Basically, cross-country wing flying in Greenland would also be possible, I'm sure, if you're up for it and willing to do a lot of hiking. If you fly in any direction, there are no roads; you either have to be picked up by boat in a fjord or you have to keep walking. There aren't many other options.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast. Stories from the cosmos of paragliding. Today with Björn Claassen and Lucian Haas at the microphone. Björn
Claassen is the head of the site department and deputy managing director of the DHV. As a counterbalance to this sometimes quite bureaucratic part of his life, he treats himself to a very special getaway every summer. Since 2015, it has drawn him to the wilderness of Greenland. For trekking, sea kayaking, and also paragliding. Normally, he undertakes these trips together with his wife. This year, he was out solo for the first time. And he used that for a very special adventure. In hike-and-fly style through a godforsaken coastal mountain range. From A Pilatok, the last village in southern Greenland, to Torsu - Katakfjord, with the imposing granite massif of Ulamer Torsuak as the goal.
Don't worry, I'd never heard of this place before the podcast either and had to look it up on Google Maps first to get an idea of the location. Björn will provide the rest of the story in the following hour. He'll paint a slightly different picture of Greenland than just a block of ice, telling us about the Arctic nature and how it gives him a sense of freedom, chatting about falling into snow holes, how he handles risk, rainy days in the tent, and of course, the fascination of flying over the imposing landscapes. Right at the end, we'll briefly return to Björn's normal life. We'll talk about the pros and cons of mandatory permits for flying sites and why he sees drones as the biggest threat to our freedom to fly.
Before we head off into the icy reaches of Greenland, I have a hot tip for you. Become a supporter of Podz-Glidz and the associated blog Lu-Glidz. Why? Because by doing so, you're helping to ensure that you can continue to hear such interesting stories from the world of paragliding in the future. You can find out how to become a supporter on the Lu-Glidz website, specifically on the "Support" page. How much you give is up to you. What you want to give is entirely your choice. What is a good hour of entertainment worth to you? If you're unsure, I recommend a non-binding guideline of one euro per podcast episode and two euros per reading month on Lu-Glidz.
Björn, how do you say good evening in Greenlandic?
Oh, I can't really tell you. Greenlandic is such a complicated, difficult language. I can't really say. It's a language that is very, very hard to learn. I mean, I have good friends in Greenland. They're translators too. They tried. In language courses, it's almost impossible to learn unless you soak it up as a mother tongue.
Can you even speak any words in Greenlandic at all? Or do people just communicate in English there? Or how does that work?
Well, there are a few words that have made their way into the global language. Like kayak, for example. Kayak is a Greenlandic word. So, the boat the hunters use to go out to sea. Or, you all know this one too, anorak. That literally translates to something against the wind. So you can speak some individual words and understand them a bit. But it's such a difficult language. Only the 56,000 Greenlanders on this island can actually speak it.
So, how did you manage to communicate in Greenland when you were traveling there?
I communicate a bit with Norwegian and English. And English usually works most of the time. And in the very remote settlements, sometimes they don't even speak Danish anymore. Danish is the language people usually speak in Greenland, after all. But Greenlandic itself is just so, so hard to learn. And in the settlements, you can manage with hand gestures. A little bit of English, that works. I mean, there's a global language. It also works with facial expressions.
You just spoke Norwegian. Where did you learn Norwegian?
Yeah, I used to work in the Lofoten and Vestlandet as an eco-guide. That's where I learned a bit of Norwegian. So, my family originally comes from the north, but not from Norway. But we've always had a soft spot for traveling way up north, to Norway and Sweden. And so I picked up a bit of Norwegian. It's a bit related to Danish. But Danish is still a bit harder than Norwegian.
How do you get from the Lofoten, Norway, and stuff like that to your love for Greenland?
Well, that's actually a very, very long story. I've flown to Canada a few times. I worked there, even during my studies as a forester. And then I flew over Greenland. And when you look out of the plane down at Greenland, it's a landscape that is extremely forbidding, but also extremely exciting. I was glued to the window and said, I absolutely have to go there sometime. And the second thing is, I've read a lot of polar literature. That goes back to my youth. There are so many fascinating stories about how the polar regions were explored, the research expeditions. Or one book in particular fascinated me. Frithjof Nansen on Snowshoes through Greenland. I can only highly recommend everyone read this book. It's almost mandatory reading for every author, freak, and adventurer.
He went from east to west across Greenland on skis back then. He crossed Greenland. There's also a book written by him called Crossing Greenland on Snowshoes. And he describes it so vividly, very flowery. He was a scientist, too—a biologist, a zoologist. And he describes it just as it is today. I mean, I've been to regions today where Frithjof Nansen was also. And it's still exactly the same as it was 130 years ago. Fantastic.
You said you saw Greenland on the flight to Canada. When did you get back? Was that your first time ever on this island?
I went to Greenland for the first time in 2015. And that's actually quite funny, because I always thought you only went to Greenland if you were on an expedition, if you had a permit, if you'd done a lot of preparation. And that's not true at all. People have been going to Greenland for years now. There's a plane. You get on a plane in Copenhagen and can fly over to Greenland. There are two international airports. And then we just did it. I flew to Greenland with my wife for the first time in 2015. To the west coast, the northwest coast, Disko Island. And that's where we went on our first trekking tour. In very wild areas on Disko Island. And that's where we discovered our great love for this country.
And have you been there every year since? Yes, I'm in Greenland every year. I've traveled a lot before, to other parts of the world too. But for me, it's actually the most beautiful country I've ever experienced. What makes Greenland's beauty so special for you? Well, that's obviously the first question. It's such an enormous freshness, an enormous silence that hits you when you're in Greenland. It's the colors, it's the blue, the white, the ice. It has such a clarity and truth. This country is almost indescribable.
So this year was your first time in Greenland alone. In the years before, if I saw that correctly, you were always with your wife. And you were there hiking and especially kayaking. And this year, you did a solo trip for the first time. Why?
Well, there was a simple reason for that, and it's also a bit sad. My wife had a frozen shoulder. And it wasn't possible for us to go to Greenland together. We actually planned to continue kayaking along the west coast. And then we thought about pushing towards the north. Just keep going further. We basically take our entire vacation every year, scrape it together. And that's always about three to four weeks. And we always head further north. And this year it didn't work out. She was sick. And I thought to myself, yeah, do something alone. Give it a try. And since I love paragliding so much—that's actually my passion—I thought to myself, I'll take my paraglider with me, pack it in the backpack. And everything necessary for survival, and give it a try.
Is Greenland even suitable for paragliding? Yeah, good question. First of all, you think of Greenland as an icy island. I mean, 83 percent of Greenland is ice. And when you fly over it, you see this huge ice sheet looming over the island. But there are ice-free areas on the west and south coasts. You have to imagine them like in Norway, tundra landscapes. And you can travel very well there. And it's also not as far north as some people think. Iceland, for example, is much further north than southern Greenland. So southern Greenland lies on the same latitude as Oslo. And you can paraglide well in Norway too. When the sun is beating down there, there are thermals; you can fly nicely from the mountains, and even do cross-country flights.
And why shouldn't that be possible in Greenland? And I've been up there so many times. I've seen there are periods of calm wind. There are days with favorable wind, also with thermals, thermal clouds. And that was the idea—to take the paraglider with you.
In preparation for this podcast, I looked at paraglidingmap.com online and asked myself, are there any official or semi-official launch sites in Greenland at all? There were somehow two marked in a bit of color, and two with question marks, more or less. So, not much is happening. That means if you go flying in Greenland, it's basically like free flight. You go to the mountain you want and you have to be sure that you can find a landing field below. And then you launch and fly for a bit.
Yeah, that's actually correct. It's basically the land of flyers. There are few trees in Greenland, lots of tundra landscape. You can actually take off from many mountains. But there's just no infrastructure at all. You really have to know exactly what you're doing and what you're doing. But actually, Lucian, you're right. There is a small scene of paragliders in Greenland. That's in Nuuk. There's a paragliding club there too. And they fly in Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, from this ski mountain and they also fly some thermals, a bit of lift. But otherwise, Greenland isn't really flown. You're more of an adventurer there and you do it like it's your first time. You have to choose your own launch site, have to think about whether you can make it, whether you can glide across, and whether you can land safely.
You
you set yourself the goal of doing a hike-and-flight tour in Greenland, southern Greenland. What exactly was your plan there?
So, obviously, you certainly can't fly distances in Greenland like you can in the Alps. And my plan was to combine it, like a trekking tour, always in one direction. I love that anyway—always heading further toward the horizon. And that was the idea. My starting point was Apilatok. That's the southeasternmost settlement in Greenland. And from there, I wanted to go across the mountains into the legendary Tazermiut Fjord. Tazermiut Fjord has very, very high mountains. They're 2,000 meters high, granite flanks, super steep.
I already knew that from our kayak trips, and I thought it could be a good way to keep flying along that fjord, from mountain to mountain. And if it doesn't work out, then I have to carry it and walk. Even before the tour, I was already aware that if things go south, I'll have to carry my paraglider for two weeks and won't get into the air at all. And if it goes well, I can fly a few times. Now...
There probably aren't any roads or great maps with big marked trails and stuff like that. How do you prepare for something like this?
Yeah, there are a few maps. But the scale obviously isn't that great. Google Earth is a good source, and I spent a long time fiddling around there and searching for what options there are for flying between mountains. You can see roughly what it might look like down there.
So I just went for it and tried it. I mean, it's not unusual to hike through landscapes like that. There are some people who practice trekking there in the summer, who grab their backpacks and head into the wilderness. And that's basically what I did. You just have to be open to a lot of surprises. It's a new situation every time. So, not everything is really predictable.
Well, I mean, you probably do hike and fly in the Alps too. But even if you do something multi-day there, you know, basically in every valley where I land, I encounter a person. And maybe I can buy something to eat. Or there's a hotel where I can stay overnight, right? Yeah, yeah. All the amenities. You can certainly retreat into the mountains, but you're actually back out in civilization pretty quickly. Now Greenland is something else, that's wilderness. Yeah, so once you've probably left your starting point there, you know that for the next few days, I might not encounter another human being at all. How do you basically prepare yourself mentally for that? I mean, what do you do in your head?
Well, for one thing, I have a huge advantage. When I'm out in Greenland, I feel very good there. I feel completely at home and really comfortable. And that's, let's say, already a very good thing for the mind. Others can't handle that. We've found or met trekkers multiple times who simply gave up because they couldn't bear the solitude. And I was used to traveling with someone else. My wife and I did many tours, those kinds of tours. Being alone was, of course, a completely different challenge. Because when you're alone, you're really alone. You have to make your decisions completely on your own. The decision of which route to choose, the decision then of where to start, which flight route to take, and making sure you land safely.
And that's a constant challenge. But mentally, I have to say, that wasn't the biggest problem for me. I feel comfortable there. It works.
It really has that expedition feel to it. You're an explorer, really discovering maybe new corners where you'd say, "maybe no human has ever climbed this mountain before." There are probably thousands of them, and only a few people are trudging around there. And most people probably don't feel like climbing some mountain all the time. So you can say, "I might even be the first person to summit this mountain I just came down from."
That's actually a cool idea, being the first human to stand somewhere. But in reality, it's just that you're probably walking over spots where no human has walked before you. So it's a nice thought. But you always have to be careful to do the right thing. In my assessment, the flying on this tour wasn't actually that dangerous. For me, it was more about things like crossing snowfields. I fell into a snowfield twice. And when you crawl out of there, you're looking at black holes. So those are things you really have to judge correctly. In the future, I bypassed those snowfields. I preferred to climb over rocks and chose other routes so that nothing would happen.
Because you can break your leg, sprain your ankle, or tear a ligament so quickly. And then you're standing in the middle of the wilderness. And for me, one thing is clear. I never want to have to call a helicopter. While that's theoretically possible in Greenland too, it might take two or three days for someone to actually come get you. And I want to avoid that.
If you've collapsed into the snow somewhere and maybe hit the rocks down below and break your leg. You'd probably have a heavy backpack on your back. And something like that would probably be really difficult to get out of that snow hole in the first place, wouldn't it?
Yeah, exactly. So there's already a bit of adrenaline in your blood. That was 25 kilos of luggage to haul. That's the paraglider. That actually only weighs about three kilos. But the bulk was actually the food. And taking enough food for two weeks is a difficult challenge. It's all dry rations. And basically, it's already clear beforehand that it's not really enough. So the food you can take with you is basically way too little. And I noticed that at the end of the tour too. I kept getting weaker. I didn't have enough carbohydrates with me, I could have used more sugar. And then things get a bit tight. But the advantage, when you set off, is that the backpack weighs 25 kilos. And every day the backpack actually gets 600 to 800 grams lighter because you have to eat something.
And towards the end, it's actually very light luggage.
How does that even work? Because you say you actually lacked carbohydrates. How cold is it there? I mean, how much energy do you need just to cope with the cold, or moderate cold, in Greenland?
I didn't actually freeze that often. A trip like this is always a compromise. You have to travel light. With a sleeping bag, a light tent, as much food as possible, as high an energy density as possible. But it's not as cold as you imagine. It's actually quite similar to Norway. At night, you might get some ground frost. But basically, it's always between 15 and 8 degrees. It's actually really not that bad. And in fact, I actually sweated more than I froze. During the climbs, because you get into such a rhythm. You really get going. Yeah, exactly. You have to really fight for it. And it works. Yeah, it's not that wild. Everyone always thinks that. And many people say, you bring back such beautiful pictures, you give these lectures.
But basically, freezing is actually the least of it.
I tried to trace your route a bit on Google Maps, or at least think about where it went roughly. And then I said, you made this little hook. It actually goes west, and then north along the way. But if you just measure it as a straight line, it's only about 50 kilometers you covered. As a pure straight-line distance. Yeah, that's right. How long did it take you?
I was out on this tour for a total of two weeks. And I took a lot of breaks, too. Forced breaks—there were two rainy days in there where I couldn't really move out of the tent at all. And there were a few days where I set up a basecamp and only headed up into the mountains from there. And sometimes it's like, if you walk into a side valley, I only managed five kilometers. That was hardly anything. But you have to fight your way through bushes, through forest. The forest lover in me might be a bit pleased that there's forest growing there, but the forest there is only eight meters high. And it's a birch-willow forest. And you have to fight your way through it. It's scrubland. And you end up running more on the branches, on the trees, than on the ground.
And it's an insane struggle to push through there. That means you're fighting through the undergrowth. And the undergrowth is the canopy at the same time. Yeah, exactly. Or sometimes, there are no paths or very few paths, then you're running over rocks, over boulders—huge boulders that have somehow broken off. You have to go around them or over them. And that takes up quite a lot of time. For me, one more thing is that the length of the route honestly doesn't interest me that much. It's actually more about the experience I have there. And I'm not the type—the Bavarian always likes to say "ear-to-ear" travel—where you're only out for the kilometers or only for the distance. Everything on a trip like that interests me. That's the fauna, for example, the foxes you see again and again, the arctic hares.
There's the flora with a great plant world, like we know from the Alps. And the landscapes are, of course, overwhelming. And I want to take my time for that. For example, I really like taking photos and also videos. And then I just take the time to spend an hour or two just photographing and not hiking up anywhere at all.
I've seen a few of your photos. And you can see, at least in the photos, it looks like you got very close to the foxes and the rabbits and stuff like that. Aren't they shy?
The Arctic hare isn't that shy at all. Of course, you still have to maintain a certain distance. But with the foxes, for example, I was 100 meters away from a fox den, set up my tent, and just waited. And if you want to observe nature, you simply have to have time. And the foxes eventually came. They were curious. And then they were actually only five meters away from me. And you can, of course, take beautiful shots and also observe the foxes really well.
Speaking of time, you also mentioned earlier that you had to endure days or even several days in the rain in your tent. What do you think when you're stuck in a tent in the middle of the wilderness in Greenland for a whole day and think, I can't get out of here now or I'm going to get completely soaked?
That's a funny question. What do you think then? Well, of course, it might stir up a lot of life questions. Who am I? Where do I come from?
Or it brings a great sense of contentment within me, I've noticed. Like, I listened to music, my favorite music, piano music. I listened to a few podcasts. So I kept myself occupied. I never actually felt bored or annoyed that things weren't moving forward, or that it was raining now. If you carry that inside you, then you're certainly not in the right place in that country. You actually have to have time. Time to travel, time to walk. And then it doesn't occupy you like that anymore. It doesn't weigh on you.
Well, you were there to fly a paraglider, too. You did a lot of hiking, took in the nature, but you also climbed the mountains to fly. What kind of flights were these, actually? Were there real cross-country flights involved, or were they really just, I hike up a mountain here and then glide back down to my campsite?
So on this tour, I was really a bit unlucky with the weather. I mean, in the years before, we'd also had periods with two or three super nice days, including thermal days. But I wasn't that lucky this time. Most of the time, they were just glides or flights where I could gain a bit of altitude. At my target mountain, I stayed a bit longer. Five days at Ula-Meer-Torsuak on that insane granite pillar. And there, it also went up at three meters per second. So I could turn there, catch thermals. And basically, cross-country flights in Greenland would also be possible. I'm sure of that. If you commit to it and are ready to do a lot of hiking again. If you have any real flights, you're there. If you fly in a real direction, there are no roads.
You either have to be picked up by boat in a fjord or you have to keep walking. There aren't many other options. And on this tour, as I said, it was more like yo-yo flying. Hiking up the mountain, flying forward a bit, then walking again, up the next mountain, and flying down again.
Would it have been just in terms of the idea—I mean, I want to cover distance too, whether by hiking and flying or something like that—would it have been the case that if you hadn't flown at all, you would have been faster on foot alone than if you say, I'll hike up the mountain first, glide that bit back down, and then pack and unpack everything and whatever else you might need. At least from the perspective of hike and fly, to actually cover distance while flying, it probably wouldn't have been worth it at all.
It wasn't worth it. That's true. But I love flying so passionately that I accepted that. That's three, three and a half kilos of paraglider gear. What I took with me was worth it. Absolutely. So the most impressive thing was simply that I had already scouted the route beforehand. I had to fly along a fjord to get into the next valley. And that worked too. A small launch site on a granite slab. That's where I inflated the glider. It was originally a bit cloudy. The cloud kept swallowing me up, and at some point it lifted high enough that I could take off there. And the plan worked out. I was able to fly along the fjord and reached my destination. I could then land again at the end of the fjord at the Talanfang, pack up my gear, and keep hiking.
How do you handle stories like these, even when you're choosing launch sites and stuff—how do you deal with risk assessment? Are you much, much more cautious than you would be, for example, in the Alps? Or is it like you say, I eventually feel so connected and at home in Greenland that it's relatively irrelevant, that you say, that looks like a decent launch site, it'll work out?
"That'll work, I don't do that. Because we already discussed this earlier, if you break your leg, that's extremely unpleasant. So you have to know what you're doing. And you always need a plan B and a plan C as well. So, if I hadn't reached the flight I just described, the landing field, then I would have had to land somewhere on the slope. The slope was very steep. It drops sharply down into the fjord. Landing in the water is not an option. You'd kill yourself doing that. And I did it this way: I scouted the route a bit beforehand, climbed the neighboring mountain, and looked at it from above to see if you could land down there, for example, when there's a low tide. And it was like that. And I'm very, very careful. I have the utmost respect for that.
But maybe, yeah, how should I put it, you can also be afraid. And fear isn't actually that bad when the risk is too high. Maybe better put, you need respect. Fear can also paralyze you. But a little bit of fear isn't wrong, so that you don't make any big mistakes.
If you're out there and you end up getting stranded somewhere, you said earlier that if you land in a fjord, you might have to get picked up there or, in an emergency, you'd have to call a helicopter or something. But there's probably no cell service at all where you were traveling.
There's no cell service. How would you have handled that? I had a satellite phone with me and an InReach device. That's a great device; you can send emails in real time with it. I had a few contacts and checked in with them every now and then. You could also set your track on that device, a point every 20 minutes, so the people back home could follow me. Or, for example, I got weather information from Robin. He has a lot of weather information at home. He checked the weather every day, compared three weather systems, and then sent me his weather assessment for that day. Whether it was flyable, whether it was thermal, if any hazards popped up, or if it was going to get too stormy. So, I had very good communication.
Well, Greenland is probably an island continent, whatever you want to call it. It's just a massive island, and there are probably relatively few weather stations and such on it. So how well did the weather forecasts coming from those models, which Robin then sent to you as a summary, actually fit? How close did they really match reality?
It actually almost always matched reality. I mean, Robin has been accompanying us with the weather for years and does this for us all the time. He sends us new weather information every day, especially when things get tricky. And it has always worked out excellently. So, you could say that. He compares different weather systems. It works. Although it's difficult at Cape Farewell. That's the southernmost cape of Greenland. And the East Greenland side is completely different from the west side. And these systems sometimes collide. And it's difficult to assess that properly. But he manages it. It actually usually turns out quite well. I'd say his forecasts are right 95 percent of the time.
But if you look at it purely geographically, it's probably more sensible not to move exactly in this kind of weather-divide region in the south, but if you look at it purely geographically, if you were to say you want to fly over the sea and maybe fly a distance or something, then maybe you'd really go more clearly towards the west coast side, right?
Yeah, that would probably be good. But it's such rugged terrain with lots of fjords. So there aren't many areas where you can really fly. Cross-country flying isn't really the thing there anyway. Maybe you can fly 20 kilometers or 40, 50 kilometers into some fjord. But then you have to follow a line. And some areas are so densely populated that if you flew out far, you wouldn't be able to get back out. Then you'd need someone to pick you up. And you can't take an infinite amount of food with you to walk all that back. So I've always prepared myself that in an emergency, you just walk all the way back.
Can't you also fish there? Or take a weapon and hunt and stuff?
Yes, well, fishing works quite well, yeah. So the char, for example, is sometimes actually a supplement to the food. When we were out in our kayaks, we fished every now and then and also pulled very large cod out of the water or other fish. That's a good food supplement.
What about
Polar bears? I also found a film in my preparation about two Australian women who did this in 2016, though that was on the west—no, on the east coast, they were. And they had a rifle with them and specifically built a protective fence, or some kind of warning fence, around their tent. In case a polar bear got too close or something, so that they could always hear it. How was it in your area? Were you somehow scared that a bear might come by?
I was a bit scared, actually. So when I set off, a hunter dropped me off with his boat and he mentioned, just casually, "Well, do you at least have a knife with you? A polar bear was spotted in the neighboring fjord." And that happens from time to time on the south coast. The polar bears travel with the pack ice. And this East Greenland Current flows around Cape Farvel, and sometimes polar bears ride with it, even though it's very, very far south. And the southernmost town in Greenland is also Nanortalik, where the polar bears go ashore. And this year, it was actually the case that there were a few polar bears again. In the years before, in one year there weren't any at all. And in another year, there were eight polar bears traveling in southern Greenland.
And we had a weapon with us once on our kayak tours, when we were quite far southeast at Kap Fervel. But that was really only as a deterrent, so that if things ever got truly critical, you could fire warning shots. Of course, we don't want to take down a polar bear. I think it's much better, and I've spoken with many biologists and zoologists about this, if you take polar bear or grizzly spray with you. Basically, it's pepper spray in a huge pressure can, and with that, you can spray out actual pepper spray. And with that, you can actually scare a polar bear off. You have to say, the polar bear is also the only animal in Greenland that you actually have to be afraid of now.
That actually makes it... All the others
are smaller, right?
All the others are smaller. Well, muskoxen, you don't necessarily want to be right next to them either, but they usually do kick. But all the others are really smaller. This polar bear in South Greenland, for you to be so unlucky that the polar bear hits you and eats you, you'd have to be really unlucky. That's completely different in Svalbard and other areas or on the east coast of Greenland.
Well, in previous years when you were traveling with your wife, you mainly paddled along the coast in sea kayaks. If you were to compare these trips now, what do you find more interesting: crawling along this Greenland coast with the kayak, or this real adventure where I also trek across the landscape, climb the mountains, and then fly down there with the paraglider?
Yeah, that's a good question, Lucian. So, definitely compare them. We've done both now, of course. I've also done this solo trip. The solo trip was unique for me. Being out there alone requires a bit of mental strength. You have to be able to handle it. The emotional swings are naturally much higher. Basically, it's nicer as a pair because you can share the experiences and discuss them. You can't just talk to yourself—because I noticed that, for example, when I watched my videos. I actually talked to myself. I was quite surprised. What were you even saying? Pretty funny. But
Did that talking to yourself only start after two weeks, or was that basically there from the beginning?
That was actually from the very beginning. I found that quite interesting. When you travel as a pair, it's more pleasant. You can actually exchange ideas. And if I compare that now, sea kayaking or paragliding. For my training tour this year, I'm with my sea kayak—we have it lying up there—we were out for a week at first, to train and to check if everything works? And I also had the paraglider in the kayak. That was of course a great combination, because then you paddle into fjords where you normally can't get at all, and then you set up the tent, take the paraglider with you, and then so to speak as
Use the tent as a base and then fly up and down the mountains. So, that was already a brilliant combination.
If you compare these two sports, kayaking and paragliding, they're completely different, I know, but in terms of what they give you personally or what kind of feelings you get out of them, are there things where you'd say it's comparable in some ways, and what's the main difference for you emotionally?
Yeah, that actually—you're completely right, it looks like these are two completely different pieces of sports equipment. One is on the water and the other is in the air. Nevertheless, it's extremely comparable. So, when you head out to sea in the kayak, it's like when you start with the kite or with the paraglider, and you have to see both things through to the end. You have to finish your trip on the sea, the waves, you have to somehow handle all of that, and you also have to land again, and it's no different with the paraglider. Your flight is only over when you're standing on the ground and safely on the ground. And the waves, the turbulence, the water—that is definitely comparable to the air. It's actually very, very similar, I think.
Isn't it somewhat more predictable, precisely because the water is visible and the air isn't?
No, not really. I mean, sometimes we've gotten into currents with the kayak, fjord currents that completely surprised us. We'd go around a corner and suddenly waves would build up that weren't predictable for us at all. We're more landlubbers, of course, we come from southern Germany; we do do long sea kayaking, but the currents that can form there were often a total surprise. And if you compare that to the air, yeah, you can't see air, but I've been paragliding for many, many years now, over 25 years, so I can actually judge that pretty well by now. And these are both things you have to learn, things you have to see, and maybe things you have to develop in a third sense for something, in order to
To avoid getting into trouble. And yet, it doesn't always work out. With the kayak, we sometimes made mistakes by just setting off too late, and then the fjord wind came, then the tide came—that's a big tidal range, a three-meter tidal range—and suddenly you have currents and the waves build up, and you actually have to see that through if you dive so deep into the waves that you can't see your partner anymore, when they keep popping up from the crest of the wave. It's quite funny to watch, but of course, it's also challenging. And with flying, paragliding, it can be similar sometimes. You don't always assess the situation correctly. You try to explain it, and I keep trying to explain it to myself as well, why this or that is happening or how turbulent it is.
Although I might actually find flying a bit easier than kayaking. Why? Because I've been flying for a long time. I fly a lot and I'm really passionate about it. I do everything from gliding to thermals and cross-country flight. Flying is one of my greatest passions, so I actually feel very at home there.
Out of all these flights you've done in Greenland, was there one where you'd say, "that was my highlight flight" – over the ice, the rocks, the fjord?
Yeah, well...
a flight I will never forget. That day, I was running around in a cloud on the mountain forever. I was over 1,000 meters up and Robin had given me the weather report. It was the best day of the week and I was standing in the cloud and it was raining, with bits of cloud constantly moving by, and at some point I was apparently standing at the edge of this cloud and looked out, and outside the weather was magnificent. It was just that I had built up this cloud in front of this mountain and then I flew out, practically away from this mountain, into the light in front of the cloud, and in front of the cloud I could see for miles. It was going up. So that was just stunning. The feelings that arise from that are very, very
magnificent and a wonderful flight.
How long did you fly for, or was it actually a timeless flight where you don't even know, but it was...
just, you're all good. Yeah, some flights were only 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and some were nearly an hour. So when it was thermal, you could really push it. But you're right, it's just kind of timeless. Because for me, the main thing wasn't flying for a long time or flying far, but the main thing was that I'm flying and this whole experience, everything that flows together there, that's actually why I'm making this trip.
Did you have GPS with you and did you also set your flights in the VXC at the end? Not because you'd get a lot of points, but just to say, look, I'll show you where else you can fly around, or just, yeah, the pride that might come with it.
Lucian, you're giving me an idea. I actually still need to upload a few flights, right? I do have them. No one has ever flown there before, and they'll probably be amazed that anyone flies in that area at all.
Yeah, but then it says the 14-day upload deadline has already passed again. The
it would be over. For the competition, it would be over. Yes, correct. It was already last summer, right?
Alright. To wrap up this topic on Greenland. If you could summarize your experience with Greenland in one word, or in other words, if you were to say, what is Greenland to you in one word?
Freedom. That's the word. Freedom. That's beautiful. I mean, the freedom I'd never have here in Germany. When you see how we deal with aviation laws here—you need permission from a foreign country just to be allowed to take off in Germany. Those are things that restrict you here, of course. But there are also over 80 million people living here. In Greenland, outside of the settlements, nobody lives. There are practically no laws restricting you there; it's really only yourself, your thoughts, or something else that limits you. You can basically do and leave whatever you want.
Do you want that freedom back? I mean, do you want to go back to Greenland too?
Absolutely, yes. I'll definitely be going back to Greenland next year. It's actually the best country I've ever visited. I've traveled around the world a lot—South Africa, Egypt, South America by bike. But Greenland is truly the absolute best.
And do you have any specific plans already, especially with your flight experiences, now that you're saying you want to do even more in that direction?
Yeah, actually with the sea kayak, mainly. Heading further north with the sea kayak. It's not like we can take months off or half a year, we just have to scrape our vacation together and then go for four weeks at a time, always further north. And the landscape changes too. And that's the plan, that we'll do it as long as we feel like it. But it's always an effort. It's a challenge. We just do it as long as we're having fun.
You just said you can't take half a year off. Is it even possible to go to Greenland for half a year? I mean, to move around meaningfully? Or is there eventually so much winter that it doesn't matter anyway? What's actually the best window of time to move around in Greenland now as a trekker, as a sea kayaker, or maybe even for paragliding?
In reality, it's actually only three or four months. So June, July, August, and maybe September for half of it. And then the night frosts begin and it gets cold. By early October, many fjords freeze over. And then, of course, it's over. So, four months are really meaningful.
What about the mosquitoes? Is it like in Sweden, where you get stung to death in the summer? Or is Greenland a mosquito-free paradise?
I actually wanted to just conveniently push Lucian Haas to the side for now. But you're of course right. The mosquitoes, they can be really annoying. There are a few plagues you just have to put up with. And that's why, you might have seen in the pictures, in some areas you have to wear a mosquito net. Over your head. Like a head net. Because otherwise it's just unbearable. They're those biting flies that get into your ears, crawl into your nose. Then you need a net. Otherwise you won't be able to stand it at all. Otherwise you'll go a bit crazy. It really is a bit of a nuisance every now and then. But there are also areas, or if the wind picks up, then you don't have any more mosquitoes. So you can live with it. I've actually arranged myself quite well with it.
Are the mosquitoes only in the lower areas then? Like, if you're moving at sea level and then you go into the mountains, they're not there anymore? So is that also a reason why you could say, I'd rather go up and then maybe go flying, because the...
Are there no mosquitoes up there? No, unfortunately that's not the case. I've hiked up mountains before and those mosquitoes followed me all the way to the summit. Unbelievable. So wind is the best. Or out on the sea, you don't really have mosquitoes either. So if you go out paddling, you can take your mosquito net off. Then you're actually pretty free. And it also depends a bit on the year. Last year we were out at the ice edge in Nassau and there were no mosquitoes at all for weeks. They were almost imperceptible. So it varies a lot, but I always had to arm myself with a net.
Let's leave the mosquitoes alone for a moment and just change the subject. Björn, you're not only known now as the big Greenland pilot, but above all, you're known to people as the head of the DHV Terrain Department. And if you're being completely honest, do you actually think the rules are good, that in Germany, terrain has to be officially approved like that?
Actually, I have to say, it would be nicest if we didn't need any of this at all. So, if I compare it directly to Greenland, it's great. There, you can decide for yourself. You might have to ask some farmers. In southern Greenland, there are farmers who plant potatoes and a few other things. But outside of those settlements, you can take off and land anywhere. No one asks you about it. And if you translate that to Germany, there are just too many of us. As I said, we're over 80 million people. That's how it's regulated. The Aviation Act wasn't made by the DHV either. It was made, funnily enough—you might have to go back a bit further—through the state of Baden-Württemberg. They sued against this old regulation.
Back then, in Germany, until 1993, you could basically take off and land. If the landowner had agreed, nature conservation laws weren't against it, and no planes or airports were affected, you could take off and land. If the landowner gave their consent. Something similar to what
how it is in Switzerland and Austria. And
In Germany, that's no longer the case. Then the state of Baden-Württemberg sued the federal government, and the federal government had to regulate it anew. And at that time, they regulated it so that the state aviation authorities or the DHV would take over these airfield licensing permissions. And ultimately, the state of Bavaria pushed for the DHV to take over this task—the task of licensing airfields. If
If you could decide something about this today, would you like to change it? Or would you say that this rule still has some advantages?
The rule also has advantages. I mean, we're not just a few pilots. We're 40,000. And even if you look at other countries, like Switzerland or Austria, for example, where many people fly, you have to organize something. You have to deal with the farmers anyway. You have to try to make arrangements with the farmers so that you're even allowed to land on that meadow. Then there are the municipalities, then there's the hunting community, then there are many nature conservation laws. And if you look at it now, after 25 years of the DHV's licensing activity, it actually hasn't gone too badly. Because we've licensed these areas, we also have legal certainty that we can fly there. It's established in these areas. If you look at how much nature conservation is gaining strength now—keyword FFH areas—
Nature reserves—with one stroke of the pen, we'd be out of those areas and wouldn't be allowed to fly there at all. Because, for example, starting and landing there is prohibited by nature in nature reserve regulations. And because we have such an old stock of approved areas, we have the right to fly there. That's basically like having grandfathered rights. I have many examples from the area approval process where, if we didn't have these approvals, they would have been removed from our inventory a long time ago because they've since become protected areas—bird sanctuaries and others. And I think the approval process sometimes saves us a lot; it was tedious and annoying to approve those things, but it saves us...
...then there are sometimes these incredibly long conflicts. Because you then have to regulate it with nature conservation, like maybe not flying over certain areas or only using them at certain times. Or that you, as I said, also have an old inventory that you can fly by default, where you have grandfathered rights.
But you just said a moment ago that we are 40,000 pilots, and in at least some regions and for certain launch site situations, it's already relatively tight and crowded. You also mentioned that pilots sometimes get in each other's way, and then clubs come along and say, no, we only want to let our club members fly because the airspace is
there. It is
too complicated or something like that. Couldn't we, especially if we could relax it a bit by saying there isn't this strict requirement for a landing field or a launch site, but that you could maybe also take off from the neighboring slope, and then everything on the plain would relax a bit? Wouldn't you say that if you did the math a bit, you'd say that maybe it would actually make things easier?
Yeah, you'd probably just conjure up even more conflicts. I mean, I've seen what's happened this year with Corona—a lot of people are hiking up some mountains or, well, "a lot" means a few people who hike up the mountains and fly down somewhere, and that unfortunately produces major conflicts time and again. That's with residents, with hunters, with farmers. If it were the case that it were tolerated and if society went along with it, yeah, of course that would be great, if we could fly from all the mountains and if everything were a bit easier. All this complicated permitting isn't so...
...pleasant for us, but I think there's a possibility that we can regulate this ourselves and do it in a positive way. We also have to make sure we don't just invite opposition. But your question is of course valid. Why can't I fly here like it's the case in Austria? Austria, France, Switzerland—they also have a bit more wilderness and a bit more possibilities. Those are mountains that aren't inhabited or areas where people just don't step on each other's toes as much and where there's a bit more tolerance. That might also have something to do with being German, that everything has to be regulated.
Do you still see opportunities within the framework of all these rules to designate more launch sites in Germany, or are we basically finished in terms of launch sites, so to speak? What we have now, we have it and we'd better protect it somehow, but we shouldn't really expect much more.
So we've actually been working for the last few years to get more terrain for terrain. We've supported the clubs, we've supported the flight schools, but also individual people in getting more terrain approved. Sometimes it's a very tedious process, but sometimes it goes relatively easily and positively. An example of that is winch towing terrain. I see a lot of potential right now in the low mountains and the lowlands with winch towing. So there are excellent sinks, the Achtwinde, or now NOVA has a winch at the start that looks very promising, and approving winch terrain is actually easier than a slope terrain somewhere. The slopes are usually in some kind of protected area, in a landscape protection zone, a nature reserve, or a bird sanctuary.
If we switch to areas that are, for example, farmland or some meadows in the lowlands, which can also be very thermal, then we have an opportunity to authorize new sites and bring about a certain decentralization. I was flying in East Frisia the year before last, which was also very, very exciting, by the way. You can fly thermals excellently there too, or in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, you can do long-distance flights. That's a completely different kind of flying than in the low mountains or the Alps. But then you can fly right on your doorstep, and that was actually always our philosophy at the DHV—to create as many sites as possible for all regions in Germany,
so that people can fly at home. So that you don't have to drive to the Alps or travel long distances. It's certainly also a contribution to nature and environmental protection if we have many sites available in all regions of Germany.
What's missing with winch flying is what you have in the mountains. You can do solo hike and fly and say, I'll just head out quickly again this evening, hike up the mountain, and go for another flight. With winch towing, you actually always need at least one person to operate the winch, who pulls you up, the car to drive the ground winch, or something else. Maybe even the launch leader, so at least two other people. So the effort is still much greater. Do you see any possibilities for how this could become even easier in the future?
Well, there are some winch manufacturers who are now preparing for solo winch towing, and that's currently the case. I know that many people would do that. If you had the possibility to be towed solo, of course, several things would have to work, but basically, the technology is actually already at the point where it would be a possibility to go flying independently in the lowlands. And another thing was the electric ascent aid, which we had already promoted and supported ten years ago. But that has never really taken off yet.
Basically, you have a backpack, a system that weighs at least 10 kilos, maybe 15, closer to 20 kilos, so it's very cumbersome. Essentially, you have a motorized paraglider that then pulls you upwards, even if it's electrically powered. That might give you a bit of freedom, but it's also bought at a very high cost. The best thing about flying is basically the free flight, just as you just described it. Hiking up the mountain, taking off, turning into the thermals and off you go. And away you go upwards.
You also deal a lot with airspace issues and how we as paraglider pilots are restricted by all sorts of things, or not. And one thing, when you look into the future—not just what might be possible in terms of winch technology and such, but also from the angle that is always a topic, which is the development of drone technology and the demands that might come from the industry side, saying they want to fly their drones too, which will then fill our airspace even more. Especially in the altitude ranges where we as paraglider pilots actually operate. What do you expect there?
So, if I look five years ahead, I don't expect much positive. I have to be completely honest. Drone technology will increase, and there are extremely different statements about it. Even five years ago, people said, yeah, in five years drones will be flying everywhere. That's package delivery, that's manned flight. That hasn't happened yet, but it is being massively pushed by the aviation authority and also by the drone industry, that drones will establish themselves in the airspace. And you can already see some of what's happening in America. And that usually spills over into Europe. The American agency, the FAA, has already largely approved that. And the drone industry's idea is to have as much airspace as possible. At first, it was only about an area up to 150 meters above ground and then some routes being flown there. But for us as VFR pilots, as visual flight pilots, there is the massive danger that they will claim airspace that we won't be able to use at all. So far, aviation law is very, very liberal. We have airspace golf and ECO where we can fly freely.
The aviation authority and also the drone industry have been pushing massively for drones to establish themselves in the airspace. And you can already see some of what's happening in America. And that usually trickles over to Europe as well. The American agency, the FAA, has already largely approved that. And the drone industry's idea is to have as much airspace as possible. At first, it was only about an area up to 150 meters above ground and then some routes being flown through there. And for us as VFR pilots, as visual flight pilots, there is a massive danger that they will claim airspace that we won't be able to use at all. So far, aviation law is very, very liberal. We have airspace like Golf and ECO where we can fly freely.
So, it's also been a huge achievement of the DHV that we've fought for our airspace like this. It's not all that bad in Germany. We can use the airspace up to flight level 100 in the lowlands. That's well over 3,000 meters. That's a major achievement. And others are trying to make this airspace, which is actually freely available, a point of contention. So, if commercial aviation or commercial drone flight increases, they have ideas on how to use it. And especially in the drone sector, you have to assume that the systems will eventually be able to fly around autonomously. And I can say quite frankly, we'd probably prefer to be kept in certain areas, maybe in flight zones with a three-kilometer radius where we're allowed to fly, and all other areas—that's how some people imagine it—would then be free for drones and other possibilities.
The technical possibility would certainly be if you have, let's say, a sort of mini-transponder with you, which you switch on so that drones and other aircraft can fly around us.
Based on what you're observing in the political discussion right now, which path do you see us heading toward? Do we maybe have our own paragliding flight reserves in a few years where we're still allowed to move freely, but where our instrument immediately starts beeping like crazy if we step outside the geofencing? Or is the technology actually such that they can say, "Look, you'll all get a small transponder, a Farnet device, or an ADS—whatever chip goes into your gear—that has to constantly broadcast," and then these drones are designed for Sense and Avoid and other things so that it can actually work, that we can circle around each other with the devices?
Yeah, I can imagine that it's heading towards us having to carry some kind of device to be able to fly in certain areas. So, the great freedom we have now probably won't exist in 10 or 20 years. But I'm actually always one who looks positively toward the future, and if we negotiate cleverly and if we can arrange it in some way—we can't stop it—then there are certainly possibilities that we can do this with some kind of chip or device, and those devices are getting smaller and smaller, so they can signal to the drone, "They're flying around there. There's an aviation obstacle here or an aviation craft is coming, so they have to dodge." But the discussion is going to be difficult. I'm noticing that now with commercial aviation as well.
A few years ago, it was much, much more liberal, but there was a lot of pressure during the negotiations with the German Air Traffic Control, where we all sit at one table, all the aviation players, and we are basically at the bottom of the food chain, even though we are the largest group. We are almost 40,000, the sailplane pilots are around 30,000; by the way, we arranged things very well with them and also teamed up with the German Sailplane Association to try and defend our position there. But you also notice that commercial aviation and also parts of air traffic control want more and more protected airspace. For example, last year or two years ago, there was a case with a paraglider pilot who was in the Echo airspace, completely legally, and
a Lufthansa plane that came very close to the paraglider. And that was the reason why they've now created a TMZ, a transponder zone, in the Nuremberg airspace, and we actually can't use this airspace the same way we could before. And the trend is,
that completely protected approaches should actually be the standard in the future, at least for the larger airports and airfields, and that this area will then be off-limits to us. So, especially in your region where you live, Lucian, in that corner with Bonn, the Rhine, the Siebengebirge—sure, there are many airports there. There's Cologne-Bonn, there's Düsseldorf, there's Dortmund. It's becoming increasingly difficult to maintain your own space there. You can tell it's getting tighter and tighter. The Bundeswehr is also increasingly using drones—fewer aircraft and more drones. And it's clearly noticeable now, like in the Bavarian Forest just recently, where the Bundeswehr simply designates an area, a restricted area, and then drones are used.
We aren't really being asked much there. And we have to try to justify ourselves and be allowed to keep flying through good discussion and also a willingness to use technology.
From a political perspective, would you consider the drone issue to be the biggest threat to paragliding right now?
Yes, at the moment, that's how it is, yeah. A lot is happening in the background. But if you look a bit behind the scenes, you can see that in some authorities, everything is being prepared to establish drone flight. The German Ministry of Transport also wants to promote drone flight and the industry. They are supposed to be the ones leading the way as the first ones. That's actually where I see the biggest danger for us. So, I think it's less about the terrain, the problem of that. After all, we have 1,000 flight sites in our inventory. I think it's more the airspace situation that will become problematic for us if we aren't well-positioned. That means we might all have to fly to Greenland in 10 or 15 years to fly completely freely. Yeah, but I mean, it's certainly going to happen in other European countries as well that drone flight will take place.
So
The airspace issue is always like that; people are always complaining about the German system, saying it's all so terribly restrictive. But when I compare it to other countries, we're still pretty well off in Germany. As I said, we're allowed to use the G-space, the uncontrolled airspace, and even the controlled airspace Eco relatively freely. At the edge of the Alps up to flight level 130, and in the lowlands at flight level 100. That's quite a lot. And there, it's simply a matter of seeing and being seen. So the powered aircraft have to give way to the unpowered ones. It's quite liberal, but I'm noticing the trend more and more. It's going a bit against us. We have to position ourselves well, as I said. And on the part of the DHV, we're in this team. Helmut Bach is doing that, he's Lufthansa.
Captain, has flown a 380. He also speaks the language of air traffic control and the other airlines, which is naturally very good for how we present ourselves so that we have a strong voice.
If you look at your own flying future, where do you see yourself in ten years?
So, I said it at the beginning, I fly with great passion. And I've loved paragliding or hang gliding for over 25 years. And I'm sure that in ten years, I'll still fly just as much and with just as much passion. So, flying is actually the biggest thing for me.
And if you imagine that some super coronavirus comes along again, and they say there's going to be a massive lockdown, and no one knows how long it'll last. You're not allowed to fly anymore, but you get one last flight before that, a wish granted by a fairy. What would that flight be, where you'd say, "That would be the final flight I'd do for now"? What kind of flight would you wish for?
Oh, then I'd start here at the Weilberg and fly over the Alps to the south. That would be my wish, my dream. I hope I can still make that happen, without any lockdowns or anything like that, but it would actually be pretty much the ultimate thing—to fly over the entire Alpine range to the south and land somewhere down there on the southern side in South Tyrol.
Then I wish you that you can actually make this flight a reality, completely without Super-Corona or anything else, and manage that big crossing of the Alps with your approach. Thank you for your stories about the beautiful tales from Greenland, the frozen continent, and also for a little glimpse into the unfortunately perhaps not-so-pretty, bureaucratically-shrouded future for paragliding. Thank you for both, and all the best to you.
Yes, thanks a lot, Lucian. To you too.
That's all. That was Björn Claßen in conversation with Lucian Haas. If you want to learn more about Björn's Greenland adventures, you can read his travel reports from the past few years on the website www.media-montana.de www.media-montana.de. Björn also offers multi-vision lectures about Greenland. In the show notes for this podcast episode on Lu-Glidz, you'll find some additional links regarding the topic of paragliding in Greenland. Did you enjoy this podcast? Then recommend Podz-Glidz and Lu-Glidz. To make sure you don't miss an episode, you can subscribe to Podz-Glidz right now in your podcatcher. Otherwise, you can find all previous podcast episodes on Lu-Glidz and Soundcloud as well as well-known audio catalogs like Spotify, iTunes, Google Podcasts, etc.
But also don't forget, by becoming a supporter of Podz-Glidz and Lu-Glidz, you're helping to ensure that many more interesting episodes will be produced there. Until then, I'll say Ciao again, or better yet in Greenlandic, Bye. Ciao.