Turn into the thermals after launch and slowly overfly the launch site. I know, when I first started flying, that was always a magical moment. And even on the trip, I always felt like I'd somehow been incredibly lucky. Yeah, like hitting the jackpot, that little thermal tube. Those moments of luck that we probably all valued so much at the beginning of our flying careers—I experienced them very, very intensely on the trip and learned to appreciate them again.
-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.
Stories from the
paragliding universe. Today with Rico
Chandra and
Lucian Haas at the microphone.
That's Rico Chandra performing live with his guitar in a Zurich club. The song is called Bloody Nose. However, Rico's music only provides a brief framework here for the interesting conversation that makes up episode number 39 of Podz-Glidz.
Rico isn't just a hobby musician, but also an experienced cross-country paragliding pilot. However, this summer he tried something new. Instead of chasing XC points, he traveled across the Alps for almost four weeks via hike and fly, from Zurich to Ljubljana in Slovenia. In the podcast, he talks less about individual experiences—you can read about those in a detailed blog post by Rico about this trip. Rather, we talk about, among other things, how this different approach to flying opened up new perspectives and emotional worlds for him in the paragliding cosmos.
Rico is a very safety-conscious pilot and is proud to have flown without injury since 1992. His unique philosophy on handling risk is also a topic of discussion.
Before we dive into the conversation, I want to say thank you once more. Thank you to conversation partners like Rico, whose many layers inspire me and also motivate me to continue with Podz-Glidz, of course. But all the listeners and readers who also love Podz-Glidz and the associated blog Lu-Glidz contribute to my motivation as well. They also support me financially. You help me a lot in developing these projects further and keeping them ad-free, and therefore independent. If you aren't one of the supporters yet, maybe think about whether you don't want to change that. All the necessary information, such as a PayPal link or bank transfer details, can be found on the Lu-Glidz website, specifically on the Support page.
How much you might want to give is entirely up to you, by the way. For those who are unsure, I recommend a non-binding guideline of one euro per podcast episode and two euros per reading month on Lu-Glidz.
Rico, in August you spent almost four weeks traveling from Zurich to Ljubljana in Slovenia on a hike-and-fly adventure. You called the whole thing Go East. You had your Ozone Xeno with you as a glider. That's a two-liner. Is that the right choice for an adventure like that?
No. No. No. That was probably a mistake. Not because it's a two-liner, but for various reasons. I mean, the pack size of a Zeno isn't suitable for hike-and-fly. There are rods in there that you shouldn't bend. That means the backpack will be a bit misshapen. Not ideal for long treks on foot. The weight is one thing, that's actually the smallest problem, but I often didn't have the ideal starting conditions, the wind wasn't necessarily from the front, and it was quite masochistic on my part to be out there with a Zeno.
Why did you
did you even choose that? I mean, as far as I can see, you prepared pretty well, there's a long packing list from you where everything was weighed out and all the gram counts and such are in there, and then I was wondering, and then he starts off with a Zeno. I mean, there are so many simpler and lighter and easier-to-pack gliders and things like that than a Zeno, especially for those kinds of hike-and-fly adventures where it doesn't come down to the last bit of performance in the end.
Absolutely, I also had a Zeolite, which Ueli from Parallel provided for me—they helped me out a bit there—and I flew it in the spring, but somehow I felt like, no, you shouldn't have different gliders, you should have one glider for everything, and I feel so comfortable with the Zeno now. I looked at it. I just felt so comfortable with my Zeno that I thought I'd take it with me and travel to Slovenia with it. In hindsight, I probably would have taken the Zeolite instead.
Why mainly? I mean, what would be the main point where you'd say the Zeno is the wrong choice after all?
Yeah, so launch and landing sites, launch sites, the Zeolite has fewer lines that, or it's often the scree holding. Yeah, bushes and then not ideal lift, and then when landing, you bring the Zeolite into bad landing sites much longer than the Zeno. The
The Zeolite is also a two-liner, would you still stick to something like that, or would it actually be more sensible to say, oh, I'll just take a quasi Advanced XI or a B-glider, where you maybe don't have to worry about it as much?
No, I think it's the two-liner principle. I like the two-liner. I feel more comfortable with a two-liner than I did back then with the three-liner C-glider. I like the feeling of the two-liner, especially when it's windy, and it was very often windy on my trip. The two-liner isn't the problem. I'd like to be on one—so the two-liner was already the right choice—but maybe one that starts very easily. One that's easy to fly in difficult terrain and is then easy to carry and fold.
What was the original motivation for this trip? Why did you really want to do it, specifically from Zurich to Ljubljana? That developed over time.
...developed. With paragliding, you often... or I had the feeling I was a bit... This developed over time. With paragliding, you often... or I had the feeling I was a bit... I fell into a pattern. When you go cross-country, you usually have one criterion that you focus on more than all the others. It could be the kilometers or the points, and it often happens that you approach flying in a completely different way. And I wanted to get back some of that original feeling—that the joy of flying or cross-country flying can be... where you pick the day, time your start so that you can get as far as possible.
And if you've been standing on the ground for two, three, four hours already, I usually just went home. Were you disappointed? Yes, depending on what I experienced. But actually, the feeling of getting from A to B, moving further and further, and the mission isn't over yet—I find that great. And also the combined task of what I fly, what I walk, how I combine the two—that's a really great challenge that's missing in cross-country flying. And actually, the combination of landing and... the journey continues, that's great. Landing is a lot of fun, and then the adventure shouldn't be over yet.
That's something I've been looking for, and I played around with the idea and eventually spoke with Sebastian Benz, who did a similar tour. He really inspired me, and I thought that maybe if I do this, I'll learn a lot too. And then I'll be able to fly as well as he does.
Sebi. Before we talk about your trip, I'm interested in cross-country flying again. You're actually a very enthusiastic cross-country pilot, and right now you're also in 2nd place in the worldwide X-Contests, series rankings, and stuff like that. So you're really good at that. Would you still say, based on that comparison, that maybe cross-country flying can make a pilot a bit too one-dimensional?
Not too obsessive, but too one-sided if you only do that. Definitely too one-sided; that's why many—most good pilots—don't just do one discipline. Most good pilots also do competition or acro or speedwing or something like that. And speedwing is too fast for me. I can't think that fast, it's not possible. Competition—I don't like being close to other pilots in the air. That doesn't work for me either. Acro—I don't have the nerves for it. That's why I think it's important to have another dimension, some other discipline, so you don't become too one-sided.
So, you're saying that regarding actual flying, you're so limited in the other things—you don't dare do them or you're not that good at them—that all you have left is cross-country flying, but that's too one-sided for you, so you need an expansion, and then you do hike and fly and say, "Let's try something like that." Exactly. This trip you started, you must have had something in mind, you always dream up something, what do you want to get out of it, what do you want to achieve, or what kind of feelings do you want to experience? Did this trip give you what you hoped for?
Yes, yes, 100 percent.
Yeah, at the beginning of the trip, I thought, Ljubljana is so far away. I've been traveling for a week already and it's so far. And then at some point, getting closer to the destination, and then arriving and experiencing so many great things—in the air, but also in nature and with people. The tour met and exceeded my expectations.
You also kept an almost daily blog there, and then edited videos. Probably on your little iPhone or something, and then always put them online and stuff. Why was this real-time mirroring of the trip in virtual space, or something, on the internet at least, why was that important to you?
I thought I'd give it a try. I thought it was an exciting extra challenge. A few other pilots did it great. Okay, I really enjoy reading other pilots' blogs and travel reports online in real time. And I thought, this is a great challenge, and I'm not really the type to archive photos or videos, so I'm forcing myself a bit to capture it. And I enjoyed it. By the way, I think even in hindsight, I would have only done it because... I did it again for my parents; since I was probably 13, they have no idea what I do on my holidays, because the boy comes home and they ask, "How was your holiday?"
Great, and he's gone and doesn't talk about it anymore. And now, after all these years, I think for the first time they've been following my blog and the live tracking more intensely than usual. Somehow... I was also able to make my parents happy by letting them experience, after all these years, just how closely I spent my holidays this time.
So, a blog for the parents. I mean, you didn't just send it to them. In the...
In hindsight, it was just already for those who gave them this
...pleasure... Okay, was it worth it? But why did you write in English?
I posted that on social media and... I have more English-speaking friends on Facebook and Instagram. I grew up in the USA, I grew up bilingual, and I didn't just want to... I thought, yeah, most people understand English, but those who understand English, many of them don't understand German, and especially not Swiss German. And then I thought, English, that's just easier for me, I'll do that now. Have
did you actually get any feedback on these blogs during your trip, like do you read what's in the comments or anything? Like, do you engage with that and say, does it make someone happy to see that someone is following you, who knows, in far-off countries or at home, whatever?
Yeah, especially regarding the live tracking. I had people sending me weather info or route tips. Or in Slovenia, it was great—there were a few of the local cracks I knew from Brazil. They sent me websites where I could check the wind. They helped me immensely in an area I didn't know at all. And that was really inspiring. And you suddenly realize who all took the time to look at the live tracking anyway.
I also read through your blog a bit or followed your routes to try and piece things together. What I noticed was that many people dreaming of hike-and-flight tours always imagine starting, landing somewhere high up on the mountain, and then pitching your tent there to continue the next day. It's always about trying not to land down in the valley. But I noticed that with quite a few of your flights, you actually ended up landing down in the valley or something like that. Was that planned?
Let's put it this way, I stayed in hotels quite a bit. I brought my tent and my sleeping bag so that I'd have the freedom not to plan my flights around where I'd stay overnight. And I did that consistently. I didn't worry about where I was sleeping before the evening. But for weight reasons, I didn't bring a stove.
Due to weight considerations, I just had more of these bars and sandwiches that I brought with me. In those cases, I enjoyed a warm meal even more if there was a mountain hut somewhere. They were sometimes full because of the pandemic and stuff. But that's not a problem. You can still grab a quick dinner and then set up the tent next to it. That's no problem. But I did notice that I sleep much better in a hotel room or an SAC hut than in my tent; I realized that pretty quickly. And with all the blogging, video editing, and electronics, I also had a battery problem.
I had to stay somewhere at least every other day so that I could charge all my devices... I had to stay somewhere at least every other day so that I could charge all my devices... And in the end, it... You say landing in the valley or on the mountain. I think with my flights... Most of the flights were so intense that I was already looking forward to finishing the flight in the valley, being able to shower somewhere, and going to a hotel. And buying a huge dinner, so I just felt more like landing in the valley. It's...
Maybe I was just always wasted. I try
myself... Or it was a tribute to Zeno, that you can't land on the mountain with the Zeno, but rather wanted to land in the valley with the Zeno.
No, there wasn't a situation. I don't recall there ever being a temptation to land up on the mountain. I never had to... never had to make the decision, like, do I want to land up here now or glide down into the valley? I think, at the end of the day, I was always down in the valley.
You just said these flights were so intense that you were glad or found it nice to land in the valley too, and basically probably let the day wind down nicely for you. What was so particularly intense about these flights for you?
Normally, when you go flying, you choose the flight day. You go out based on the weather, or you fly in chosen weather. But that's actually not the case at all with this adventure. You look out the window and have the choice of either going on foot in the morning, flying, or just not getting any further. And then it was always, it was often some kind of north foehn, foehn, or stormy. And then... I often decided to fly on days when I wouldn't normally fly. I managed my risks very well. I'm happy to tell you a bit more about that.
I did it very systematically. But I've been up in the air a lot in conditions where I was effectively scared, and in the end, I was quite happy to walk for two or three more hours where you can't crash.
Did you have any really hairy experiences on this tour?
No, in the end I didn't have any really hairy experiences, or at least nothing more than what you usually have when rigging and flying. But I think that has to do with the fact that, as part of my risk management, I was very aware of the dangers beforehand. And I don't think there were any dangers that... in the end appeared out of nowhere that I didn't... Yes, that surprised me. I think I did a really serious analysis before every flight. And most of the time it was... with paragliding, things usually go well.
And if you really think about all the possible dangers beforehand, then you're better prepared for something going wrong.
What does risk management mean to you? And have you checked everything? Do you actually have checklists that you use internally, or maybe even on paper or on your phone as a bulleted list or something, where you say, "Okay, I'm going to proceed really systematically"? Like how a commercial airline pilot might do with a large plane, saying he has his very specific checklists, and only once he's worked through them all does he say, "Now I'm really going to take off."
Yeah, over the course of the first two weeks, I developed a certain... a certain systematic approach. Namely, that you always make wrong decisions, but they have consequences. And with hikeflying, on a longer tour, the consequences aren't just that I can write off a day and go home, but that I might have to walk for five or ten hours as a result. Or worse. And that's why... regarding decisions, I've actually divided wrong decisions into five categories, or rather, the consequences of wrong decisions into five categories.
The first is that I could get injured. The second is loss of or damage to equipment. The third is misery, like physical exertion, fear, cold, or rain. The fourth is loss of time. And the... the fifth is looking bad in front of other people. Is that a risk? Those are simply the five categories of consequences that mistakes can have. And they are weighted very differently. So, getting injured—I really want to prevent that. And that's why I've tried to assess the dangers very well and only entered situations where I could get injured if it was truly worth it.
So I... how many things can go wrong? I try to quantify the probabilities in my head somehow. And I also try to resist the tendency to compensate for a lack of talent with courage. I really did a risk assessment there. Is it worth it? And do I have it under control? Do I feel good? Are the dangers manageable? Because I actually wanted to avoid health risks, and I managed those relatively well. That's the first category of impacts from wrong decisions.
The second is loss of material or damage to the gear. And that can also mean the end of the tour.
That means something like this plays a role, for example, when choosing the launch site—whether you say, I'm starting here from something maybe very rocky, where the probability of a line somehow snapping because it's whipping over the sharp rock edge is much higher. Or what is material loss for you as a decisive factor?
Yeah, exactly. The example you gave plays a role. But I can quickly patch up a brake line like that. And if it's something bigger, then it also falls into the category of physical danger, the first category, which I take very seriously anyway. But it's mainly about losing things. And I really didn't take that quite so seriously at the beginning. But then over time, after losing one or two things, I really started taking it seriously. What
did you lose them?
My sun hat once. But that's annoying, but not that bad. My tent poles. And that's the thing, I put my tent out in the sun somewhere in the morning to dry and somehow then forgot to pack the tent poles, and then after ten steps I thought, do I really have everything, should I quickly go back? And I thought, yeah, you have nothing with you, you can't lose anything. And then I only realized it many, many hours later, and that's very annoying. Are you back? No, I'm not back. I'm not back. Later on the tour, I met someone from this region in an SAC hut, and he went looking for the tent poles in the right place, but they weren't there anymore.
That was a real problem, wasn't it? Because I feel a bit stupid carrying a tent without the poles up the mountain.
Maybe you can still use it as a bivy bag. Yes,
that was really annoying.
Did you buy a replacement tent, or what did you do?
A bivy bag instead of the tent, that was the solution. But mistakes like that just can't happen. And for me, there are only two ways to ensure I don't leave material behind or forget it. One is, with a checklist, I have everything with me. And I have a checklist. Or if it's a place where I can be sure that nothing was left behind, then I can do that too. But I have to do it really systematically, consciously. I do the check now, have I left anything behind. That also means when unpacking, not distributing my belongings wildly in the area, but in a selected, delimited area. Or at the launch site, for example, I then consciously
not just unpacked everything, but... I carried my glider up the slope to set it up so it wouldn't cover anything, and so on. And I was really pedantic with the time there, to make sure I didn't lose anything else. I also always checked that my zipper pockets were closed, so nothing could fall out of my pants pocket. Because that can become very annoying very quickly. And I take that time to do the check. Yes. That's the second category of consequences from incorrect material loss. The third is loss of time. I just thought, yeah, that's part of it.
The journey is the goal. If I wanted to get there quickly, I would have taken a train. So with
time loss... time loss is more of a cross-country flight mentality, where you say every lost second is a lost kilometer. But for a trip like this... That
is for such a
the journey is actually largely irrelevant. Exactly. It
is the goal, the journey is the goal. So time loss and hardship, like physical exertion or inconveniences, rain, cold, I'll take both. I've simply made up my mind that I don't care about that. I didn't imagine that it would be possible without having strenuous climbs. I really don't care about that. As long as it doesn't affect my health, I'll just put up with it. So the consequences of wrong decisions,
Time loss and some kind of suffering, I said, I just don't care. I'm willing to take that.
And the good looks, point 5? The good looks, that... you didn't want to appear sweaty in front of other people, or what kind of point is that?
It's a bit silly that anyone is supposed to care whether I have one day more or one day less. But what I've noticed is... and I think blogging did me a favor there. Because people enjoy it. The blog is much more exciting when things don't go perfectly, or when I'm honest about my emotions, my effort, or my frustration—maybe being drunk or scared. That makes the blog more interesting for the readers. And as for the "bad look," I could just... block that out and see myself more as a journalist,
...who documents it, and not the one who... a journalist doesn't have to look good, otherwise they probably aren't doing their job well.
That's just how I interpreted it.
That means, in the end, only these first two points really remained: namely, that you say physical integrity and, so to speak, your equipment must remain completely intact.
Exactly. Motivation still plays a big role somewhere, doesn't it? That leads into the topic of nagging. And there, I already look out to make sure that motivation doesn't suffer. Now, I've told myself, I don't care about steep climbs, I don't care about rain, I've simply decided that won't affect my motivation. And it hasn't. But what I... once you've established a rule for motivational reasons, it's when determining how high I should go... or with hike and fly, it's the decision of when I'm high enough to start, to enter the thermals.
And I've also come up with a rule that doesn't depend on the thermals, or whether the sun is shining nicely, or whether it's a fickle day. It's quite simple: I don't want to have to climb up the same spot again, so I'll climb at least as high as possible—if it doesn't make it more dangerous—so that I can glide far enough, even if there are no thermals, so that I can at least scramble up the neighboring mountain if it didn't work out. That has made a huge difference for my motivation. A glide to the next mountain doesn't bother me. A glide... to end up in the same spot again after five hours and then have to climb up there again, that's what I've tried to avoid.
You said something interesting earlier about physical integrity—staying healthy, not getting injured, or only taking on that risk of injury if it's worth it. At what point would you say it's worth taking a risk of injury to keep moving forward on a tour like this?
So the same question arises. How is it even worth it in paragliding? We take on a certain risk of injury. Most of my friends who have flown paragliders intensively for ten years have also suffered vertebral fractures at some point. At least that's how it seems to me. So we make this trade-off. We take on a health risk. And the question of when it's worth it for me on this trip, when there's no significant time saving... Well, I just weighed it up.
First, it's often at the launch site. Do I launch or not? How bad is it if I don't launch now? How bad is that? And sometimes the situation was, yeah, I could launch now. There won't be any amazing thermals flight anyway. So, yeah... am I not losing out that much if I skip this launch and walk, because it would have been a glide anyway, then maybe it's not worth it. But if it's a... what happened often were launch sites on thermically active days where I knew, yeah, if I get into the air well, then I can probably fly for an hour, two, three.
That means it will be worth getting into the air. But the problem I often had is that the wind is quite strong from one side and I have to go in the other direction. So, I have to launch properly somewhere and ultimately fly through a pretty strong lee. I've done a lot of those kinds of lee assessments and tried to do them properly. I've looked at all the wind measurement stations in the region, in the region, in the region, in the region, in the region, in the region, in the region, in the region, in the region, in the region, in the region, in the region, in the region. Are they reasonably in a decent range? If I fly into the lee, will I have 300 meters of space under me afterwards, or will I be right over the terrain? Do I have an escape route?
This kind of reasoning, and then also listening to my gut feeling. And sometimes it told me, yeah, you've got this under control and it's effectively not as dangerous as you're feeling it to be right now. Or, yeah, no, it's not worth it. At best, it saves me two hours. That's not enough. I'll walk.
From the way you're telling it all now, you seem like a very systematic person. Where does that come from?
I don't know. I wasn't like that back then. I wasn't always this way. The people who knew me in my youth, they didn't... I started flying early, at 15. And I'm pretty sure my flight instructor back then definitely didn't see me as systematic, but as...
Were you a daredevil back then?
Yeah, a daredevil, and probably reckless too, I'd say, from my current perspective. But did you never get injured during that time? No, I never got injured. And I'm actually really proud of that. Was that just luck when you
At the beginning, you say you were a daredevil? I
I think in the first ten years, it was probably a bit of luck that I didn't get injured. Now, of course, luck always plays a role, but I'm very systematic about assessing risks now. I also do a mental debriefing after most flights to check if there were actually any dangerous situations or not? And what can I do better? I can do everything to avoid dangerous situations. So now, I'm systematic about it. Back then, yeah, I think I was lucky that nothing serious happened to me.
In 2003, from what I've read, you were in the Himalayas and did a major expedition, flying up to the high mountains, up to 6,000 meters and so on. Did you already have that risk assessment mindset back then, or were you still different at that time?
I think I was acting differently back then, but not necessarily without thinking. I mean, I already had some experience by then, and the more experience you have, the more you see what can all go wrong. I wasn't being reckless, but I never dealt with safety as systematically as I do now. These were friends of mine from university, they were professional climbers and they had a first ascent in the Himalayas as their goal, and I thought that sounded exciting, wondering if I could come along as a cook, and they said, no, we have a cook, but why don't you bring your paraglider?
And I thought the idea was totally crazy, and two weeks later I decided that I would go along with the paraglider. But that wasn't being reckless, it wasn't like that. It was serious.
Did you just climb that one mountain with them back then in the Himalayas, or did you say, "Now that I'm here, I'm going to stay a bit longer"?
Yes, I helped the friends with the equipment transport and I had a launch site just above the base camp from which I could take off. Up to over 6,000 meters. And I did my little flights there, not cross-country flights like we see today from Brad Sander and those guys or the French in the Himalayas, but just into the neighboring valley and back, and I already had my sleeping bag and emergency gear with me, but no real cross-country flights. And afterwards, after the whole expedition, I went to Birr for a bit and did some bivouac flying there with a friend.
But not like this bivouac flying here. It was never like that. And back then, there weren't many pilots in Birr either. It was still very manageable in that Tibetan colony.
If you compare these two things now, there are almost 17 years between them, but you're a different person, and it was a different kind of flying back then—different mountains, different demands. If you were to compare these two trips, or if you had to decide right now, what would you want to do again? Would you rather have that big, distant adventure, like the Himalayas or something, or would you rather do a Hike and Fly, where you're in the Alps—actually, what you know from your long cross-country flights—but approaching it in a completely different way?
Tough question. The Himalaya expedition was amazing, and I wouldn't want to miss that out on. But if I had to decide right now, I'd go for another Hike and Fly trip in Europe. That's really incredibly satisfying. And yet, the Himalaya trip gave me so much. If I had to choose, I'd go with the Hike and Fly.
From the trip you just took, was there a specific experience or something where you'd say, "This is still really close to my heart"—not necessarily something to do with flying or anything else—but where you'd say, "this trip was worth it just for that"?
There were these moments again and again that reminded me of how fantastic what we're doing is. So, the feeling—it's actually two moments that are very special. One is right at the launch, when you feel the pressure from the glider on the harness and entrust your weight to the glider, to that pressure; I find that a great feeling. And the second moment is, after the launch, turning into the thermals and slowly overflying the launch site. I know, when I started flying, that was always a magical moment.
And on the trip, I always felt as if, if I had been exceptionally lucky, I'd received a free lunch or some kind of lottery win—this little thermal tube. Those moments of luck, which we probably all valued very much at the beginning of our flying careers, I experienced very, very intensely on the trip and learned to appreciate them again.
That means exactly those kinds of moments are what you'd say are actually missing from that, or maybe you noticed it in hindsight—that's what you might sometimes notice in XC flying, because you might not even appreciate that small moment, but just say, oh, it's going up here, where's my next turn point, or where do I have to go now, how and what, and am I fast enough, should I get out of the thermals now, or whatever decisions you have to make there.
Exactly, with cross-country flying, you don't really ask the question, or at least not often anymore, "Can I get up?" Instead, you assume that since I'm starting at this time, well, logically I'll get up. And if you don't get up once and sink after the launch, then you're, I'm a bit stunned that that happened to me. So then you're disappointed and like, what's the point, why did I just sink? But with... hike-and-fly, it was really that pleasant surprise. Ah yes, it's actually carrying again, and then you see that even on the worst days, there's still sometimes an astonishing amount of lift available.
So, not on the miserable days, but even on the mediocre ones, you can still cover kilometers, and that feels good.
Are these perhaps even the more fascinating flight experiences in the end, when you realize it doesn't always have to be blasting out from below and you can fly fast, but instead, sometimes it's really just gliding along a slope at zero speed on some small valley flanks, you only make very slow progress, but that still, just because of that, intensifies the experience so much?
That could be true, and I think the variety—the opposite, the contrast to normal paragliding—is what makes it really exciting.
And what was the riskiest thing you experienced on the trip? I mean, you're clearly someone who's very focused on risk minimization, but what did you still experience as a risky moment, perhaps?
I think one of the most intense moments—objectively, it wasn't that dangerous, but it was definitely intense in terms of tension—was that flight at the end of the trip from Kobala near Tolmin in Slovenia to here in the US. That's into the Ljubljana plain. That flight is only about 50 kilometers or so, but it goes over terrain that looks truly terrifying to land in—those narrow Slovenian mountain valleys with forests and no landing strips, and wind coming from all directions. In the morning, that Bora, that north foehn or whatever it is, was still blowing.
I was really scared, I was tense. When I was getting ready at the launch site, a paraglider crashed and it looked pretty terrible. I was really tense, and it was also the final challenge of the trip. I developed an enormous tunnel vision during this journey. I only worried about segments of the trip and no longer about my life outside of this trip. At some point I realized I didn't have any worries anymore except for this segment and that segment.
That was the final stretch, and at some point I realized, okay, the landing sites are coming up again and I'm getting closer to the goal. There's the Ljubljana airport. Then I realized I'd overcome this last challenge that I'd been so excited and tense about. Now I don't have any worries left at all. That was a great moment. It was a huge amount of tension that just released. It wasn't necessarily really risky, because those were forested valleys and going through the glider. Getting hung up in a tree, that could still have happened. I wanted to prevent that, and that's why I was tense.
But in the end, it's not ultra-dangerous or the risk of landing in a tree. There is an injury risk, but it's not necessarily as high as it feels when you're flying over a forested valley like that.
What is it like when, after a journey like that—you were out there for almost four weeks—when you say that during those weeks, the journey is the goal. You just keep taking these small steps and you also say that in that moment, you were actually there and it only mattered, all other worries had vanished, it basically only mattered the moment, and then you arrive at Jubelianer and suddenly, the "the journey is the goal" suddenly becomes the goal, Jubelianer, it has become the goal and you've arrived and you know that this journey is now at an end. In that moment, maybe after the first thing, did you say, I don't have to worry now. I don't have to worry about that section anymore, but were you relieved and happy about it afterwards, or was there also a kind of sadness, like saying, wow, actually I was doing so well and worry-free for four weeks now,
I would have actually liked to stay much longer.
It was really a great joy to arrive and I was happy to be back home, my home, cooking in my kitchen again, sleeping in my bed, seeing my people again. I was really happy to go back home. I then managed to get it done like that. I originally planned to stay in Jubiläenstrasse for a few more days to meet friends and celebrate with them. They were then in quarantine and I couldn't meet them, and then I thought, yeah, I'll take the train, and there was a station right there with a direct train to Zurich.
I thought, yeah, that would be nice, to be back in Zurich and go out for a beer, and then I was really happy to head back home.
You started paragliding in 1992. That means you've been flying for almost 30 years now and have probably accumulated an enormous amount of experience over the years. What have you learned on a hike-and-fly tour like this that made you go, wow? Does paragliding really still keep evolving like that?
The phenomenon of paragliding still having room for growth is truly incredible. What sport in the world is there where you can still learn so much after 10 or 20 years? On top of that, there's the development of the paragliders and the materials. Progress is still being made. I feel like I've learned as much this year as I did during my training days. I think that's really great about our sport. It's totally underestimated when you're recommending a sport to people who don't fly.
In most sports, you hit a limit where you can't progress anymore unless you're training more and more every day. And even then, you eventually turn 30, you're no longer one of the youngest, and you slowly start to fade. That's what's so great about our sport. Now, what did I learn specifically with hike and fly? I don't know, but I feel like it was self-confidence. I think I gained more confidence as a pilot, knowing that you have a piece of equipment that can cover enormous distances. So, if necessary, you can travel across national borders on foot with your paraglider, and that it really works over long distances too.
Are there also, I mean, these are more like, how should I put it, the surroundings of flying. But are there also technical flying stories where you notice that, despite your great experience, you're still making progress? Or do you eventually say, the basic techniques—like maintaining thermals, starting, whatever—I actually master all of that now, and now it's just a matter of adapting it to the individual local conditions? Or are there still things where it suddenly clicks and you say, "Now I understand how it works here," or "how the Tibora blows here," or whatever?
So I still don't quite understand both of those things. But I think I've learned an enormous amount by flying two-liners. So, accelerated flight and then flying on the B-risers, I only learned that in the last two years. And I think I can still learn a lot more from that. I'm using it more and more, flying accelerated more and more. So a huge amount has been added there. Then, I imagine that I've gotten better at letting the glider search for the thermals, letting the glider fly. And then it automatically flies toward the thermals.
I don't know exactly anymore what is the glider and what is intuition, and how the two work together. But there's somehow this element of—you can't explain it exactly—but a magical attraction to the right or to the left, and that's where there's effectively thermals.
You then give in to it. It's like your own personal thermal.
Thermals. Thermals. That's the technique.
sense that you then develop. Or how can you imagine it? I
I'll go along with that. I'll go along with that. Maybe I'm just imagining the whole thing. But I have the feeling that, by listening to that, I've become much better at it. And that's been very productive over the last few years. So that's also true in flight, in low-level flight, in Brazil, in Kaiko—it's quite extreme when you start at six in the morning and somehow... the whole thing looks flat, but you get the feeling there's something there. Or I have to move more to the left, or whatever. So I've definitely changed my flight style. In the last four years, I've gone to a SIKU every year, to an SIV training.
I still have a huge amount to learn, but I feel like I've also learned a great deal.
Then, in terms of flight tactics, I think about it a lot more than I used to. I also have much more interaction now, on one hand, within the league. There are many from the Swiss paraglider league. There's now this XC league, and there's a lot of interaction there. I'm part of Alps Freeride. We are in paragliding. We're in the paragliding club, and there are very good pilots there whom I can learn a lot from. This interaction is also new for me. For the last 28 years, I've often been out flying alone, because many of my friends either stopped flying or became paragliding instructors and therefore didn't have time to go flying.
For the past few years, I've had a huge amount of interaction with other pilots, and I'm learning a lot from them as well.
We already touched on this earlier. You're such a systematic person. Do you ever notice that this highly systematic thinking you have—and you say a lot of, yeah, I'm trying to think this through and all that—that this thinking sometimes actually hinders you when you're flying? Like it stands in your way, dampens your gut feeling, and makes you go, "Shit, I wish I had a gut feeling" or something like that?
I think where it has a dampening effect on me, above all, is when you go cross-country flying, for example, and then you're standing on the ground after three hours and don't go up again. So, yeah, I don't always consistently follow my feeling of joy. But I've also met some great people again who go out, get wasted, and run up the next mountain and keep going, and I've started doing that too. And it's a great feeling, because we fly—it's about nothing, we fly for ourselves, and we fly because we enjoy flying and also that feeling of outsmarting the laws of physics.
And that joy doesn't disappear just because it's afternoon and a cross-country flight of 80 or 20 kilometers finished in the morning.
If you look back at all your experience over all these years, if someone were to ask you now, or if you were talking to a young pilot who has already finished his training but wants to keep going, what would you advise him? What's the best way for a paraglider pilot to continue their education?
So, there are a few things I would advise someone in such a situation. The most important thing is to cultivate the joy of flying and not make any compromises when it comes to the competitive side. Competition can be a huge motivator, but it shouldn't be a damper. The second thing is to know... that you can become incredibly good in a short amount of time if you fly a lot and exchange a lot with others. I think joining a league is definitely a good idea, and flying competitions.
You can see that pilots learn an enormous amount at competitions. That's not for me. I get stage fright if someone is in the same thermal, but I would definitely start flying a competition or give that as advice if someone wants to learn a lot. And very importantly, paragliding is an incredibly great sport, but it's not worth getting injured for. So taking that risk that I'm going to break my back in the next ten years, that shouldn't happen. So I am now... It's still somewhat baffling that we have so many accidents.
And I think we have these accidents because we're too aggressive, because every one of us approaches it a bit too aggressively. And if we took out a bit of that dynamic and flew a bit more safely, I think we'd have significantly fewer accidents. Because, don't get me wrong, I think it's an incredibly great sport. But is it really so great that I'd trade my back for it? No, I don't think so. And lying to yourself and saying, yeah, it won't happen to me because I fly much better than everyone else, that's also pretty risky. And finding that balance and saying, okay, it should be fun,
but it shouldn't be excessively dangerous. I'll guess. And I'd try to get on the trail as early as possible.
How much experience would one need or should one have to start a hike-and-fly adventure like the one you did?
Hard to say. I don't think it's something that requires an enormous amount of experience. I think if someone has the confidence to assess takeoff terrain, the confidence to assess landing zones, and the self-discipline to play it safe when in doubt, then it's accessible even for someone who hasn't been flying for very long. I think it comes down to those three things: being able to assess takeoff conditions, being able to assess landing conditions, and having the discipline to say—or the size to say—that it's a hike-and-fly adventure where not being able to fly is an integral part of it.
If there's too much risk, I don't take off.
In the four weeks you were out there, how often did you actually see a launch site where you could have taken off, but ultimately said, no, I'll pass on the flight?
Maybe three times. There are about three that come to mind right now. Maybe there were more. But there was also the other thing, where I was already in flight and thought, yeah, that's enough for today, I'm going to land. Or that I thought, yeah, these clouds look threatening enough now, I'm going to land. The rule of thumb I used there, I don't know if it's correct. I form these hypotheses, which I might also know from Dani, my first flight instructor—the rule of thumb I use for thunderstorms and such is, if I can still see blue sky vertically above, then it's still okay.
Sure, no one should just insist on that. But maybe it's a reasonable hypothesis to carry around for a few years and test: is it true? Is it not true? Is it true? Is it not true? You can also check that from the landing field, from the ground. And I have many such rules of thumb and hypotheses for myself, and so far, these rules of thumb have worked pretty well. It's somehow more quantitative than just going by gut feeling, like "now I've had enough" or "the cloud is too black for me." It's about trying to quantify things somehow and then measuring whether they actually hold up.
What's your favorite rule of thumb?
If you're ready to launch, then you're ready to fly. Now, no one should take that as a rule of thumb without carrying that hypothesis around for a few years and testing whether it's actually true. But with rules of thumb like that, I at least get closer to, yeah, a certain measurability than if I just say, I don't know why, but I'm not launching now.
Maybe with these rules of thumb, you should at least double-check, as long as you assume that the weather conditions won't change significantly in the next half hour or so. Yeah, sure. You can fly the moment you've taken off, but it's possible that fifteen minutes later there's some kind of super Föhn breakthrough and then you're like, shit.
Absolutely. I really don't want anyone taking these rules of thumb to actually fly or live by them. What I'm saying is, it certainly helps to carry around these rules of thumb as hypotheses and evaluate them over the years. And then you sharpen your understanding of what's still doable, which lee is still flyable, and so on. There is
Is it a rule of thumb that you eventually dropped because you realized, "I've believed this for 20 years, but shit, it doesn't actually work"? Or is it something you'd better just leave out?
Yeah, the rule that you can always land somehow—I dropped that one.
I don't know if I—well, I never followed them, but I carried them around as a hypothesis, and you do say that in conversations with friends, like, somehow you always manage to land. Logically, because the ones who died aren't around to speak up anymore. But I have this rule of thumb, like, I really want to see the landing field, either directly in the glide path or know that it's there. Otherwise, I don't really fly into it.
Does this way of thinking in terms of rules of thumb—like, yeah, I'll put that out there as a hypothesis and follow it for a while—does that also have to do with your profession? You're a physicist, you even worked in research for a while, worked on that particle speed bar at CERN in Geneva and stuff like that. Does that also have to do with you saying you like to think in those kinds of systems? And if so, did that—or the physics and that way of thinking—would you say it helped you somehow in aviation?
It's probably the other way around. My attraction to physics came from the same reason as my attraction to rules of thumb and systematics. So, it's not that I was taught physics and now I have to apply rules to everything; rather, I was interested because some rules and hypotheses were established in physics that were then either quite well discarded or confirmed. And the second question from you...
was. Yes, whether this kind of thinking from physics or this rule-based thinking.
Whether that helped me with flying? I don't know. I think so, because there's quite a lot of physics in our sport—the meteorology, the glider dynamics, the mechanics, the whole thing. I do think that it's useful. But if I compare it with friends who are absolutely not physicists but fly very well, they also have an excellent understanding of meteorology, mechanics, and these physical aspects of the sport, and I don't think I'm ahead of them when I discuss them with them.
That means you don't have to be a physicist to become a really good pilot. Definitely not. What is a good pilot to you? It
There are a few pilots who, I think, just have some kind of special sense. And when I fly with them, I don't get the feeling that they're thinking at all about how they could be on the ground in 20 minutes, because they fly with so much self-confidence and choose such original routes and draw great lines in the sky and have a feel for it. There are a few who are just really good at it intuitively. But you don't have that when
you say that now?
So when I watch these pilots, like Dominik Rohne, a good friend of mine, or Sebastian Wenz, who I've flown with a lot this year—when I watch them, they definitely have a gift that I don't have.
But if you look at your position in the XContest, for example, as I said, you're now in second place in the series class and so on, maybe you don't even need that kind of sense to be able to fly very successfully.
I think a certain sense of purpose has developed for me, maybe just because I started early and have been at it for a long time. Being high up in the XContest wasn't really the goal. I didn't plan that. No, I was in Brazil in October and I did well, but not on the days when everyone else flew far, but on those miserable blue thermals days. And then at some point, a bug in the XContest was fixed and suddenly I was way up at the top of the ranking and I thought, that's pretty amusing too.
Let's jump to the very end of the topic now. As a physicist, you're now running your own company in Zurich, or running it with others, called Arctis Radiation Detectors. What is it about?
Our company develops monitoring systems for radiological threats. That means our customers come from international government circles, and they use these systems, for example at the border, to prevent highly radioactive sources from being smuggled into the country or materials like uranium or plutonium that could be used for nuclear weapons.
So you're still a relatively young company. When did you found it?
We founded the company in 2007 as a spin-off from ETH Zürich and CERN. But we're not the classic, typical high-tech startup that grows explosively with venture capital and then becomes worth billions. What we do is very exciting and very great. And I believe we make an important contribution to security. But it's a really tough business. That's the market. Our competitors are primarily large, publicly traded American defense contractors. And to compete against them with a tiny company from Zurich,
where labor costs aren't the lowest and you also have to manufacture hardware, that's a really tough business. And we've had some great years, but also some very big challenges.
As the boss of such a small company, facing really tough competition and all that, can you actually clear your head and, basically, your days for flying?
Sometimes I've done better, sometimes worse. This year, I've done pretty well. It also has something to do with the pandemic. There was a bit more free time than usual. But we also decided a year or two ago, about a year ago, to structure things differently so that my role is no longer as central and all-encompassing as it was before. And I have colleagues on the team who do really great work and have the company's leadership under control. That also made it possible for me to go on this trip for a month without a laptop.
That was the first time in, I don't know how long, that I didn't have my laptop with me. That's only possible because I have great colleagues who did that work and did it very well.
But was that still sort of a one-time experience? Or would you say that now that I've tasted what Hike and Fly is like, with that freedom and those possibilities, I have to do it again right away next summer? I
I can well imagine going on a hike and fly again soon. I'll change a few things, maybe not for as long, maybe to the Mediterranean instead of the East. But I can definitely see myself doing that.
Would that also work for you in terms of your job, can you fit that in?
I want to shape my life in a way that I enjoy, and yes, that's how it's going to be.
And if you could wish for one special flight right now, where you'd say, "I want to experience a flight like that," whether it's just a very long cross-country flight or a very special hike and fly flight—what kind of character would this flight have, where you'd say, "This is where I feel it the most, this is flying, this is this freedom?"
That's a difficult question because the versatility of flying is exactly what makes it so appealing. I think there are already many flights I'd love to do again or that I've never done but would like to try once. But if I really had to choose one thing, it would be going on vacation again with my club colleagues from Alpsfreeride in Piedrahita. Living together for a week, flying great. The flying there is also very varied. There are mountains, there are flatlands, and sometimes both. Both in one flight.
I think that would be my choice, so, a flight holiday with friends in varied terrain.
Piedrahita, which is in central Spain, located a bit north of Madrid, is a very, very beautiful cross-country flight area where you can ride along a very, very long ridge or fly out into the flatlands. A great destination. I hope you'll get to go to Piedrahita with friends soon, or anywhere else where you can do your beautiful, beautiful flights. Rico, thank you for this conversation and the insights into planning and systematic risk reduction in hike and fly and other flights. I've learned a lot and I wish you to continue coming back down to the ground healthy and happy, above all.
Thanks a lot, Lucian Haas, I wish you the same. And thanks a lot for inviting me to this conversation.
Yes, great, I'd love to.
That was Rico Candra in conversation with Lucian Haas. If you want to learn more about Rico's journey, you can find the links to his travel blog and YouTube channel in the show notes for this podcast episode on Lu-Glidz. By the way, there are already more than 40 hours of additional podcast episodes available on Podz-Glidz. You can find them on Soundcloud, Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, and many other audio catalogs. If you don't want to miss any upcoming episodes, I recommend simply subscribing to Podz-Glidz in your podcatcher of choice. If you also become a supporter of Podz-Glidz and Lu-Glidz, you're helping to ensure that many more interesting episodes will be produced there in the future. Finally, I'd like to repeat one statement from Rico. What a great sport we have, in which we can still keep developing ourselves even after many years.
In that spirit, take the chance and go fly. Ciao.