So the best thing paragliding gives me, now also in winter, is trying or better yet understanding that the paraglider can simply be a means of transport in the mountains. For example, it can allow me to do a valley jump without having to go through the valley below when I reach the end of the snow on a spring ski tour and want to get to the other side of the valley. Then I unpack the paraglider and fly over there. Or I take it as a pure man-heli and try to use the thermals to get somewhere further along that I would otherwise have to climb up by rappelling or where other people would need a helicopter for. That's why it's always, always more and more in the backpack when going ski touring. And there, of course, the small, light gliders are great again because you hardly feel them when you have them with you.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast.
Stories from the cosmos of paragliding.
Today with Tim Fritz. And I'm Lucian Haas.
The Matterhorn can rightly be called an icon of the Alps. Its pyramidal peak is world-famous. When you have those steep rock faces in mind, you wouldn't necessarily think of wanting to start with a paraglider there. But there are people who dream of exactly that. And there are those who even make that dream a reality. May I introduce? Tim Fritz. The 37-year-old from Tottnau in the Black Forest climbed the Matterhorn solo by train in early September 2025. There, he then launched himself into the air from a small snowfield just below the summit with his single-skin glider.
Many hours of climbing were ultimately met with ten minutes of flight. In this episode 171 of Podz-Glidz, Tim Fritz tells the story of this and other adventures. All about hike and fly, climb and fly, bike and fly, and ski and fly. For example, a trip from the lowest to the highest point in Europe, where he, however, managed not to get into the air a single time.
By the way, I can only present stories like these on Podz-Glidz because there are some sponsors who appreciate my work on the podcast. They can support me financially. Join in too. You can find all the necessary information about this on the Gleitschirm-Blog Lu-Glidz, specifically on the "Fördern" page.
Tim, how long have you been dreaming of flying from the Matterhorn?
So I had the idea about six years ago.
And since then, it's always been buzzing around in the back of my mind and I've always been checking the weather. And that's how long it's taken. Yeah.
Why was that a dream of yours in the first place, and why specifically the Matterhorn?
We used to spend a lot of time in Valais, either training for ski races or on vacation with my grandparents.
And we probably all know that the Matterhorn is the most famous mountain you know, and you just look at it. And as a hiker or alpinist, you'd really like to have stood on top of it at some point. Of course, there's a lot going on at that mountain, and because of all the beautiful myths, there are also the stories that a lot is happening there. But still, we would have liked to be up there once, and I actually went up once at 14 with one of our ski instructors. And then lately, more and more flights were added, and I thought it would be nice if one could combine that. And now it's worked out.
Did you know that you can take off from the summit ridge?
I had a memory of the first time I was up there, but that was a long time ago, that it doesn't go straight down everywhere. I knew that. And nowadays, you can check everything again precisely using video footage from the RZMAT, Google Maps, photos, and all that. But I could only be 100 percent sure, or 99 percent sure, once I was up there and saw, okay, the glider fits there and the snow is laid out in a way that it works. So the idea was there. I already thought it could work, but it was only when I was up there that I was sure it would.
So you were up there once at 14? Exactly. And now the second time? Yeah. How old are you now? 37. Okay, so that's quite a long time. And you planned, I want to fly down from there. I can imagine that. But you didn't go back up beforehand to check, to say that it's actually possible.
So over the last few years, it was always like I would have missed the moment. I mean, people do say it's good to go in the autumn. There shouldn't be too much snow yet. It shouldn't be too busy on the mountain. It should be a pretty quiet day, so you'd want to avoid those thermal weddings in the summer, also because of landing down in the valley. Then I thought, this year. I'll take two weeks. I'll go to Zermatt and then I'll build it all up nicely, step by step. I thought I'd go up once, take a look, not bring the glider, go back down, maybe go up again. And as it turned out, I got there at the beginning of those two weeks. There was already 40 cm of fresh snow. The Matterhorn season was actually already over.
The local mountain guides told me that too. And then I thought, okay, I'll take a look. I'll head up, but the weather isn't that good over the next few days and it's supposed to start snowing again. I'll go up now, but I'll take the paraglider with me just in case. Not that I'm standing up there later with great conditions and thinking, oh, I forgot the paraglider. And that's how it happened—it was actually only the second time I was up there and it worked right away.
On the day you flew there, was it still during the ascent where you actually didn't expect to be able to fly? So it was more like, I'll give it a try and I'll take it with me in case the opportunity arises, but actually, the day wasn't one where you'd say, "Today is the day"?
The wind forecast was 30-knot gusts and a 20-knot base wind from the west at 4,400 meters. That would have been way too strong and the wrong wind direction. But I had planned to go up first and check it out. That's why, throughout the entire ascent, I didn't really have much hope that it would work at the top. But I already noticed that there's actually no wind during the climb. So, not from any direction—it was pulling up a bit from the north flank, but that wasn't bad. And just before the summit, an Allgäu mountain guide came towards me, and I asked him, and then he said, it's not far anymore, it's super beautiful up there. Then I asked, what's it like up there? Is there a lot of wind? He said there's no wind at all.
Then I thought, cool, but no wind at all. That's not so great either, because you don't really want to start forward on a mountain like that. But better than too much. And then a little spark of hope started to grow that maybe it could work after all.
And then it worked too?
Then it worked. There was zero wind at the summit. That means you had to start forward? I had to start forward, no chance of starting backward. I would have much, much preferred to start backward. I would have also preferred to start towards the north.
But you needed the summit slope to get those three or four forward running steps.
Would you have even been able to
be able to stop? Yeah, I had planned to take three steps. And when I saw the ski and felt and realized that it was there above me, I just kept accelerating. If that hadn't happened, you could have still stopped. But of course, on a very, very narrow edge, you don't need to stumble in a situation like that.
Do you get a rush as an experienced alpinist? Or is it something where you're so concentrated that you just power through it?
You're nervous beforehand. But once you decide to do it, just like in any other sport, you're in the flow and so concentrated that you just do what you have to do. I analyzed the launch afterwards and took a look at it. It comes up a bit worse on the right side than on the left side. Even so, there's another brake impulse with the right hand. That didn't happen consciously. I didn't think, "the glider is coming up a bit poorly on the right side, so move a bit to the right, give a bit of brake on the left," but it all happens automatically.
Now tell me, what kind of gear do you actually use for that? A lot of people are probably wondering right now, like, how can you start with three steps up there on the Matterhorn?
It was actually the case that the gear I had with me isn't my preferred mountain gear, but it worked very well for this. So I had a strapless harness, a small mountaineering harness. And the glider was the current Pace from Skywalk, the lightest certified glider available right now. A single-skin. Exactly. Of course, it's great for hiking up. There's nothing more pleasant than having a kilo in your backpack as an option. And if you had to hike back down, that kilo wouldn't matter either. It's perfect for that. Now, single-skins are actually just easy to launch on a meadow if there's wind.
But because you can't lay them down as nicely and they settle on the undersurface when they catch the wind, and then when you lay them down again, the lines like to get tangled in the scree or in the sharp rocks, especially in Valais with the slate.
So I still have a P3, I actually would have preferred to have that one with me; it would have been more solid, and definitely nicer for laying down and starting cleanly. But it was in the check.
Exactly. So I had very light gear, which was great. But with a different glider, it would have definitely been easier to launch.
Matterhorn, well over 4,000 meters high. How did you prepare for that? Because you're not from Valais, you're from the Black Forest, and there aren't any mountains that high there.
Yeah, well, I spend a lot of time in the Bernese Oberland. That's only about an hour and a half, forty-five minutes away from us. I'm also in the Valais a lot. Chamonix isn't that far either. That's kind of the advantage of the Black Forest. You can live here in the moderate hills and it's not far to the high mountains. But for work, I'm in the Alps a lot both in winter and summer, so I'm more or less used to the altitude. We've already been to a few other four-thousand-meter peaks this year. So the altitude, that went well. You can also practice climbing here. Not for six hours straight, but you can go climbing for six hours on different routes. And it's also possible right behind the house.
And the most important thing for the undertaking was taking off and landing. And you can practice that anywhere where you fly for a short ten seconds. Whether it's on a 300-meter mountain near us, on a practice slope, or while tandem flying. That was the preparation.
But doesn't it make a difference whether you start at, I don't know, 700 or 800 meters in the Black Forest or at over 4,000 meters? I mean, the air is significantly thinner. Do you notice that during the start with a single skin?
I've actually thought about that quite a few times. I figured, well, the air pressure is lower.
Does the glider feel slower? Does it feel faster? Does it sink more? Does it sink less? I think if you do that at 8,000 meters. We had a meeting recently and David Göttler was there. He started at the Langgap - Harbert. It's actually like that. The glider needs many, many more steps to be able to start if you were to launch it forward. But at the Matterhorn or even Mont Blanc, I didn't have the feeling that it has a major impact. As soon as you have wind, not at all anyway, because then you use the wind to launch the glider. And even now, how he dived away at the Matterhorn and flew off, I thought that was relatively similar to here with us, not at the Matterhorn, but at the Hasenhorn in Tottenham.
Also a horn. Exactly. You just said Mont Blanc. That means the Matterhorn isn't the first four-thousand-meter peak you've flown.
Not the first four-thousand-meter peak, yeah.
My grandpa and the older mountain guides always say that when you fly down with a glider, it's actually kind of cheating, a bit shitty, because you save yourself half of it. And as we know, the more dangerous half or the more exhausting half at least, I absolutely agree with that opinion.
It's much easier on the knees, the hips, the joints, and for your time. You're back down in ten minutes and can rest at the bottom.
But I think the mental effort during the ascent is much greater than if you don't have a glider with you, because you still have it in the back of your mind. Everyone who does smaller hikes diligently knows this. You're always thinking: is the wind okay up there? Is it too strong? Am I getting up at the right time? And with something this big, of course, it's even much, much more, that you waste so many mental resources already, and that makes it exhausting too.
Is that really the case?
Do you think those thoughts circling in your head about whether you can start at the top really take up that many resources, like a truly noticeable additional burden?
For me, it is. I don't know what it's like for others, but for me, definitely. It's a lot of thinking about it, and then checking the weather again in between to see, is the wind getting stronger? What are the readings in the valley?
Then turn on the Burn-Hair again and see how the wind changes there. So you're already very preoccupied with checking whether the flight will work or not. Of course, if the conditions are super stable and everything fits, then much, much less. What is it about flying in such high mountains that's so special for you?
So yeah, the special thing is, I like going up high. And if I can fly down, it's a very, very big safety plus for me. I don't have the alpine hazards, like daytime heating, rockfall,
not spend the same amount of time on the descent on the mountain, but in the best-case scenario. At Mont Blanc, you fly a bit longer. There, the glider flight with the 16er glider is almost a quarter of an hour. At the Matterhorn, it was a bit shorter. But let's say, after ten minutes, I'm back down and actually out of danger. Plus, I've experienced a beautiful flight and I can also, I can do a 180-degree turn and look at what just happened there in the last few hours. That's what makes it. So the safety plus is definitely right at the very front. And also simply the beautiful experience of being allowed to start from such a mountain, you have to say.
The mountains just allow it. There's not much we can do about that.
Now you're saying safety plus, but this plus is only there if I actually have, basically, ideal starting conditions up there.
Exactly. That's what you learn in flight school. When you're at the launch site, the decision is made. And the glider is always just one option, an additional option. And it's obviously important, especially in the high mountains, to say there's Plan A, which is flying, but Plan B, Plan C, Plan D is hiking down or rappelling. So even at the Matterhorn, I had 60 meters of rope with me to rappel. I didn't need the rope a single time because you don't need it for the ascent and you don't need it for flying down. That means I basically carried it up for nothing. But of course, it could have been the case that you have to get back down, and then you have to have everything with you. That means always having the glider only as an option and then saying, if it's not possible to fly, you still have enough time to hike back down.
At Mont Blanc, it was a bit different. The wind only became good at 3 o'clock. And if you're still at the summit at 3 o'clock, you have to hurry quite a bit to get back down if you can't fly. But there's also the Valois Bivouac in between, where you could say you can sleep for another night. Or you could walk via the 3-peaks route to the Aiguille du Midi. That would have worked too. So, always keep these options in the back of your mind and don't just rely on flying.
How long did it take you to climb the Matterhorn? You said the takeoff was at 10 minutes.
How long was the ascent? Well, I started from Tesch. So, anyone who's been to Zermatt knows you drive through the Mattertal and then you get to Tesch, and that's where the train starts. You can't drive any further. I slept at the campsite there. I started at 2:30. At night? At night, yeah, exactly. I went to Zermatt by e-bike and then up on foot, and I was at the summit by 10:30. So, 2:30, 3:30, 4:30, 5:30, 6:30, 7:30, 8:30, 9:30, 10:30. 7 hours. And then a bit of time at the summit. Half an hour. So after 7.5 hours, I was in the air. That's far, far, far from it,
like the fastest people running up there. I mean, the current record for Zermatt, the Matterhorn summit, and back is somehow around 4 hours and 40 minutes. Round trip? Round trip, yeah.
Okay, so you're basically 7 hours out. Exactly. You would have had to descend. Yeah. Would those also be
another 7 hours, or does it go faster then? No, it goes a bit faster. So if the conditions are right—and they were that day, it was a beautiful autumn day, you couldn't have painted it any better—then afterwards, it's less of a way back down to the Hörnlihütte than it was up from Tesch. So you're back at the hut after 2.5 hours. After 3 hours, you're back at the hut. If you take it easy, of course you can do it much faster, yeah.
How often has it happened to you that you've climbed such really high mountains with a glider, where you then actually had to decide at the top, no, I'd rather go down, I can't fly, I don't want to fly?
Actually, not that often, because the weather forecasts are already good. It might have been different in the past, but nowadays you can really rely on them. During my very first attempt on Mont Blanc, I actually had a complete normal setup, so an Epsilon 4 or Epsilon 5 with 26 square meters and a normal seat harness. I think it was Success and a heavy rescue carried up on Mont Blanc, but I was also younger then. 16 Kilo, 18
Kilograms, what did you have with you?
Yeah, it wasn't that much, so there were definitely 15 in total. So probably almost 15 times as much as now at the Matterhorn, and it blew us off the summit up there, so we could hardly stand, and then I carried it down again. Exactly, Benni, who was with me, didn't have a glider with him, so he was happy during the descent.
That he had a partner with him who goes down with him.
Exactly, for one thing, he had a partner with him who didn't fly away but went down with him, so he didn't have to carry a glider down. Exactly, that was at Mont Blanc.
How
How much did you curse during the descent? Like, saying "shit, I lugged 15 or 16 kilos up there just to glide down like some proud gladiator, and now I have to haul it all back down again."
At first, I was already disappointed, but in the second moment, I had to admit that it was actually clear from the bottom that you could have just left the glider down there, because the wind forecast already showed it would be strong. Now, the flight was only part of a larger journey. I had been traveling for two weeks by bike and the final destination was Mont Blanc. That's why the undertaking succeeded anyway. Only the icing on the cake with the glider didn't work out. That's why I was actually happier that the entire undertaking worked out than that the flight didn't work, and on the way down, the backpack was heavy, but not as heavy as when going up.
If I'm following you correctly, you're saying a project—you've done something, I assume it was this trip, where you said you wanted to get from the lowest point in Europe to the highest point in Europe. Was that it?
Exactly, that was it, yeah. Where is the lowest point in Europe? It's in Nievekerk on the Eisel, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. I hope the Dutch listeners will forgive me if I've said it wrong. And it's minus 12 meters below sea level, right up there, north of Amsterdam. That
means you rode your bike from the Black Forest by train to Nievekerk or however you pronounce it, always with the glider on the back, and then you rode up all the rows and everything else until you finally arrived in France.
Back then, my mom thankfully took me up there, and then I took off from up there with a trailer on my bike, with skis on it, and ski boots were with me, and the rope and all the mountain gear and the paraglider. How did the Dutch people look when someone with... They were always very interested, it was funny. But I think you got into conversation with people more because of this trailer than if you hadn't had a trailer with you. That's why it was, it was always super nice. So there in Holland and then in Belgium, then suddenly the Ardennes appeared, where I thought, where is this steep low mountain range coming from? That was also quite exhausting. Exactly, yeah.
Did you fly at any point along that route? No, actually not a single time. That means you were out for two weeks, with a trailer, skis and all that stuff, and 15 kilos of flight gear, just to ride from Holland to Mont Blanc, hike up Mont Blanc, and then haul the glider back down again.
Or not to fly, yeah. So that was also my first bike trip, my first undertaking on a four-thousander with a paraglider and and and.
Well, it worked out perfectly, but the thing with the paraglider, that really could have been skipped.
What lessons did you learn from that?
Prepare better regarding the weather, although of course, if you leave for Holland two weeks in advance, you don't know what the wind will be like on Mont Blanc when you arrive. But also along the way, when opportunities arise to enjoy the journey and not just think about the destination. And that's also what I often notice with Hike and Fly and Climb and Fly—as I said earlier, you have such tunnel vision on the summit and whether you can take off, and because of that, you sometimes lose the enjoyment of the path. I notice that too sometimes when I'm out with my girlfriend or something; you're always so focused on the takeoff and you forget a bit to just sit by the wayside for an hour and let your gaze wander, because you're always thinking, "Yeah, the wind is right now, will it still be right when we arrive?"
That means your girlfriend flies too? She flies
too. Or
Do you fly in tandem?
We used to always fly in tandem, and then at some point she said she wants to fly alone now, because then she can steer wherever she wants and doesn't always have to fly where I'm flying.
That means you guys go up the mountain together more often, but your experience is that once you have the flying in your head, you notice a bit less of the rest, or you run the risk of noticing at least a bit less of it.
Or you have to make a conscious effort to
not just to think about flying, when it's not just about flying. Sometimes it is only about flying, when you quickly jump up in the evening and then fly down. There have been one or two situations where we said, come on, leave the glider in the car or at home today, let's just go hiking. Then it doesn't matter how long you sit at the summit. Because it's just more relaxed.
then in the end.
Yeah, exactly.
Well,
As far as I can see, you're basically a professional mountain sports athlete, whatever you call it. So you have your own mountain school, as you call it, in Tottnau and you do ski touring, mountain biking, tandem flying, probably climbing tours and stuff like that, which you offer there. Of all the things you do there, would you say paragliding is the most mentally demanding?
No. No. Rather?
Freeriding and ski touring in the winter, with the snowpack assessment and all the associated alpine hazards, are more mentally demanding. Definitely. So for me, if I were to dive deeper into paragliding now, that would also become more exhausting. But I find that in the winter, it's mentally harder and more tiring to assess things than in the summer. Yeah.
Are you then busy during the ascent of such a ski tour? Oh, and what about the descent? Like you're saying now, if I'm hiking up with the glider, can I take off at the top? And what will my flight be like? Like, are you already caught up in that mental carousel?
It always depends, I think, a bit on what the goal of the undertaking is. And if you're a passionate skier and mostly into the downhill part, then you're basically hiking up the mountain just to get back down. The ascent is just a means to an end. Are you that kind of person? I'm more like that, yeah. That's more my thing. There are other ski tourers who say, hey, for me it's about the ascent, I want to improve my fitness while going up, and if it's so bad at the top that I have to take the gondola back down, then I do that. That's also absolutely cool if someone trains their fitness that way. For me, it's like, no matter how I get up the mountain, whether I have the paraglider with me or the skis or the mountain bike,
for me, it's also mainly about the descent. It's about having a nice singletrack down from the mountain. And of course, during the ascent, you're often already thinking about the ride down or the flight.
When you go ski touring in the winter, do you often have a glider with you, or do you do without it because you say, no, the descent is so great anyway, so I'd rather go down on skis than fly down with the glider?
Yeah, well, someone who has already taken off from the Matterhorn with skis, Ueli Kästenholz, he would correct me there. He's a passionate speedrider—those who are in the snow with skis and have the glider over them, like a small one, just to take off briefly. I tried that too, but I love skiing, the feeling of skiing, too much. I just like being in the snow with my skis and feeling the snow, not just dipping in briefly and taking off again. That's why I wasn't, or speedriding didn't really interest me that much, and I didn't have the glider with me that often at the beginning. But lately, I'm liking it more and more because I'm now trying to experience, or better understand, the best thing the paraglider gives me in the winter too—that the paraglider can simply be a means of transport in the mountains.
So he can, for example, enable me to do a valley jump without having to go through the valley at the bottom. If I reach the end of the snow on a spring ski tour and want to get to the other side of the valley, then I unpack the paraglider.
or I use it as a Poor Man's Heli and try to use the permafrost to get somewhere further that I'd otherwise have to climb up by falling or where other people would need a helicopter for. That's why it's always, always more and more in the backpack when going ski touring. And in that case, the small, light gliders are also great again, because you hardly feel them when you have them with you. For
Poor Man's Heli, this poor man's helicopter—but you're not using your little Pace, the single skin, for that now?
No, it has worked with the Pi before to just glide over a bit. But it's better if you have, let's say, a cross-country glider or a normal paraglider with you, so you can gain altitude and fly to somewhere you'd otherwise have to climb. That's obviously not possible with the small glider.
As far as I understand it, I've never gone on a big ski tour. But I know that for the people who do, there's a lot of risk assessment involved. Also a lot regarding avalanche danger and so on, having to plan it out, checking the snow conditions, and stuff like that. From the experience you've gathered, are there things you'd say can be transferred over to flying as well?
I think you can
...always transfer those experiences from mountaineering to other sports and take a lot with you, regardless of whether it's winter, summer, spring, or autumn. When going ski touring or freeriding, it's very often the case—or not that often, but it's always like this—you look at the avalanche bulletin in the morning, or even the night before, and then decide where to go: which mountains, which slopes, which regions are even an option, where is it too dangerous, where is it less dangerous, where is it maybe even relatively safe, or is the risk very manageable? And then you go there based on the forecast, which is now really incredible and provided for free with avalanche reports and everything from all sorts of regions.
and then you get there, but you don't have the guarantee that if you're on slope X, it's actually like it was in the forecast in the avalanche report. You then have to—that's what you call an individual slope decision—you have to look again at whether you do a snow profile there or if you just check if the situation is as described, and it's exactly the same when I walk to the launch site with the paraglider or on a mountain where there is no launch site, no designated one; then I also have to check on-site, is the wind now like it was forecast? In the best-case scenario, it's much, much better, like it was now at the Matterhorn, compared to how it was forecast in the app. In the worst case, it's
much, much worse, and then I have to hike back down, even though I thought, well, I can definitely fly today. There are definitely parallels there. On-site, before you unpack the glider, clip in, and take off, you have to open your eyes or your senses—not just your eyes, but also your ears and everything else you have at your disposal—to make a decision for yourself.
As a mountain guide in the Fahrenheit -Binist, are you a different kind of flyer than someone who doesn't have that kind of background?
I think the more experience you gather, the...
you become more cautious because you know what could happen. If you're completely naive, you might not even know what kind of result could come out if things go wrong. But I also believe that you acquire a larger so-called skillset where you can master more difficult situations. So it goes like that and maybe balances out. But one big point is that when you're training someone, when you might have responsibility for people, when you might have people watching what you do, you already have a responsibility not to do anything stupid. And that makes you more cautious, and you say, hey,
I don't want to set a bad example here, and then you might end up leaving it out one or two more times,
what you might have still done maybe ten years ago.
Are you more of a risk-taker or more risk-averse when you're out on your own?
Yes. I'm definitely more risk-averse, because I think, well, that changes again once you have kids. That
So you don't have any yet?
No.
Then you have completely different things happening back in the "back room." Many father and mother friends of mine can confirm that too.
But when I'm alone, I'm making the decision for myself, and if something happens, it only affects me right now. If I have someone with me, then in that situation, they are responsible for how the rescue goes. He has to watch it happen or she has to watch it happen. And, and, and. So that's one thing,
why I'm definitely more risk-tolerant. The other thing is that in that situation, I don't have any responsibility for someone else. So when I'm on the mountain, it's very, very often already the case that I have responsibility for the other person, and then of course I make decisions that don't even involve 50% risk, but have to be much, much safer. Because I'm making the decision for the other person. It's like when I go tandem flying. I don't do, I don't train maneuvers there. If I go paragliding alone, then I train maneuvers, but if I'm tandem flying with someone in front, then I'm responsible for making sure that person arrives safely on the ground, and then the decisions are much, much, much, much more defensive, which is also a good thing.
If someone comes up to you now and says, Tim, you've already launched from some Vietausers, and now from the Matterhorn and stuff, what do I need to be able to do, what do I have to do to be able to pull something like that off someday? Quite,
a lot, a lot, I mean, you could say a lot of paragliding, but that's not really true. You have to do a lot, a lot, a lot of take-offs and landings, because that's what it comes down to. I don't have to know how to fly in thermals. And then you have to be in the mountains a lot and be an experienced alpinist to be able to assess all of that, because then you just have this flight component added on top. It's already not easy to climb a mountain like that to begin with.
You also don't climb up there alone. And then you have to make the decision about the launch. So first, you have to be a more or less complete and good alpinist in these mountains. Then, at some point, paragliding comes into the picture. You don't do that two weeks after getting your license; you go into the mountains a lot. A lot—which didn't actually do me any good at the Matterhorn, but a lot of ground handling in small, small areas. I've already practiced that. I marked out a small claim here at home on the meadow and said, hey, I'll inflate the glider here and stabilize it above me and I won't step over this marking tape with my feet because there's no room.
How small was your claim there? It wasn't big, it was two by two meters. Two by two meters? So the glider was outside of this claim, but your feet were supposed to stay inside it at all times.
And you say, okay, there's a bit of wind, you'd probably be out of your two meters in three steps. But with a bit of wind, you say I should put a glider on those two by two meters
...set up. Exactly, whether I throw it into the air and it sets itself up, or if I pull it up briefly. But, well, that was specific training. So, out on the meadow next to the house, we also have these rock faces that just require a cliff start. I've practiced that one way or another too. You really have to prepare for that. How do you train cliff starts?
Or how did you train cliff starts?
On the one hand, by first practicing on a meadow to get the glider over yourself cleanly in a small space. Those two by two meters? Exactly. And then being at the rock and setting up the glider just like you practiced on the small claim, and then jumping off with a headwind. And it's best in an environment where you don't have any obstacles. So, where there are no trees in the way, where you can also glide out cleanly. And surprisingly, there are actually quite a few of those right here in the Black Forest, right on our doorstep. Where you can actually simulate the Matterhorn start, as it was, 100%. Except for the altitude.
That means you don't have to go to the high mountains to basically master high-alpine starts.
No. Well, I originally studied sciences and I learned there how to
...trains situations. And that's always the thing: you create a laboratory condition where you acquire a rough shape. At some point, it becomes a fine shape. Only then can you enter the situation. You're poorly advised if you...
...tries to implement it in the final situation without the skills. Then it usually goes wrong. Because you don't know what to do. If
When I look at so many pilots—not all of them, but in the various clubs that are known—the word training isn't necessarily one that people associate with paragliding. Instead, people always just want to fly. And not train. How could you change that mindset?
change? Well, I don't think it's even wrong at first. Or if people just go paragliding for pleasure, for relaxation, for a change of pace, to meet friends, to clear their heads. I think you only have to train if you want to improve, if you want to achieve goals, if you maybe do it professionally. Then you have to train specifically. It's already good, of course, if you train your starts. I don't think that hurts anyone.
And if you look at the...
So there are quite a lot of paragliders who are happy if there's a trail and then drive to the launch site with it. Which is completely understandable, because if I have a complete cross-country flight kit with me, I wouldn't carry that up the mountain either. But even the good cross-country pilots show that, whether it's Maxim or Kriegel or whatever their names are. Or Simon Oberrauner, who was just with you recently. They're all fit. Of course, they have to walk during the X-Alps, but even at the paragliding World Cup, they're already fit people, and I think that also helps with the flying itself. Even if you think, well, you're just sitting there in this
harness and you don't actually have to do much, but it is still exhausting.
Paragliding is also a lot of mental effort. Sometimes it's more effort in the head than in the body. How can you train your head for paragliding?
I don't even know if I'm the right person to give much information on that, because I don't have that much airtime or flight hours; I can count my flights that last over five hours on one hand.
So you're more of a mountain-down jumper? Yeah, or
I'm more the type who tries to use the paraglider to get from A to B. And A and B usually aren't that far apart. Okay, from one side of the valley to the next. Exactly, or we recently told our group of friends that we'd do a bivouac tour and then flew from Lake Thun to Lake Geneva in three days. Normally, you'd do that in half a day.
But it was still nice. The
...is the goal. If you have some beautiful moments in between, that's the main thing.
Exactly, but training your head while paragliding—that's actually hard for me. After about two hours of flying, I have to concentrate on not drifting off, on not thinking about the next landing spot or the next hut where I'd like to land to have a piece of cake, but really focus on the next goal. It's easier for me when I... How
...what happens? If I imagine that, you climb up the Matterhorn, you say you're on the way for seven hours and you probably have to be very concentrated for those seven hours so you don't make a wrong step or whatever you do. Why do you drift off after two hours of flying?
...right? When I fly in the Alps or the Dolomites, I can stay focused better than when I fly in the low mountains or the flatlands, because in the Alps it's a bit like in the high mountains, you always have something to do. So a valley wind comes back and you have to think about how the valley winds work, what the wind system is like, can I soar up this flank or do I have to center thermals or whatever. It's easier for me to stay focused longer because it's varied. In the Black Forest or the flatlands, I'm bad at it. There, it's often just looking for cloud streets and flying along them. I'm also way too impatient there; I switch to somewhere else much too quickly, while the others just soar along the slope for another 15 strokes until the lift comes, I'm already on the other side of the slope and five minutes later down landing, thinking to myself,
now you finally notice that you're staying there. And you can compare it: at the Matterhorn, those seven hours fly by. You don't even notice it. At Mont Blanc, seven hours is forever because you're just "trudging" in quotation marks. You just put one foot in front of the other. I always say Mont Blanc is the Feldberg in large scale. It's just a hill. You never need your hands. You never have to hold onto anything. And then it's much, much harder to stay focused. And that's actually how it is for me when flying thermals too.
The more difficult the situation, the longer I can fly.
You've been flying for 15 years now. How has your approach to flying changed over that time? If at all?
In the beginning, shortly after getting my license, I didn't fly that much. Back then, skiing and mountain biking were still much, much more important. It wasn't until two or three years after getting my license that flying started to become much, much more of a priority. And at first, I thought, well, flying is just about flying as long and as far as possible. Because at the landing field, even here, it was always just about how long did you fly? Where did you fly to? What route was it? And then I thought, I have to tackle that now. But here, the aviation scene isn't that big anyway. And the people who fly here often just do their own thing. So there isn't really a scene like, or there wasn't 15 years ago, a scene like what I heard Patrick von Kennel say in your podcast, where he said that when they go to the hangar in the evening, everyone is there and they exchange experiences and then they say what time you have to be where.
We didn't have that here at all. And then I felt a bit of resignation, thinking I wasn't getting anywhere with cross-country flying. I mean, I do fly cross-country and I'm not a bad pilot, but I'm not making real progress, and I started feeling a bit of that...
glider soaring to it, or whatever it's called, and I then saw, aha, I can somehow find a greater added value in what the glider can offer me than just sitting at the launch site, parawaiting until it's possible, and then flying from the Black Forest to the Swabian Alb and then taking a six-hour train ride back, which I'd actually like to do at some point just to be able to join the conversation, but I currently lack the skill or even the patience for it. But maybe it'll come.
When you flew down the Matterhorn in ten minutes and were at the bottom, was that a "Juchee" moment, or was it also a six-year dream that you'd watched over and over again, and now you've done it and something is complete? Does a sense of emptiness remain?
So many people said when they saw the video, they've never seen me so
seen as wildly happy.
So there was already a huge amount of joy in the fact that it worked out.
In the moment after the start and while flying, then I landed at the bottom and I was just super relieved and incredibly happy, and I lay there—I still had the down jacket on, the jacket, the helmet, the goggles, the gloves, I was still hooked into the glider, lying there, I wasn't wearing the crampons anymore, I took them off in the air, but I was lying there on the meadow on my back, looking up at the sky, and I just lay there for at least an hour and was just happy, I was just happy. So probably one of the happiest feelings I've had in my life so far, that was really, that was truly beautiful, that was really, really cool.
I was really happy about that, and now looking back, when you talk about emptiness—of course, when you talk to people about it, they ask, "What are you doing next? What are you doing next?" And actually, there are things I want to do next, but afterwards it was just like, phew, the project is finished and for now, there's nothing. I don't have to go out and stake a claim next to the house right now, or practice cliff starts, or think about how long it takes to climb the Hörnli -Grad, or whether it's better to go up via the Leone -Grad in Italy or whatever. Now I can fully focus on the winter.
And does winter mean going on ski tours again, mainly?
Mainly ski touring, yes exactly. Training ski instructors, training mountain guides, going ski touring, being in the mountains with guests, and also having the paraglider with me as much as possible to practice or train for the next projects, like we said earlier.
But then there are still projects, even if you say you don't have any yet.
Yeah, it's not that simple. I also spoke with someone recently and
with Bernd, who's a mountain friend from back home, and then he said, well, now you've flown off the actually most famous mountain—the one on the Toblerone, it's everywhere, everyone knows the Matterhorn—you've flown off that, where do you want to fly off next, what's left? And then I thought, well, there are other beautiful mountains too, and I was recently at the Jungfrau, which was a super nice tour, but of course, if I tell someone that, they say, well, that's not it, right? I say, no, it wasn't, but it was still beautiful. Then of course there are the higher mountains, like I mentioned David Göttler earlier, or I was once on the mountain with someone for a very, very long time, he once flew off the Amadablam with a paraglider,
but I'm a really bad high-altitude mountaineer, so I like it when it's warm and when you can sleep well and stuff. So, I'd have to really, really, really get into it to be able to fly from these high mountains; I don't think that's ever going to be a goal. Stick to your...
...at your limit or mountain guide's limit on your mountains, that's the best way to get back. Out of all these experiences, if you say the Matterhorn, was that like the most fulfilling flight of your life so far?
Yes, as described earlier, in terms of hike and fly or climb and fly, it was definitely the most fulfilling flight. It was a feeling of pure luck, something I probably hadn't experienced in flying before, but of course, with such small
cross-country flight issues, or if you do a very, very long
...can save on cross-country flight problems, or if you take a very, very long... When was that? I got my license in 2010, so that's probably when you can talk about the first flight, but my very first flight was at 6 or 7, I don't know exactly, I just know the picture and so on, by that age I think I was already in school and our... Tim Fritz: ...valley floor can be avoided if you do hike and fly, or whatever it is for me, it sounds weird, but it's fulfilling. I can take off right in front of the house with the paraglider and then fly down to Todtnau, land at the bakery to buy some rolls, and then walk back home or briefly walk up to the Hasenhorn and fly back with little thermals. It's incredibly fulfilling because I think, hey, I didn't need a car, I didn't have to take the bus, I didn't need public transport, I just took a glider and it helped me make my activities of daily living possible. I find that fulfilling too, so paragliding itself, having your feet off the ground, maybe the very, very first flight was the most fulfilling, it could just as well be.
When was that? I got my license in 2010, so you could probably call that the first flight, but my very first flight was when I was 6 or 7, I don't know exactly, I only know the picture and so on, from that age I think I was already in school and our
the workshop foreman from Sommer's ski school, Roland Lansch—maybe some of you know him too—he had a flight school in Freiburg, but only in the summer, because I think back then you couldn't make a living from it all year round. In the winter, he was the workshop foreman at our ski school and waxed our skis. At the end of the season, Roland said, "Hey, we're going on a ski instructor trip to my flight school, and then we'll do a taster day." I was 6 or 7, as I said, but I had just broken my leg snowboarding shortly before and was totally disappointed that I couldn't join in. I don't think I was an easy kid when I couldn't move, and I wasn't happy there at that practice slope all day; I had to watch the whole time. Eventually, Roland came over and said, "Come on, Tim, now we're flying, and you just have to be able to stand on one leg, and I'll pull you by the..."
harness forward if the wind is right, and then we did it, and that was the first paraglider in flight. Sometimes I think I should have stuck with it, then maybe I'd be a better cross-country pilot now if I had stayed with it, but that was the first flight, it was quite funny. At 7 years old.
sticking it out with a cast on your leg and stuff isn't exactly the easiest thing. That's true, yeah. In your actual flying career with a license, did you ever have some kind of negative experience with an accident where you ended up with a cast or something?
So, fingers crossed—knock on wood—I haven't had a paraglider accident here on this table yet.
I also think that's something you can be happy or satisfied with. It means you've often left your paraglider in the backpack when it could have become dangerous.
That's why it wasn't a real accident. The day after I got my license, I thought, okay, now I'm going to do some ground handling. Ground handling is important.
And it was a super gusty day. But at that moment, I was actually really happy when the gust hit, because I thought, okay, now I can inflate the glider. Because before that, I'd been standing on this meadow for 15 minutes, then in the ski lift, and nothing was happening. I thought, it's really starting to winch up there in front. And I also had the Epsilon that I had with me on the upload. Then the gust caught it, and I didn't get it over my head; instead, it stayed in the power zone, 45 degrees in front of me, and I braked it there without putting my hands up to get the glider up, and then it took me 250 meters over the meadow and between the lift cables, and that was definitely a learning experience. A formative experience. That you'd better have a glider under control when the wind comes.
It's actually good that you had that right on the first day after the training. Indeed, yes. A safety development came out of it. Tim, thanks for the great story. I'm curious to see what happens if you ever develop a new dream—which mountain or which hike and fly adventure that will become. Thanks for sharing that story. I think some people can take a lot away from that, thinking about it a bit. How do I actually approach these mountain adventures? Where am I maybe being a bit too bold? Should I maybe not do something as cautious? Should I be a bit more careful and sometimes really prefer to prioritize the descent? I think some people will certainly be well-advised by that.
Thanks for sharing that.
Thank you very much, Lucian, for the chance to be here. For the very interesting questions. I think I've reflected on myself and my paragliding more in this time—I don't know how long we've been talking now—than I have in the last 15 years. Thank you very much for that, and also many thanks for the many other podcasts that, I believe, help so many paragliders get better or simply appreciate flying. Thank you. Yes, I'd be happy to.
That was episode 171 of Podz-Glidz with Tim Fritz. If you want to hear more of these inspiring and educational stories from the cosmos of paragliding, I would appreciate your support for my work. On my blog looglights.blogspot.com, you can find all the necessary information and links under the "Support" section on how you can keep this project alive with a freely chosen large or small financial contribution. I want to thank all my supporters. See you soon. Fly high, fly long, fly far. Ciao. Yours, Lucian.