It's always fascinating when you've flown a long way and land somewhere, and then you meet the locals to hitchhike or something, and they ask, "Are you hiking on foot with that big backpack? Where are you coming from?" And then you say, "I flew. I'm from Oslo and I flew 150 kilometers from Oslo to where I landed yesterday." They always look at you like that. "And where's your engine?" The engine is up there in the sky. That's the sun.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast. Stories from the cosmos of paragliding. Today with Ulrike
Juese and
Lucian Haas at the microphone.
Norway. The land of fjords, the land of farmed salmon, the land of oil wealth, the land of sweaters, the land of ski jumpers and cross-country skiers. But the land of paragliders? That doesn't occur to you at first in this series. Nevertheless, paragliding is of course done in Norway too. And one of the best pilots in the country is a German. Ulrike Jüse. She has already stood on the podium several times in the Norwegian XC League. In 2019, she even took first place. Overall, that is, ahead of all the men, mind you. Ulrike has lived in Norway for almost 17 years, which can even sometimes be heard in a sympathetically subtle Norwegian accent in her native tongue.
She came to Norway for a promotion as a pharmacologist. But above all, because of the country's wild beauty. Because Ulrike is a nature person through and through. She basically can't get enough of being outdoors and away from settlements. And so, the 41-year-old maintains many sporting hobbies that allow her to head into the wilderness. Hiking, climbing, ice skating, and ski touring are among them. And of course, paragliding. She prefers doing it all alone in the holy land. It's designed in a park-and-fly style and for overnight trips. In this 74th episode of Podz-Glidz, Ulrike Jüse talks about this passion. It's about, among other things, solitary flight tours through the wilderness of Norwegian national parks and her conscious choice of routes away from roads and other easy ways back.
We're talking about the appeal of experiencing these imposing natural landscapes from the perspective of various sports, but also how to handle the risks involved. Another topic is the paragliding scene in Norway, which in some ways ticks a bit differently than in the Alpine countries. Ulrike also gives valuable tips for all those who might feel like experiencing the Norwegian wilderness by paraglider at the end of the podcast. If you enjoy this podcast, it would be great if you could support my work on it as a patron. It's very easy and comes with no obligations. How? You'll find that out on the website of my blog Sluglides, specifically on that page. And of course, you can also simply recommend Podz-Glidz.
With a good rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, a post on Facebook or Instagram, or best of all, just by talking about it directly with your flying friends.
Ulrike, I was browsing through your online logbook a bit, and the last flight entry in there is from October 31, 2021. Don't people fly paragliders in Norway during the winter?
Yes, actually I do. But I'm very selective when it comes to flying. And I have so many other hobbies that just outcompete flying in the winter. So I actually choose other activities, other leisure hobbies that I have, which I find are nicer in the winter.
Which ones?
Skiing and ice skating, for example. Those are my main activities in the winter, besides work, of course.
Ice skating? Like real ice skating with nice pirouettes and all that? Or what does ice skating mean to you?
Without the pirouettes. Ice skating up here in the high north is touring skating.
Tour skating.
Exactly, you do that on lakes, fjords, or rivers. That's on natural ice or what we call black ice. So, clear, beautiful, natural ice that you move across. You'd love to move across an entire lake all day, or along a river, or hike between several lakes. It's basically like hiking on water, just on a layer of ice.
You just said black ice. Exactly. So, black ice. Is it actually black, or how are we supposed to imagine that?
Exactly, it's really black when it's nice, fresh ice. So, thin, new, transparent ice that looks black because of the water underneath. That's what you call it. Black ice, in good German. It's also called that in Norwegian or Swedish.
But you can still see through it.
You can see right through it. So, if you're driving along the shoreline, where the water isn't very deep, you can see the lakebed or seabed, stones, fish, plants, and stuff like that through the ice. It's completely transparent. But if you're further out on a lake where the water is deeper, it has a black, dark appearance. On some lakes that are very... where you have glacial water, for example, or very, very clear water, it can also shimmer bluish, blue-green. So you have some lakes like that here in the mountains, mountain lakes.
That sounds very magical somehow.
Absolutely. I always find it's not that different from flying. Because, in principle, you're moving through a landscape and you have to know exactly what you're doing. You have to know the conditions. You have to know the techniques. You have to be able to read the ice. There's no one there telling you, "You can go long here, the ice is thick enough here, it'll hold you." You have to do everything yourself. You have to be able to do it, and you have to be able to assess and understand the risks. And then it's really fun. So, once you've basically learned all that and you're paying attention to what needs to be watched, then it's really, really beautiful. And there are also very specific sounds and experiences that are actually quite unique to the activity, things you won't find anywhere else.
So when you're putting weight on thin ice and moving across it, skating, then you get completely different sounds.
Does it crack? Exactly,
it makes cracks, cracks form and tensions are released. So ice is basically always under tension. Because when water freezes, it expands. We all know that. If a rain gutter, for example, gets clogged or a water barrel or something, it expands. Ice has a lower density and a larger volume than the water that was there before. And that also happens in the ice layer. So the ice is under tension. And when you then move your body weight over it, cracks form. And those are like Star Wars sounds. It's fantastic when you're traveling on a lake and have rock walls next to you reflecting them. Those are sounds you don't actually hear anywhere else.
Very specific. And you can actually hardly record it. On video, it all sounds more metallic, you really have to experience it.
So it sounds even more magical now that you're describing it like that. Is this black ice skating your favorite winter activity?
Yes, it's actually gained more and more priority over the last few years. But I also find skiing very interesting. I mean skiing outside of resorts and alpine facilities, of course. Moving through the landscape on skis. Which is also very, very beautiful here in Norway. Because those vast expanses become even bigger and further away in the winter. Because, in principle, large terrain or areas can basically only be reached by skis. There's no human intervention there that would basically hurt. There are paths or roads that are cleared, but you basically only have skis as a means of transport. And that is very, very beautiful too.
Very wild.
Pretty wild, yeah.
When does the flying season usually start again for you?
So I prefer cross-country flying. My favorite flying activity isn't necessarily glider or slope soaring.
...but thermal flying. Cross-country, and I also like multi-day tours. And for those, you need thermals. And those don't really start until very late in Norway. So I'm ready to do the first flights at the end of March. Thermal flights. But I also like to fly in the winter with skis. And glider with skis is also nice. I also like to go ski touring where I have a glider with me, just in case you can fly down somewhere. Because that opens up completely new, beautiful possibilities. New routes that you can't do with just skis and climbing, for example. If you want to go down some mountain sides where everything is glaciated. Big glacier crevasses and such. Then you could fly over them. That's a completely different possibility for a brand new route you can do there.
So, you can't go the whole winter without flying at all. But now, you're absolutely right. This early winter was a very, very good one. Very strange weather here in the north, with a lot of wind and constant new fronts. So there were actually very few windows in the weather that would have offered any opportunities. And it was also a very long, very, very cold period. And when it's minus 20 degrees and windy, you don't really feel like standing on the mountain, sorting out your gear, and then flying down. It just gets very cold.
I want to talk to you a bit more intensely or in more detail about paragliding in a moment. But first, tell me, how did you end up in Norway as a German? And how did you get into paragliding?
Long story. No, I really like being outdoors. I think that's already been hinted at a bit. So I like all kinds of activities close to nature, leisure activities. Whether it's hiking, fishing, mountaineering, climbing, skiing. Ice skating came later, of course, only here up north. You could say it's not quite as widespread in Germany. And Norway is actually an eldorado for those kinds of activities. So it's quite natural that if you have such a strong interest in these activities, you might think, yeah, could I maybe live here in Norway? Yes, and then it came that I actually wanted to do a PhD.
And you have to be at a university for that. And it wouldn't be bad if that university were right next to nature and mountains, with those kinds of opportunities where you can combine the two. There aren't many cities in Germany that actually allow for that. So I thought, well, Norway is actually a very good idea. Let's just give it a try. Then I applied all around and actually got a doctoral position in Oslo. So I moved to Oslo and then I stayed here. Ever since. That was... a few years ago, I moved in 2005.
So you've been in Norway for 16 years now.
Yeah, exactly. I did a quick calculation, yeah. I had already started flying before that. In the late 90s, I started with hang gliding in Chiemgau and flew there for several years until I moved to New Zealand. For a period, I basically stopped flying because moving to New Zealand with all that—hang gliding—New Zealand isn't quite that practical.
And then I was back in Germany for a bit, working in Rosenheim. I continued with kiting there. And when I moved to Norway, I didn't take it with me either, because it was a bit impractical again. Especially up here, the infrastructure makes it more demanding to be out with a kite. I mean, you have almost no lift systems; for example, in the mountains, you're basically dependent on car transport or muscle power. Well. And then, after several years, I kept looking longingly at the sky whenever I saw someone flying. And at some point, I noticed that paragliding had made some progress by then. And then in 2013, I actually decided that maybe I could give paragliding a try after all.
Because the gliders have gained a lot of performance in the meantime. And the safety has also improved significantly, so that even as a kiting pilot, you didn't find paragliding to be so out of the question anymore. And it has such incredible advantages.
You just said that was in 2013, that's when you got into paragliding. You were already in Norway with the paraglider, did you learn paragliding in Norway then?
Exactly, I just did a normal course here, a beginner's course, and I started right at the very beginning.
Is it the same way it's organized in Norway as in Germany? So you go to a paragliding school and have to do an A-license? And later maybe a B-license? Or is the system different there?
It's a completely different system. Actually, it's much less structured than you might say in Germany. So, you don't have schools here that organize and trade this. It's all club-organized. These are volunteers who, in principle, get a kind of teaching license. So, pilots who have had their own license for a year can do some additional training and then can train new pilots. So it's a completely different system than what you're used to in Germany. And it mildly shocked me a bit at the beginning that it's handled so much more simply here. It has its advantages, but as a German, you do find it very strange that there aren't actually any professional instructors.
So that's all? They're all clubs. And you go to some club and say, I saw you guys fly paragliders here, I'd like to be able to do that too. Can one of you teach me? And then they say, yeah, here's Ole, he's the one who's going to teach you. And then you go along with him five times and then you know roughly how it's done? Or how does that work?
That's one way to do it, but most clubs have courses now. So they have more or less fixed course schedules, at least the larger clubs. Oslo Paragliderclub is one of the biggest here in Norway. And if you live in Oslo, it's quite natural to take a course there. They have five or six intensive courses every summer where you get, what's the German word for it, an L-license—so this first license—within a week, so that you can basically fly independently afterwards. More or less independently in a flight area where you've flown a tour with an instructor or where an instructor has basically given you the take-off and landing instructions. You have to have the L-license to do that, and then you're allowed to fly there.
And once you've done, I think, 30 flights or so, you're basically a free pilot. You take a theory exam and then you're allowed to fly wherever you want.
Wherever you want. Does that mean you can also start wherever you want in Norway? Or are you restricted there too, and does a launch site requirement apply, with typical club launch sites? And are you restricted to those?
No, you can fly wherever you want. That's the wonderful thing about this country. You can take off wherever you want. You can land wherever you want. Of course, we have aviation laws. You have to follow those, obviously. So there are TMAs up here too, and control areas and so on. So, of course, not there. You have to know how to do that, naturally. Just like in Germany. But otherwise, if you don't have any airspace restrictions, you can take off and land wherever you like.
What kind of paragliding is there in Norway at all? Just to have an idea. Roughly how many, maybe? You know, a ballpark figure. Oh. Is it a few hundred, a few thousand? Good
Question.
So, definitely not a few thousand. Let's say a few hundred. But with a grain of salt. I don't know.
And how many clubs are there then, if you say people are mostly organized into clubs?
There are about five large clubs and then many small ones. So, a club can just be a handful of pilots who say, "We'll start our own club." It's not a huge community here. It's really very manageable.
That means you know most of them too. A bit of an exaggeration, though.
I'd claim I know most of the long-haul flights. Or I know all of them. More or less.
Yeah. Okay, then tell me, how many long-haul flights are there in Norway?
Oh, that's a tough question.
Let's count them.
Well, let's say maybe 50 active ones.
From that perspective, it's not many. That means the active cross-country pilots are the ones who also fly in some kind of cross-country league. Or they say something like, "Here, I'm posting my flights on the server," where you can see—okay, it's always the same 50 names appearing there.
Yeah, well, let's say 50 to 100. That's still a lot. Some people do three or four great flights a year and then something else for the rest of the year. Or they take a year off and so on. But the most active ones, the ones who really fight for the top spots, are maybe around 50. Not necessarily fighting for the top spots, but the ones who are actively flying in these leagues.
Is it particularly difficult to go on cross-country flights in Norway? That so few do it, when you say there are a few hundred pilots, but only about 50 actually go cross-country. Is that a specific challenge?
Yes and no. I actually think that until a few years ago, it was still quite exotic. But something is happening right now. Over the last few years, more people than before are actually pushing for it or considering it. So I think you can see a certain trend where it's becoming increasingly interesting for more pilots to go on cross-country flights. But you also have many areas where it's not quite so easy or trivial to go cross-country due to the lack of infrastructure, you could say. So if you fly into certain areas, you don't know if you'll be able to get back out that day, or even get back to where you started.
So it's not like in the old days. It's not that easy to maintain the route, where basically there's a road in every valley where you can pull up and turn back. And that basically gives you a certain level of hesitation when it comes to cross-country flying. At least, it does.
Do you have that same hesitation?
The opposite. I long to not come back.
That means you just go to the launch site, take off somewhere, let the thermals carry you along and just say, whatever. I'm just going. Flying wherever my nose leads. I don't care if there's a road down there or nothing at all. Just wilderness.
That's what I love doing most, yeah. Landing on a road is actually the worst way to end a tour, I think. Getting stuck somewhere beautiful in the backcountry late in the evening—that's the best. Set up camp and stay there. Ideally somewhere you can take off again the next day. That's my favorite.
We'll talk about that wild flying again in a moment. One more question first. I saw that as a cross-country pilot, which you are too, you also participate in this Norwegian XC league. And quite successfully, if I saw that correctly. Tell me, what have you actually won there so far?
Let me give you a bit more background. Originally, I started paragliding to do hike and fly. Basically, to incorporate it into my other activities. Because I thought that was the biggest appeal—that you can climb mountains, do some scrambling, and then fly back down so you don't have to hike down. Because hiking down, descending, is always the boring part, I find. But I quickly discovered that thermal flying is actually super interesting. That it's basically even more interesting. And then I thought, well, if you combine that with camping or flying from hut to hut... In Norway, people love hiking from hut to hut, and often with camping in between. And if you could combine that with flying, that would be pretty brilliant. And I thought, well, I have to get really good at flying first. And to get really good at flying, I have to get really good at flying first.
And to get really good at flying, I first have to get really good at flying. You basically need some kind of incentive or points to collect. I thought that in those kinds of leagues, it's always a pretty good strategy. So, at some point, once I had mastered a decent amount of distance, I signed up for one of those leagues. That was in 2017, could that be right? Was it 2017, could that be right? 17, 18, 19? Yes,
I think you had your first successes in 2017. Yes, I think you had your first successes in 2017. Exactly, 2017.
Yeah, so that was actually the very first season I signed up for the league. I came in third and was like, oh, how, huh?
Well, almost by accident actually, but that did increase the interest in continuing.
Third in the women's ranking?
No, there is no women's ranking here. We don't have that many pilots. So we only have one ranking. And that's all classes, men and women, all in one big pool. Everything.
in one big pool. That means there are only these 50 pilots anyway, and you can't really do many different rankings, so there's just one where everyone flies together. Are the different glider classes somehow weighted with a factor, or if someone is flying an ENA glider, then they've just had bad luck in terms of performance?
You just had bad luck. And if you have a small C glider and all the others have D gliders, then you basically just had bad luck; you have to fly better. Simple as that. Then
If I understand correctly, you fly a small C glider. Exactly. And most of the other performance-oriented cross-country pilots in Norway fly straighter high-performance gliders with a D in front. Exactly. But then you must have been pretty good, because you were already in third place in 2017, I think, or 2018 or 2019, at some point you even won this XC league.
Yes, I think that was my second year in the league. I even won then. That was nice. How
did it land that a woman suddenly won? Or is it in Norway, where women are perhaps much more... well, in the Nordic countries, where women are already much more normal in politics and other things, where everything is valued equally, is it also completely accepted that a woman is at the top of the pilots? Or is that still something special in Norway too?
I don't know how it's perceived or how it's communicated. Or how people think about it, I don't know either. I mean, it wasn't a big deal, it's never a topic of conversation. But there are few, unfortunately even here few, women who fly long-haul at all. Very few.
Those would be the long-haul pilots. And if you look at the total number of pilots, is the female ratio in Norway also only around 10 percent, like it is in the Alpine region? Or is it perhaps higher in Norway?
No, the same thing. Too few, the percentage of women is too low. Unfortunately, unfortunately.
Couldn't you call more people as an example woman? Unfortunately, unfortunately. Where do you actually spend this time in Norway, then fly over?
I hope so. That would be nice, it would be a nice bay effect.
Do you actually always fly alone on your cross-country flights? Or do people in Norway fly together a lot? Especially since it's such a wilderness, where you might think, maybe I don't want to head out there all by myself?
Yes, that's how it is. We already made plans to start together. It's probably not different from other countries, that you're basically a group that meets at the town square early and then take off together, and many—or most, I'd almost say—also like to fly in pairs or threes or in a group, at least at the beginning or for the first part or a large portion of the route. I usually fly my own way. I have a somewhat different flying style and don't really fit in that well, and I have my own ideas on how I best fly the day, and I usually sit down after the...
So tell me, what's special about your flying style?
We already briefly discussed the first thing. That's that I fly a C-glider and also the smallest one. So I'm a light pilot. And we are usually slower, significantly slower. That means if I want to keep up with a D-glider, I'd have to fly at full throttle all day, and I don't necessarily like that.
That stresses me out. I also notice that I can't really concentrate on the surroundings anymore; I'm basically just preoccupied with not losing contact. And I don't like that at all. It stresses me out a lot. And it also takes away a bit of the focus—away from the beautiful things about flying, that playful and exploratory side where you basically follow your own intuition and not others'. So, I usually fly alone. About 80, 90 percent of my flights, I fly completely alone after the takeoff. And then, of course, my attitude is that I prefer to get away from roads and away from valleys...
... and straight into areas where I haven't flown before or where no one has flown before. While many other pilots tend to follow the racing routes more. In principle, it's no different here than in the Alps, where some routes are particularly suitable for going far, covering many kilometers, and scoring many points. But I'm more drawn to the remote corners, the ones that aren't usually flown long distances and where I haven't flown long before.
So, my head needs new perspectives and new views somehow. So if I've already flown a route before, I've done it, and I'm finished with it. I need something new next time. If I'm standing on the same mountain, I want to try a different direction and discover something new, not do the same thing again. But I guess I'm a bit strange about that.
So you never fly the same route twice?
Well, you have to fly some routes more often. And that's just because if you start flying up here in the spring—during those first good flying days—you're very restricted by the snow. And basically, I mostly fly in the southeast of the country, where there are several main valleys, actually three or four main ones. There's no more snow in the valley by then, but on the high plateaus that separate these valleys, there's still a continuous snow cover. And you basically can't fly over those at all. So for the first month—at least until the end of May, anyway—you're forced to fly along the valleys. You can't do anything else. Because as soon as you move away from them, you're heading straight for a landing. And then you land in the snow, and that's where you have real problems.
That would only be in the spring. In the summer, the snow has melted and you can pretty much fly wherever you want. So you don't have to take anything into consideration anymore?
Exactly. And I fly wherever I want to go. I fly quite a lot. That's called "freie Strecke" in German, right? So when you're not flying triangles. Basically from A to B. And the reason for that is because Norway is quite windy. So flying triangles here, you're often caught in a headwind. And if you want to fly a bit away, it's actually worth flying with the wind. So I basically let the wind determine my route.
That means you take off, head into the wind, let yourself get blown along, and take in the scenery while you do it.
Yes. I know where the wind is blowing, of course. I've done a weather check beforehand. So I already have an idea of which wind direction there is and what's worth flying. And you also have to—I mean, Norway isn't that big. You basically have to choose the launch site intelligently. If you want to fly far, you have to move the launch site so far that you basically have enough distance before you end up somewhere by the sea.
When you do flights like that, you know where the wind is coming from and all that. Do you prepare for it any other way by setting waypoints? Or do you say, no, that's wild flying, just heading out into it. I'll just see where it carries me and then see where I land. And then from there, I'll have to see how I get back.
No, not really. Neither one. I rarely set fixed waypoints. So, I definitely don't put anything into the instrument or any turnpoints or anything like that. Since I'm flying into a triangle and would like to hunt points, then of course you need something like that. But I do plan exactly, at least Plan A, Plan B, maybe even a Plan C, of what the day could bring. Because we also have, for example, an airspace here that isn't quite so simple. You have to navigate around all these airspace restrictions and not put yourself in a stupid situation where you have to land somewhere because you can't get around it. So, unfortunately, that limits the possibilities quite a bit.
And then the weather isn't ideal everywhere on a given day. So you try to plan the route so that you basically have the best weather all day or the best thermals throughout the day, even into the evening, and the same wind direction. So it's a very detailed weather check that's necessary before I even go flying. So during the season—the flying season—I spend a lot of time on weather checks, almost daily.
If you're going out flying now and say, okay, I know where I'm starting, I know roughly where the wind will probably blow me, the wind will be manageable. What do you take with you as equipment, especially when heading into the wilderness, also in terms of safety? If you say it's off the beaten path, where you might be wandering around for a while. So, do you have an InReach, a satellite tracker, or something else with you? What belongs in your gear just for wilderness reasons, what's included?
So I have a Spot with me, that's right. I've always had it with me for several years. A phone, of course, even though you don't have signal everywhere, like in the Alps in principle. And I always have overnight gear with me and enough food for two or three days, actually. That means I can be out there for several days and can also change my mind quite spontaneously if the weather or the wind and conditions are different than what the weather report predicted. Because that's not always true, especially up here, not always. So I have everything with me, enough clothes and so on. The only thing you don't have to have with you is water. There's water everywhere you land. No matter where you land, you have water. What you have to have with you is a beer. There's guaranteed not to be any where I land, well, where I land.
Yes, that's the basic equipment.
Is a tent included? Yes. Is a sleeping bag always included? Yes, exactly. Is it like a very small one-person tent, or how should one imagine it?
Exactly, it's a tent that you can also use as rainwear at the same time. So it's called a poncho tent.
And then you have a trekking pole that you use to prop up your poncho, and you can sleep underneath it. That
is very correct, exactly. And a small air mattress. And then you basically have... basically everything you need.
On how many of your wings does this happen to you, where you actually have to use it? Not planned, because you say, I want to string together two or three different routes for a few days anyway, like doing a hike-and-fly trip, but really, where you say, I've taken off now and in the end I had to spend the night somewhere in the wilderness and only got back the next day or whenever that was.
So it depends on what... I mean, you can fly through the night anytime... The days are so long here. In midsummer, it hardly gets dark at all. It gets twilight around eleven and starts getting light again at two. So in principle, you can... you don't even need to. You can anytime, even if you get deep into Jotunheimen, you can hike back to a road within eight hours or so and then trek back if you want to. But I actually find it... nicer to stay where I land. I've never really planned on it. And besides, if you know the land and the areas well enough—and I can do that now—you also know where you can take off again the next day.
Actually, the best thing is just to stay there or to plan your landing so that you know it's just a short hike to the next launch site. Or you just land where you can take off the next day. I actually find that more interesting than betting everything on getting back out. Unless, of course, you have to work the next day and have to get back, then you have to do it. But it's never happened that I actually had to get back and didn't make it, or that I had to stay overnight even though I didn't want to. Thank goodness that's never happened to me, no.
If you have a job that probably runs from Monday to Friday, then you always have the weekend to fly. But then what you do there, that's what you do. But that's the main problem. The main flying day, Saturday, because on Sunday you always have to say, I have to somehow get back.
Yes, thankfully I have a job that's quite flexible. So I always try, when there are good flying days—there aren't many good flying days up here. And for the really good flying days, I try to take the time off, even if it's during the week, and I also like to have the day after off as well, so that I have the opportunity to combine them.
Just now, in the past year, I mean in 2021, I saw that you also did some hike-and-fly tours and traveled through national parks in Norway. Is it even allowed to fly normally in those kinds of national parks?
Not in all of them. That's a bit different. That means there's one national park where taking off is forbidden and planned landings are forbidden. So, that's the Rondane National Park. That's because of the wild reindeer there, which are very shy. And there, at the starting point, they want to ban kiting in the winter. And the legislator basically put kiting and paragliding or paraglider in a category there. And unfortunately, taking off is currently forbidden there. Otherwise, you can fly there from somewhere else and fly through it and do that. And it's a very good place. You have to land there, that's how it's allowed.
But in all the other national parks, it's allowed to both take off and land. There aren't actually any other restrictions there.
That means you can travel to such a national park, say, "I'm going to hike up a mountain over here," and say, "This is my launch mountain," and then launch from there.
Yes, exactly. If it's launchable. Norway is quite rocky—at least on the mountain peaks, it's usually so rocky that you can't launch at all. And in Norway, the tree line is at about... well, I'm talking about southern Norway, which is the area where I fly the most, actually, south of Trondheim, the tree line is at about 1,000 meters, and above about 1,400 you basically only have scree, stones, and rock. The highest mountains are at 2,400, and the valleys are, on average—at least in the high mountains, on average—at 600, 700 meters. So you don't actually have that many vertical meters. That's a very effective launch height.
Because you just can't get out of the rocks, you can't get all the way to the top.
Exactly, a pile of scree.
What does that look like, I mean, how do you choose those starting points? If you say, "I'm going to this national park, I've maybe never been there before, I haven't started there yet," do you look at something like Google Earth or something else where you could say, "Maybe I can start there, I'll hike over there and hope that I can find a scree-free area for myself"?
Exactly. Now, I've been to very, very many areas on foot or by ski—you can see very well by ski, too, because in the mountains everything is often blown clear, the snow is blown away, so you can already see if it's very stony or if the moss and stuff are sticking out, or even on foot in the summer. So, I know very, very many areas, very many mountains from before, and I know what they look like, but otherwise, Google Earth is very good, and Instagram is perfect for finding stuff like that.
In early summer, you still have snowfields that you can use, but they don't work if you have a south wind, for example, then it's harder again, but in all other weather conditions, you can also use snowfields. Or you just try your luck and know that the limit for starting is around 1400, and if you find a launch site at 1400, there's usually a small patch of moss somewhere where you can still lay out the glider, but in principle, you have to be very frugal and be able to start on the smallest area, which is already an advantage.
And what about landing? If you say you're just flying out into the wilderness, is there a lot of forest where you'd have to say it's actually unlandable territory, or is it because there are so many lichens, mosses, and other low-lying scrub that you could basically land almost anywhere there, if it sets you down in some form?
Well, that also depends entirely on where you are and where you land, which region of Norway you're in—the geography and topography vary a lot from one part of the country to another. Basically, east of the main mountain ranges, so east of—I don't know if Jotunheimen is a term—well, you can roughly divide all of southern Norway into Westland, which is the typical fjord landscape you see on all the billboards, where you have the fjords and beautiful mountains. And then you have the east of the country, which is more high plateaus with U-shaped valleys leading down to the lowlands, and between east and west, you basically have a high mountain region that forms the weather divide between west and east.
And in that area, you have relatively high-altitude valleys that go up above the tree line, where it's sometimes good for landing and sometimes there's endless scree. Where you actually can't land at all, so it's one or the other.
While to the east of these mountains you mostly have valleys with agriculture, fields, or forests—lower-lying valleys where it's very, very easy to land, so it's usually very, very easy to find something—to the west, you have the fjord landscape, and there you have water on the valley floor, so landing in the fjord is not a good idea, and many corners there are also very demanding when it comes to finding landing spots.
So your favorite—or probably also main—flying area is this middle region, where you say, in the mountains, where it's best to fly.
Yes, for cross-country flying, the east is actually the best because it's significantly drier. It's often in the rain shadow; all the fronts coming in from the west rain out in the Westland and also largely in the high mountains where the clouds build up. Yes, that's a very good point. Then, behind that wall, in principle, you have all the dry areas with the plateaus. That's where you have the best conditions and the longest season, especially for cross-country flying. In the high mountain area, you have a very, very short season. It starts sometime in July and ends at the end of August. Very, very short.
You just mentioned the term or name Jotunheimen as a national park, where you also did a hike-and-fly tour. Tell me a bit about a tour like that. What do you see when you're out there flying?
Jotunheimen is a very alpine region. It's not that different from the Alps, if you set aside the fact that the valleys aren't developed. So you have no roads or infrastructure in the valleys in that entire area. It's a stretch of maybe 50 by 50 kilometers, perhaps the Drehe. The highest peak in the area is the Drehe at 2,490 meters. I've been there a lot, both for climbing as well as hiking and skiing. So I actually know the area very well from before. But I've hardly flown there before, at least before last summer.
So I've made a few small excursions. I've gone in there or scouted the area, basically the outer districts. And no one else has really done much there either. So if you look at these heatmaps, it's a huge area that basically has no lines from other cross-country pilots. That's always intrigued me, for years now, to fly in there. But there are only a few days a year where it's actually possible. And last year was actually fantastic. It was two long weekends. Specifically weekends that had really peak conditions with hardly any wind, proper high pressure at the end of August, beautiful thermals. Actually the perfect conditions to fly in there. And I also did two bivouac trips there.
And it's actually fantastic to fly past mountain peaks and over routes or climbing routes that you've already climbed before, or flown up to mountain peaks. To fly over them when you've hiked across or skied over them—that's very, very special when you do it for the first time and know that no one else has ever flown over them either. With a paraglider, that's really classy.
What appeals to you about this wilderness flying, or really saying, "I was the first one here," and so on? What draws you there?
Not necessarily that I'm the first. It's more that sense of exploration I mentioned earlier, that I really enjoy discovering landscapes in different ways. I find it a completely different experience when you go there on skis and then fly through it a year later, because the impressions are totally different. Naturally, you see the landscape from a different perspective and you basically use the conditions nature gives you to move through it. So if there's snow, you can use that to ski through it; if there's ice on the lakes they pass through, you can master skating that way. Then you can do that and master flying to a certain level.
Then you can fly through it and, in principle, explore the landscape in a completely different way. Or, if you can climb and have mastered it—climbing without bolts, which is what climbing in Norway is—then you can explore it that way. And research and discover it for yourself. That's actually what I find so beautiful about all the activities I do: that you don't move on any man-made structures, like ski lifts or climbing facilities or anything like that, but that you basically master the craft yourself, understand the conditions, and put the whole theory into practice and, in principle,
nature, oh, how can I say that in German?
You
Say it in Norwegian, just say it in Norwegian, maybe then it'll come back to you in German.
Yes, in Norwegian, it's much easier, in principle, to move from A to B in harmony with nature. I actually find that very beautiful, this appeal of being responsible for yourself, navigating through a landscape and making decisions. And understanding and using the given conditions, in principle, to get around. That's the appeal of all these activities. It doesn't necessarily have to be flying; it can gladly be another activity.
If you compare all the different activities you do, what do you find appealing about flying when exploring these kinds of landscapes?
That's a difficult question. But flying is fascinating. And I think—and I'd say most people agree—that flying is fascinating because, in principle, you're moving upwards into warm air using a piece of nylon fabric, just to move further forward until you find the next pocket of warm air. So it's actually so much applied theory, so much more than with other activities. Flying is basically a human dream, isn't it? Even as a child, when you saw kites somewhere in the mountains, you'd go, "Oh, fantastic, that's almost supernatural that it even works like that." And I believe that fascination is always there; you can't shake it once you've tried it. The fact that it works, and that it works so well that you can transport yourself so far with it.
It's fascinating every time you've flown a long way and land somewhere and then meet the locals to hitchhike or something, and they ask, "Are you hiking on foot, with your big backpack, where are you coming from?" And then you say, "I flew, I'm coming from Oslo and I got here yesterday. I flew 150 kilometers from Oslo to where I landed." They always look at you like, "With what? And where's your engine?" The engine is up there in the sky, it's the sun.
And that's just... I mean, for us, it's almost normal by now because we know how it works. You don't really think about it that much anymore, but if you actually stop to think about it, it's quite fascinating that it works, that you can do it. Yeah, just like that.
I imagine that when you go ski touring or do your ice skating tours, or when you go hiking or climbing, you probably do that more often with others. With climbing, it's also common to belay each other and all that. But flying is something where you'd say, I actually do that completely alone, even if we might start at the same launch site, but I'm then very quickly on my own routes, the others are much faster and I want to do my own thing and all that. What you said there—to what extent is being alone in such a wilderness a pure joy for you, and to what extent do you sometimes feel fear?
No fear, just enjoyment. Actually, I like it very, very much. I also really enjoy being out alone otherwise. I don't do it all the time, though. And some activities, like ice skating for example, the safety depends on not being out alone. And we're relatively strict about that. You don't go touring ice skating alone. For safety reasons. As for skiing and hiking, and to some extent climbing, I very, very much like doing those alone. Climbing, of course, if you're belaying yourself, you need someone to hold the rope at the other end. You don't do that alone either. But I also really enjoy going on the old via ferratas now.
I also really like doing that alone. If there's already a facility I can use, that's actually one of the few activities I do where others have prepared something and built a so-called installation in the mountains. But I like using those too. I actually really like being out alone. And because, in principle, as I just said, you make your own decisions. You're more on your own and you observe the conditions alone, navigate alone. In principle, you have to be able to do everything, apply it alone, and make the right decisions alone. I find that very interesting. And also, simply sitting alone in front of the tent or by the fire in the evening, lost in your own thoughts.
Because, for instance, if you've been flying all day, your brain is running at full speed. And the whole time, it's like a game of chess, basically. You're highly tense, thinking about strategy, safety, conditions, chess moves. Is it still right? Is it how I thought it was? Are the forecasts correct? Or is something else going on? You're so tense all day, experiencing so much. And processing all that in the evening, I actually find it very nice to do that alone. Even though, on the other hand, it's also very nice. But it's different when you've flown a route with two or three people, that you can exchange thoughts with each other. But it's just different, simply, when you land with two or three people. We did that this year too. We flew in through Jotunheimen this year, and on the last tour, we even flew with four people.
That happens to me very rarely. But it was also very nice, sitting there in the evening, all four of us in front of our little one-person tents, looking at the mountains and then discussing the day again. That is also very, very nice. Variety.
If you land somewhere in the wilderness like that, it could happen that you're really unlucky and hurt yourself on the small scree, or something else happens. And now you're out there alone. Has anything like that ever happened to you, where you were really sitting there somewhere in the wilderness and saying, damn, I can't get out of here on my own?
Yes, that happened to me once. It was quite a while ago, too.
So normally I don't think about it that much. Not even now, even after having an accident like that. But back then, it was actually the case that I also had a hard landing. Now four or five years ago. Four years ago. And I noticed immediately that I shouldn't try to get out on my own and had to call emergency services. Back then without a Spot, so without the satellite SOS button. That was also the turning point where I said I need something like that, because my phone at the time, which wasn't a smart phone, had this little bar that would come and go.
So it was also a very unnatural spot. But the emergency call still went through to the rescue center. And they sent a helicopter.
And he found it too.
That's quite a strange situation there. Being all alone somewhere. No one knew where I was either. So at that time, I was also flying without any tracking. Flying all by myself. Everyone else who started that day isn't there. They flew somewhere completely different. No one on the radio either. And I was basically completely alone. In the wilderness, so to speak.
But it went well.
What happened to you there? I mean, did the heli have to fly you out?
Yeah, exactly.
You were actually just a failed landing.
Or did you
have you actually crashed in any other way? Well,
It was an emergency landing with a stall, and then about 10 meters onto my back. And that usually doesn't end very well.
And then you were probably treated in the hospital. And you were stabilized and all that.
Yes, exactly.
But didn't you have any permanent damage from it?
No, thank God, not at all. It healed very well. I was really lucky. It was an unstable fracture, but they fixed it up nicely. Everything went well and it healed well. I don't notice anything anymore. I was back in the air after two months and kept flying.
How do you do that, that an accident like that—which, especially if you're lying out there in the wilderness and saying, I'm really helpless now and really dependent on outside help just to get out of here at all—how did you do that to not build a mental block that says you're not flying into those wilderness areas anymore? I mean, you're still fully up for it. So how did you manage to overcome that? There are some pilots who, after experiences like that, don't dare to fly anymore and say, I'm always scared, I have a block, and it's not actually any fun anymore.
I did have some concerns before I went flying again. How will I react to it? Because you never know how you'll react to something like that. So that could have happened, but it actually never did. The thought isn't in my head while I'm flying, not in my head at all. I have no doubts whatsoever that I want to go flying as much as humanly possible.
Maybe it's also because I know I have a spot for it, could be.
But most likely, it's just so important to me that I've basically aligned my priorities with it. It's too important to me not to do it.
The allure of the wilderness overrides everything else you have going on.
I guess that's the main reason, and yes.
If a German pilot says, "Wow, what Ulrike is describing sounds amazing, I want to travel to that Norwegian wilderness and go flying there too," would you recommend it? And if someone wants to go there, what should they be able to do and what must they definitely pay attention to?
Where do we start? Bring plenty of time. I've hinted that there aren't that many, so it depends on what you want to fly. If you want to do a cross-country flight, you absolutely have to bring plenty of time, because sometimes it takes three or four weeks and you don't have a decent cross-country flight day. You can also get lucky and have five or six in one week. You never know. The weather is so changeable. If people say the weather changes quickly in the Alps, it goes even faster up here. So I'd say you have to have very, very good meteorological knowledge. You also have to be very interested in checking the weather constantly. Wind is a bigger problem here than in the Alps. In the Alps, you can still hide somewhere where the wind doesn't hit you properly.
Any protected areas or anything like that, that doesn't exist here at all. The wind is usually stronger than it is in the forecast.
Otherwise, it's an advantage if you have a few other hobbies related to outdoor activities, so that you can also spend the time you can't fly nicely. So if you like hiking, wonderful. A bit of climbing, wonderful. Or early in the season, if you show up here in May, when there can already be the first really, really good flying days. If you like to ski, like backcountry skiing, away from the groomed runs and away from the alpine facilities, then it's of course a huge advantage, because then you have something to do on the waiting days and can do something really nice.
Otherwise, if you like to do hike and fly—meaning you just hike up the mountain and glide back down—you have more options, so there are more days that are possible. And then you can, of course, combine that with nice hiking and climbing tours. Just the gliding. Then in the west of the country, in the fjord landscape, spring is particularly interesting, also in terms of thermals; it basically starts in February, you can already do a few thermal tours in Westland, and I think it's until well into June that there are still good conditions. After June, it eventually becomes too stable for thermals, and proper thermal flying becomes more difficult in the Westland areas.
Of course, you should do your homework and study the map a bit so that you internalize both the geography and the airspace, because neither of those is entirely trivial. Especially Westland has a very, very complicated airspace with an incredible number of small airfields that occupy enormous areas of airspace, sometimes even down into the mountains, so places where you can't even take off because of airspace restrictions. You have to master all of that, of course. And a lot of flying is done there with small aircraft, those small airfields, and they fly very close to the mountain peaks. So you shouldn't say, "nothing happens there." That's not necessarily smart.
Is there anything else you can do? Yes. Well, for cross-country pilots, if you really want to do some cross-country flying, you should maybe head to the east of southern Norway. That's the area around Vagomo—if you read it in German, it's "Strecken-Mekka"—this area is the Mecca for cross-country flying. You can really fly 100 kilometers quite nicely there, if that's what you'd like to do. You'd stay in the east of southern Norway.
Are there still normal slope launch sites there, or is it also launched from the winch? Only
Foot launch, actually. So paragliding, winch launch is only done here for safety courses, really. And acrobatics. Otherwise, you only have foot launch.
And if someone comes along and says, I'd like to experience a hike-and-fly adventure, what would be the best time of year? Really high summer, when you can also go into national parks like Jotunheimen and things like that?
Yes, well, for Jotunheimen and Heimen. And that area of Breheimen - Jotunheimen. Not before July. If you do it before July, you definitely have to have snowshoes with you. Even July itself can still have a lot of snow, especially in early July.
You should probably check beforehand. That depends on the winter. It varies a lot, of course, from year to year. So, if you want to move through the mountains on foot, without snowshoes or skis, in high alpine terrain above 1,500 meters or so, you have to wait until the end of July. August is actually the best time for pure hike-and-fly in the high mountain areas.
If you want to be sure of having a few good days... August is also often relatively stable in terms of weather. But it's often so stable that it doesn't work at all outside of the high mountains. So then you're very restricted to the truly alpine areas. You just have to have areas where the valley floor is at 800, 900 meters high. Otherwise, it's too stable.
Let's take a quick detour at the end regarding the weather in Norway. Especially this phenomenon of the extremely long days. That doesn't have anything to do with the weather directly. But this phenomenon of the extremely long days, where you also say, okay, the sun shines until 11 p.m. and it's already light again by 2 a.m. How does something like that actually affect flying? I mean, from what point are the thermals earlier? Do they start earlier in the day? So can you already take off at 8 a.m. and say the sun is already high enough? Or does the thermals ultimately still stick to what we're used to in Central Europe, that you can start at the earliest at 9, but actually only at 11 a.m., and then it's already over again by 7 p.m.?
The start is usually later here than what's common in the Alps. I've thought about that a lot—why is that? Because, as you said, the sun rises and shines a lot on the east sides as well, because it's more direct. I think it has to do with the fact that we have fewer vertical meters from the valley floor to the ridge. So, a typical, good, early-time ridge in the Alps often has over 1,000 meters of elevation difference. And this elevation difference makes the difference, because with the low-lying sun, it basically only shines into the mountains—at the right angle. And then this elevation difference makes a huge difference. We have, well, everything is around a 200 to 500-meter height difference. We don't actually have much more than that in the ridges that exist, because the elevation differences just aren't there; the terrain simply doesn't provide any more.
And that means that, in principle, the sun needs more time, I believe, to build up enough thermals so that it's actually thermally active. That's one thing. The other thing, I think, is also the geography; in the Alps, you have elongated mountains, ridges in principle, so you have very long valleys and long mountain ridges that run in the same direction. The
same orientation to the sun and so on.
Exactly, in principle you can start early where the thermals are still relatively weak, but you know, for the first 20 kilometers you can basically cruise along this mountain ridge and that doesn't change there. We don't have that here either. Basically, we're missing these mountain ranges where you can fly along... early in the morning to get those first 20 kilometers done. So in principle, you're dependent on the fact that if the start is very, very thermal and is going to happen earlier, you're dependent on climbing up and then flying to the next mountain, and that one has to be just as good. And there's usually a valley in between. So after the first thermals, you have to cross the valley in most places and then the next mountain again. From a geographical standpoint, I think it's a real challenge to start early.
And I think there are hardly any, so the earliest starts are around eleven, maybe half past eleven. And those are good cross-country pilots who have found exactly the right launch site. But of course, it's possible that... I mean, we don't have as many pilots as in the Alps and maybe haven't found the perfect spots and the perfect routes that allow for that yet. So I think there's still a lot of potential to start earlier, because without a doubt, the earlier you start and the later you land, the further you get.
The course record is 250 kilometers. That was broken last year after many years of eager effort to extend the distance. And that's not all that much. 250 kilometers isn't a lot. But in the evening, I think it goes on longer than elsewhere. So, it's not unusual to land around nine o'clock in the evening in the height of summer.
You might start maybe two hours later than in the Alps, but then you have those two extra hours towards the evening. A second weather question that interests me is that in Norway, the atmosphere is somewhat compressed. There just isn't as much air in the northern regions as further south. Also because it's not as warm overall and things like that. Does that also make itself noticeable in the base altitudes there? Is it the case that you say, okay, there are mountains that are 2,000 meters high in Jotunheimen or something like that, but the base altitude is actually rarely much higher than those mountains, so you have difficulties jumping from mountain to mountain in some places? Or do you have really nice base altitudes where you can say, I can also hit 3,000 meters in Norway?
Yes, the standard summer base altitude is around 3,000 plus or minus 400.
My highest was a bit over 36. Oh wow. That's quite acceptable, I think. So you look down 1000 meters to the highest mountain. That's pretty cool. Cool. Also thermals. You always think that thermals are so weak in the north. I don't believe that. That's not true. We have pretty strong thermals. So, especially east of the main ridge, we have 10 meters without any problems. That's standard actually during the best time. So as far as thermals go, I don't think they're affected at all up here. I think the season is just shorter. And this damn wind just ruins so much of the good stuff on good days.
But if you're flying with the wind, you could also say that the damn wind can help you too, especially for flying long distances. Or is that not right?
It's just a matter of weighing the risks and what you're willing to risk.
And you don't like to take that much risk?
I'm very careful with wind, yes. Wind—well, you can, it's a very strong thermal day, you can handle more wind, but it still gets very uncomfortable in the air. And I actually have my whole time... I have very clear limits that I don't cross. So I'm quite strict with myself. Simply because you don't necessarily have to push the risk. And I think wind is a factor that is often underestimated as a risk factor.
Last summer I saw that you were back in the Alps and flew a lot there. I don't know much, but you at least did some flights in the Alps. If you compare flying in Norway and flying in the Alps now, is there anything about the flying itself that you find more appealing?
More appealing in the Alps? I mean, flying in the Alps is a bit different from the flying I mainly do here. Most of the flying here is in the east of the country, where you have high plateaus and U-shaped valleys. So you're not flying in high alpine areas all the time. And there, you're constantly dependent on finding the next thermal, where you don't know where it is. So you fly a lot by clouds. It's a bit more similar to lowland flying, even if it's not lowland. Whereas in alpine flying, it's proportionally much easier to know where the next thermal is. I mean, you see the typical trigger points. You know exactly where you should fly to, to that ridge over there, and there's guaranteed to be a thermal somewhere, and boom, you're there. Then, of course, you have an incredible number of wind indicators, like other pilots flying around there who show it too.
So you can fly much faster, I think, in Norway. And in the Alps, because basically, you either circle or you go full throttle to the next thermal. It's so predictable in principle. And especially when you're soaring along the Pustertal, I think that's pretty easy flying. In terms of finding your way and knowing where to go. And also being able to hide from the wind a bit is very pleasant. So you just fly a few parts further and then it works again. So if you look at the wind maps, it's blowing like crazy at the main ridge, and then you fly a bit to the south and you're in the lee of the Dolomites, and then it's a perfectly normal, beautiful flying day. And you just don't have that here at all.
And when you're flying over the high plateau, you're basically constantly—especially if you're flying solo—constantly searching for the next thermals and you usually don't have all that much altitude above the ground then. Because if the ground is over 1000 and the base is at 26, then you just don't have much room to move. That's free space until you have to find something where you don't know where you're supposed to find it. So the trigger points are much harder to locate.
So, for someone who flies a lot in Norway like you, who basically learned to fly there, is flying in the Alps a piece of cake? No,
I wouldn't call it a child's play either. Well, I haven't been out in the Alps that much. So I can't say that. I can't rely on that. And this summer was unfortunately... I had actually planned to have more time to fly in the Alps. But the weather really wasn't that great for flying. And unfortunately, not many days turned out well. But that's the experience I have from flying in the Alps. That it's much more obvious where you'll find the next thermals.
So if you had to decide right now, between a good flying day in Norway and a good flying day in the Alps, which would you go for? Which would you rather do?
I'd love to experience a really good flying day in the Alps sometime.
Because, yeah, all the days I flew in the Alps this past year were these windy days where you'd think, "It'll probably work in this area." And then you'd keep catching glimpses of the wind. You'd constantly notice, "Ah, it's pulling through somewhere here." So, really good days—days where you could say, "Today you can do whatever you want. Today you can fly in any direction and really let loose"—those were unfortunately not included at all. I'd really love to experience that. That would be pretty cool. And if I ever had the chance for something like that, I'd definitely prefer an Alpine day.
That would be another goal for this year, where you say, I'm going back to the Alps and hoping for really good flying weather.
Yes, yes, I do. I'm definitely going back down to the Alps. For a few weeks or so. If it's possible this year, I'll try to do that. Try it again. Try it again, yeah.
And what about hike and fly in the Alps? I mean...
If so, then I'd love to go paragliding in the Alps with Bibi.
That's how I understood it too. But then flying with Bibi for really a few days, a few weeks. What would your wish be there?
As long as it lasts. So if there's a ten-day weather window, I'm taking it. No question. The weather decides.
Alright, Ulrike. Then I wish you that you get this chance in 2022, maybe this year or 2023, but definitely in the future—to fly Bibi in the Alps for ten days. But otherwise, of course, you can also do beautiful flights in Norway, where you can fly deep into the wilderness, where you'll need days just to get back home satisfied.
Sounds good.
Thanks for telling me about Norway and aviation. And all the best to you.
Thanks, you too.
That was episode number 74 of Podz-Glidz, featuring Ulrike Jüse in conversation with Lucian Haas. In the show notes for this episode on Lu-Glidz, you will find a series of further links regarding paragliding in Norway. Podz-Glidz is part of the paragliding blog Lu-Glidz's podcast offering. Lu-Glidz is online at www.Lu-Glidz.blogspot.com. By the way, Lu-Glidz is spelled l -u -g -l -i -d -z. If you feel well-informed or well-entertained as a listener of Podz-Glidz and a reader of Lu-Glidz, then please give something back by supporting my work as a patron. Your one-time or recurring contribution is entirely up to you. In other words, you can give as much as you want.
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