We pulled off our best moves when we had a knife to our throats. The magic moves, the really wild stuff—we'd each have a problem, like for example, bad weather coming the day after tomorrow. And that's when the boldest and cheekiest moves were born, and they worked every time. And that's also something I take with me into life. When I have a really big challenge, it's something beautiful. It's an opportunity to make something out of it. And I've developed a completely different relationship with difficulties than I had before.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.
Stories from the cosmos of paragliding.
Today with Peter von Känel and I am Lucian Haas.
The X-Peaks project captured the attention of many paragliders in the summer of 2024. I also watched with amazement via live tracking and social media reports as the Swiss Peter von Känel and Chrigel Maurer ascended and flew all 82 four-thousanders of the Alps and the routes in between, using only skis and their paraglider. And they did it in just 51 days.
Eat, Hike, Fly, Summit. Fly, Hike, Eat, Sleep, Repeat. That's how you could summarize the duo's daily routine. And in between, there were many adventures. However, this episode 146 of Podz-Glidz isn't meant to be a retelling of the events. I'm more interested in the background. What drives someone in a project like this? How do you plan with all the uncertainties, especially the weather? And how do you manage to reduce the inevitable risks despite the ambition and extremism? Mountain guide and former PWC pilot Peter von Känel talks about all of this, including how he came up with the idea for X-Peaks in the first place.
How his extensive experience in mountaineering perfectly complemented Chrigel Maurers piloting skills. How important it was to always think in different scenarios. How difficulties turned into opportunities. And how much brute force and how much luck were ultimately involved in achieving success.
If you enjoy Podz-Glidz, please consider supporting my work as a patron. You can find out how easy it is on the paragliding blog Lu-Glidz, specifically on the "Support" page.
Peter, imagine you're talking to someone who doesn't know anything about mountaineering, skiing, or paragliding. How would you explain the special thing about this X-Peaks project to them? That is
That's quite an introductory question you're asking there. I'm known for my introductory questions.
We're looking for an adventure, away from the ordinary. And we don't really look left or right. We just do whatever draws us in. Whatever we feel like doing because we can have a great adventure. And the mountains, that's like our playground for us. And we move through these spaces and have a huge amount of fun doing it.
But you had a goal too. Or was this goal actually not that important to you?
The goal was to have a great adventure. That was the primary goal. And when I first had the idea for X-Peaks—the project is called X-Peaks—when I first had the idea to climb all 82 four-thousand-meter peaks, just by my own strength, with a paraglider and on foot, I really didn't know how realistic that was. I couldn't gauge it. I thought about it a lot. And I just couldn't reach a conclusion. But I thought it would certainly be interesting to try. And for me, the vision wasn't standing on peak 82, but for me, the vision was to leave home.
With everything I need to potentially climb all the four-thousand-meter peaks in the Alps.
Since when did you start getting pregnant with this idea?
That was sometime in the summer of '22.
I was maybe going through a bit of a midlife crisis, as that's how it is at my age, I guess.
You were 50 back then, if I'm seeing that right, or was it 49? Yes,
49, exactly. And I was working as a mountain guide. And as a mountain guide, you have a relatively lot of time when you're lying in bed in the evening, or also when you're waiting for the guests. You always have quite a bit of time to think. And sometimes the thoughts are pretty superficial, but sometimes they also go quite deep. And one of those deep thoughts was, what can I actually do? And I'm not really top-tier anywhere, neither as an alpinist nor as a paraglider pilot. But I can fly well and I can climb well. And I spent a long time studying how one could meaningfully combine these two disciplines.
And flying in the mountains has always fascinated me. And so the whole thing slowly crystallized a bit. I thought a bit smaller at the beginning. I thought of the Swiss four-thousand-meter peaks, there are 48 of them. And then I thought, what would actually be the next step up? And that would, of course, be all the four-thousand-meter peaks in the Alps. And what would be the cleanest style possible? That would be if you did it by your own power and without a support team. And the idea was basically fixed in its entirety. But as I said, I had no idea how realistic the idea was.
Did you think about doing this as a team from the start? Or was it also an idea that you wanted to do it for yourself? Like, would you have maybe tackled it alone?
I think it's definitely something for a team. The first thought was actually, is this a cool idea? The second thought was, is it realistic? Because those who know me know that I have a lot of ideas, and many of them are quite unrealistic. And thirdly, I thought, who do I want to do something like this with? Because it was clear to me that I need a partner for this project. I can't possibly handle this alone. And yes, the partner has to be a bit crazy to even get into something like this. And the partner should be funny, because you're relatively close to each other for a long time on this project.
And I think getting along well is the be-all and end-all. Because the whole thing is supposed to be fun. Yes, and finally, if someone can fly a bit well, that helps too, of course.
And that's how you ended up with Kriegl? Or how did you two connect? Did you ever tell him about it? And he said, wow, that's exciting. I want to join in.
I wrote Kriegl a text once and briefly described how I envisioned the project in broad strokes. And he wrote back saying he had to sleep on it because we'd be sleeping together. The next day he wrote to me, okay, I'm in, be there. And asked if we wanted to meet up sometime to grab a bite and discuss the whole thing a bit. I think I kind of walked into some open doors with him. He also had projects in mind involving mountaineering and flying. I think he wanted to start as many of the 48 peaks as possible in Switzerland and fly down. But the problem, his problem, was a bit of how he was going to get up those 48 peaks.
And he was actually open to his project, and that led to the other one, and we hit it off relatively quickly. Kriegl was also the first person I asked. He was the first one who came to mind, and I asked him first and he agreed right away.
But you knew each other before that too?
Kriegl and I have known each other for a very long time, that's how it is, yeah.
Have you guys gone mountaineering or paragliding together before? I mean, not recently, but before the time when you were still doing competition paragliding 20 years ago and maybe had regular contact with Kriegl because of that?
We ran into each other every now and then, and I think in 2020 we did the first Eiger Tour Winter Edition together. That's done in teams of two, and Kriegl asked me if I'd form a team with him. It was my first competition again in some 20 years, and we already noticed during training that it was really fun to be out there together, that we complement each other very well, and yeah, it just worked very well for the two of us, even on a human level. With
With this XP, or X-Peaks project, you had the goal, okay, we want to do all 82 four-thousand-meter peaks in the Alps, only on foot and only with a paraglider, and then you also set a time limit. You said it should happen in 72 days. Why 72 days?
The 72 days were actually the result of reviewing our calendars. We both looked at our calendars and saw that it was the largest possible window we could manage. And then we had a starting point and an end point. That effectively resulted from our other commitments. But we were quite radical and actually pushed back our other summer commitments pretty ruthlessly.
So you really cleared your schedules for this period. You would have said, for 72 days, we have nothing else going on.
We really carved out a 72-day window to do this project. And even then, we didn't know how realistic that was. We only knew that Ueli Steck did the project in 62 days. But not the same project, I think that's still important, he did everything by bike and on foot. And he also had a support vehicle. So he had a support team. And of course, we have quite a few advantages with the paragliders. On the other hand, we didn't have a support team and we didn't know if the advantages would outweigh the disadvantages. And we thought, 72 days, that would be,
could be realistic to pull off this project.
In the end, I think you managed it in 50 days. And if you subtract the rest days you had in between, I'd say it's about 40. I haven't counted it out exactly, but you have to get to roughly that. So, on average, two four-thousand-meter peaks a day. Would you have considered something like that possible yourself during the planning, the dreaming, and all that?
No, I didn't actually think it would be that straightforward. Specifically, we were on the move for 38 days, and the entire project from the start in Frutigen back to Frutigen took 51 days in total.
We had pretty difficult conditions at the beginning. There was a lot of bad weather in the spring and early summer.
And yes, we were already able to train like that. On our training tours, the weather was often bad too. And looking back, that was actually very good because it carried over into the project. And we could actually start from June 8th, we had our window. But the weather was really, really bad. And on June 10th, it looked like we could fly. But in the morning it was still raining where we were and it really didn't look that good. But we said, okay, let's just go and take everything with us. And either it'll be a training day or it'll start for real right away. And then it really took off.
We then pivoted. We had the light harnesses and we took the
...ski touring gear with us. Because there was so much snow. And we also knew we couldn't fly very far. The weather report really wasn't that good for flying. And so we pivoted. And that was kind of the motto for the whole thing. We were constantly replanning and adapting to the conditions.
When you're so heavily dependent on weather conditions and have to plan accordingly, can you actually plan an adventure like that in any reasonable way? Or do you just have to prepare your mind to adapt to the unknown, and then be able to basically rethink things spontaneously at any time, change direction, and say, okay, we're doing it differently now, but we're still pushing forward.
So, to start with what doesn't work: you can't pre-plan the route. That's impossible. We adjusted our planning several times a day at points. But what you can do is prepare very well and establish decision-making strategies; we defined blocks that we wanted to do or that made sense. For example, in the Bischabel area, there are various combination possibilities for these mountains, and depending on how good or bad the conditions are, you can adapt accordingly. But that was actually exactly what we were looking for. The project isn't linear; it required flexibility and also a great deal of uncertainty.
And that was actually what appealed to us about the whole thing. Our goal wasn't to follow a predetermined plan or, yeah, basically put the peaks in an order and then tick them off one by one; our goal was actually to do cool moves and get the maximum out of the respective conditions. And that's what we were served—grabbing the opportunities that presented themselves along the way. That's what appealed to us.
If you look at the paragliding scene, the term Magic Move is well known in relation to Chrigel, because of what he always does during his X-Alps. Are you also someone who is known in this scene as a mountain guide for Magic Moves in some way?
At this scale, when your feet are on the ground, you have certain options for doing cool things, but the real magic moves happen when you're actually flying. But we did have one massive magic move in our tour when we combined the Mont Blanc South Summit into a single trip. That was a pretty wild magic move. And I, as a mountain guide, prefer not to plan too far ahead; I love the flexibility and the uncertainty. And my guests know that, and they like to be surprised. So we just agree on a time window and then see where it's best, what makes sense, and then we go out and do the maximum—get the most out of the conditions we encounter.
I'd like to take a step back to the actual preparation you did anyway. What did that look like? I mean, how did you prepare for it as a team? What did you do beforehand to get in sync with each other or perhaps to learn specific things from one another?
That was a pretty multi-layered affair. We also had slightly different focuses. For me, it was clearly the flying. For the last 20 years, I've been doing tandem flying and hike-flying. And as for cross-country flying with modern gear, I really had to practice that again. And from 2023 until now, leading up to the 2024 project, I was literally in the air every spare minute. It was like I experienced a second spring. Chrigel gave me his X-Alps Omega. And that is a really fine glider. And I felt comfortable under it immediately. And I did as many flight hours, launches, and landings as possible with this glider, just to get fit at flying again.
Chrigel shifted the focus a bit more towards mountaineering. And then we discussed a lot about how we want to operate as a team. We knew there were some dangers. And also some potential stumbling blocks on a mental level. I can give an example: when I fly with Chrigel, it's possible or likely that there will be situations where Chrigel can still act. Just for a moment. And I can't anymore. And I have to recognize them and I have to have the courage to say, okay, no, that's one step too big for me, I'm not doing that.
And this requires a lot of mutual trust. I have to stop trying to prove to Chrigel that I'm a very good pilot. It's exactly the same with mountaineering. If Chrigel is scared on a ridge when it gets airy, it's good if he tells me he doesn't feel comfortable anymore. But in mountaineering, it's a bit less acute in that sense, because you're connected by a rope and if he can manage the ascent himself, he can actually get over any section that I got over earlier. But the mental side—that really played a very big role in our preparation. We discussed these topics a lot.
For example, we also discussed how much risk we want to take, how we want to handle risk on our tour. Or we didn't want to go all out, but we actually wanted to
keep the risks within a reasonable range where we feel it's manageable.
What was it for you, specifically regarding this project, where did the risk lie, which risks were you both willing to take, and which ones did you say you wanted to rule out?
You always have a bit of a buffer, more or less, when you're out there. If you go all in, full risk, then you have no buffer. But we always have a bit of a margin; in Swiss German, we have a very nice word for that, we call it "Spatzig."
And we often discussed this reserve, how much reserve we take. So on one hand, we tried to design our entire system to be somewhat risk-tolerant. For example, we decided early on that we would take emergency gliders. That was also a topic because, after all, that's an extra kilo you're carrying, and that makes a big difference. On the other hand, we also said we'd take forgiving gliders, we'd take B-gliders and not two-liners for this project. And that actually brings in a bit of safety margin. We also said that when we're in the mountains with our feet on the ground, we normally go roped up.
Just like we usually do, when I'm out with guests, we were basically out there as a team, plus or minus. And we often discussed risks before and during the project, and we also frequently looked at how many safety margins we still had today. Was that good? It was sort of a ritual. We actually often took a quick look every evening at how we had performed in terms of safety today.
Is it like a list you work through, at least in your head or in conversation, where you say, okay, what went well today, what went poorly, where were we at the limit, where were we in the orange zone, where was it maybe red, and where was it green?
Yes, I think on one hand it requires a lot of honesty with yourself, you have to be a bit self-critical, and it can also go the other way, where you say, okay, today we took too much reserve and more could have been achieved, we could have squeezed more out of the day. But for us, that's not really the danger; we actually always have to brake a bit more so that, in terms of risk, we don't fall out of the range we want to move in. Were there situations,
where you
did you consciously slow down or consciously call something off? For example, you were already in the middle of a start process and then you'd say, "No, that's not right, we're actually reaching the limit of the risk we're not willing to take," and we'd pack up and just get off. We actually had that
once, when we descended from Weiss-Mies, we knew the weather would turn bad the next day. And we'd go home. We had a rule: we could drive home from a valley town, leave the weather behind, and then take public transport back to the same valley town and basically continue our track.
And we were on the Weiss-Mies, it was quite windy and we actually didn't agree when we got back to the glider depot, do we want to fly here now or not? And for Kriegl, it was just barely okay. He tended more towards flying, but for me, it just wasn't quite okay to fly anymore. Because there was really quite strong wind and then we analyzed, okay, if we fly, what can we gain? And what do we risk? And then we realized that we can't gain that much at all, even if it flies well. And then we decided to descend and then at the end we drove as far as we could with the skis and then at the end
with the glider on our backs, the skis on our backs, we hiked down through the green into the valley in our ski boots. And those aren't exactly easy moments, not even for me. Because I don't really want to be the one who doesn't dare, and I would have liked to fly too, but it really didn't make any sense. And we decided to hike down on foot after a pretty extensive risk analysis. That also gave me a huge amount of confidence in us as a team. So that was also an important step for you? That was certainly an important step, also daring to show weakness and maybe
to make unpopular decisions for the sake of safety, when it's necessary.
You just said that the situation up there was just barely at the point where you're like, no, that's actually too much for me. Is that a gut feeling, or do you really have something like a decision tree in your head where you say, we're measuring and the wind is now hitting more than, every now and then in gusts, more than 65, and I just don't trust myself with that. I would have dared it up to 63, but 67 is just too much for me now.
At some point, your gut does come into play, but for me, it happens relatively late. By nature, I'm more on the bold side, and if my gut tells me it's not good, then it's really not good at all; for me, it's more of a thinking process and a weighing of options. We also didn't have protectors on our ultralight harnesses, and you simply have very little reserve. If you fly out of the valley, out of the Saastal, you have few landing options, and if it pushes you down and you have to land somewhere tight in a clearing, still with shifting winds, then that's just a pretty high risk, and we weighed that against the potential gain we would have had.
to pick up, if we had flown, and it just didn't fit. But it really is quite a thought process, and I've been flying for a very long time—since 1991.
If I don't feel completely comfortable, I certainly take that seriously and try to get to the bottom of it. And if you look at it a bit systematically—what can I gain at most, what can I lose at most, and how high is the risk of losing it—then you can make sensible decisions, even if it doesn't feel that great emotionally in the first moment.
Were the decisions you made always sensible, would you say, or were there situations that from your perspective—maybe Chrigel experienced it differently, but from your point of view in life—were actually precarious and where you'd say the factor of luck even came into play, that nothing happened, and where you end up saying, we just barely made it through?
When it came to flying, it was pretty hairy a few times, and we had safety margins thanks to our relatively forgiving equipment. And I think we needed those safety margins, certainly at least once at Badeset, where the conditions were really limited. I think I was more than happy with the Theta compared to the Omega, because that was the decision beforehand: do we go with the Omegas or do we go with the Theta? The Theta is a mid-range glider, the Omega is a high-performer, and I think the Omega might have already overwhelmed me in that situation, because it was really
hair-raising, and what
was was there? Terrible sink or turbulence or what did you guys have going on there?
That was just a huge downdraft, and it pushed us down. We just landed in the Badeset, then did the peaks, and landed in the Lay, sheltered from the wind, and the takeoff went deep top, but when we flew out, it was really quite a hairy business, and we lost 900 meters of altitude in the shortest amount of time and had to land again down on the glacier plateau after maybe not even three kilometers. It just washed us down there, and
then did you climb down from there or did you take off again? No, we
then we walked a few hundred meters forward across the glacier plateau on foot, and then it went down again and we were able to take off again, and then we let ourselves wash out a bit further out of the valley, then at some point we caught some thermals and were able to turn up.
And then we were able to fly quite far towards Switzerland, which was pretty much my limit, and in the evening I said, "Okay, we needed those safety margins, and I don't really want to be out there like this." But Chrigel also underestimated the intensity of this lay. He said he hadn't expected it to be so severe, and you can see that even when you're out there as a pro, it makes sense to build some safety margins into the system, specifically for those kinds of misjudgments, so that they don't lead to an accident. Now...
it turned out well, but can you really only do projects like this if you don't know exactly what to expect beforehand?
We discussed a lot at the beginning about what to expect, and in the 38 days we were out there, I experienced two situations where I thought: Okay, now the safety margin was too thin, I didn't like it anymore. And I don't think that's such a bad result, if you experience two situations of a few minutes over 38 days where the safety margin really becomes a bit thinner than you'd like, but you also can't delude yourself, this project is not without danger, that's a fact.
Does such risk and, ultimately, danger make you happy in any way?
What really makes me happy is being able to control a difficult situation for me. That's what I'm really looking for, that flow feeling. But as for the danger itself, I'm actually a bit afraid of it. I don't particularly like adrenaline, I have to say. I'd rather avoid the danger itself. But on the other hand, I really enjoy situations that challenge me and where I can prove myself. That's actually what I'm looking for, that feeling of control. How
Do you deal with moments of fear like that one at Parc des Écrins in hindsight? I mean, how do you manage to do something again after the fear and the feeling of being trapped that comes from it? What positive things can I take away from that for myself?
I think I manage that very well. When I experience something I don't like, and it goes well, it's important for me to reflect on it, to be able to put it into perspective. I can't just tick it off and look forward; I have to effectively digest it, and usually, something good comes out of it. But I can also in that moment... we still had pretty hard thermals, and we had a long flight ahead of us. We flew all the way back to Bötti-Sibernahr that day, and I functioned very well even after that experience. And in the evening, I then needed a moment to myself to recap the whole thing again.
and putting things into perspective, being able to see what exactly happened—it helps me a lot when I understand what happened, and in this case, I did understand it. I also understood that the safety margin got a bit thin in that situation, but it was still good. I wasn't obviously in the red zone yet, but I wasn't as deep in the green zone as I'd like to be. It is
Is Chrigel just as much of a systematizer as you are when thinking through these kinds of risks, or is he more of a big-picture gut decision-maker?
That's a very interesting question, I think. Chrigel and I are similar and yet very different. I...
I think Chrigel also puts an extreme amount of thought into things, which is actually untypical for a pro who has been in the business for so long. He's still extremely curious and loves learning new things. He also enjoys getting to know himself better. For example, if we have a Föhn and it's actually quite certain that it won't fly, he'll take the glider and go up above the house, go up to the alp, and see if it really won't fly; he challenges himself with these decisions and with this process of uncertainty. And I find that really impressive about him. We are very similar in this regard, but where we differ,
Sometimes a bit over-analytical, I think he sometimes takes things a bit too far or tries to understand things that aren't relevant at the moment. And Chrigel has such a wonderfully down-to-earth way about him, and he's brought me back down to earth several times during the project—for example, when we crossed the Schreckhorn and Lautrahr. Those were the peaks, the third and second-to-last ones. We had really strong wind up on the ridge, and we had the gliders deposited down on the Gag at 3,300 meters, and I'd been thinking the whole time, how does that work with the wind systems?
And I was looking at the lenticular clouds and thinking about it a lot, and I asked Chrigel a lot of questions, and at some point Chrigel got annoyed and asked, does it matter? How much wind there is at 4,000 meters for the flight we want to do? I had to say, um, no.
And I think he's very deliberate on one hand, but on the other hand, he's also very pragmatic. He thinks about what he needs to think about in order to make good decisions, and I think that's also one of his great strengths. How
did you actually make decisions as a team? Was it always one person in the lead and the other following, with you being like the mountain guide making the decisions regarding the mountaineering, and Chrigel making the decisions regarding the flying, or was it more of a cross-pollination, like some kind of middle ground?
So, when it came to mountaineering, I was generally the one responsible for making the decisions, and when it came to flying, it was more Chrigel. We established that as a general principle, but we also agreed that we interfere with each other. It's not just accepted, but expected, that we get involved. And if, for example, Chrigel questioned my choice of route, I really had to provide a good reason, a convincing reason, as to why it made sense. And it was exactly the same with flying,
We had some very interesting discussions about decisions. By the way, we already had the first decision when we met in Frutigen and went up the first slope. I wanted to fly more towards Grindelwald and Chrigel more towards the south, so we already had to agree for the first time during the first ascent which direction we wanted to fly. Have
Did you guys leave it to chance sometimes, like flipping a coin or something, or was it really discussed out? Or how did you ultimately reach... I mean, two people is 50-50, so how did you eventually come to a decision?
We always actually tried to convince each other with arguments, and we often planned in scenarios. So, we knew the rough direction, and then we developed scenarios: How could it go? And usually, there's a probable scenario, a scenario if it goes better, and then another scenario if it goes less well. Then you're not really surprised while you're out there; you're not reacting, but you can act and follow a scenario. And sometimes you just have to adjust the scenario during the flight, for example. We could do that when we were wing to wing...
When we were flying, we could do that by shouting to each other, or sometimes we'd call each other while in flight. But each time—when you do a high-altitude tour in the morning, for example, you get a relatively good feel for the day: how much energy is in the atmosphere, how much wind there is, how the whole thing is developing? And then you already have quite concrete ideas when it comes to flying, and you discuss them, you create the scenarios, and then you head out and see how it goes. And it gets really interesting when opportunities suddenly present themselves along the way, when doors open, and you see: "Wow, come on, let's reposition, now we have a great chance here." Then it gets really interesting, and that's often the start of a magic move.
You just mentioned that you always set out different scenarios, some that could go better and some that could go worse. Would you say that, all things considered, it actually went better than worse for you much more often?
That's really something that definitely surprised me, how often it turned out better than expected. It's truly amazing when you... I don't know, when you have the courage to try something, when you're already out there anyway, and you say, oh come on, let's try that. Often it works out, it's really amazing. That already started during training. We had these carbon plates we wanted to test, basically as snowshoes. You can clamp the plates between the crampons and the boots, and we had to go into the snow, and the weather was bad again, and we said, okay, come on, let's go up the Mönch.
We're heading to the Jungfraujoch, but we're taking the gliders with us anyway because it probably won't fly, but maybe... you never know. If we were just at this point on that day, I would never, ever have called for trying to fly from the Mönch with those weather forecasts, never ever. I really would have said: No, the chances of that are far too low. And then it just worked out, and we had absolute top conditions. Above the closed cloud cover, we could soar, and we spent hours carving around there, and it was fantastic, it was really cool, and it was often like that during the project, that we just
To be sure, we actually took quite high tactical risks.
Because a tactical risk—I distinguish between tactical risks and injury risks. You have to control the injury risks well, but with an adventure like this, you can take high tactical risks. With a tactical risk, you don't get injured, but you risk, for example, not being able to do anything at all if it goes south. Then there are no four-thousanders, and if we had planned carefully, we might have been able to do one or two, but with a high tactical risk, we might do three or four on that day. And those are the tactical risks, and we were just ready to take high tactical risks because we weren't goal-oriented, but we wanted to experience as much adventure as possible, and there were several times we tried a move
And we said beforehand: Okay, we don't know if it'll work, but we know that it's pretty much certain there's going to be a cool adventure, and
Then it often worked out.
Mostly really amazing for me. I've been blown away a few times by how that fit.
It's really amazing how often it worked out and how often it clicked, how
When you're out there as a team and those magic moves actually work out, do you really celebrate in the evening, like really let loose at the mountain hut?
We had a few times where we had the chance to have a glass of wine together in the evening, but we couldn't really go wild because the next day we had to keep going. But sometimes I was completely wired, just when everything went well again after a magic move in the evening, I could almost not believe it. And what helped me was that I wrote it down. I kept a diary and I actually typed into my phone what I experienced that day, because I knew if I didn't do that, I wouldn't be able to sleep at all, the thoughts would just keep circling and I didn't want to forget it under any circumstances.
Sometimes I couldn't process the experiences at all, so I wrote them down and could then tick them off. But it happened to me several times that I'd wake up in the middle of the night and think, wow, that was a move. And then I was so hyped up that I couldn't get back to sleep, there
It's things you've written down in your smartphone where you'd say, I wouldn't publish those.
Yeah, so when you have experiences where you say, yeah, okay, we had those, but they stay within the team, they stay between us, we don't even tell them at all.
No, that wasn't the case. I don't think I'm missing anything right now. I also wrote a book, so I basically formulated the notes, and that helped me digest the whole adventure and experience it all over again. And I really did exhaust pretty much everything, and I think that's a trait of both Chrigel and me. We're not extremely vain, and we don't really care about revealing sides of ourselves that might not be so sexy, so to speak.
Did you have all these impressions, or the pre-dreaming and all that? Did you also have something like sleepless nights where you said, "This is moving me so much right now, I can't really sleep, I'm just resting," and everything is just spinning in your head and maybe rearranging itself? Or is it a learning process going on there, and you slowly understand what you're actually doing?
I actually have a relatively relaxed attitude toward sleepless nights. I think sleepless nights before a big project are somewhat fundamentally important for being mentally prepared and really thinking of everything. A lot of mental work happens during those sleepless nights, and very valuable things occur there. You also relax just by lying there; you don't necessarily have to sleep. You recover too if you lie there relaxed and let your thoughts circle. Of course, those nights can sometimes drag on a bit, but I know from experience that this is a very important process, that very important things happen in this phase and
Are there things, like moves or whatever, that you visualize beforehand that then end up happening exactly as planned? For example, Chrigel once told me that he sometimes dreams the night before about what special things he'll do the next day, and then it happens exactly like that. Did you guys experience something like that as a team during this project?
Yes, I think so, those are the scenarios we think about, and some of the rough scenarios, you do those the day before or during the night, and then you correct them, you see them a bit or adjust them slightly. But the big picture, what you want to do, that is something that is thought out in advance, and that is also one of Chrigel's great strengths, I think. He is enormously creative when it comes to scenarios, and enormously flexible in adapting the whole thing. But I also had, for example, a scenario beforehand that I didn't like at all. I was really worried that if we landed somewhere in a steep flank, I would slide off.
Because we flew with lying harnesses, and they aren't compatible with crampons, logically. And if you land somewhere, I'm talking on the Weisshorn or somewhere in a steep remote flank, and you start sliding without crampons, that's not funny, you don't want that. And that really worried me, and I actually figured out a technique one night on how I can take my ice axe with my belay device. I can put the ice axe in a leg loop of my climbing harness, and the ice axe is fixed with a sling in the tie-in point, and I can start with the ice axe in my hand, or I can also land with the ice axe in my hand, and if I start sliding, I can anchor.
Have
Have you ever tried that? Or did you just think about it, or did you say that I should practice that? I'm going to go into steep terrain and see if, with my harness on and everything, I can just anchor myself there with the ice axe.
So, the anchoring itself, I didn't have to train that. I do that regularly in my courses too. I don't know exactly how it works, but what I had to train was: Can I start with the ice axe in my hand, or can I take the ice axe in one hand and have the brake in the other at the same time and land like that? And I did some starts and landings with the ice axe, with the ice axe in my hand. How well can I stow the ice axe after the start? All those things, and we practiced them, and that gave me a lot of confidence to then be able to apply it. And there were several times I actually took the ice axe with me, ready to use.
It was never really necessary, but it simply gave me the necessary confidence. For example, if you land in that steep snowfield below the Mischschabelhütte, it works very well if the snow is soft, but if it's hard, then having the ice axe could be really useful, and for this flight, I had the ice axe ready at hand.
Are there things you would do differently in hindsight, or are there mistakes you wish you could have avoided?
Yeah, actually, I should have practiced launching in strong winds at altitude more. I underestimated that a bit. Back when I was still flying competitively, I was a very competent launcher; I had it really well under control, and I thought it was still the same, but the technique has evolved. I realized that I'm not quite as good at launching as I thought I was.
Because at altitude, when you're starting at 3,800 or 4,000 meters, the dynamics are just completely different, and if you have little space, the whole thing gets a bit sketchy. Krigl is an excellent starter, even in the mountains and at narrow, windy launch sites, and he really supported me several times by, for example, holding my paraglider so that I could take off. That
So you mean you always started first, just to be safe? And then he followed behind? I
I was always allowed to choose whether I wanted to start first or second, and I actually started first most of the time in the high mountains.
Were there situations where you said, because of your starting technique—which was certainly good, but because of your not-perfect starting technique for those wind conditions—that you said, "I'm skipping this start," and if you had just been a bit better there, we could have flown there too?
No, we were really able to launch everywhere, at the end, wherever we wanted to, where it actually made sense. We didn't actually have to skip any launch site because of this small weakness, but I would have been a bit more relaxed if I'd had it under control a bit better. I would have just been less close to my own limit. I
I looked at the X-Peaks side, I think your notes are probably written there as a story. I read through it, and whenever it comes to starting, it's very often like: Yes, we're in the lee and the wind is quite strong, or quite strong from behind. And you guys also started more often with a tailwind using special starting techniques and stuff like that. Did you practice that beforehand too?
Yes, we practiced that, but starting with a tailwind on skis, I can't do that. That was pretty good for me, I brought that with me, just my weakness, if you want to put it that way. It was really about very strong wind at small launch sites, simply how much I can run towards the glider to take energy out of it before it goes out the back, so that I have enough space? And I was really glad when the Chrigel held the glider for me, for example. That was really enormously helpful some times.
Were there also difficult situations? Are there things where you'd say, "That was such a brilliant moment," even in terms of flying, where it stays absolutely burned into your soul as a highlight?
I've had some of those brilliant moments. For example, we launched at the Egwido Bionasssee, which was our last 4,000-meter peak in the Mont Blanc area, and then we flew out, and it was truly magical. It was absolutely top-notch, even though it was a rather small launch site, but the wind was so incredibly perfect. I could really stand still, pull back, already control the glider, and then just give it a little bit of forward motion and push off, and it was a beautiful feeling. And otherwise while flying, I've had some absolutely dreamlike flights that are among the best I've ever experienced. I'm almost starting to get a bit nostalgic here.
The flight to Piz Bernina and back, for example, was absolutely fantastic. That flight was so beautiful, and when we were at Piz Bernina, the weather report was perfect and the base was rising just enough that we could land below the summit. We were able to land 15 minutes on foot below the summit, then back down from high up on the Bernina before it started packing in again, start with zero wind and then turn around, and then we flew quite a long way back, and that was just pure cinema. Those are the kind of moments you never forget. How
You attribute so much of that to luck, but how much of it can you still plan for in some way?
Above all, you have to make sure you're in the right place at the right time. I mean, we were often lucky, but I think we also always pulled a bit of luck in our favor by simply planning and not planning cleverly. But for example, on the flight from Piz Bernina that I described earlier, I had a low-safe there and lost about, yeah, maybe 3-4 hours. I just had to claw my way back up again. After a traverse, I got low and struggled to get back up, and the timing was just golden. When we were at Piz Bernina, it really fit to the minute that we were able to land at the top, and I don't know what we would have done if we'd been there 45 minutes earlier.
Maybe we would have tried to fly to the Rosehütte mark and do the Piz Bernina the next day. So, it was definitely luck in our favor that I had this low-safe and got stuck for a bit; the timing was perfect then. But often, we really forced luck in our favor. I also remember a story from when we flew back from the Bündnerland to the Bernese Oberland; we had a strong southwest wind and at these ridges, we just couldn't make any more progress. It was over. We were standing there in a valley wind—no, actually, the wind was really coming from the southwest and pulling over it, and we were stuck, and then we let ourselves wash back toward a lee slope, sat there for a bit, and then landed in it and discussed the situation and had a little snack.
and then we replanned and Gregor said, "Oh come on, let's fly over the Maderanertal, that's a more northerly route." Maderanertal, Central Switzerland, Sustenpass, and at first I just swallowed hard and said, "Wow, that's quite the special route suggestion." And he said, yeah, he had already flown it, and it's doable. And then it was really exactly the right thing for that day, it fit so well because the corresponding knowledge was there.
Also, because Gregor has already flown so much in these areas, how much experience did you have with this actual high-mountain flying? I mean, you've certainly stood on some of these 4,000-meter peaks before as a mountain guide and climber and whatnot, but how often were you actually up at those altitudes? Did you have your paraglider with you before and flew down from these heights yourself, like hike and fly style? So I...
I've flown in the high mountains a few times; that always appealed to me more than cross-country flying. It always drew me into the high mountains, and I've started and landed in the high mountains quite often, so I knew it—it really wasn't that unknown. What I didn't know was with so much wind; I actually never considered that. If you have 35 or 40 knots of wind at 4,000 meters to start at a small launch site, I just didn't do that. I'd descend a few hundred meters and start there with 20 knots; that was sort of the difference, and now we often start up high and have gained quite a bit of time and altitude because of that.
And that was a bit new for me, just in those marginal conditions. It was also like that with cross-country flying, Chrigel doesn't really take much off my hands. Under regular conditions, the difference is relatively small. Sometimes I'm a bit ahead, sometimes Chrigel is a bit ahead, and we can really, like back in the day with competition flying, we pull ahead and help each other out and show each other where it climbs well and so on. I can keep up well, I can manage, but as soon as the conditions get really marginal, I reach a certain point where I'm overwhelmed and I'm just happy if I can follow Chrigel.
Now you've started at these altitudes with this strong wind at the X-Peaks. Is that something you'd say, "Ah, I've seen that now, it works," or "it can work if you do your risk assessment properly"? Is that something you'd say you'd do more often in the future, or was it just okay for the X-Peaks this time? And with Chrigel as a companion it worked, but it's not something I'd add to my standard repertoire.
Yes, absolutely, it really pushed me to my limits and I've firmly decided—I've already started—to do more ground handling in strong winds and more soaring again, just to get better and have better control. I saw with Chrigel what's possible in terms of glider control in high winds and I definitely want to get into that region too. That is one of the results of this project as well, really opening up a new world in this regard. Now
From a mountaineering perspective, is this project a bit like a first ascent? I mean, in terms of the style you used, as if you'd opened a new route or something with new techniques being combined accordingly. In mountaineering, routes are sometimes climbed by others afterwards, and the more often they are repeated, the more famous those routes become. Do you think there's a chance that some people might repeat the X-Peaks project in some way, that it might spark some interest, you know?
I actually never really thought about that. For us, it was actually a bit selfish, maybe our project was the main focus, but if we can obviously inspire people to do something similar, then I think that's very nice, and I would do it. I think you can also do it in a shorter amount of time; if you have good flow, you can do this round in significantly less time.
Would you try it yourself again? Probably every adventure—if you were to do it again next year, the conditions would basically be different because the weather doesn't just repeat itself, and neither do the conditions. So, from that perspective, it could be a completely new adventure again. Would that be interesting for you, or would you say no, I've ticked off the 82 peaks in this form now, and if I did it again, it would have to be something completely different?
So, I can imagine doing parts of it with people, with guests. I have guests who are good at flying themselves and they want to do certain sections.
And there is, of course, a certain appeal to it, and it's also interesting commercially, if I can do that with people a bit more, very interesting. But I think that's already a bit of a once-in-a-lifetime project for me, and I'm not really interested in attacking our "record," so to speak, again. I don't think that's the record, or how long we take, that wasn't really the issue. It was more the question of whether it's even realistic to get through it? How many mountains can we manage in those 72 days and
To be honest, it doesn't really appeal to me to try that again, or to try and do it in a shorter amount of time, for example. But I can definitely imagine combining mountaineering and flying more, especially from home. I've already seen that; during the preparation, we already did some really cool stuff. We flew to the Stockhorn from home and climbed there, climbed the north face, and that really adds a certain spice to these tours, and that's already a cool thing.
What you wrote, the book, also says X-Peaks: new ways on old mountains. Is that maybe your new focus for your work as a mountain guide too, where you say you want to combine much more—like mountaineering and this flying out or flying in?
Well, I'm already quite a bit of a cherry-picker today, and flying with people – I do have a light tandem, but I don't really push that much because I find it's quite stressful. I feel like it's stressful, and I don't really promote it that much. I really like doing tours with people who fly themselves, like hikingfly or climbingfly stuff, and if it works out, it's great, but it's just so hard to plan. And as a mountain guide, I already have my hands full making good decisions for more demanding tours, and if you then add the extra element of the paraglider, at some point I just get a bit overwhelmed.
I just noticed that it's quite stressful, and it sounds great at first glance, but in practice, it's not that easy to implement.
In a podcast with Clark, which you recorded together with Chrigel a few weeks ago, or where everyone was present, you used an interesting word regarding this project. You said it was also about elegance, and that you proceeded elegantly. What does elegance mean to you in this context?
Elegant means when it just flows naturally, or you can work your way up the mountains. You can really—I'd call it a bit of a hack—you can just use brute force and trudge up the peaks, or you can do it elegantly. You can fly from peak to peak, you can combine them creatively. For me, it's elegant when you can optimally use the conditions or the circumstances as they are. That is the epitome of elegance for me.
Was during the whole project was so difficult that you'd say: basically, we were just standing on the summit with a crowbar?
We did a "crowbar" move as an entry into the Monte Rosa area. So, we were in the Jungfrau area first, cleared those peaks, and then—we had a good flying day and flew over to the Rimpfischhorn. That was a really cool move, by the way. We did the Finsterarhorn on skis, went down, did a cross-country flight into Valais, landed under the Rimpfischhorn, then went back up to the Rimpfischhorn, then we also took on the Strahlhorn and went into the Monte Rosa Hütte, and then the weather already turned again.
and we then decided to leave the gliders in the Monte Rosa Hütte and just hike the Monte Rosa area on skis, basically as a ski touring trip, and on the first day we went over the Nordend
Dufour, Zumstein, and then over to Signalkuppe in really bad weather, and I have to say, that was a bit of a brute-force effort. It was some pretty hardcore storm mountaineering we were doing there, but it paid off. We were then in the Monte Rosa area and had the opportunity over the following days to explore the whole area there.
Did you know it was going to get that bad? So, from your perspective, was it a conscious decision to push through it like that?
I knew it was going to get a bit tough, but it happened sooner than predicted and it was also a bit more intense than I thought. But we also knew we could head back to the Monte Rosa Hut at any time; we had that option. You could say we didn't maneuver ourselves into a dead end, but in terms of conditions, it was already at the limit. You also had to watch out for frostbite on the face; we had to regularly massage our noses and adjust the hood so that the face was somewhat protected from the wind. But it was already a bit of a brute-force effort there now.
In November, you're doing a whole series of lectures about X-Peaks. You're doing a tour in Switzerland. I think in early January, you're also going to Erwald in Austria. And you've also written a book about these X-Peaks. We just talked about how important this kind of follow-up is for a project like this. So, presenting the success and all that—is that part of the project, or is it just like the cherry on top?
It's a win-win for me, I really enjoy doing it, I really enjoyed writing the book, and I really threw myself into it, writing on it almost day and night, and it was also a great process for me to experience the whole thing again and be allowed to dive back into it once more, and also the lectures, I love giving lectures and I love telling the story and the fascination, and for me it's always a bit of reliving the whole thing again, and I find that extremely inspiring and beautiful, and what I also notice is that people are hugeley happy about our [success], they are happy with us.
And there's such a positive, good atmosphere when you give these talks or meet people along the way who say something, pat you on the shoulder—that's obviously a huge ego boost, that's clear—but it's just really beautiful to see how much joy people have and how you can perhaps inspire them to do something like
Are you involved as a team in the preparation of these lectures? Do you discuss everything and assign roles, or does someone take the lead on certain things? Or do you tell the parts about mountaineering and Chrigel tells the aviation stuff, or how do you do that?
So for the preparation, I focused on the book. Chrigel is involved too, by the way—meaning he shares the risks, but also the profit—and Chrigel organized the entire lecture tour. So we've basically already divided the work like that, and during the lectures themselves, it's pretty spontaneous. We don't have a script where we hand over at fixed points; we just have things we tell, and we basically ask each other a question every now and then. We also have a blog during the lecture—so we thought about how we want to present this to the people, and we decided we don't want to tell them what we did, but rather show them what we experienced during this lecture, and we talk a lot about feelings, and I think that's more fascinating and easier to relate to.
For example, I have a blog where I talk about my feelings while flying, and Chrigel has a blog where he talks about his feelings while mountaineering, and along the way, we basically pass the floor back and forth. We've had a presentation for a company so far, and it actually worked very well, and I'm really looking forward to the lecture tour.
Can you briefly tell us at the end, what is the most moving feeling you have when flying, when...
When you've done high-altitude tours in the morning and then have a really long flight in the afternoon, and you know that so much has really happened today. You've made huge progress; you managed a magic move, and that gives you such a great feeling. Those are moments for the photo album of your life, it's absolutely grandiose, and when you then do what you really love, which is flying, and maybe with beautiful scenery and beautiful light, then it's already a bit overwhelming, you...
You have two daughters, as far as I know, and maybe grandchildren someday. What would you tell them about this project in maybe 20 years or something like that? What would be your favorite story, where you say, I definitely have to tell my grandchildren about this, right?
I think I'll annoy them constantly with my stories. I think what really, what impressed me, was on one hand Team Riegel and me. We succeeded very well in putting our egos aside. We are both alpha animals, and we really put ourselves at the service of the team. We carried each other, and that carrying each other and carrying yourself, that is something enormously beautiful and enriching, and it feels really great when you can build something like that. Another highlight for me is that the best moves were achieved by us each time when we had the knife to our throats, the
the magic moves, the really wild stuff—we each had a problem, like for example, bad weather coming the day after tomorrow, and then the boldest and cheekiest moves were born, and they each worked, and that's also something I'm taking with me for life. When I have a really big challenge, that's something beautiful, that's an opportunity to make something out of it, and I have a completely different relationship to
When I had that before, that
means that difficulties are also always the chance to experience something truly special
Yes, exactly. In English, there's the saying "Use the Difficulty," and I think it has a very strong core message, then...
Dear Peter, do you want to leave it at that? You can learn from "Use the Difficulty" for all sorts of aspects of life. It's great what kind of project you...
...you've done, or if you've given us a bit of an insight here as well, where it wasn't really about telling us exactly how you got from point A to point B, but more about the background that flowed into the planning and everything else. I found that very interesting, thanks a lot for that.
Thanks a lot, it was a very interesting conversation for me, and I'm curious to see the result when
If you liked the result and want to learn even more about X-Peaks, you can find some further links in the show notes. The book by Peter von Känel, X - neue Wege auf alte Berge, will be released in early November by Edition Filitor. The dates and locations for the planned lectures by Peter and Chrigel can be found on the X-Peaks website. Podz-Glidz is the podcast by Lu-Glidz. A new episode is released every two weeks. If you don't want to wait that long, feel free to browse the archive. Over 150 hours of interesting conversations about the cosmos of paragliding can already be found there on Lu-Glidz and everywhere else where there are podcasts. If you want to hear more from Podz-Glidz and read Lu-Glidz in the future as well, then why not become a supporter of both projects?
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