the way past Lake Geneva, even a bit into France—I think that was 264 kilometers or so. Which of these flights are you particularly proud of?
What should I say now, hey? I mean, you know, flying 267 kilometers to France is already awesome, but somehow that's actually more the kind of flying we've been doing at Oertliberg for a long time—you know, the one-way flights with more or less a tailwind towards the west-southwest, it's just longer now, but yeah, awesome of course, but I actually find the triangle almost, somehow almost a bit cooler, because Oertliberg is definitely not built or positioned to fly FAI triangles; it's also deep and you have to fly across the wind, and there are still tons of airspaces that you have to somehow navigate around.
you can't climb very high because of Zurich airport, you're flying a lot against the airport, against the wind, then into the mountains, and then you have to somehow get back down to Zurich. So actually, I find the triangle almost even cooler, which is also cooler because if I do the triangle, I land in Allmend Zurich and take the tram home, that's also nice, of course. Yeah. That
meaning, getting back from France over those 267 kilometers, that was a bit more complicated?
No, that would probably have been complicated, but, um, um,
a pilot friend from Geneva, Reynald Mummentaler, somehow saw me on live tracking and messaged me while I was still in the air, saying, "Yeah, keep flying, just keep going, I'm already on my way and I'll get you back to Switzerland." And it really happened like that—I landed, parked, walked across the field, and there he was already pulling up in his car and he... pff, an hour later we were in Geneva drinking beer at his place. If he hadn't...
if he had picked you up, would crossing the border have been a bit more difficult because of the Corona times?
Oh, I have no idea, I would have had to find that out. I heard that it was a bit difficult from Switzerland to France—so the French didn't really like it when people went into France—but back into Switzerland, I heard it was never really a problem, and even when we drove across the border, they didn't pay any attention to us at all. I mean, it's Geneva, right? They have an extremely large number of "Frontaliers," they call them, so French people who work in Geneva, and I guess that's just... it's a bit difficult, you can't always control everything perfectly, right? Well, you're there...
flown with strong winds, you also mentioned the Bise, and often when heading towards Geneva, the Mittelland gets narrower, the wind often picks up even more, and stuff like that. Were those the kind of conditions where you'd say it wouldn't have been flyable for a less experienced pilot?
No, not at all. I mean, the flight—the long 267-kilometer flight—not at all. No, no, it was never, at no point did I have any concerns that there might be too much wind. It actually wasn't a strong Bise. It's generally cooler anyway when you go flying in not-so-strong Bise. You have many more options. But there can be moments; we had this phase at the beginning, we were there, there were many pilots on that exact day when Sebi Benz got the record, so the first time he improved the record, yeah, that was a day where I was traveling more in the Mittelland. Sebi Benz and Peter Kleimann landed in the Vevey-Montreux region, and I went further into the Mittelland with my best friend Rico Chandra.
That was a day where, towards the end, I had some serious concerns about what the wind was like down on the ground. So I kept checking, I kept looking at the wind station. And I really shouldn't have gone too close to Lake Geneva that day because, well, the breeze just blows right out onto the lake and can get really strong. So, yeah, I'm a relatively—let me put it this way—pretty cautious pilot. Like Peter Kleimann and Sebi Benz said, they actually landed right on the lake, practically on the lake, and I said, yeah, maybe slightly backwards just down to the edge, so that it just barely works, you know.
yeah, but there can definitely be days when you're starting at Uidliberg where it's better not to push all the way, not all the way to Lake Geneva, because it could just be too strong, yeah, definitely, yeah. When you go into this
When flying from the direction of Uidliberg, you're always flying into the lee first. Is that still a bit of a concern for you every time, or do you say, "No, I know all of that by now"?
Yeah, no, actually you don't fly into the lee, you know, the Uidliberg isn't that high, it's just at the highest point, it's like 870 or something meters high, in some places it's only 700 meters high, the launch site for example is, I think, about 700 and we already fly higher from there, depending on which route you take, it's either at 1700 meters or 1300 once you get up there of course and then, so is it even the lee, is that even an issue, no, no, actually not, no.
Can you still remember your first flight from the Uidliberg? Yes, pretty well. When was that?
Yeah, that was around 1997, I think, about a month after I started paragliding. Yeah, I was 18 and I was really overmotivated and full of energy, and I'd actually thought about it quite a bit. I thought the wind comes from the lake, the Uidliberg is in the way, and the wind has to go up somewhere, so I thought I'd just hike along this Uidliberg ridge and I'd find somewhere I could launch myself. By launch, I mean, was there no launch site back then? No, well, the launch site we use now didn't exist yet, it only formed 15 years ago due to a landslide. Back then there was some launch site at Buchenegg, I think it's called, but I didn't know about it, I had no idea about flying.
and there were these kinds of clearings, like meadow clearings, that pulled up a bit towards the ridge, so I carried my glider up there and laid it out and yeah, I had one, it was already an old glider back then, a Pro Design Corrado with 31 square meters or something like that, way too big for me
and I was obviously over the moon when I took off and immediately gained altitude over the Uidliberg. That means the wind was probably stronger then? Yes, it was very strong, because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get up with those gliders back then. But the joy only lasted about two minutes until I then drifted backwards into the lee in Stalikon, which is the village behind the Uidliberg, and I came back down to the ground there. So, that was already in the lee? That was definitely lee, but luckily I had a glider that didn't have so many cells and actually, I never saw the glider collapse, I don't think it was even capable of that. Yes, that was a mix of joy and stupidity and everything, just very curious.
Yeah, both of them together, right? But it was also a different time, wasn't it? I mean, there was no internet back then, right? No, there was no internet. I mean, our weather report was much more rudimentary. Or for me at 18, without knowing anything, the weather report was simply looking out, seeing where the wind was coming from as best as you could, and if there was still a cloud, you could estimate it a bit better. We'd often just drive somewhere and see if it was lying.
That means you'd hike up Oertli-Berg once and check if it was snowing, and then it would just blow off somewhere. Exactly, but I overestimated Oertli-Berg. And then you're proud of that.
Yeah, it is, yeah.
You'd rather forget the rest of the flight, but you're proud of the altitude you reached. That's great. Yes, exactly. Now, you've been flying to this mountain for 23 years. Does something special connect you to it? Is this mountain also home for you?
Yeah, yeah, sure. I'm from Zurich, I come from the city of Zurich, and even as a kindergartner, you'd go there, how do you say, to roast marshmallows. We did our school trips there. We went playing in the forest. You go up there with your first love. With friends to go sledding in the winter. Yeah, of course. That's not the mountain right now. You might go there when you go hiking. I'm at the Oertli-Berg very often, even without a glider, in any case. It has
Does home have a meaning for you? I mean, this...
The word home? Yes, what should I say? A meaning? Not really the word itself. No, Zurich is my home. Switzerland is my home. But now, well, much less so. No, I really enjoy being on the road and abroad often, and I'm not exactly some ultra-patriotic Swiss local. I wouldn't say that, no.
You've been traveling around the world a lot over the past two years. What were you looking for?
That's a good question.
Yeah, you know, I worked at the flight school for a long time. That was all really cool and laid-back and exciting. But I just felt like having that feeling again from when I first went traveling at nearly 20—that all the doors open again, that nothing is certain, that you go traveling and anything could actually happen and you could just go with it. Something could happen, it could pull you somewhere or wash you up somewhere, and you could basically seize every opportunity and do something completely new. I think that was actually sort of the feeling I was looking for again. Just opening everything up again, letting something new in, and something like that.
And what did you find?
Yeah, lots of flying, lots of kiting, lots of great stuff, but I'm back in Switzerland again. It's great here, too. And I'm actually still working in the paraglider industry professionally. Well, once things get going again, of course.
I asked you before this conversation to write down a few bullet points, a few highlights from your flying and traveling career. Just so I could have a bit of an idea. And in the end, you basically sent me two full A4 pages. And there's so much we could talk about now, things that make you really jealous, everywhere you've already been, and all the different things you've probably experienced there. I think that could take hours. Let's just play a little game. I'll give you a few bullet points from your list and you tell me what comes to mind first and most vividly for each one. I'm curious to see what comes up. You have to think fast. That is
not my best
Page. You can take your time if you want. I'm always curious to see what comes out first, even from a slow thinker. So let's get started. Tanzania.
Tanzania
flying over volcanic craters. How did you get to that? To my thought or Tanzania? To Tanzania. Hey, I actually still remember that quite clearly. I saw some photos. I think one photo series was by Michael Gebert and I think he was with Foto. I think he was with Foto. I think he was with Foto. I think he was maybe with Felix Wölk there. And the other photos were by Horacio Llorens and who was he probably traveling with? Probably with Tom de Dorlo there. And what impressed me the most were, on the one hand, these volcanoes and then these vast, vast steppe plains with so many of these small craters standing all around there.
and the play of light. And I knew then that I absolutely wanted to go there. And then years later, I finally did it.
And what's it like, flying from this volcano? Do you have to hike up to be able to take off from the top? Or can you take off from anywhere around all the corners? Or is it all so wooded that you have to look for a clearing first, like at the Oertliberg?
No, it's not forested at all. So, neither around it nor on the mountains practically. No, almost not. Actually, I'd say there's practically no forest.
You can land anywhere anyway. These are the great Maasai Steppes, and it's also beautiful because you really see the giraffes, the wildebeests, the... I mean, there's a huge diversity of animals running around there. It's incredible, and you land right in it. It's really totally wild. So, the special volcano that impressed me most regarding thermals, that Oldoinyo Lengai, you can, could go up there, but you have to take a guide. Everything in Tanzania related to tourism is extremely expensive, really extremely expensive. And we then decided to go to the—that's also the Rift Valley, you probably know that, or in Kenya, the flying in the...
Back in the Kerio Valley. Where they fly back and forth along the ridge for 100 kilometers, doing what people call power soaring.
Exactly, and that's actually the continuation, just further south, then in Tanzania, it's not quite as pronounced at all, it's much deeper there. But we each started at this ridge edge, or rifts, which were maybe 150 km we went up there, 200, something like that, and then flew over the area to the volcano, up the volcano and overtopped it, and then landed perfectly on the volcano, and that was—I mean, that's extremely impressive because the volcano is still active. And it's such a perfect volcanic cone and it's fantastically beautiful there, really. It's something, I'd say, one of the most beautiful things I've ever flown, yeah. But it's definitely not a place where, you know, like at Uetliberg, where I can go to anyone who can somewhat take off, it's no problem at all.
So, I've already found flying in Tanzania to be quite demanding, because of the wind and the thermals. And even then, it's not that easy to actually catch a thermal, and I found it still quite...
demanding. And then you land somewhere in the steppe, and wild animals come out, or people come running over because Africa is full of people, where you always have to watch out that they don't trample your glider.
So you definitely have animals, but the animals that still roam outside the national park aren't really, how should I put it, predators anymore, no more wild cats, because that's Maasai territory and the dream of every Maasai man, and I believe so,
The ultimate high for every Maasai man is to kill a lion. For whatever reason, I don't know anymore. But outside the parks, as far as I can remember, there aren't really any lions left.
People also come to a run, but it's not like in Kenya when you land there—it's much greener. In the Kerio Valley, it's extremely populated; they come in the hundreds, and a dog is surrounded. If you land in Tanzania, it goes on for a good while, but then you look across the plains, and the Maasai come running across the plains there—it's really bizarre. You see them half an hour before they reach you, you see them running towards you on the horizon. That
I think so too.
super cool.
The Maasai have grown quite tall too, haven't they? They're very tall, yes. At least from the pictures I know, they're these very slender figures that are shot from such a low angle. Yeah, exactly. With long sticks, and they probably... yeah, it's an interesting image when they move around like that.
Yeah, exactly. And you think it's just folklore, you know, like from a catalog with the robes and the spears and the claw necklaces, but actually, they all dress like that. I mean, I haven't seen any—or at least not in this region—Maasai wearing Western clothes; they're all really dressed traditionally. That's really interesting,
Exactly. Well, in Tanzania, probably differently than in Kenya, there are probably very few paragliders who just happen to fly by. How do the Maasai react to that, or how did they react to you? Are they very friendly, or do they say, where are you coming from, or what is this all about, or? Look, I
I was a bit surprised, because usually, when you're one of the very few, as far as I know, it's actually almost always just positive. The Maasai were really friendly, and that wasn't the issue at all, but the question of money, gifts, and the fact that it costs something because you're landing on their land—that was always very much on the table. So yeah, I was a bit surprised. Usually, from my experience traveling, the joy outweighs everything; you get invited and so on. Even in Kenya, it was never really an issue; it was joy, lots of people, kids, I don't know, a huge crowd.
In Tanzania, it was like this idea of money—so you're basically the white person with money landing here, and now you're giving us something. Even though, I think they really haven't seen many paragliders yet. I was a bit surprised, I have to be honest, I was a bit surprised, yeah.
But friendly, definitely, yeah, no, it's not an issue at all. But
Money was already a topic, yeah. Let's jump over to a completely different continent now. Colombia. Yeah. You write "Para-Backpacking in Colombia." What is that, or how does that work? Oh, I just say it like that.
A lot of bivouac flying is done; it's actually pretty much the same as bivouac flying, but I noticed—I did it two or three times years ago—and I noticed that while it's beautiful up there on the mountain, and I always imagined it being super cool, I realized I don't really like being alone. I don't like being alone in the evening; I like being around people, even if I'm not traveling with a colleague. I don't have to talk to a ton of people or anything, but I like being somewhere where there are people. And Colombia is extremely well-suited for exactly that, because first of all, it's warm where you land, there are actually people there anyway, so you'll be able to sleep somewhere, and somehow you can get back up the mountain.
I don't necessarily have to walk, and in the tropics, even less so, it's just too hot anyway. And in Colombia, I started—I think, yeah, no, I don't think so—at the launch site in Medellin, sort of like Bordeaux to Mütliberg, just in Medellin, and all I had with me was a bit of a credit card, I think I had about four T-shirts, four pairs of underwear, my flip-flops and camera, and my flight gear; I didn't have much more with me, and I just took off towards Cali, then I flew a bit further south, then towards Pereira, then I flew the central valley, the Magdalena Valley, and each evening I just looked for somewhere to sleep, and the next morning I'd find some tuk-tuk, or a
...scooted, looked for thermals again, drove somewhere onto a hill, and I did that for about three, three, three and a half weeks, I basically toured Colombia, instead of taking buses, I just flew the routes back with my paraglider.
Are there always mountains there, so where you say, I landed down below, and the next day someone drives me up somewhere, and then there's something there again where you can take off, right? Yeah,
Absolutely, plus or minus. I mean, Colombia is extremely well-suited for this kind of flying because it often—well, it has mountains, mountains—so, setting aside the areas towards the Amazon or the plains towards the Caribbean, yeah, it's actually all, all, all hilly; it's really hilly everywhere. And you also constantly, you know, have fields and open spaces where you can somehow take off, that too. And they also live—well, you have many towns, villages that don't lie in the valley down by the river like we do, but very often on the ridge at the top, and main roads often run along the ridge at the top too. That's why you can take off somewhere there; it's fascinating, it's almost always, almost always.
given, yeah. That means you'd often land right next to a village like that, stay the night, and then take off again from right next to the village.
Yeah, unfortunately, I didn't land perfectly that often,
No, usually I have to take some vehicle the next morning that drives me back up. But
that's a way of traveling that you can definitely recommend.
Yeah, I think it's great, yeah, that's exactly my style, yeah, and I'm actually sure you can do that too,
let's say, doing that in other places too. Where I'd really like to try it,
that's the thing, you know it from competition flying now, from the photos, so I was especially impressed by Pancas—what is that, Southwest Brazil? That's the state of Espirito Santo, Minas Gerais is also nearby, like Vitoria, Governador Valadares isn't far away, but also Baixo Guandu, Castelo, where they always have the competitions, so those monolith landscapes, and I'm quite sure that in this zone you could do that very, very, very well, just the weather is similar, it has hills, it has quite a lot of launch sites, even official ones, I'm very... I definitely want to do that in, yeah, in the future too, yeah, at least try it.
In Brazil, you did something completely different with travel, at least. You did cross-country kiting on the coast. How does that work?
it's much, much easier than distance flying—at least on the northeast coast of Brazil, you actually have, you could say, almost half the year you have the trade winds just blowing from the east, sometimes with a bit more of a northern component, sometimes a bit more southern, and you really have wind every single day, so that's not the question, we actually have to constantly fight not to drown while kiting, there are, I'd say, very few days in that half-year where you don't have wind, and otherwise you just get on the water and kite up the coast with the wind, yeah, and I think I covered about 600 kilometers along the coast there, very similar to paragliding backpacking, just that you need almost even less, I had two pairs of trousers, one dry one, one that I wore on the water, some T-shirt,
Yeah, credit card, camera, phone, that's it—you really don't need much more. And then you have a drypack, so a waterproof backpack, and I think I had about three kilos on my back, something like that, three or three and a half kilos, no more. And then you can... I mean, there are people who do 1,500 kilometers of downwinding, that's what you call it, downwind kiting.
But isn't that boring? I mean, just downwinding along the coast, and basically the coast probably looks like a low strip or something, there aren't any mountains right behind it or anything, I guess, so it's not the most interesting thing for the eyes, is it?
You're right, it's not exactly the perfect tropical beach with palms leaning over bright blue water, it's not that, but basically every 30 or 40 kilometers you keep hitting villages where you can sleep, you keep seeing different kiters, there are so many towns where people kite, you meet people again, by now I already know a whole section, it wasn't the last time I did it, I was there again last year, you already know people, then you have, I'd say, you're not just simply riding down with the wind, that is, Northeast Brazil actually, it also has waves, it has places with waves, but I find it's above all a paradise for flat water kiting, and that's of course perfect for jumping, for learning tricks,
So last time I didn't ride such long stretches anymore, just so that when I arrived at the next town, I still had some power left to play. And no, it's not boring at all, no, not at all. But there are, I have to say, really, really, really beautiful sections; it's just drier, more of a dune landscape, but you keep hitting these oasis-like places that are green, right? And that's already very, very beautiful, or the Parnaiba Delta where the Parnaiba River flows in—those are all these offshore islands where you can also ride through the rivers. It's, yeah, it's gorgeous, really super beautiful, yeah. How long did it take you to do 600 kilometers with the kite? Ugh, it wasn't that long, right? I'd say I did it, I think, in two weeks, but of course you can do it, you can do it much faster, there are people,
they could maybe kite 100 kilometers a day, they could do that, because you can do that, right, but for me, that's not it at all, it's not the same, you know, not for me, like with cross-country flying, I don't see the kick in just going as far as possible per day, but I prefer to experience something along the way, yeah, and I also need my energy left for playing and learning tricks and, yeah, so there, I don't have the goal of covering the 600 kilometers as fast as possible at all, because technically it actually requires endurance the longer you ride, of course, but technically it's not really demanding, just riding down with the wind, it's not that at all.
In Brazil, you were also out on really long distances, you flew over 500 kilometers there once, from, I think, Kaiko or something, if you compare that now and say, yeah, cross-country kiting isn't really what's interesting for you, doing the long distance, well, cross-country paragliding in Brazil, at least over the flatlands, also means, okay, just letting yourself blow with the wind, basically a downwind you're doing there, why is it with the paraglider that it's interesting, to really do the long distance, where you say with the kite you wouldn't have that interest?
Yeah, because it's something completely different. I mean, even in Northeast Brazil, it's not like you just turn it on and let yourself blow down, because with kiting it's more or less like that, because the wind is blowing and you're standing on the water, you don't have to do anything, well, have strength, but nothing else. So, you don't just fly 4, 5, 100 kilometers without doing anything. So, the challenge there is starting very early in the morning when the thermals are still weak and flying until very late into the night, and also anticipating these rhythm changes. Flying over flat land is also something completely different, especially for Swiss pilots; I used to only know mountain flying.
No, no, I find the flights in Brazil super exciting. I think they're extremely special, yeah, I'm going to go back there again, yeah.
Compared to your flights from the Urdliberg, where you also basically flew with a tailwind—those one-way flights towards Lake Geneva—would you say that stories like these, these incredibly long-distance flights in Brazil, have also changed your thinking in terms of what can be done in the flatlands of Switzerland?
I think so, yeah, I definitely think so, yeah, it's just the confidence. It's not just Brazil, when you travel a lot, so I've flown a lot of flatland in recent years, whether it's, or, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, yeah, even when you fly in the valley there, it's also flatland flying, yeah, in many other places too. I think at some point you realize that you actually only need a mountain to get an initial altitude, to catch the first thermals; after that, the thermals, I think they exist all over the world wherever there's some kind of solid ground. Mhm.
Do you enjoy one more than the other, where you'd say mountain flying is, for some reason, more interesting for the eyes or something, than flatland flying?
No, not at all, I think both are awesome. It's just, it's totally different, really very, very different, how you fly, but I have to tell you, I'm actually only now, in the last year—two, I'm saying two now—flying ambitiously in the mountains in Switzerland again, because all the years before, the 11 years prior,
I worked a lot with the flight school during the summer months, and sometimes you almost don't want to go flying yourself anymore, even if the weather happens to be great on a weekday when you have time off. At some point, I could hardly see flying anymore—no, that's an exaggeration, but I almost didn't want to do ambitious flying anymore. And it's actually only in the last year, two years, I'm saying now, since I started flying ambitiously in the mountains in Switzerland again, and I've rediscovered it completely fresh. So it's also super cool how quickly you make progress there with very few tears, so it really is...
a super chill way of flying that I wouldn't want to miss out on, no.
You just mentioned your flight school, or your former flight school, where you gave your share back to your partner—that's Paragliding World in Zurich. You founded that in 2007 with Ueli Neunschwein, and specifically in Zurich, in the city. Is a city a good base for a flight school?
Yes, that's how it turned out, yeah, that, how, yeah, yeah, in any case, right, I mean, you have to say, Zurich isn't a huge city, it's maybe with everything around it, somehow just under a million, and within an hour's drive from our shop, you have, you have dozens of flight sites, right, it's just not like, where, where, in Bonn, right, I think that probably looks a bit different, from Zurich, hey, there, you're already in flight sites so quickly, that's a bit of a problem from a logistics perspective, and we had this idea that, that we'd simply best set up our, our shop, our, our headquarters where the people are, and that's now, again, if you look at Switzerland, it's, it's an eighth of the, the Swiss population lives in Zurich, and that also turned out to be true, so the first year, of course, that was, we somehow survived, like, barely, but already in the second year it went very well, and, yeah, so it continued like that, and it's still going very, very well, yeah, so I think, to,
So, regarding the customers, we actually rarely had to worry, yeah, about other things, yeah, but not really about the customers, no.
Since everything went so well, you even founded a branch in Lucerne later, I believe, which really speaks to your success, and success always gives you a boost, so why did you still step away from the whole thing? It was basically your baby.
Yeah,
Look, I did it for eleven years, and, and it was a, really, I have to say, it was a, a super educational time, super exciting, and extremely many, many good moments, and, and, I did it with Ueli, Ueli Neunschwander, who runs the school now, we still get along very, very well, I also work for him again, as a freelancer, but I just somehow had the urge, I wanted to fly more myself again, have more freedom, so I don't have kids, you know, I have relatively few obligations, and now just to earn a lot of money until, until 65, and then I don't want to anymore, my bones are old, everything hurts even more than it already does,
And I was a bit, you know, today you see so many movies about pilots and kites, and you know what it is, all the cool, cool adventures, and I started seeing myself more in that direction again. I wanted more of that part, and you just can't earn a lot and have a lot of time, you can't have everything, and as I mentioned before, I just wanted to open up again, to see what else is out there. I didn't want to just keep going until, until retirement or whatever, I'd already noticed that my passion, the passion, wasn't quite as present as it was at the beginning. Hey, I just had to recharge a bit again, do new things, see new things, and yeah.
I'm not really the type of person who likes the daily grind—it doesn't really suit me.
Looking back today, would you choose that career path again—that path as a flight instructor—if you were to jump back ten years with the knowledge you have today?
Yes, immediately, yeah,
I would
do it again immediately. I mean, you know, it was really, that was such a great time, building something like that. It's also super cool to see, if you've never done it before, to go out on your own and realize, hey, I can actually tackle anything, you can do anything, you're not dependent on someone having a job left for you, because there are so many things you can do if you really go for it and think of something, you can make a living from it. And I think that's a nice feeling, that knowledge, hey, actually, if it has to be, then I'll just do something on my own again, hey, if nothing else works out. And there's also, there's also a lot of self-confidence in a way, I think that's a good feeling, and it was just super exciting, right? And when we started, hey, that was, that was different, we somehow had two students, and we didn't even have a car at the very beginning, and we borrowed a car to drive to the flight area, that was, that was really awesome. And then, then you see it grow, and it works, and many plans work out, many others don't, right, but the big picture works, that's, that's super cool, that's really cool, yeah, yeah, definitely.
Did you see yourself as a good flight instructor? Well, the best, of course, no, yeah, that is, yeah, what am I supposed to say now, hey,
Come on, that's a bit modest, you don't ask a Swiss person something like that.
Then I'll ask it differently: what makes, in your view, a good flight instructor?
Yeah, I think empathy,
Empathy, yes, exactly.
Technique?
Look, technique—I mean, you don't have to take an exam as a flight instructor, I think. If you do, it's not that super difficult, but I'm talking about the instructor who trains the student up to the exam, up to the license. You know, what you teach there isn't technically difficult; any good pilot can do that, it's not rocket science. It's much, much more important that you have a personality that's liked by a large number of people, that you connect well with them, and that you find a way to convey the content to these people—so, the pedagogical side of it.
And I think, pff, some people are just given more of that than others. I consider that much, much more important than being, like, the best pilot. That's secondary, I think, as a flight instructor.
Is a flight instructor allowed to be an aviation geek?
It's easier for the flight instructor if he's not that obsessed with flying.
Yeah, he's allowed to, but it's, well, I still am, you know, and I've suffered many times, hey, on good days, when you're standing there at the landing field and others are flying 250 kilometers in the mountains, those, those aren't nice moments, you know.
But it's a job, right, that's how it is. What does that do to you? Do you become, or did you become, dissatisfied or angry or whatever in situations like that, what eats away at you?
Uh, not angry, of course not angry. I mean, you chose it that way and you know that this is the job now. If you say dissatisfaction, that's a strong word, but I think, especially in the last few years, it was a bit of dissatisfaction or like the feeling that I'm missing out. I'm missing out if I keep going like this forever. That feeling kept growing. You know, in the first years, as I said, there were so many other things we learned, experienced, and set up that were so exciting—maybe less for me personally in terms of flying, but on other levels, so exciting that it made up for it.
But towards the end, it came back much stronger, and I really had the feeling—that was certainly one of the reasons why I sold my share, because I wanted to fly more myself and live that part of my life more, yeah, definitely, because my passion for flying hasn't taken any damage after 20 years or more, on the contrary. Where does this passion for flying come from? Yeah, I have no idea, I don't know either. It's a disease. No, I don't know, I don't know. I wasn't actually born into an outdoor family, so I don't have it from home, you know, it's not like, I don't know, yeah, the outdoor thing, that started with climbing and a bit of mountaineering, and then I slipped into paragliding pretty quickly through my best friend, and since then it's just happened, right?
Well, there are many people who slide into paragliding like you say, and then they have a lot of fun with it and dive right in, and many of them then think about whether they should maybe even become flight instructors, so to say, to live it out even more. Is that something you could recommend to people?
Yes, definitely, yes, yes, yes, you can
I mean, even if you basically stepped back yourself—not completely, but you'd say, no, but at some point a point was reached. You know, that's
one, that's just one of the reasons. For me, flying is also about the fact that I just don't want to do the exact same thing my whole life and want more freedom in other ways, um, but still, I can do that. You know, as a flight instructor, there's not just the possibility of building your own thing, which takes a bit more from you than if you're employed, but I'm speaking now for the school I know best, what, uh, paraver.ca in Zurich is, um, so we have, we have and they still have many employed flight instructors and it's one of the schools that actually pays good wages. So you know, a flight instructor who works at ParaWorld, um, can make a good living from it.
And it's also like, you have the opportunity, if you're very young now and still like to travel, you can work for half a year in the summer when flight instructors are needed the most, you make good money, and in the winter you go traveling. So you have many cool options as a flight instructor if you want to, yeah, definitely. And it's definitely, look, I don't know if I'd still be compatible with an office job, I don't know, I don't think so, that wouldn't work well anymore, I think that would actually
make me unhappy. Now, you've been traveling for two years now, um, how did your ex-partner at the flight school, the one who took over, Uli, react to that? Was he jealous of everything you're doing, of the opportunities you have because of it? Ah,
I didn't ask him that specifically, no. I don't think so, you know, it's a different situation. He has a family, he has two kids, he has a completely different... his life is set up differently. When you have kids and a family, you obviously have a different need for income. I think it's just a different setup in his life. I don't think he's jealous, and even if he were, well, he can still sell, right? Are you ever jealous of your own life? Well, I mean, I find it pretty cool, I have to say, at the moment, right? But you also have to see, my life at the moment, that's not sustainable, right? I'm not making that much money right now, I'll have to earn a bit more eventually, otherwise it won't last forever.
Will this way of making money also be linked to paragliding, or are there any other areas where you'd say that might also interest you? In
Right now, I'm just back in the paragliding world and excited about the whole thing, and I'd love to do it this way, but actually, you know, when I sold, I already had the mindset that if I actually got my hands on something, it could have turned into something completely different, but I haven't actually found anything that excites me more. So, especially now, yeah, well, I'd earn less, but to have the opportunity to actually do exactly what I love doing most and probably do best, which is flying and traveling and then conveying that to people and taking them along and getting them excited, I'm really looking forward to that, yeah, that's pretty cool.
That's also very exhausting, isn't it? Being with a lot of people 24 hours a day for one, two, or several weeks—it's exhausting, but it's also very, very cool, honestly.
In terms of plans, you should also be doing that this year—it's also listed on the homepage for Paraworld and stuff like that. Well, Dominik has joined again and will be supervising our trips and things like that. Now that Corona has hit, how many of your plans for this year have you already cancelled just because of that? Oh,
almost all of them. No, now for the trips, fortunately, our neighboring countries have reopened the borders, so the day after tomorrow I'm going with a group to a cross-country flight camp in Austria and about two, three, four trips will happen—well, you never know, things can change again at any moment—but there should be about three or four trips left this year. But I also planned, I started a bit of competition flying last year and actually, fortunately, I was able to qualify for the PWC round, and now that's actually all put on ice, except for the Swiss PWC, which is pretty much certainly happening, but everything else regarding competition is actually where I...
where I had planned to go, that's all, everything's been cancelled now, it's a real shame, isn't it? But man, oh man, it is what it is, right? We can't change anything.
Well, maybe it's just postponed; maybe it'll happen when PWC comes back, and your accreditation for it will probably still be valid next year, because nothing else is actually getting in the way of that.
should work, yeah, definitely, yeah, yeah.
When you look at your 23-year aviation career, there's so much in there that we've only just looked at the tip of the iceberg, but if you were to look back on it, is there actually anything like a particularly formative experience that you would say influenced you and your attitude towards aviation or your attitude as a pilot especially strongly? Uff,
I couldn't really name just one single element. I do think that my first big trip, which I took at about 20, when I was traveling for 18 months from Mexico to Ecuador back then,
Apparently, that already shaped me a lot—simply being on the road, traveling with the glider and wanting to explore countries from a bird's-eye view; that, that has shaped me very strongly to this day. It is, it's still the same thing, actually, that fascinates me the most: discovering countries, meeting people, having experiences, having the glider with you, flying new routes, and very often finding and flying over completely new places where maybe no one has been yet. Already this discovering, experiencing, combining travel with flying and, and, yeah, also that, that, the human experiences, the interpersonal stuff when you travel like that—it is, it's still the same thing that fascinates me, that fascinates me the most, yeah.
I still see that.
Now you said earlier that you're actually a relatively cautious pilot. Does that fit? Yes, cautious and traveling together?
I mean, of course, if you're paragliding per se, and you're a bit active and travel, you're certainly not the most cautious person per se, but as a pilot, I'm quite, quite cautious, in contrast to my early years. So, does that fit together? Yes, you can do your best, right? I do my best to be as safe as possible while I'm out there doing my things, yeah, that's for sure, yes. That works, I think that works, yeah, yeah,
Yeah. When you say you're more cautious today than in your early days, was there some kind of, like, a defining experience where you realized, oh, I should put on the brake a bit or change my mindset, otherwise, if I keep flying like this, then, then I'm done for?
Yeah, I had, I had some setbacks, I think the most significant one was relatively early on, I don't know, like half, half a year, a year, a year and a half after, after starting my flying career, I had already flown, I'd say, hot gliders, because people, people told me, yeah, yeah, you have talent, you can do this, go for it, and of course that's not good at all when you say that to an 18-year-old, overconfident, daredevil, which I was more of back then, that he's also relatively gifted, that's not a good combination and it actually, on my glider, it almost threw me off three times, once over the Fiescher Glacier, then somewhere in the Cento Valle, it almost slammed me into the mountain, and after that in Engelberg,
I already grazed a fir tree and that was a huge setback. I mean, I think I would have stopped flying if my, at the time, almost my entire social circle had also been flying on a beginner glider; it really set me back. I went back to a training glider then and had to rebuild my confidence very slowly. It really wasn't cool to go flying again; I was scared, and with every tiny, tiny movement in the canopy, it would come back up, and that wasn't cool, yeah, that really wasn't cool. It left a mark, yeah. However, I also tended to forget it pretty quickly, which was a bit of a problem I had. Yeah, there were two or three more incidents on top of that and, yeah, now I think I've slowly learned it, yeah.
What would you advise aspiring or, let's say, already certified but still, yeah, inexperienced pilots to do to really learn to fly safely and independently faster?
Well,
I did do that, but I think what's really important—and this keeps coming up in every podcast, actually—I think a lot of flying, a lot of ground handling, a lot of taking off, landing, ground handling, playing with the glider, Seacoast I think is also a very good thing, but I think ground handling would actually be almost more important from my point of view, I think it's even better. I think,
although, yeah, it's a bit of a contradiction, but I think it's good if, in the first few years, especially when you're looking at Switzerland,
People progress quite quickly; when you're out in Switzerland, I'll run into them in Fiesch or in Engadin, so really in the high Alps, and first of all, you don't need some glider where you know exactly how much it can do after one or two years in your flying career, but rather you should really push the gliders you're flying—just fly that glider for as long as you feel, hey, I'm really bored now, and I think only then is it actually time to switch. I think that again and again with cross-country flying, too; if you're being distracted or have to expend too much brainpower dealing with your glider, your fear, or your doubts, then you just don't fly well.
I think what you can definitely do is, if you're doing groundhandling or going to a dune or somewhere on the coast, that you take a glider that challenges you more. I think that's certainly a good thing because you have to work harder, you have to understand a bit more, you learn a lot there, but I'm thinking of a glider that you don't have 100% under control, putting yourself in
to throw yourself into summer high-alpine thermals, I think that's bullshit, that's bullshit and potentially dangerous.
And based on all your travel experience, if you were talking to a Swiss pilot who says, "I've only flown in Switzerland so far, and now I want to go fly somewhere else internationally," is there a place you'd say, "That's a great spot"? Because as a spot, it's beautiful, but is it also a place where you can really improve your flying? Without being too demanding, perhaps?
There are many. When you travel, one criterion can certainly be going to a place where there's a lot of flying and where you have few rainy days. As they say, it's better to go where the olives grow than where the cheese is made.
I mean, it's tough, I do Spain—I'm a Spain fan, I always find Spain cool, not just because of the flying, but also because of the whole culture, sitting outside in the evening, having a beer, eating tapas, I like that incredibly much. Of course, there are certain seasons where you get a really good haul.
Colombia is a constant, Colombia is incredibly good for traveling because it flies basically every day. I don't think you should underestimate it; it can also be quite tough in Colombia when it's drier, because when it's green, that tropical humid thermals are often actually relatively good, a bit milder than when it's dry, but when it's not as humid, then it can get really strong. Hey, I also think Brazil is super beautiful, Brazil is never a wrong choice, never a wrong choice, really, yeah. There are so many beautiful places.
I think South Africa is great too; it's a fantastic area, a bit of vacation and flying and coast and thermals, a very nice mix for a holiday like that. I think a two-week trip would be awesome too, yeah. Is there a...
place where you'd say, I haven't been there yet, but I'd really love to go for some paragliding?
Oh boy, yeah, I think there's quite a lot there, yeah.
Should I name one first? I think Peru is something I... in the highlands, unfortunately, it's in the highlands, when it's summer here, it's nice there in the highlands, but I really want to do that sometime. Hey, the USA is also somehow on the...
wishlist, right? I mean, there has to be potential for it to be huge in the USA. With a few thousand pilots and a country that size, there must be so much potential there, it's incredible.
Hey, Africa would also surprise me. Right now, as winch flying is picking up a bit more, you can actually—there's nowhere left where you can't fly. I'd find that really exciting, like going to certain African countries, I don't know, Zambia or something, flying around the center of Africa and seeing how it works there, I'd find that extremely exciting, yeah. I don't know Asia at all, actually I know Asia very poorly. I definitely need to go to Birr or all around Birr, I have to go there somewhere too, and what—I was there briefly now, but we couldn't fully enjoy it because we were a bit late, but I have to go back there, so Pakistan, the Karakoram, that's the real deal,
that's getting serious, so you really have to think about that, yeah.
So you still have quite a bit planned, or rather, quite a bit on your bucket list, Dominik. Oh yeah, a lot. Well, I hope that all of it—maybe not everything, but a lot of it—still comes true somehow and will be relatively easy to realize at some point, with or without Corona. I definitely wish you that your projects get off the ground properly again in the coming time, both with groups and alone, and yeah, thanks for all your descriptions, super interesting.
Thanks for the invitation, I wish you a nice evening, bye Lucian, bye. Bye Dominik.
That was Dominik Rohner in conversation with Lucian Haas. In the show notes for this podcast episode on the Loglites blog, you'll find some relevant links. By the way, anyone who wants to travel with Dominik in the future should check out the tour offers from Paraworld and Flyer with Andy. He is listed as a guide for some of the destinations there. And for those who just want to escape into the cosmos of paragliding as a listener every now and then, you can simply subscribe to Podz-Glidz in your podcatcher. But remember, all these stories don't produce themselves. I put a lot of time into them and appreciate everyone who supports my work as a patron. You can do that via PayPal or bank transfer. You can find the relevant details on the Loglites website on the Support page. Thanks for listening and for your support.
See you soon. Ciao. Music