Running down a mountain, I've loved that since I was a kid. I grew up up in the mountains, and I had to run down to school, and I ran so fast that it always felt like flying. So when a ledge came up, I'd take a step forward and really jump down over the edge, and that's why I've been able to do that since I was little and I love it, running down a mountain really fast.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.
Stories from the cosmos of paragliding.
Today with Wendelin Ortner. And I am Lucian Haas.
The Dolomitenmann is probably the oldest and most traditional competition that also includes paragliding. Many see it as the cradle of Hike-and-Fly races, above all the Red Bull X-Alps. And some of the participants are just as legendary as the Dolomitenmann itself.
Wendelin Ortner participated in the very first Dolomitenmann in 1988 and hasn't missed a single competition since. He has skipped the annual races held around Lienz. He even won the paraglider ranking six times. He landed in the top 5 nineteen times. Most recently, he started for the Red Bull Legend team.
Someone who has been around this long can tell you a lot. And that's what the 57-year-old does in this 97th episode of Podz-Glidz. Not just about the Dolomitenmann, but also about how paragliding has evolved over a period of now 35 years.
Wendelin himself was the first paraglider in his home region. He spent his childhood on a mountain farm high above the Drauthal. Even back then, he dreamed of simply flying down to school and then back up home at noon. The fact that something exactly like that actually became possible for him years later still makes flying—and especially hike-and-fly—feel like a dream to him even today. If
If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting my work as a patron. You can find out how it's possible to do so easily and without any obligation on the Lu-Glidz blog website, specifically on the "Fördern" page.
Wendelin, how does it feel to be a veteran?
Yeah, it's really funny, because the kids thought it was really nice. Like, when they read the word for the first time in a newspaper, they had a lot of fun with it, and that's why it feels good.
And why are you a veteran?
I've been flying for quite a long time. There are many locals near my home who saw the very first paraglider they ever saw, and that was me. And they still remember it today. It was also the case that a year after I started flying, I participated in the Dolomitenmann every year. That was the first time for the Dolomitenmann. And I always take part in this competition, I'm always there.
The newspapers report on it, otherwise you wouldn't become known as a paraglider pilot. And they think that it's apparently something extraordinary, that you've been doing this for so long. For me personally, time has passed faster than expected. I don't think it's that extraordinary at all, because for me, flying still feels like it did in the first minute when I started, it's still the same joy. And I'm actually happy that I can still be part of it. That's why, for myself, I'm of course not some old-timer, but it's new every single time. And I'm happy that I can still just do it and fly, and the joy...
is unbroken. This first Dolomitenmann was in 1988. Now we're in 2022. In between, I think—if I counted correctly or read it right—there have been 35 Dolomitenmanns in total. I believe one was canceled once because of Corona or something.
No, Corona never caused a cancellation. Fascinatingly, the Dolomitenmann always took place. Even during the Corona period, we were really lucky. Even if it had happened a week later, it would have been cancelled. And that happened every time. It was only because of the weather that they couldn't fly three times. But the competition itself always took place. And that alone says a lot about the Dolomitenmann. Out of 35 times it took place, it could only not happen three times. Which competition in the world is like that? I don't know a single one.
35 times, or minus three, at least then you flew with them 32 times. Can you actually still remember every single competition, or do the memories blur together when you're actually starting there every year?
The memories naturally blur a bit over time. But as soon as someone brings up a specific situation, it becomes completely vivid again. It resurfaces. And there are so many memories that pop up in your head again. You can remember certain things as if they happened just yesterday. Others, of course, are like, "Oh, that happened too," just like with everything. But it has been a long time. And yet, I find it feels like it was only last week, almost sometimes, for the first time. I find it very fascinating that you can remember certain things. That you can remember certain things so well because they were, I suspect, just so intense in the way you experienced them.
And that's why it sticks with you.
Maybe not every listener knows exactly what the Dolomitenmann actually is, how it's structured, or what kind of competition it is. Can you briefly describe what it's about and what's special about this Dolomitenmann?
Dolomitenmann was invented at a time when mountain biking was emerging, although back then they weren't real mountain bikes like they are today. Paragliding had emerged as well. It was still a very young sport back then, only slowly becoming known. A well-known skier, Werner Grissmann, had the idea to create a competition where these disciplines would appear together in one event. A team competition, so to speak. And he added a mountain runner and a kayaker to it. So, the competition takes place like this: first, the mountain runners start, they do a mass start,
they run up the mountain, and at the top, the paragliders are waiting; they get tagged, like in a relay race, just by a handshake, and then it's the paraglider's turn. But the special thing about the Dolomitenmann is that the paraglider doesn't just fly—like, he doesn't just take off and fly thermals and navigate gates, that's not the case; instead, the paraglider first has to walk to the launch site. And that's also timed; the launch itself is all counted. You have to be fast at the launch, and then you fly a specific route, which is in the glide angle range—that's about seven kilometers, a valley crossing; as fast as possible you land again, you have to walk again, you walk up a bit more; in total, we have about 300 meters of elevation to walk, even as a paraglider with the equipment.
They just carry it up the slope, as the paragliders know it from the practice slope, which many didn't find very popular—hiking uphill with the glider in your hand. And then after the second flight, we hand over to the next team member, the cyclist, also with a handshake; the cyclist rides up the mountain, rides back down, and then hands over to the kayaker. And the kayaker, as the last person, then comes back into the city of Lienz, the goal is at the main square, and whichever kayaker reaches the goal first, that team has won.
For the paraglider, which is actually more important—the running qualities, because you first have to run to the launch site and then have to climb up to the second launch site in between—or are the flying qualities really the deciding factor?
Yes, both are crucial; it's like in winter sports, in the Nordic combined where cross-country skiing and ski jumping are combined. It doesn't help if you can cross-country ski great but can't ski jump, and it's the same with the Dolomitenmann. So you have to be good in both disciplines. It is flown with very small gliders, so they have to be paragliders, they aren't speedgliders that are allowed, and it's flown very fast, which isn't exactly harmless, because a paraglider simply isn't built for high-speed flight, so you need a fair amount of flying experience. And as far back as I can remember, I've never seen anyone win who wasn't really very good at paragliding but at the same time also in great physical shape.
So you have to be very good in both disciplines.
Is this route that you paragliders have to cover today still the same as it was 35 years ago?
The route has changed several times; it's different. For the first Dolomitenmann, it was a completely different route because the gliders had changed, the performance of the paragliders had changed, and the glide angles had changed enormously. So the route was changed multiple times. In recent years, it has more or less stayed the same, but in earlier years—at least six, seven, eight, nine, ten different launch sites, what we had at the Dolomitenmann, yeah.
And they were always adjusted to, okay, the performance has improved, they glide better now, so we have to give them more distance so they can actually glide down, or what was the decision that the starting places were also changed? The
The starting locations were also changed, but it also had to be exciting and attractive, and in the past, people wanted to offer something new again, more progression. And eventually, of course, the height of the mountains is the limit; you can't increase it any further. So, because of that, it stayed the same at some point. They said, "This is a good route, it's really well-suited," and from the organizers' perspective, it's also easier if you do it the same way year after year. But we've been to many, many places, always searching—especially at the beginning of Dolomitenmann, looking for something new—and now it's become established; it fits very well so far.
More than 30 years ago, paragliders were basically half-parachutes, hard to launch and all that. How chaotic did it actually get back then? I
I can still remember, during my first Dolomitenmann, I had a glider that had a beautiful name, Superspeed, although that was less about horizontal speed and more about top-to-bottom, so how fast it hit the ground. So the word Superspeed and glider 3 fit perfectly, and you were allowed to fly as far as you could there. It wasn't that you had to pass a specific point, you had to reach a second staging area at a certain point, but which was aerodynamically impossible to reach, and then you just flew a stretch along the slope and really landed somewhere between the trees, where it somehow worked, because you hadn't taken the meadow beforehand, even if you had a few meters of altitude. It's similar to X-Alps, it's not squeezed out until the last meter, and that was already very exciting; many of them ended up hanging in the trees somewhere or on a lift cable or something, yeah.
And if you look back at those years, from when would you say you could really start talking about flying with these paragliders?
Ah, that happened relatively quickly. For those who still remember, there was quickly a Triller, which had very good performance and were also exciting gliders. They were completely closed at the front at the leading edge, with only a few slots right in the middle, and they would often fold over during a collapse like an air mattress and then stay that way. So there was already a leap in performance, it happened very quickly, even though the gliders weren't even certified back then and it wasn't mandatory to have a reserve parachute. So the performance development was already moving forward. I personally never flew a Triller like that because I always had a bit of respect for it and was afraid; I preferred, ah, I'll live a bit longer and for that I'm a bit slower, it doesn't matter, and so I focused a bit more on the hiking and said, it doesn't matter if I lose a minute or two while flying somewhere, I'll just walk faster. But these gliders, the development went upwards rapidly at the beginning, they just had less to do with today's safety standards.
So those were, and the weight was just heavier; they were difficult to carry and very awkward to lug around. So, the most progress happened only in recent years, but in the beginning, it was... well, the desire was always there. I can even remember talking to manufacturers, saying, please build a glider for the Dolomites, for hike and fly—gliders that are easy to launch, that still fly reasonably well, so that they aren't so voluminous, aren't so heavy in terms of weight. But you couldn't get any traction; you mostly just got the answer that paragliders go up by car or by lift, but they don't go on foot, and the equipment actually just kept getting heavier in the beginning.
My very first gear wasn't heavy; it only weighed seven kilograms, but over time, the equipment kept getting heavier. I still remember how the first pilots showed up with 12, 13 kilograms of gear, and they'd say, "Are you crazy? What are you hauling up the mountain?" And then it got even heavier, up to 20 kilograms and so on. The real turning point came with the X-Alps gear. That was, wow, a highlight for all the hike and fly enthusiasts—the birth of today's modern hike and fly with lightweight equipment was X-Alps. And X-Alps, in turn, came because of the Dolomitmann. X-Alps itself was born on the Dolomitmann; Hannes Aach, the mastermind behind X-Alps, was regularly at the Dolomitmann too, and that's where in Lienz, at the Dolomitmann, the idea for X-Alps was born.
Since you're saying this development started relatively light, then got heavier, and then lighter again—did that same development happen with the Dolomitmann itself? Did the gear people had to carry for the Dolomitmann also get heavier for a while before it became significantly lighter again with X-Alps and so on?
Yes, for many pilots already, but not for me personally. I kept my first glider; I've always used my first light one. Back then, it was actually a light glider, and I've competed with it for years—not in pink or neon yellow, but with a really chic design for that time that still turns heads years later. But for years, that was actually the best glider, my very first one, and the gliders changed over time because that was the lightest one, yeah, exactly.
But you don't fly with that anymore today, or you just don't use it for show flying, you probably don't fly with it to actually get on the front podiums, then you can basically compete with the old gear again.
Yes, exactly, that's the great thing, even the curve tools have become lighter. It's incredible, nowadays a curve tool with a protector and all that stuff weighs 500 grams; the ones from 1987 can't even compete with those anymore. So, the curve tools today have become lighter, which is great—you don't even notice them anymore when you're wearing them.
You've won the Dolomitenmann several times, at least the paraglider part, and probably partly with your respective team members, the whole team competition as well. How often did you win the paraglider part?
I won the flying part five times, yes, the individual discipline, and it's a huge incentive to win that at the Dolomitenmann because the runner-up isn't even mentioned in the individual discipline; at the awards ceremony, really only the winner is mentioned, and the others, well, they just participated too,
And the team ranking is counted down to fifth place; in the early years, it was only up to third, and now there are even two categories, professional and amateur. That's why it was already my goal—I can remember when I participated for the second time, the first time I did quite well, and the second time too, I was actually moving pretty fast, made some mistakes, and then there's always that mental math: look, if I hadn't done this and that, then I would have... oh man, I might have even won. And then you start getting, like, sort of motivated, but the main reason I wanted to do well at the Dolomitenmann was simply that I was interested in the trophies for the individual disciplines. There are beautiful ones,
...exquisite trophies, made by an artist who is also originally from Silja, Joss Birkner. He became world-famous through Red Bull because he created those bronze sculptures at Red Bull's headquarters in Fuschel am See—those giant 12 bulls bursting out of the water. He also created the Dolomitenmann trophies, and I happened to be there before the first Dolomitenmann; by chance, I ended up in his workshop and saw how he makes them. Because his neighbor was our kayaker at the time, he said, "Now we have to go over to our neighbor's place, let's take a look in his workshop and see what he's doing; he's making the trophies for the Dolomitenmann." And they weren't like the usual tin cans, those lead crystals, or those sheet-metal trophies—they were truly beautiful works of art that fascinated me. Seeing how he cast and shaped them, I thought, "I absolutely have to have one of those," and that was my goal. That's why I focused specifically on the Dolomitenmann; I'm not really a big competition pilot otherwise, I prefer just flying around the area and enjoying it, but that really motivated me—I wanted to have a trophy like that.
Now you have five of them, at least for the paragliding. I have all...
six at home—oh, I forgot, I said five times, that's right, that's not important—I have them all at home and I have all the different ones at home; I have a ski jumper, a paraglider, a kayaker, and a mountain biker, because we swapped with each other, with participants who had won the individual ranking several times, and they said it doesn't make sense for me to have four paragliders at home when there are four disciplines, so we developed a sort of swap meet among ourselves and swapped the trophies there, and now I have four different ones at home. The other two, I sponsored for social purposes.
When was the last time you won, in what year? I think,
if I remember correctly, 2006.
That is...
not at all yet
it's been that long, depending on how you calculate it. Yeah, exactly, at 35 years old. What's it actually like regarding the performance level? Well, in paragliding, they often say that you can still fly relatively sportily even into a relatively high age. There are also examples where people well into their 50s have still won PWC competitions and things like that. What's it like with this Dolomitenmann?
Well, because it involves running, and it's steep uphill, and the sections are—I mean, for short bursts, you have to run very fast—it's naturally harder with age to keep up with the young people. Due to the physical difference. But that's one thing; otherwise, in terms of flying itself, I feel like you don't get worse. If I think back specifically to this year, the route was pretty much the same as in previous years, and I actually did my fastest time ever since I started doing the Dolomitenmann. And thanks to the light and fast equipment—as fast as it is today, I haven't been beaten on time this year.
What place did you finish in this one?
Year? I think 22. Out of how many starters is that? From the starters, it's always limited to 120, and now I don't even know how many were involved this year. It's just 120 teams, it's limited to 120 glider handlers.
But then you're seen as a senior and a veteran who's still doing great.
Yeah, that makes me really happy. I really like it and it's fun, it's a blast. And for the last few years, I'm no longer involved in the whole thing where every second counts for the win; it's always been a wish of mine, even back then, that I wanted to participate and just enjoy the whole thing, not having to go out the night before either. You don't have to train for it every day and it doesn't matter at all whether you're a few minutes faster or slower, that doesn't play a role, it's just about enjoying the atmosphere, being there—that's what I love so much, that's why I still love doing it so much, because I can really enjoy it, even though it's of course very exhausting at times, but even when it's exhausting, there's a certain pleasure in it once it's over.
You just mentioned training, even though you said you don't have to train every day or anything like that. How do you actually train for the Dolomitenmann?
You train for the Dolomitenmann primarily—which the other competitors don't have to do—to be able to start as quickly as possible. For example, people say, and I'm a flight instructor too, take your time at the launch site, don't rush, concentrate, organize the lines nicely. With the Dolomitenmann, this rule is pretty much thrown overboard, so it's about time, and of course, you have to practice that. Just like a firefighter practices how to connect the hoses as quickly as possible, you also practice as a paraglider pilot how to start as quickly as possible, and that is definitely training you have to do. It's not just, "okay, I've shown how it's done once," but you really have to practice it very often, because during the competition itself, a certain amount of nervousness usually comes into play, that you're a bit excited.
...and so that it happens automatically. Above all, you should have practiced it so often that you made some mistakes during training, rather than just thinking, "Look, it works anyway, I did it three times." It's really something—I practiced it while I was still ambitious about winning; I even went out to the practice slope at night and practiced with a torch in the dark so that the movements were so well-rehearsed that I could do them by heart. Then it was very easy; when the sun was out, it went very smoothly during the day.
Did you fly at night then too?
Well, you can't say that now, of course I've flown a bit at night, but in Grashalmöhe and,
the hay was standing high. Yes, exactly, it was on private property, which is the nice thing—I grew up on my parents' farm where the practice field is right in front of the front door, so I could also quickly head out to the field after the daily chores to practice. But another type of training is, of course, the starting; you practice that, and it's not just starting, but you also have to land quickly. You don't need to, if you're flying in, I don't know, the World Cup, you don't need to be able to land quickly, you fly over the finish line and that's it, the boy reaches it, but also being able to land somewhere as quickly as possible and without excessive curves, so that it fits well, and training the glide angle. How much gas can I give in the air? Because if you press the foot speed bar too much, it's possible that you sink too much and thus fall short and don't reach the goal at all, and have to cover the rest of the distance running, which takes much longer than flying, and vice versa.
If you fly with too little speed bar, you end up coming in high, which costs time again with the altitude loss. So that's what you can train from a flying perspective, and alongside that, of course, the fitness, the running—and for that, I specifically started participating in running competitions. I was totally disappointed when I did my first running competition; it was like a mountain run and I thought, I'm good, but then I do this run and, yeah, shit, they aren't getting slower. I thought they'd slow down, why are they running away so fast? They can't possibly make it all the way up the mountain. And then it was like, it went up a forest path and at the first bend they were still fast and I was finished, and then I was way at the back, like third to last or something, and then I get to the finish line at the top, exhausted and almost last. I really thought before that I was a good mountain hiker, but they... the nice thing was, at the finish at the top, they all congratulated me anyway and were friendly and said, great that you took part, and that's really good for the first time. And that motivated me so much that they gave me dates for the next running competition right away, and so I...
I got into the running scene a bit, and of course, I got much better because it's completely different from just walking or running briskly up a mountain. It's totally different, and I was able to improve there, and I even managed to win a Dolomitenmann for the first time. Have you ever won a running competition like that? Yeah, but in my age group and smaller ones, not at the district level, but not anything huge, though I've stood on the podium quite a few times, yeah.
In the Dolomitenmann, if I saw it correctly, in paragliding—at least in the recent ones—based on the route, the mountain runners arrive at the top, and as paragliders, you don't have to run up the mountain at all; instead, you have to run down a good stretch of the mountain first, and also relatively quickly over rocks and stones, I'd say.
Yeah, that was back in my younger years, when I was 20 or 30—that was my favorite discipline. Running down a mountain, I loved that even as a kid. I grew up up in the mountains, I had to run down to school, and I ran so fast it always felt like flying. So if an edge came up, I'd do a little leap forward and really jump over the edge, and I've been able to do that since I was little. I love running down a mountain really fast. I can even remember stories where sometimes the hut owner would come out in front of the hut, looking horrified, and ask what had happened. He thought someone was coming down fast to get help because I'd just dash down the mountain so fast and with such speed—even on foot.
So, it's kind of like flying for me too, as they say.
A friend of mine, I told him that I'm doing an interview with you here and he said, yeah, he saw you once up at the launch site and one of your students' helmets rolled down the launch site and you sprinted after it, overtook the helmet, and caught it again, and he says he's never seen anyone run down a mountain that fast.
Yeah, I can do that very well, and it's happened often that someone didn't have a glider with them anymore; they thought at the launch site that they couldn't fly anymore, so I lent him my gear and then he said, you fly down with my gear, I'm already walking down. Then I helped him up there at the launch site to put the glider on, and down below I helped him pack it up again—that's how fast I was on foot, too.
I've gotten a bit slower in the meantime; you get more cautious as you get older.
Are there specific techniques for running downhill, where you can say you can run that fast but still be safe? If you have a lot of momentum, you have to be able to stop again somehow, and then the risk of falling is also high and all that.
Yes, of course, you can flip over sometimes, but so far it's only knocked me down, but I also had bad shoes, they had little tread, so it's good to have shoes with good tread for running downhill. But I don't think, I'm not sure if you can really practice that very well, you can practice a bit, but it almost has to be in your bones, like with me, that you can run really fast over rocks somewhere. And because you just mentioned being able to stop, it just occurred to me, in a competition too, I really couldn't stop anymore when running downhill. That was once for the 10-year anniversary, that was it, there was no intermediate landing, usually there's an intermediate landing in a Limitman where you run again, and there was no intermediate landing, instead the flight distance was over 11 kilometers long and just in glide flight, and at first I was annoyed, how is that supposed to work, I'm not that heavy in body weight because I'm not very tall, I'm only 1.66 and don't have many curves, 58 kilograms, how is it supposed to be fast paragliding if the weight is missing?
And then I had the glorious idea of filling my backpack completely, not with weights, so iron plates instead of wooden slats, put iron plates in and carried a water bag, so I had about 30 kilos of equipment at the staging area. But with that, you also had to run downhill to the first staging area, and then I sprinted off at the top, just like usual, with these 30 kilos on my back; I couldn't brake anymore, I wanted to walk slower and then there were these switchbacks and I just had to go straight down, I couldn't run zigzag at all, but straight down, it was like a miracle, I didn't fall and it didn't flip, and one who ran off before me was also a South Tyrolean, he could run downhill well, so I overtook him like he was walking uphill, because I simply couldn't brake there anymore, but luckily at the staging area I managed to brake it in, so I was at the staging area very quickly then, yeah.
You briefly mentioned earlier how you trained at night and stuff, and that this fast start is what it's all about. Do you actually use a very specific packing method for the glider for that, so you can say, okay, I can just toss this one and I know all the lines are sorted and I just have to start running and it launches behind me?
Yes, that's how it is. The preparation when packing the glider is very important, so very conscientious, correct techniques were developed there, and we were actually among the first to participate, we were pioneers, and there were some very funny, different methods. In the meantime, only a few methods have crystallized as being the best, but there were some really weird techniques, all sorts of things people invented, it was really funny. I even saw one once with the idea that he stands above the paraglider before the launch so that the lines stay nicely on the glider when he pulls it apart, and then he just walks over the glider and things like that. So, interesting things were already being invented there, and I remember, yes exactly, in the first years, in the last years it's been like this, that we with the harness on at the launch site
have to be standing at the handover point already with our harness on to rule out the possibility of forgetting to fasten the leg loops or other buckles on the harness—so that you've already put it on—but for decades it was always mandatory to have the entire piece of equipment inside the harness. So you also had to put on the harness quickly, and back then, even though the entire kit was packed, I managed to get it down to under 30 seconds from the packed backpack to takeoff. For that, you have to have everything packed neatly and laid out correctly and so on. And nowadays, it's much easier. You have the harness on, the glider on your back, some people just put some elastic bands around it so the glider falls down quickly, opens up a bit, and you're off.
So the whole thing takes less than ten seconds. Today, it's the standard for many to be in the air.
Are these things you learned, specifically regarding the packing method, or how to pack the lines so they don't form any knots when you unpack them really quickly? Are there things you use today in your normal flying as well, or since you're also a flight instructor, do you tell your students, "Hey, pack it this way instead, it's better for unpacking later"?
Definitely, yes. Definitely. You can see how cumbersome some people are and how they don't handle it properly. I always think to myself, what are they doing here? It's much easier that way, and of course, I show them how to simplify it and rule out a lot of potential errors.
And what's your trick for that, or what's your technique?
My technique is actually relatively simple, because I also use it every time during hike and fly. Sometimes you get to a launch site during hike and fly that is very windy, where you don't really have the time to lay out a light glider and wouldn't even manage to hook up. So I always leave the harness on the glider. I don't separate them; I even accelerate with it already hooked up. I actually fold it quite normally using that accordion technique, but I don't put the lines in short loops, rather in very long loops. You lay it on the launch site with the glider on top, not rolled up so large from the leading edge to the trailing edge; you fold the glider nicely from the trailing edge to the front leading edge, but also the size of the backpack, as it is. I lay the harness exactly on top, remember how I laid it on without twisting it, and thus, in windy conditions, I can just open one zipper of the backpack, step into the harness, and only then take the glider apart.
Most of the time it works; I already have the brake handles in my hand and then I just pull the glider apart a bit, hold the lines up so I can see the risers to make sure there are no knots in them—well, for Hike & Fly, during the Dolomitenmann, you don't do that, you save yourself the time and just look at the risers up top, if they're okay, then I'm good to go.
Have you ever experienced it at one of those starts at the Dolomitenmann, where despite all that great preparation and everything, something goes completely wrong and you end up standing there for like a minute having to untangle the lines again?
Yeah, yeah, I've done everything stupid myself. That's why I came up with the idea to practice it. Like I said before, during training, it's not just important that it works three times, but you have to practice it so often that you also notice when it doesn't work. And that can happen exactly during the competition; it happened to me too. You'drath want to sink into the ground, especially if you have a good team ahead of you and you're far ahead in the rankings, and then the seconds slip away, and you can't get moving because you're busy untying knots. It almost can't get any worse. You've seen scenes like that again and again at the Dolomitenmann, they keep happening and will keep happening, where instead of lines, you just have spaghetti at the second launch site and everything is tangled.
So, you mostly have that problem at the second launch site, then at the first, as I said, a lack of preparation means you don't set up properly. But getting tangled up is more likely to happen at the second launch site because there's the run between with the glider in your hand, and also the landing, depending on how the glider falls when landing. So the worst case would, of course, be if the glider falls upside down, not a few lines ahead or a few behind.
You really have to re-sort everything first so that you know that it's all...
is correct.
Yes,
Yeah. So
That's a major factor, and it's cost me at least two or three wins because it didn't work out at the second launch site the way I would have liked. But it's the same for others, even the world's best.
Okay. Wendelin, let's jump into the topic a bit and go way back in time to your childhood. You just mentioned that you grew up on a mountain farm. When you grow up on a farm like that, how do you come to the desire to want to fly?
Yes, I've mentioned the mountain farm a few times because I think that was the foundation for me, for how I even started with flying in the first place. That's why it always fascinates me. Most of my flight students come from the lowlands. So, for them, the idea is actually obvious—there's a mountain up there and you want to fly down to the school instead of walking down. And of course, I'd much rather have flown back up after being down at the school—it was always 300 meters of altitude—that high-altitude flying, that's what I would have wanted most of all.
And flying, especially because the road back then wasn't paved; you just couldn't get to the house by car, you couldn't drive there, it was really just a footpath. You could barely manage it with ox carts, but otherwise, it wasn't a proper road. And because of that, just for that reason alone, flying... but I was probably also unconsciously shaped by all the many stories my father always told me before I went to sleep. I mean, he always told me these really very imaginative stories about flying, like how an eagle came along and took a little man with him, his name was Josele, and the eagle would fly around in circles with him somewhere and then land somewhere again and take off again, yeah. And I can remember that, and I always wanted that.
And I could always, when I dream and I've dreamed of flying, if I concentrate very well in the dream, then I can fly. So if the concentration fades, then it's of course dangerous, but if I concentrate well, I can really fly without anything, without any aid. And I always had this wish, I always wanted to fly. And as children on the farm, we'd go out into the hay barn with the umbrella and then we'd jump down into the hay. That only worked once with the umbrella, then it was broken and it wasn't taken with much joy. But, I mean, this whole wish to fly is there in many people, but I think it's also very special in my case; my grandfather, my grandfather wanted to fly too, not just my father.
And you have to know, my grandfather was born in 1858, so that was a long time ago; that was the time of Otto Lilienthal, and I can only imagine that he might have seen a newspaper article once, and then my grandfather tried to build something similar himself and take off. So he wanted to fly down from the mountain farm too, and he actually ran out from under the house, ran down the meadow, and probably, luckily for me, he didn't take off. Because you know, in those days, if you flew, the chance of survival wasn't very high, but he tried it. The desire to fly was there even with my grandfather. Did you know your grandfather? No, I didn't know him.
He died before my time.
But his flying machine, if you want to call it a machine, that's still standing
somewhere at your... I think it was all turned into firewood again. It was burned again after it didn't work.
That means on the mountain farm, everything was handled very practically, anything that was no longer
useful
was, then it really brought some heat in the winter. Would you say, I mean, is that the case with you, you have several siblings too. Yes. Do they fly too? Or was this desire to fly, were you the one who basically kept that alive in this family?
No, that's really only me. One brother tried it again, but without my knowledge. He secretly took my gear, which wasn't such a good idea. And then he thought, there's a nice lift there. Then he apparently went around the height, he was vertical and luckily wanted to come down at the same spot, but it still scared him a bit, so he quit. But otherwise, my siblings themselves, they have no ambition to do it themselves. Not even flying along, no one wants to do that. So that's not it. You fly tandem, but have none of them ever flown with you? Yes, some have flown with me, but not all. Some say, no, not at all.
They lived up there on that mountain farm, though. They probably all had to go down to school. The 300 meters. Yeah. Can you explain why you were the only one who then said, I want to fly? The
I've also asked myself why that is. That it infects some people like that—as far back as I can remember, it's just been in me. It didn't just appear out of nowhere. I didn't see something specific and go, "Ah, now I want to fly too." When I started paragliding, I hadn't seen a paraglider before. I only saw a photo. "Ah, look, there's a parachute, you can fly down from the mountain, and the parachute is already open before you're in the air. What else could happen?" And that was enough for me. I saw that and thought, okay, I'm doing that right away. I've always wanted to do that. And there were probably kite flyers already, they existed before, but that didn't work for me because I didn't have a license yet, and what do you do with a bike and a kite to get up the mountains? It's a bit difficult. So I only saw one photo of paragliding.
Then I said, look, I've always wanted to do that. How many times I've talked about it while mountaineering, like it would just be so cool if you had a parachute, you could pack it out and fly down. So I've always...
I was always talking about it and I always wanted to do it. And I don't know why it's not the same for the others; they've also said they want to fly down, but I just think maybe they're more cautious or something, that they're a bit more hesitant, but I wanted to do it at any cost. I would have gone all out for it, I always thought. I really wanted to do that.
Yeah. Were you sort of the "airhead" of the family?
Yes, I guess I still am, yeah, exactly. And I have these dreams, maybe I'm also—I've always been a very imaginative person, it was always difficult for me in school, I often drifted away from the lesson, I wasn't always focused because I was somewhere else entirely with my thoughts, often it was about flying and stuff like that, and that wish for this dream to come true was so strong, so I'm so happy and so glad still, I really appreciate it even today, that I can fly and that's not a given for me, so it's almost something sacred for me and I just enjoy it, I enjoy being in the air so much, it's like all those stories, the children's books, the fairy tales there were of Aladdin and so on with the flying magic carpet, and so when I say, look, now I'm getting into my flying hammock and now I'm going to fly down over the mountains and just hover along there, that's how it feels for me, so for me it's not a matter of performance, but simply,
gliding over the landscape.
Now you said you dreamed about it a lot as a child. What was it like when you actually took off with the paraglider for the first time? Was it an absolute high, or did it maybe not live up to your dream idea of flying, because you were basically just shooting down over the grass with those old bags, and from today's perspective, you might not even call it flying anymore?
Looking back, it doesn't matter whether it was a short or long flight; I can remember my first takeoff very well—in the first moment, I was actually startled because it wasn't planned at all. We were on the practice slope, and at the beginning, it was actually just a relatively flat meadow where you pull up the glider and just run a bit without taking off. And I start running there for the very first time, and then I'm already flying, because the situation was this: there weren't that many paragliders, it was just some Maxi,
those were reconstructed parachutes, which I had to share with a colleague, a fellow course participant, who weighed 110 kilograms and I weighed just about 56 kilograms. Okay, the same size glider and the flight instructor kept shouting, run, run, okay. When I got to it for the first time, I pulled up the glider and just ran as fast as I could. And then I started running and I was in the air and he didn't say anything now,
and I had already lifted off a few meters, and that whole first moment was rather scary—shit, what's happening now?
And I was, but I'd only just flown about 4 meters, then I landed again, and then nothing, right back up again and again and again, and every single time I ran off, making sure I managed to get those few meters off the ground again. The addiction was even stronger then.
When you compare that to the other people who took the course, would you say that with your big dream of flying and all that, you maybe even had some kind of special talent for it?
Yeah, I'd say so, yeah. I saw it in the other course participants too, looking back now. I mean, I was very motivated and had so much fun with it, and my big advantage—which is also a talent—was that the launch sites at that time were very, very steep. I can remember the practice slope, the actual practice slope where they finally said, "Now we're allowed to take off," it was so steep that the glider wouldn't just lie there on its own; it would slide away. The other colleagues in the course always had to hold onto the glider so it wouldn't slide off. And I, having grown up on a farm in rather steep slopes, had no problem standing up and starting to run, and that was my big advantage; I wasn't afraid because I was standing up there.
And the others, they hardly dared to stand up, they held onto the tufts of grass so they wouldn't tumble down the slope, and then the flight instructor says, "And now run!" And that might have been my talent advantage there, clearly on the practice slope. And I only went up because on the second day, that one guy who weighed 110 kilos was always there, something was already hurting him, and then I had the glider all to myself, and I just kept running up and down with my own glider, like, without getting tired and without getting hungry or thirsty, I just couldn't stop, yeah, like a little kid, over and over and over again.
Addicted to flying. Are you?
Even today?
Yes, still. It's actually quite bad for me if I don't have a paraglider in my hands for a long time, and it doesn't have to be a big flight, but just lifting off a few centimeters, just a little hop like that, and if I just explain it to the students on the practice slope and say, I'll show you how it's done, and then fly through the air for just a few meters, then it feels right again. Otherwise, it can be that I'm not as relaxed, yeah.
You're working as a flight instructor today, and if I saw that correctly, this year is practically your anniversary year—it's your 25th, if I did the math right.
Yes, as a flight instructor, exactly. And my plane is also turning 35.
Great. What
What fascinates you about this job? Flight instructor. I never wanted to be a flight instructor; I can remember even during the admission for the flight instructor course, I remember they asked why I wanted to become a flight instructor, and my first sentence was, I don't want to at all.
Why did you do it then?
Yeah, exactly, that's where the question came up, because I'd already seen how it goes, or during my own course—I can remember myself, in my course, on the first day on Monday there were eight of us, and then three days later the course was already over, there were only half left, not because they didn't want to, they just couldn't do it anymore, they were somehow definitely out. I thought, I'm not doing a job like that,
If you only have injured people constantly, and I don't want anyone to get hurt or injured, I wonder if one can bear that, but then it was... I only helped out once at the flight school back then, in Siljan, and it was so much fun, and I laughed so much, I mean I really... we had so much fun in the course and laughed until my stomach hurt from laughing, like muscle soreness, and that's what eventually made me decide to become a flight instructor. It was also like, I can remember being on the practice slope when I started flying myself, I immediately helped the others too, laying out the gliders, aligning them, and showing them how to clip in, I showed them that... so mostly also at the launch sites, if someone was still at the launch site, I usually stayed there too, and if someone had problems and I saw they weren't getting off, then I helped them again, carried the glider up again, laid it out again, so it's just in my nature, by default, that I want the other person to fly too, not just me, just looking at it, they aren't getting off, they need help, and then just starting... I can't do that, and that's why I usually help the others at the launch site, and it's been like that for me until today, actually, always like helping someone out so they can do it too, the flying.
A flight instructor with heart and soul. Roughly how many flight students have you trained in that time?
Wow, well, I actually tried to do some rough statistics last year—you have to take those at the flight school—and then I looked through them, and I calculated it to be around 4,000, roughly. 4,000? 4,000, yeah. So that's really crazy, yeah. Of course, not all of them stayed with us, but they somehow did a course, whether it was a trial course or something else, so roughly that many, yeah. You can only start to imagine how many takeoffs and landings that adds up to once they got their license, so that's already a lot, yeah.
Isn't that enough for you to be able to say that you've infected thousands with a flight virus, maybe? And that you've somehow conveyed my idea of flying to them as well?
Yeah, I'm not really aware of that, but since you're asking now... I haven't really thought about it, because I'm always thinking ahead to the next course, what's new again, and it's like starting from scratch every time. So I hadn't really thought about it, but it... it really is, actually, when you think about it, you've accomplished a lot, yeah. It's very demanding work too; even though it can be very beautiful, it's also very responsible work, and it really is, when you think about it, like, wow, huge, yeah.
Were there any situations or phases in your life as a flight instructor where you noticed your job might have even taken away your own joy of flying?
Well, it never took away my own passion, even if someone got hurt, for example during a course, if someone got injured or something. For me, it was always that when I went flying again, and then it was gone again or something like that, but the passion was fully there. But, not wanting to be a flight instructor anymore—of course, there are always phases like that in every job, where at some point you're fed up with it, or it's too much, or it can be overwhelming. Those moments exist, of course, but luckily they are only moments, and they are always overshadowed by the joyful experiences and so on. And somehow, I also have the ability to forget bad experiences pretty quickly, I find that completely fascinating.
When people often ask about the worst experiences, I really have to start by thinking about it. Only with time do certain events often come to mind, and I'm relatively good at—I think that's also an important quality—being able to forget and just enjoy things all over again, seeing that it works and runs smoothly, and seeing the joy in that. But I also suspect that it's related to the fact that I've really never experienced a truly terrible situation, like someone crashing in my course, becoming paraplegic, or even dying, luckily. I mean, I only know that from flight instructor colleagues who often quit the job afterwards because they just can't deal with it.
And after an experience like that, but I have to say, I count myself as one of the lucky ones, because you can't choose that yourself; you don't have control over whether something happens or not. Often, you can only give instructions over the radio, and if that even works in the situation—the radio, the communication, all of it—you also need a guardian angel. And I really count myself as one of the lucky ones who never had such a bad situation that I said, "Now I'm hanging up my hat on this job."
Has your approach to the job changed over the years, perhaps due to new techniques regarding instruction, but also new techniques in terms of the materials available, such that something has changed to the point where you say, as a flight instructor, I have to think differently or approach it differently?
Yes, constantly, yes constantly, and I love that, I always like continuing my education and training like that. I like it when I see something again like, oh, that can be done differently, and so on. I also always read fascinating articles, or your articles too, and I've been doing that since the beginning. I remember being with the club in Lienz back in the day, and we had a club magazine, and I even wrote an article once, quite provocatively, with the headline: Get rid of the license.
And the thing was, once you read the content, it wasn't meant that you shouldn't do any training at all, but rather that it doesn't help you if you got a license once 20 years ago and that's enough; you have to keep educating yourself anyway, there's always something new, and that you have to keep doing advanced training, and so on. And I have to say, I've often learned a lot from students too. I also do advanced courses where experienced people come, like for example, perfect backward starts—I didn't teach myself that, of course, I learned that from students who came from areas like the Palatinate, or somewhere, Moselle flyers or something like that, who have really hot launch sites where we'd say, they're spinning in the mountains or something, launching out like that, in a gap, they can do that so well, and they actually showed me how it's done really well. So I often adopted their techniques; it wasn't just always the teacher teaching the students something, but it also goes the other way, that students—now not the complete beginner who has no idea about paragliding, but that they also teach something or often show, look, it also works there, or look, you can also turn over back there, I hadn't even thought of that yet, and why does that work? That you can pick things up from pilots who come from outside.
and I really love that, and I think it's great when you feel validated in reverse, like you're doing it right, you know.
You already mentioned earlier that you have many student pilots who come from the flatlands, or I'd say "flatlands" in quotation marks, it could be hilly terrain or something else. Yes,
Yeah, yeah.
If you have these different types of students there now, is there a recognizable, palpable difference? Can you tell with a student, "This is a typical lowland person" who's just coming to me for beginner courses, versus "This is a typical mountain person"? I mean, can you see it, can you feel it as a flight instructor?
Nowadays it's less so, but for beginners it was clear—not the slopes of the practice hills, which were very steep; nowadays practice hills are rather flat and not as steep anymore. So there were already differences in how you manage on a mountain, but that's more the physical side, not the enthusiasm. I find it absolutely fascinating how people who come to the mountains to fly are already thrilled just by seeing the landscape, the mountains; that's motivating too, and for many, it's a "wow" factor. Of course, there are others for whom it's intimidating, like flying down into a valley with mountains on either side, and for some who find that terrifying—that's perhaps the big difference.
Growing up in the lowlands and in the mountains, because for us, the mountains are normal, but for someone who doesn't come from the mountains, I think it's primarily not just joyful, but also intimidating. Like, there's a mountain there, what, how, am I supposed to fly down that now? But the air is the same; there aren't any rocks just lying around in the air.
You said earlier that you forget the bad things very quickly. What about the positive, great things—I assume you won't forget those as easily? So, what stands out particularly in your memory, moments you especially love to look back on?
First of all, it was at my home, how I flew there, and then I realized that you can also take off at my place, right by the house. So that was my second parachute I owned, which wasn't even a parachute, but it could actually fly. It was a paraglider profile, and the thing could fly. And I managed to take off in the spring, right next to my parents' house, and gain altitude without spinning out. And to fly up to the clouds, where as a child you always dreamed, what would it be like up there by a cloud? And then up to the cloud, then a valley crossing over to a mountain, over the summit, back again, and landed right by the front door.
I would have said, okay, you can kill me now, I can die, I was the happiest person in the world. You can't experience anything even more beautiful than that, I was just blown away. So that was already very fascinating for me, it was a real highlight, because I never would have thought it possible that you could do that with a piece of cloth back then. And that is also what continues to motivate me, among other things, another reason why I still love flying so much, because this development is still ongoing. So the gliders, it's so much fun with the equipment. I love my High-Can-Fly gear so much that I can't just let it sit around somewhere, I have to go flying, because that's exactly what I always wanted back then, such nice light equipment that you carry up the mountain, that you don't even notice on your back, and that's just so easy to take off and so easy to land, and yeah,
you can put your hands in your pockets and fly down and the thing works, and I don't have to constantly worry about you landing in a creek or getting stuck in the trees. That exists now—the equipment that's available today—and that's a major motivation for me and something I really love, because I've experienced this whole development from the very first rags, as I said, that were dragged down somewhere, mattresses, but the fascination of flying was just as great back then. I can also remember the first flight where I was in the air for 10 minutes; the students today would laugh if you said you flew for 10 minutes. Back then, people were making phone calls—not with a mobile, but with a real phone, with a rotary dial, on a landline—someone told me, I was in the air for 10 minutes, flew for that long. So, in the beginning, that was a sensation, but as I said, a few seconds was just as sensational for me back then. But that first flight stays in my memory, right by the front door—that's the area where you only ever went on foot as a child, which you know very well, like your own backyard—and then you fly over it, fly up the mountain, where I had previously walked up, and then you fly over the ridge, up to the summit, and
doing the herding, so I've actually used that, like going out on the paraglider to look for sheep on the farm or something, so you're flying around and as a kid you'd be out on the alps as a shepherd, and now you can do that from the air. We always wished for that; you'd be able to see right over the hill, into the hollow in the back, and then you turn with the glider, there's a sheep, there's another one, okay, that's it, they're all there, and it's done in minutes faster and without any effort. I still find that completely fascinating.
Those were your great experiences back then, but looking back now, what was the last big "wow" moment you had while flying?
I had one yesterday, for example. Yesterday was such a beautiful day, Sunday; the weather report had already predicted it would be perfect for a hike and fly. And since I'm currently at my girlfriend's place in Salzburg, we went to the Schafberg—a beautiful mountain there—and the top was snow-capped. The last third of the height was all white with snow, while down below, the forest still had those autumn colors, the leaves were still there, a bit of that with the beautiful orange and colorful tones, the forest and the lake below. And then we hiked up there, and it looked like you were in the Himalayas. The temperature was also a bit crisp, the wind, and while going up, you'd think you were climbing some mountain in Tibet or something. We went up to the summit and then just flew down over Lake Wolfgang to land. It was just the two of us again, and that was wow.
So that was my last "wow" experience. Luckily, I've had many such "wow" experiences, or a few weeks ago we were in the Dolomites too, and my girlfriend, who hasn't been flying for very long, she hasn't even been flying for a year, and we took off there at Kohlroddella. There were a lot of pilots there, we all saw that the weather was good, which isn't usually my thing, going to a launch site where there are so many pilots, and I thought, shit, more and more are coming, now we'll have to take off at some point right in the middle of the crowd, that's not my thing, taking off with 100 other pilots. And then they took off in front and there was a tailwind at the launch site, and since we can take off relatively well, we got out and out with the tailwind and then we were all alone, we took off just the two of us, zero, nothing, we were up there well over 3,000 meters, straight across to the Marmolada and then, wow, that was really such a hammer experience, there were no idea, 200, 300 pilots there and we only took off just the two of us all alone in front of the launch site and yay, straight across immediately, and picked up the queen right away,
to the Marmolada peak, and then we landed in the Gardertal too, so that was a dream as well. I have so many highlights, yeah, so even in the morning, often when I just fly down through the high fog, there are still these wisps of mist and you're gliding underneath it with the sunrise and wow, that's just beautiful for me, yeah.
In an email you wrote to me, "I love weather reports." Yes. Why?
Yeah, because they didn't really exist back then. I grew up back then, computers didn't exist, you couldn't sit at home and go into a computer, so there was this telephone service at the airport where you could still call, it was like an automatic announcement, the weather report immediately from the control tower, and that was always considered large-scale. And at some point over time, there were suddenly weather reports that could distinguish within 15 kilometers that the weather must be different there, that the weather on the flight mountain can be different again in one that's only 10 kilometers away, and then I thought, how does that work? So that was like a highlight and an experience for me, I love that stuff, I love it because you always wanted weather reports that are a bit more detailed, that fit us paraglider pilots, which always helps me, because this large-scale one is already, because the weather situation in the forecast was very often the same, large-scale, and then there are days again where you can fly and where you can't fly at all, and in these small-scale weather reports, these detailed ones, you can read that out now in the weather report, you don't even have to be really smart yourself and somehow guess, like it was common back then, let's just go see, the weather will be checked at the staging area, maybe it works or maybe it doesn't, and nowadays that's mostly, these weather reports are also quite right if you have the current one, and I love that, so for me that's all, wow, technology that I really love, I like that, or standing at the staging area up there and knowing how the wind is at the landing field down below, that was always the
valley wind systems in the mountains—well, those didn't exist back then; we always wanted that, for decades, to have something like that be possible, and nowadays you can rely on it, you can even check in the air what the wind is like somewhere. And that's why I like it so much, because weather is one of the most important factors when you go flying, especially if you want to stay alive, and now there are many more possibilities for me to get to fly—meaning, if I go up a mountain and have to come back down, that's very rarely predicted beforehand.
How often does it still happen that, because you grew up in the mountains and maybe have a different gut feeling for weather developments and things like that, you recognize things that these weather reports don't pick up or haven't modeled yet?
That does happen. It's simply the result of years of experience as a pilot; you look at the sky every day, and then often with just one glance in the morning, when you pull back the curtain in the bedroom and look out the window, you see, oh look there at the Riebelstaud, it's wobbling like that or like that, and the sky looks like this, the cloud looks like that—the weather report actually said this—but if the cloud looks like that and it's moving a bit fast, you can often tell with just one glance. Many would say that's intuition or the subconscious, but it's simply years of experience, and you often see it at a glance, even though, as I said, sometimes the weather report says the same thing, but this fits or this doesn't fit.
Alright Wendelin, thank you for your very interesting stories from 35 years of flying, 35 years as a Dolomitenmann, and 25 years as a paraglider instructor; that's a lot of history coming together in two stories, and we probably only scratched the surface of all the other little details and experiences you could tell us about. Thank you for that. You're very welcome. And I wish you—I don't know how much longer you'll be at it—but I hope that in your remaining time as a flight instructor, you can still say that you basically bring everyone down safely, so that you definitely don't lose your joy of flying through any stupid incidents.
I'm glad to hear that, that's what I'd wish for too, yes exactly. I can't imagine right now that I'll stop flying. I always say I want to still be flying at 90, and that's the main goal. It's not a goal to win a competition or to be good at it, but to stay healthy while flying and to enjoy it.
At 90, that's good. We can make a date, we don't have to go all the way to 90, but if you're maybe 80, then we'll do the next podcast. Yeah, but on top of a mountain with Hike and Fly works. That's for sure, and then we'll talk about Hike and Fly flying in old age. And I'll pick the mountain. Excellent.
Podz-Glidz is the podcast of the paraglider blog Lu-Glidz. I am the producer of both offerings. My name is Lucian Haas. Lu-Glidz can be found online at www.Lu-Glidz.blogspot.com. Lu-Glidz is spelled l u minus g l i d z. On Lu-Glidz, you will also find the show notes for this podcast episode along with some further links. If you are already a supporter of Podz-Glidz and Lu-Glidz, thank you. If not, then please support me in continuing to serve the paragliding scene. As a freelance journalist, I invest a lot of time into this, and it needs to be financed somehow. Especially since this isn't a hobby project, but part of the work I do for a living.
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