Confessions of an XC Hound by Gavin McClurg

AC T

CONFESSIONS OF AN XC HOUND Gavin McClurg smashes the North American footlaunch record – and wants more.

LINE OF SIGHT Gavin McClurg. Photo: Jody MacDonald

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 that 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 its causing long-term physical and emotional damage. So I keep going for the high. I can’t think of anything else while I’m awake, and I 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.

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My addiction is paragliding. In particular, cross country 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 (while she was my girlfriend, the wife thing happened recently, I think to try to distract me – which has failed miserably!) 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; then rock climbing big walls; kayaking class VI (ie “unrunnable”) first descents across Central America; and helming sailing yachts on two successful circumnavigations engaged in kitesurfing expeditions. In early 2012 I was able to end my Captain job and let the addiction really take a 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 centre that would do any good. The kilometres and hours started adding up. I got on a Niviuk Artik 3 and discovered XContest’s “Chocolate Bar”, which clocks up a chocolate for every 100km flight. I studied tracklogs and weather like a professional poker player studies an opponent’s face. Early in the season 100km seemed like a very big deal. By June anything short of 100km was cause for long study of my tracklog 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, the top-ranked pilot in the US, where is best to fly long distance is in the US. He tells me Owens Valley, California; Jackson Hole, Wyoming (his home town); and Sun Valley, Idaho. Jody and I spend a single morning in Sun Valley just a few weeks later and go no farther. Matt Beechinor breaks the US foot launch record near the end of June with a ground-breaking

flight of 309km (193 miles). The record travels at lightspeed through 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. A few weeks later the North American record is broken again from Sun Valley. Nate Scales flies a remarkable 319km (199 miles) deep into Montana. A week later the paragliding world breathes another collectively astonished breath when Nick Greece goes 328km (204 miles) from Jackson Hole across the Red Rock desert, an impossibly isolated area of Wyoming and the line is moved 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; has every bit of the risk – but these other sports only last a few seconds! I want some of this for myself.

LIFE IN THE SUN ‘The most radical and committing flying on the planet is in the States, says Gavin. Photo: Jody MacDonald

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LIGHT AND SHADE ‘I am on the road to madness.’ After a ’comparatively bland’ life big wall climbing and round the world sailing, Gavin discovered cross country paragliding. Photo: Jody MacDonald

I begin to question if I can ever be that good. I begin to contemplate and visualise 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 community. I get a wildcard to compete in the PWC in August in Sun Valley and make a desperate phone call to Niviuk. I’ve never flown an EN D, let alone a comp wing. The day before the comp begins I take my first flight on the Icepeak 6, and my first flight in Sun Valley. Nate Scales is my flying buddy that day and we climb well above where we are supposed to legally. My water bag freezes solid and I suck down a tank of supplementary oxygen, the first I’ve

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ever used. We complete a 102km FAI triangle and I land in a state of bliss that doesn’t evaporate 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 even happening. My brain is becoming intensely fond of this new drug. The conditions are challenging and strong and our little valley, which on a good day has 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 I think possibly harder than any reasonable person ever has, or should. And I’m not being arrogant. This spring was like armageddon in the Alps and the only way to get in the air was to move around endlessly. Mostly the moving ends in frustration but we 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, we have very few roads, and even fewer people travelling on them. The conditions are strong, and the mountains are huge.

On 9 July 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 256km that day (159 miles), 50km 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 14 July 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 Lemhi’s, the Pioneers, the Beaverheads, the Divide. Each one requires glides of 30km and more. Distances and vistas are indescribably grand. We frequently reach heights of 18,000 feet (5,000m) and even with supplemental oxygen I experience my first foul brush with hypoxia. Near the end of the day I make a move towards Bozeman, knowing 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 311km from launch, just a few miles short. Far from being discouraged I am ecstatic. I’ve broken my own personal best by 55km and I’ve made mistakes, landed early. All I need is the right day…

ON THE GROUND The sky from the chase vehicle’s point of view. Photo: Matt Beechinor

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HEAVEN LOOKS LIKE THIS The view from 5,000m on Gavin’s record flight. Photo: Gavin McClurg

Wingover. Photo: Jody MacDonald Gavin’s three tracks. He flew 954km in three flights over a week.

We get home at 3.30am thoroughly worn out. The eight-hour retrieve on dark roads loitered by big 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 10am the next morning when we get a call from Matt, who is up on launch. The weather is better than the day before, he says. Time to go paragliding! I run to the store to buy some food, my friend loans me a bottle of oxygen and I head up the hill. Matt and another pilot get unlucky on the first glide across town and arrive in shade and hit the deck. My late launch is one of many moves that just happen to go my way that day. The conditions are far stronger than any I’ve flown in before. When I’m high everything is glorious. When I’m down low it’s terrifying. The climbs are ear-poppingly strong and the sink is horrifying.

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Overdevelopment chases me all day, running along the Divide to my south but I’m able to run safely and make incredible time, averaging 52km/h. I land at 6.20pm on the edge of Canyon Ferry Lake, just outside of Helena Montana, just as the glass-off begins, leaving more than two hours on the table. Just a few minutes before I’d been at 18,000 feet and thought I was looking at over 500km. But the overdevelopment finally caught up and I had nowhere to go. Too much wind to go north, heavy rain to the south, and a giant lake ahead that was a virtual fence. My Flytec says I am 387km from launch. I’ve beaten the record by 59km (36 miles). Matt chases me all day driving 100mph and never catching up. When he does we make the long, long drive home talking about our shared passion. Our shared addiction. And we both decide an intervention definitely isn’t necessary.