Confessions of an XC Addict by Gavin McClurg

JANUARY 2014 Volume 44 Issue 1 $6.95

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Confessions

of an

XC Addict XC by

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G avin M c C lurg

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New Foot-launch Record 240 miles 38

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“Time to go paragliding! I run to the store, buy some food, borrow a bottle of oxygen and head up the hill.” photos by

JO DY M ac Donald, G avin M c C lurg & M att beechinor

riends, family, sponsors, business associates, and all of you folks on Facebook whom I am “friends” with but have no idea who you are: I have a problem. An addiction. It’s really, really bad and it’s time to come clean. I can no longer pretend my addiction is not completely in control of my life. I can no longer hide behind the obvious facts. The high is so powerful I can’t get enough. Ever. Never, ever, EVER enough. Coming down gets harder and harder to handle. I think it’s causing longterm physical and emotional damage. So I keep going for the high. I can’t think of anything else while I’m awake, and can’t dream of anything else when I’m asleep. I’m in deep and I need help. My addiction could possibly kill me. My addiction causes problems with work and problems with my wife. I tell her she’s still the most important thing in my life, but we both know I’m lying. Yes, it’s that bad. My addiction is paragliding. In particular, crosscountry paragliding, but I throw in a quick fix from time to time under a speed wing or an acro wing if things are really desperate. Which happens frequently. My wife led me down this one-way road to madness. In 2006, she put a paraglider in my hands and taught me how to ground handle. Up until that time I’d led a perfectly adrenaline-filled, but comparatively bland, life—alpine ski racing in my youth, followed by rock climbing big walls, kayaking class VI (i.e., “unrunnable”) first descents across Central America, and helming sailing yachts on two successful circumnavigations engaged in kite-surfing expeditions. In early 2012, I was able to terminate my job as Captain and let my addiction take proper hold. A few weeks of

SIV and acro in Turkey to begin the season. Spring in the European Alps. Buy an RV, call it “The Niviuk Mobile” and park it for great lengths of time wherever the weather promised potential. I’d done a bit of XC by then, enough to know I had little chance to find a rehab center that would do any good. The kilometers and hours started adding up. I got on a Niviuk Artik 3 and discovered XContests’ “Chocolate Bar,” which clocks up a chocolate for every 100km flight. I studied track logs and weather like a professional poker player studies an opponent’s face. Early in the season, 100 km seemed like a big deal. By June, anything short of 100 km was cause for long study of my track log, private pep talks and comparisons to other pilots who are better. Trouble was brewing. I’d been at sea for 13 years. My girlfriend (still girlfriend at this point) and I are looking for a place to live. I ask Nick Greece, one of the top-ranked pilots in the US where the best place to fly long distance is in North America. He tells me Owens Valley, California; Jackson Hole, Wyoming (his hometown); and Sun Valley, Idaho. Jody and I spend a single morning in Sun Valley just a few weeks later and go no farther. From there, Matt Beechinor breaks the US foot-launch record near the end of June with a groundbreaking flight of 309 km (193 miles). The record travels at Internet speed throughout the flying community and people take notice. I, for one, am awed; I didn’t think flights of this length were even possible in the mountains. I sign up for my first competition in Chelan, Washington, and get a taste for the vein-smacking high of making goal on the first task, then the bitter frustration of bombing out two days in a row. The addiction is in full bloom now.

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A few weeks later, the North American record is broken again from Sun Valley. Nate Scales flies a remarkable 319 km (199 miles) deep into Montana. A week later the paragliding world breathes another collectively astonished breath when Nick Greece goes 329 km (204 miles) from Jackson Hole across the Red Rock Desert, a ridiculously isolated area of Wyoming. And the line moves again! These three records are the most inspiring moments in sport I’ve ever seen, ever tasted. They are big-wave surfing, extreme skiing, and proximity base-jumping all rolled into one. But XC paragliding lasts for hours and hours, requires the same kind of concentration and skill, and has every bit of the risk, while these other sports only last a few seconds! I want some of this for myself. I begin to question if I can ever be that good. I begin to contemplate and visualize what would be necessary to go that far. I don’t really know where to start, but I know I want to be a

part of these pioneering flights. I want to be a part of this inspiring community. I get a wildcard to compete in the PWC in August in Sun Valley and make a desperate phone call to Niviuk. I take my first flight on the Icepeak 6, also my first flight in Sun Valley. Nate Scales, who holds the Idaho state distance record, is my flying buddy that day. My water bag freezes solid and I suck down a tank of supplemental oxygen, the first I’ve ever used. We complete a 102km FAI triangle, and I land in a state of bliss that doesn’t diminish for many days. This is now my home. The PWC is my second comp and I become a sponge, soaking up strategies and skills faster than my mind can process what is happening. My brain is becoming intensely fond of this new drug. The condi-

ABOVE Gavin McClurg over King Mountain, Idaho. RIGHT McClurg eyeing up launch at Mt. Baldy, ID.

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“...the learning is now on a bell curve that has no bell. It’s straight up. Vertical. I want MORE. MORE, dammit, more!”

tions are challenging and strong and our little valley, which on a good day might have two pilots on launch, suddenly has 130 of the finest in the world. Show me the way! I fly just well enough to qualify for the Superfinal in Colombia, where I get slaughtered, but the learning is now on a bell curve that has no bell. It’s straight up. Vertical. I want MORE. MORE, dammit, more! Another spring in Europe, chasing distance possibly harder than any reasonable person ever has, or should. And I’m not being arrogant. This spring was like Armageddon in the Alps; the only way to get in the air was to move around endlessly. The moving often ends in frustration, but I manage to pull off a few memorable flights between downpours. And my flying partner, Bruce Marks, will log nearly 500 hours in the air by the end of July. But I have my eyes on Sun Valley. Europe is the training ground, the place to tune up for what may be the most radical and committing flying on the planet.

We don’t have trains or buses, and we have very few roads with even fewer people traveling on them. The conditions are strong, and the mountains are huge. On July 9, Nate Scales and I launch off Bald Mountain, Sun Valley, and head east. The flying is magnificent and, as the day winds down, we find ourselves linking onto the Continental Divide, the north-south mountain highway that begins at the southern tip of South America and ends at the top of Alaska. I fly 256 km that day (159 miles), 50 kilometers farther than my previous best. I land near Yellowstone in a literal no man’s land and would have likely spent two days walking out, if not for a friend chasing us from the ground all day. Five days later, on July 14, the weather looks good and Nate and I head east again, but this time on a more northerly course, crossing into Montana after soaring over ranges that rise sharply off the desert floor—the Big Lost, the Lemhis, the Pioneers, the Beaverheads, the Divide. Each one requires glides of 20 miles and more. Distances and vistas are indescribably grand. We frequently reach heights of 17,999 feet and, even with supplemental oxygen, I experience my first foul brush with hypoxia. Near the

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McClurg's big week!

end of the day I make a move towards Bozeman, knowing that if I make it, I’ll have the North American record. But I turn into a headwind and land on the banks of the Madison River 311 km from launch, just a few miles short. Far from being discouraged, I am ecstatic. I’ve broken my own personal best by 55 km and I’ve made mistakes, landed early. All I need is the right day… We get home at 0330, thoroughly exhausted. The eight-hour retrieve on dark roads surrounded by loitering animals requires vigilance, and I have none left to use. I crash on a friend’s bed for a few hours and am literally driving back home to get more sleep at 10:00 the next morning, when Matt Beechinor calls from launch to report that the weather is better than the day before. Time to go paragliding! I run to the store, buy some food, borrow a bottle of oxygen and head up the hill. Matt and another pilot get unlucky on the first glide across town, arrive in shade, and hit the deck. My late launch is one of many moves that happen to go my way that day. The conditions are far stronger than any I’ve flown in. When I’m high, everything is glorious.

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When I’m down low, it’s terrifying. The climbs are ear-popping strong and the sink is horrifying. Overdevelopment chases me all day, running along the Divide to my south, but I’m able to run safely and make incredible time, averaging 52 km/h, a speed I didn’t think possible to average on a paraglider in the mountains. I land at 6:20 p.m. on the edge of Canyon Ferry Lake, right outside of Helena, Montana, just as the glass-off begins, leaving more than two hours on the table. A few minutes before, I’d been at 17,999 feet and thought I was looking at over 500 km. But the overdevelopment finally caught up, leaving me nowhere to go. There was too much wind to head north, heavy rain to the south, and a giant lake ahead that served as a virtual fence. My Flytec says I am 387 km from launch. I’ve beaten the record by 59 km (36 miles). In three flights in one week, I’ve stacked up 954 kilometers. Matt chased me all day, driving flat-out, but never caught up. After we finally reunited, we began the long, long drive home, talking about our shared passion. Our shared addiction. And we both decide an intervention definitely isn’t necessary.

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