The Red Bulletin UK 01/24 by Red Bull Media House

UK EDITION JANUARY 2024, £3.50 SUBSCRIBE: getredbulletin.com

BEYOND THE ORDINARY

DUST TO GLORY The unstoppable rise of rally racer Vanessa Ruck KILLER MIKE The US rapper on changing the world FROZEN ASSETS Our guide to the best snow gear

Breathtaking adventures in the world’s coldest climates

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E D ITO R ’ S L E T T E R

Contributors

SIMON CUDBY British-born, California-based Cudby is one of the most respected photographers in motocross. “Riding in Iceland with Vanessa [Ruck] was a blast,” he says of shooting the UK rally racer for us. “We spent six days riding across various terrains, and she was always super-motivated to do what it took to get the shot.” Page 48

MARK BAILEY

DAVID SODOMKA (COVER), ALEIX SALVAT

“All of these amazing athletes recognise winter is not a time to hibernate, because coldweather climates can unlock cool new adventures,” says the writer, who spoke to six such figures for our celebration of frozen adventure this issue. “The lesson was clear: don’t keep your own adventures on ice until summer.” Page 28

THE RIGHT PATH Our lives are shaped by low-stakes daily decisions: to jog or not to jog? Salad or Subway? But when a single choice could be life-changing, what does it take to make the correct call? The stars of this issue know all too well. Take ice-climber Will Gadd. The Canadian almost died climbing Helmcken Falls in 2014 and was left with PTSD, but this year Gadd decided to face his fears and return. He and five other bold adventurers revisit their most daring sub-zero challenges to date. Then we meet motorbike rally racer Vanessa Ruck, who is making history with almost every finish line she crosses. But to become the first woman to complete many of the world’s toughest desert races, she first had to force herself to get back on a bike after a road traffic accident left her unable to ride. And award-winning US rapper Killer Mike knows he could be somewhere very different today had he not been told to choose between drug dealing and his rap career. As it is, his choice to make music has also created a platform for him to fight for social change. Enjoy the issue.

SHENEAD POROOSOTUM The London-based journalist has written about fashion, culture and music for the likes of Wonderland and Reader’s Digest. For this issue, she interviewed rising rapper Ren. “It was enlightening,” she says. “He’s a confident character bringing people together. I came away with a sense of resilience and positivity.” Page 24 THE RED BULLETIN

Switching focus: David Sodomka, who shot our cover image of kayak ace Aniol Serrasolses, is caught snapping on location in the Arctic

CONTENTS

FROZEN ADVENTURES

in his blood. The Atlantan rap star and local hero shares his manifesto

P L AY L I S T: R O M Y 13

SUB-ZERO HEROES

R A V E O N T H E A V O N 15

Winter = duvet days, right? Meet six athletes whose audacious, frostbitten exploits will make you feel a bit lazy

MOTORCYCLING

MUSIC

Blistering heat, broken bones, burntout clutches: all challenges left for dust by the English rally/enduro ace

16 M A K E I T E X T R E M E 19 FA N TA S Y F I B R E M I L L 20 JAMES LAKE

HEROES

KILLER MIKE

KYLIE MINOGUE

Spitting bars is his trade, but activism is

Thirty-five years in the game, the pop icon has hit a new peak. We toast it with her… with a glass of Kylie wine

VANESSA RUCK

PHOTOGRAPHY

GREG LECOEUR

The Frenchman’s images have depth and, as shown by this portfolio selection, not just the subaquatic kind

The Welsh rapper on his battle with chronic illness, creating light from darkness, and kidnapping his fans

T R A V E L 67

REN GILL

MATT FORMSTON

Every surfer develops a feel for the waves, but when you’ve been blind since childhood the skill is vital 04

VENTURE H O W T O : S E E T H E W O R L D 72

E Q U I P M E N T: S N O W G E A R 74 F I T N E S S : F O R E S T B AT H I N G 83 C A L E N D A R 86 S E M I - R A D 98 THE RED BULLETIN

SIMON CUDBY, GREG LECOEUR

G A L L E R Y 6

LUCAS TIEFENTHALER/RED BULL ILLUME

DAVYDD CHONG

Lech Zürs am Arlberg, Austria

LEARNING CURVE

“It’s a miracle this shot exists!” says Austrian Lucas Tiefenthaler. “I invested hours, miles and nerves to create [it]. The weather was too windy, too warm, too snowy. I couldn’t use serial shot mode because of the flashes. And I could press the shutter button only once, so I needed perfect timing to capture Thomas [Göschlberger, MTB rider].” A semi-final place in Red Bull Illume (Creative category) followed. lucastiefenthaler.com: redbullillume.com

Riga, Latvia

GHOST RIDER Riga is home to an eerie sculpture titled The Ghost, by artist Ieva Rubeze. Could its spirit have infused this shot, a Red Bull Illume semi-finalist (Energy category)? Er, no. The light-painting skills of Volodya Voronin and skater’s instincts of Arturs Bogdanovics are arguably otherworldly, though. “[With multiple flashes] you can be blinded for a split second,” says Voronin. “This shot shows the skill of an athlete who’s learnt the trick so perfectly he can do it blindly, even over the gap.” actiongrapher.com; redbullillume.com

DAVYDD CHONG VOLODYA VORONIN/RED BULL ILLUME, DANIEL GAJDA/RED BULL ILLUME

Salt Lake City, Utah, US

GLOW UP

What have Just Stop Oil got against US climber Ross Fulkerson, you ask? Nothing, obviously. These warm orange hues were diffused by Mother Nature, and Daniel Gajda captured them gratefully. “When Ross pulled on for his second lap, the sun came out from behind the clouds and lit up the orange leaves with that gorgeous, golden mountain light,” Gajda says of the shot that bagged a semi-final place in Red Bull Illume (Emerging with Canon). “Man oh man, did it feel like a perfect moment!” gajdaphotography.com; redbullillume.com

Teahupo‘o, French Polynesia

RIDING HIS LUCK Serendipity earned Morgan Maassen a Red Bull Illume semi-final place in the Innovation category. “A compendium of miscalculations made this shot,” he says. “I swam too high through the lip; Eimeo [Czermak, surf pro] was late for the barrel and bottom-turned instead; the wave was crumbly with the late-morning wind… But all this worked together, making the 10th frame of an unremarkable sequence a perfect window through the whitewater to Eimeo’s bottom turn.” Lucky break indeed. morganmaassen.com; redbullillume.com

MORGAN MAASSEN/RED BULL ILLUME

DAVYDD CHONG

P LAY ALL D AY

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F E AT U R I N G

ROMY

Moving moments Singer, guitarist and DJ Romy Madley Croft shares four songs to dance, weep and heal to Life hasn’t always been easy for Romy Madley Croft. The solo artist and member of London-based band The xx lost her mum when she was just 11, and her dad nine years later. During this painful time, music – dance tunes, in particular – became her escape, and in her teens she began DJing. In 2005, she and school friends Oliver Sim and Jamie Smith formed indie-rock trio The xx, with Croft on guitar and vocals. Their self-titled debut album, released in 2009, was an international success, hailed for its unique blend of electronica and dream-pop. Croft’s debut as a solo artist, Mid Air, pays homage to her favourite queer clubs, DJing, and the feel-good music of her youth. Here, the 34year-old, who records under the name Romy, picks four songs that made an impact on her formative years and continue to inspire the music she makes. romyromyromy.com

VIC LENTAIGNE

MARCEL ANDERS

Scan the QR code to hear our Playlist podcast with Romy on Spotify

Robyn

Beverly Glenn-Copeland

Oliver Sim

Madonna

Dancing On My Own (2010)

La Vita (2004)

Fruit (2022)

Get Together (2005)

“I consider this song an absolute anthem. It’s such a classic, and it really reminds me of being in queer clubs when I was younger. When I hear it out today, it still unites the room. It’s got a combination of [a feeling of] euphoria and sad lyrics. It’s a huge inspiration to me. Robyn is someone who I look up to a lot.”

“My mum died when I was 11 and then my dad when I was 20, and those moments made me reassess life and how short it is. I try to live with that perspective – to try to see the positive in things – but it’s not always easy. So when I hear [this song’s] lyric, ‘My mother says to me: enjoy your life,’ it’s like therapy in the club. It’s healing music, for sure.”

“This is my favourite song from Oliver’s album [Hideous Bastard]. He and Jamie [Smith, who records as Jamie xx] wrote it together, and it was interesting for me to hear what they made when the two of them went off. [The xx last released an album together in 2017.] I wasn’t involved at all, [but] I didn’t feel left out – I felt excited for Oliver! This is a really uplifting track.”

“This song is why I reached out to [Madonna producer] Stuart Price to collaborate on my project. I really love his production, his sonics, and the way he captures the emotion. Also, it was exciting to hear all his stories and what it was like to work with Madonna in his studio in a flat in London. From what he said, it was quite a low-key experience.”

THE RED BULLETIN

JAMIE NICHOLLS

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LOU BOYD JAMES BECK, CHARLOTTE SAWYER

A group of ravers in swimming costumes dance in front of a courthouse. A woman gracefully swims down the Bristol Channel wearing a mermaid’s tail. A bride in her wedding dress floats above the riverbed – a scene reminiscent of Millais’ famous painting Ophelia. These unusual moments are captured in Rave on for the Avon, a new documentary by director Charlotte Sawyer, which showcases the diverse individuals in southwest England who are using unconventional, radical approaches to preserve beloved wild-swimming spots. Sawyer first encountered the rampant nature of pollution in wild waters when she moved into a house next to the River Avon in Bristol in 2019. She saw an ad posted by locally based adventurer/campaigner Lindsey Cole, who was looking for someone to make a film on water health. “Lindsey swam 60 kilometres down the Avon wearing a mermaid’s tail and dragging a giant inflatable poo to bring attention to sewage pollution,” says Sawyer. “She ended her swim at Bristol harbour, where a huge crowd greeted her. I made a 12-minute film of that day, but it began a larger idea of making a film comprising all the voices that love the river and are fighting for it in unexpected ways.” The issue of water pollution is much wider than the one river this film focuses on. The UK’s waterways are in a critical state: last May, an assessment by the Environment Agency judged only 14 per cent of its rivers to be “at good ecological status”. Bathing waters are the only blue spaces where water quality is regularly monitored for its effect on human health, and polluting industries are subject to legal obligations. For this reason, campaign group Surfers Against Sewage has called for 200 wild-swimming areas to be created by 2030. The film and those in it are pushing for the Avon to be among these sites. THE RED BULLETIN

RAVE ON FOR THE AVON

River dance

The UK’s waterways are in crisis. This new film shows the eccentric ways in which one group of Bristolians are fighting for the blue spaces they love Rave on for the Avon revolves around the work of the Conham Bathing group, named after a stretch of the Avon in the east of Bristol. Citizen scientists Becca Blease, Eva Perrin and Aggie Nyagari-Salt are highlighting the river’s poor water quality by running their own tests and sending samples to the water company that should be doing the monitoring. “Becca started it, then she was joined by Eva, who has a PhD and a deep knowledge of bacterial science and rivers, and then Aggie,” says Sawyer. “They’re all highly capable women doing the Environment Agency’s – or Wessex Water’s – work for them. When they turned up at City Hall to hand in a petition [asking that a by-law banning swimming in the Avon be revoked], there was a rave

I second that motion: (from top) mermaid Lindsey Cole and her inflatable poo; local DJ Sophie Bolton keeps the party jumping at the rave outside Bristol’s City Hall in October 2022

going on. People had turned up in bathing suits, with a sound system, to show their support.” The film ends with Megan Ruth-Trump, the woman in the wedding dress, in a moss-woven headdress. Campaigners in New Zealand are fighting to give rivers personhood and rights, and Trump wants the same in the UK. To show this, she stands at the water’s edge and marries the river, becoming Megan Avon-Trump. “It was all very silly but also quite serious in its message,” says Sawyer. “This film shows an eco-feminist approach to campaigning. We’re showing that this fight isn’t just about the duty of looking after our waterways; it’s about a love for the water.” Rave on for the Avon will be screened around the UK early this year; conhambathing.co.uk 15

Thinking outside the box This British sculptor is on a mission to prove that anyone can become an artist, and anything can become a piece of art Exeter-based artist James Lake was 17 when his life changed dramatically. That was the year he was diagnosed with bone cancer, which resulted in the loss of his right leg, followed by many months of recovery in his bedroom as he came to terms with his new body and mobility. During his recovery, Lake latched onto the idea of using his creative talents to understand and process the intense experience he was going through. He looked around his house and began making art with the resources closest to hand: old cardboard boxes and packaging that his parents had thrown away. Cutting up the cardboard and then reconstructing it, he created sculptural frames – his very first pieces of art. Fast forward 26 years and the now 43-year-old artist has made a career from that decision to raid his parents’ recycling box as a teenager. By cutting, moulding and sticking together discarded pieces of cardboard, Lake creates detailed life-size human sculptures that comment on environmentalism and upcycling in art. “[My work] is about transforming an old box and giving it a new life, valuing resources,” he says. “For that reason, I think it’s important that the cardboard is visible in my sculptures, 16

House of card: (clockwise from top) Youth (2023), modelled on Lake’s youngest son; two views of Time (2021), a piece that captures the resilience of Lake’s 74-year-old mother

and that people can still see they’re made from it. [My works] question how we perceive and value art and all the things around us. Are they reusable? Do we need to buy that? Can we repair it?” By exhibiting his work in primary schools as well as galleries, Lake wants to show children that art is something that’s attainable, created from the same materials they play with in the classroom. “It’s incredibly important for me to inspire a new generation of artists that transcends economic barriers,” he explains. “I want to create a level playing field for all, and I hope that I’m a positive role model for them, both as an artist and as a disabled person. “Art should reflect the experience of everybody. I’ve developed a way of working wherein the materials and the method mean that art can be created anywhere: a bedroom, a garage, a shed. Great art should not be about the materials that you use, but about the passion and effort you put into the work.” In July 2023, Lake was announced the recipient of the Adam Reynolds Award, an annual prize presented to mid-career disabled artists, which includes a commission with a £10,000 bursary. He will première a major new piece in early 2024 – one that translates his art to a digital environment for the first time. “This is a new direction for me, and a first in terms of combining my art practice with another art form,” Lake says. “There will be some surprising elements, so I don’t want to give too much away! “Cardboard reflects humanity in that as a medium it can be both strong and fragile. I’d like to think this new work will leave you with a feeling that art has the power to change people’s lives.” jameslakesculpture.co.uk THE RED BULLETIN

LOU BOYD

JAMES LAKE

| SAM INGLES

| JOHN MYHRE & SEBBY K.

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LOU BOYD MICHALIS MAVROS

A man rides at full speed on a single-wheeled bike, leaning back on a seat perched above a recycled tyre as he performs wheelies and other stunts. This machine is just one of many madcap inventions from Make It Extreme, a YouTube channel run by Michael Mavros and George Shiailis, two best friends who use salvaged materials to create unique and innovative mechanical projects. On Make It Extreme, the pair transform everyday objects and vehicles into extreme versions of themselves, pushing creative boundaries in the process. They build and design their projects, film and edit the entire process, then finally showcase the results. “By passionately crafting furniture, engines, tools, toys and vehicles while leveraging our imagination, we try to offer innovative solutions to various mechanical challenges,” explains Mavros, who’s based in Paphos, Cyprus. “We’ve shared this passion since our early years, and now, through our channel, we share it with millions of other people in an easily understandable way.” For its 100th video, Make It Extreme introduced the Monotrack bike, constructed entirely from recycled and salvaged materials. The duo utilised a 100cc two-stroke engine from an old scooter, cutting the sidewalls of a used car tyre and fitting it around a recycled motor. The bike reflects their commitment to sustainability and creativity, existing purely for the joy and curiosity it brings. “The idea for the Monotrack bike came from an old wartime photo where we saw a similar vehicle,” says Mavros. “Our creations are often inspired by things we’ve encountered before. For example, the Monowheel, where a person sits inside a huge wheel, was inspired by THE RED BULLETIN

MAKE IT EXTREME

Limitless design This DIY design duo make and film madcap inventions to promote the joys of mechanical engineering and inspire creativity in others

Reinventing the wheel: (from top) Make It Extreme’s Michael Mavros rides the Monowheel; a wartime photo inspired the Monotrack bike

similar vehicles from decades ago, and our tank chair stemmed from the idea of creating an accessible adventure vehicle for people with limited mobility.” While their modified bikes and cars often grab the most attention online, the pair frequently apply the ‘extreme’ treatment to much less high-octane items – a recent video features an extreme cable-wrapping machine. “As you can tell from our name, the whole concept revolves around creating extreme things from scratch and using parts anyone can find,” explains Mavros. “However, these extreme creations can be anything, Our first project that gained

people’s attention was a briefcase that could transform into a dining-room table.” Make It Extreme now has almost two million subscribers who tune in every month to see the duo’s latest invention. And Mavros promises that 2024 will see them create their most daring project yet. “Our goal is to create things from scratch in an extreme way that motivates our audience to either attempt a similar project or simply be inspired and impressed,” he says. “That’s the essence of our motivation behind all these daring ventures — sharing our passion to encourage people to start creating.” makeitextreme.com 19

How one woman’s plan to grow her own dungarees sowed the seeds of a whole new, sustainable fashion industry If you were raised on fairy tales, the image of a spinning wheel might be an enduring memory – whether it’s the spindle that pricks Sleeping Beauty’s finger or the machine that the impish Rumpelstiltskin uses in the story by the Brothers Grimm. The notion of magically turning humble straw into precious gold thread, in particular, is embedded in our imaginations. For North Berwick-based farmer, musician and costume and set designer Rosie Bristow, this concept is not whimsical fantasy but tangible reality. With her project Fantasy Fibre Mill, the 30-year-old is on a mission to reintroduce flax spinning to the UK and foster a locally sourced fashion industry where people can 20

grow their own garments in a field near their home then return the material to the soil when they’ve finished with it. The inspiration for Fantasy Fibre Mill came to Bristow during the COVID pandemic, when she was working on an organic farm and her costumedesign work had dried up. “I’ve always been very wary of fast fashion,” she explains. “Being a seamstress, I could tell that someone must be getting really badly underpaid to make every garment. [Working on the farm] started me thinking not only about where clothes come from but also about the origins of the fabric. After all, cotton, linen and wool all start off on a farm.” The 2019 book Fibershed, which documents its author

Spin cycle: (from top) Bristow creates thread from the flax she’s grown; a prototype shirt made by Fantasy Fibre Mill

THE RED BULLETIN

LOU BOYD

Straw into gold

MAHALA LEMAY

FANTASY FIBRE MILL

Rebecca Burgess’ quest to create a wardrobe of clothing crafted from materials within a 240km radius of her home, inspired Bristow to begin growing flax to make her own garments. “I naively didn’t realise what a big project it would be,” she laughs. “But it has started an even bigger project: I realised I wanted to disrupt the exploitative fashion supply chain by creating a regenerative local one.” Instead of growing one pair of dungarees, Bristow generated enough plants for an entire fashion line, planting a hectare of flax – the biggest crop seen in the UK since the 1950s – and recruiting 35 volunteers to help harvest it. “I discovered that the missing link is that we have no machinery in the UK to process the raw plant into yarn, and the machines are far too expensive to start bringing over,” she says. “That’s when I met [Fantasy Fibre Mill co-founder] Nick Evans, who’s a designer and computer programmer. Together, we’re designing and building the machinery for a whole new industry. Our plans will be open source and free, so as well as creating the machines ourselves we’re doing the research that will allow others to make their own.” Last June, Fantasy Fibre Mill was awarded a grant of £50,000 by business innovation agency Innovate UK to develop its processing set-up; in October, it won £30,000 and nearly £10,000worth of business support from entrepreneurial development programme Converge. “Imagine it: you could grow your plants, then, using our machines, you’d make yarn and fabric without chemicals,” says Bristow. “You wear the garment and repair it when needed. Then finally, when it gets to the end of its life, you compost it in the soil to contribute its nutrients to the earth. Then you grow more. We’d be creating a circular economy that wouldn’t exploit anyone or hurt the planet.” fantasyfibremill.com

FW 23 TO GET THERE

H E RO ES

RIDING THE WAVE

In 2023, KYLIE MINOGUE pushed her success to new levels, winning over young fans and breaking through in America. And the 55-year-old pop icon has no intention of hanging up her hot pants just yet… WORDS MARCEL ANDERS

“From what I’ve heard from other people in the business, you don’t stay here [between shows] or you’ll go crazy!” Kylie Minogue laughs. The pop icon is referring to Las Vegas, where she’s in the midst of an extended residency. With her six-month stint in Sin City, Minogue is adding her name to a long list of musical greats who have performed on the famous strip, from Elvis Presley to Lady Gaga. A five-word cameo in the ill-advised Neighbours reboot aside, 2023 has seen a new peak in the 55-yearold singer’s evergreen career. Packed with upbeat floor-fillers, her sixteenth studio album Tension debuted at number one in the UK album chart, and lead single Padam Padam caught the attention of the TikTok generation, becoming a summer dancefloor staple around the world. Much like the wines from her own signature range, it seems the singer only gets better with age. Here, she talks about creativity, big nights in, and following in the footsteps of Sting and Bono… the red bulletin: Your music career has lasted 35 years and counting. Do you still feel the same motivation as when you started out? kylie minogue: [I do it] because of the thrill, the creative desire. I love it. I mean, I ask myself the same thing sometimes. I think, “That’s it, I’ve got to stop.” But then all my team will roll their eyes and say, “We know you’re not stopping.” So you’re not tempted to move to the South of France and buy a vineyard now you have your own wine brand? I’m not a connoisseur of wines by any means, and that’s one thing I’ve been

PHOTOGRAPHY ED COOKE

totally clear about with Kylie Minogue Wines. I just like a good wine. But that would be a fantasy, yes. I’d have to have my recording studio there as well, which would make me like a fully fledged pop star, like your Bonos and your Stings – they’ve got their own vineyards. Padam Padam is your most successful single for a long time. Did you expect the reaction it received? It took all of us by surprise, the success of it and that it was picked up by quote/ unquote “youth radio”. But it’s so refreshing that the song has just been taken at face value. I think the younger generation are so open-minded, not judgemental. I mean, I remember being 20 and thinking that someone who’s 40 is just so old. We’ve all been there. But I think [young people] are exposed to so much now, and they know it’s not cool to be judgemental like that. I think that attitudes [to age] have to change, and they are changing, which is good. Was a Vegas residency something you wanted to tick off your list? Yes, Vegas is new. And it’s a good challenge. I think it’s kind of almost a rite of passage as a performer – there’s the lure of Vegas. But my show is more about the intimacy of old Vegas. It’s the opposite of what people would think. So I’m doing it for the experience; it feels like a good time. Many of your songs are dancefloor staples. Do you still enjoy clubbing? Not so much, if I’m honest. My heavy clubbing days were the early-to-mid-’90s when that’s just what you did. I’m enamoured by that time more and more, because you didn’t have [mobile] phones and you weren’t tweeting and Instagramming and TikToking or any

of that; you were just there. Maybe the younger generation are bored of the older generation going on about that [time], but it was just incredible. In recent years, for me it’s been more about not planning to be dancing, but after dinner the music just gets louder, you move the furniture around and suddenly you’re having the best disco. What was it like making a return to Neighbours? It was very brief. [Laughs.] I’ve done a couple of other bits of acting since then, and I really enjoy being back on set. Along with a few nerves, I feel very at home on a film set or a TV set, because that’s where I was every day for two-and-a-half years when I was 18. I love how everyone has to work together as a team. That might play a part in why I have never earned the “diva” label. I’m very aware of the heights of showbiz and keeping some sense of normality. With all the achievements under your belt already, what’s next? I feel like I’m just surfing a wave that’s a lot of fun – even though there’s a lot of paddling. By the way, I’m not a surfer, but I have caught a wave, so I can attest to that sensation of, “Is it going to happen this time? Am I going to catch a wave?” I’m enjoying this moment, feeling I’m inhabiting myself in a kind of fuller way than I have for a number of years. I’m enjoying my success. Kylie Minogue’s album Tension is out now through Darenote/BMG; kylie.com

THE RED BULLETIN

“I remember being 20 and thinking that someone who’s 40 is just so old” The singer found the response from young music fans to her hit Padam Padam “refreshing”

THE RED BULLETIN

H E RO ES

MUSICAL MEDICINE

Chronic illness could have brought REN GILL’s career aspirations to an end. But by channelling his experiences into raw, honest expositions on the human condition, the Welsh-born musician has touched millions WORDS SHENEAD POROOSOTUM

Ren Gill, known professionally as Ren, never expected his album Sick Boi to top the UK chart, but not in the usual, humble way an artist might claim. Gill had good reason: the songwriter, rapper and producer isn’t signed to a major label; wasn’t in the UK to promote the album’s October release, and had turned down invites to play at major festivals including Glastonbury – all because of ill health. For years, the artist from Bangor, North Wales, had been in pain and couldn’t get out of bed. Doctors told him he was depressed, but he knew that wasn’t it. After eight years of looking for answers, Gill was diagnosed with the debilitating bacterial infection Lyme disease and had to leave his adopted home of Brighton, East Sussex, to receive life-improving treatment in Canada, his current base. The illness derailed his ambitions – a lover of music ever since his dad gifted him a guitar at the age of 10, Gill had forged a successful busking career on the streets of Bath and Brighton. And yet, amid the tumult, the 33-yearold has continued to create new music. Exploring some of the darkest and most difficult parts of his journey so far, the songs have been accompanied by cinematic videos, impromptu live performances, and livestreamed treasure-hunt-style games in lieu of a traditional touring schedule. And Gill’s music has resonated. Hi Ren, an intense nine-minute rapped dialogue using his own dark inner voice, has been watched more than 20 million times on YouTube since its release in 2022, and led to an outpouring of fan reaction. The chart-topping success of Sick Boi – his follow-up to 2016 debut Freckled Angels – shows that Gill hasn’t let his many talents

PHOTOGRAPHY BRAD LEWIS

be dulled by his struggles. Here, he talks about forging a connection not despite his illness, but, in part at least, because of it… the red bulletin: You began making beats at 12 years old. Who were your musical influences while growing up? ren gill: I had loads. At first, I wanted to be a producer. I grew up listening to drum’n’bass [acts] like Shy FX, Micky Finn & Aphrodite… But then I also loved John Frusciante from the Red Hot Chili Peppers for guitar; early Eminem, Kurt Cobain, Bob Marley. There was a lot of variety, and they were a huge influence because my parents listened to them. [Today] I’m influenced by filmmakers, too, like Quentin Tarantino, Stanley Kubrick, Martin McDonagh… All those stories inspired my writing, maybe even more so than music. How have your more difficult experiences shaped your music? When the everyday looks quite bleak, it’s a process of alchemy to create light out of something dark. I can choose to feel empowered or powerless; to be a victim or be gifted with a perspective most people don’t have. Music is a blessing, because I have an outlet to channel my frustration and suffering, and [to create] a buoyancy aid for others going through a dark time. Did you expect the response to Hi Ren? I don’t think I ever expected the degree of momentum. I was just trying to remain impassive, curiously watching while being mind-boggled by the whole thing. There aren’t many people who can relate to being chronically sick for 13 years. I think the beautiful thing about art is that I can talk very specifically about a situation and someone can hear that and apply it to their own. The track resonated with a lot of people, and I think what that says about humanity is more interesting than what

it says about me. There are many people experiencing this kind of inner conflict. Did you feel vulnerable revealing your innermost thoughts and struggles? I think illness has a way of cremating some of those layers. They exist because [we’re all] conditioned to be very selfaware but also self-critical. We just want to do the thing that makes us accepted by everybody. I think illness has been a way for me to thin those layers; it burns away a lot of what’s not important. Many people reach those perspectives as they get older, and I think illness has a way of speeding up that process, because we become aware of our own mortality. Every day is a gift. You might as well be fearless. Your health hasn’t allowed a tour. How else have you connected with fans? I love being disruptive. We wanted to do something exciting in Brighton, so we got a crowd of between 500 and 1,000 people to turn up at the train station and they were met by people in balaclavas who took them to a secret location in a car park. The police showed up, but they recognised me from busking and left me to it; we’ve got a love-hate relationship. Being based in Canada, I do a lot of streaming on Twitch and talk to my fans on Discord. It’s almost like doing shows in a different way. What advice would you give others experiencing serious setbacks? Have self-belief, because for a long time I felt I had to wait until somebody gave me the opportunity. It was really empowering to realise we can do so much for ourselves, and that it’s in our own hands to control. renmakesmusic.co.uk

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“Every day is a gift. You might as well be fearless” Self-belief has allowed Ren Gill to take control of his life despite serious health setbacks

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H E RO ES

TUNNEL VISION

Picture yourself surfing the huge waves of Nazaré, Portugal, becoming a dot on a 15m-high wall of water. Now imagine doing it with your eyes shut. This is how Aussie surfer MATT FORMSTON rode a monster he couldn’t see WORDS AMY WOODYATT

the red bulletin: How do you surf if you can’t see? matt formston: I started out on a bodyboard when I was about five – Dad would push me into waves, get me in and then drag me back out again. I learnt how to feel the board. It doesn’t have fins, so you have to surf using the rail, to learn how to feel that water running off. Then

I began to paddle in myself, hearing the waves coming towards me. I basically use my feet as my cane, to feel what’s happening. [I learnt through] thousands and thousands of hours of catching good and bad waves, finding out what it feels like and what my body should do. How does that translate to big waves? The biggest waves I’ve found in Australia have been 25-foot [almost 8m] waves, then you go to Nazaré and you’re surfing 50-foot [15m] waves, so it’s not really incremental progression! I worked on my breathing – you’re probably going to come off your board, and if you don’t have the breath capacity and the mental capacity, there’s a good likelihood you’ll die. I’ve got a wife and kids, and I definitely wanted to come home to them. I trained to the level where my longest single breath hold was five minutes and 40 seconds. Then I was doing ‘empty lungs’ – that’s in case you hit the water, all the air is pushed out of you and your heart rate increases. I learnt how to reduce my heart rate underwater: I’d spread out all my air, and my coach would crush my chest cavity. I did a 25-metre lap underwater with no air in my lungs. What motivates you? My attitude used to be: “I want to prove to others what I can do.” What I was really trying to do was prove I didn’t have a disability. People would say, “You can’t,” so I’d go out to prove them wrong. Now it’s more just the curiosity of what’s possible. How do you balance the element of risk with family life? Risk is a perceived thing; it’s not necessarily based on data. I looked at Nazaré: people see the wave and they feel fear. When you look at it, many highly trained people go there and not

many have died. I knew I’d trained as hard as anyone else. On top of that, I had the best team in the world. When you break that down on a piece of paper, rather than just looking at the big wave, the data says I’m actually pretty safe. How do you prepare to surf big waves? There’s a lot of trust between the whole team to make the call on whether I go or not: I can’t see how big the wave is. I only find out how big it is when I get to the bottom of it. When Lucas Chumbo [a Brazilian former surf champion who tows Formston into waves] has got me into the right spot and I’ve got the right speed, he blows a whistle and I know that’s the time. I pull myself forward using a rope and that takes me over the ledge of the wave. What did it feel like catching your first wave at Nazaré? All I heard was the whistle. Then the whole world was silent. It was just me going down this massive wave and I can feel the water coming up on my board. It’s just this feeling of the board slicing through, going at, like, 60kph. When I heard the kick-out of the wave, I knew I’d made it back to safety. Then all the audio comes back and I can hear all the guys screaming, all the jet skis rolling around and the crash of the waves breaking. How do you follow up that goal? I’m considering going for a freediving world record because of all the training I did with my breath capacity. It feels like something I should use. Formston’s journey has been captured for a documentary, The Blind Sea, set for release this summer; theblindsea.com.au

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THE BLIND SEA FILM

Matt Formston has been blind since the age of five. For the Australian, surfing provides endless possibilities. Some days, he feels like a racing driver on his board, making sharp twists and turns. Other times, riding waves is more creative, he says, allowing him to “create my art on the canvas by synthesis or feel”. Feel is key. Formston has spent the last four decades fine-tuning his surfing, learning how to manoeuvre himself on waves he can’t see. When he lost his sight as a child, Formston’s parents didn’t treat him any differently: they kept him in mainstream school, entered him into tag rugby with his mates, and encouraged him to try whatever sports he liked. After years competing in para-cycling – with a world record, national titles and a Paralympics appearance to his name – Formston switched his focus to the sea. “I wanted to be a pro surfer, but due to my disability I couldn’t compete in the water the way others did,” says Formston, 45. “Even when I was cycling, I was always saying, ‘I can’t wait to retire so I can just surf,’ because that’s what I love doing.” When the chance came to compete in the first world championship for blind surfers, he plunged himself headfirst into the sport. Then, as a man who rarely does things by halves, Formston began training to catch big waves at surf mecca Nazaré…

“I only find out how big the wave is when I get to the bottom of it” Thousands of hours on the waves have trained Formston’s instincts for surfing without sight

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Snow wonder: runner Fernanda Maciel smashes two world records in Antarctica at Christmas 2022

JORDAN MANOUKIAN/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Words MARK BAILEY

SUB-ZERO HEROES

It takes a special kind of grit to enter a hostile frozen environment intent on achieving a next-level physical feat. And in recent months these six audacious athletes have proved they have what it takes, breaking records, nailing firsts and pushing themselves further than ever before as they embarked on their most daring cold-weather adventures yet

Frozen adventures

FERNANDA MACIEL / ULTRARUNNER

It’s Christmas Eve 2022 at a remote, snow-covered base camp in Antarctica, and Fernanda Maciel is quitting the warmth of her tent to begin a historic 35km speedrun up and down Mount Vinson – at 4,892m, the highest peak in Antarctica. The Brazilian ultrarunner is soon battling temperatures of -40°C, lashing winds and high-altitude slopes. But after running to the very top of the bottom of the world, she wakes on Christmas morning to two well-earned presents: Guinness World Records for her 6:40:19 ascent of Mount Vinson and for her 9:41:38 round trip from base camp. And as previous speedchasers used skis for some sections, Maciel is also the first person to run up Vinson. To put her achievements in context, climbers usually take anything from five to seven days to cover the same ground. “But I love to move fast!” laughs the 43-year-old. The former environmental lawyer had already achieved Fastest Known Times (FKTs) for other peaks in the iconic

Seven Summits group (the highest on each continent), including Aconcagua (6,960m) in South America and Mount Kilimanjaro (5,895m) in Africa. But icy Antarctica glistened with a unique allure. “As a Brazilian, I have this obsession with the cold because it’s the opposite of our tropical temperatures,” says Maciel, who trained with cold showers and winter runs at her training base in Chamonix, south-east France. “Antarctica is extreme and completely wild. To run fast in this environment was a big challenge.” Armed with a backpack full of kit and food, she set out from base camp (2,100m) at 11:30am and ran the first 10km over ice fields in running shoes, before switching to boots at Low Camp (2,750m) for the steep, 1,200m fixed-rope climb. “It was a huge wall at angles of almost 50 degrees,” she explains. Then came the final run and powerhike from High Camp (3,770m), past sheer rocks and blue ice, to the summit. “Some parts were super-hard because the air is thin, and you have an exposed rocky ridge, so you need to be careful.” Conditions were so cold that Maciel’s goggles froze and she suffered frostbite in two fingers. “I couldn’t wear a down suit, because I’d get too hot when running,” she says. “I focused on light, warm kit instead.” Maciel stopped for just 60 seconds at the summit before her descent. “It’s superextreme and [I was scared] to stay longer,” she admits. “The troposphere is super-close. You see white clouds mixed with the ice and snow, so you don’t know if you are in the sky or on land. Visiting this environment, in this fast style, I felt like an explorer.” redbull.com

TOM DE DORLODOT / PARAGLIDER

“YOU SEE WHITE CLOUDS MIXED WITH THE ICE AND SNOW, SO YOU DON’T KNOW IF YOU’RE IN THE SKY OR ON LAND”

“YOU FEEL SUPER-FRAGILE. YOU’RE GOING LIKE A ROCKET” “In a world where we think we’ve seen it all, there’s still a lot to discover,” says Belgian paraglider pilot Tom de Dorlodot. “I think, ‘What hasn’t been done?’” This is the mindset that inspired his 2022 expedition THE RED BULLETIN

THOMAS DE DORLODOT/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, JORDAN MANOUKIAN/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

Mountain glide: De Dorlodot on his epic ‘Grand Slam’ flight through the Karakoram range in July 2022

to the snow-encrusted Karakoram mountain range. Mountaineers know these peaks well, but for paragliders this frozen world remains an exciting new frontier. Facing temperatures of minus 30°C, in July 2022 De Dorlodot and Horacio Llorens, a Spanish paraglider, completed the ‘Grand Slam’ – an epic flight linking new lines across K2 (at 8,611m, the world’s second highest mountain), Muztagh THE RED BULLETIN

Tower (7,276m), Trango Towers (6,286m), Broad Peak (8,051m) and Gasherbrum IV (7,925m). During the world-first flight, which took seven hours, they soared to an altitude of 7,577m and hit speeds of up to 60kph. “From around K2, you can see 8,000m peaks hundreds of kilometres away,” recalls De Dorlodot, 38. “It’s like nothing you can imagine. We got incredible footage for our film [Flying Between Giants].”

Paraglider pilots sit in a harness beneath the wing and gain height using columns of rising warm air (thermals), circling upwards like a bird of prey. De Dorlodot has flown in exotic locations but says the Karakoram’s cold skies are unique: “You feel super-fragile. You’re on oxygen. We take off at 3,500m and go to 6,500m in 10 minutes, so it’s radical. We had thermals of nine metres per second. You’re going like a rocket.”

They made more than a dozen 100km flights, culminating in the headline-making ‘Grand Slam’. While most paraglider pilots climb mountains then launch off them, these two lifted off from a base camp at 3,500m, harnessing the thermals and open landscapes to fly to the mountains and then around them. “It’s pure freedom,” says De Dorlodot. The cold-weather flight and documentary were only 31

RAMON MORILLAS/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

BÁRBARA HERNÁNDEZ / ICE SWIMMER

possible due to advances in kit, from super-light gliders to voiceactivated GoPro cameras. “Now we can do things that were not possible 20 years ago, so we can dream bigger,” says De Dorlodot. The pilots used a special leg cocoon and glove covers to stay warm. And with a hostile landscape beneath them, they packed bivvy bags, crampons and tents for emergencies. They had oximeters attached to their earlobes, which provided live data on their oxygen levels. “I’ve had serious blackouts at altitude before where I couldn’t see or speak,” says De Dorlodot. “If you go hypothermic, you consume twice as much oxygen, so it gets dangerous.” The aerial adventurers had hoped to set a new altitude record by flying over K2, topping Frenchman Antoine Girard’s record of 8,407m, set above Broad Peak in 2021, but wind conditions made this impossible. The pilots returned home with other world firsts, however. “Being the first to fly right on the faces of K2 means you’re the first for ever,” says De Dorlodot. “Completing the ‘Grand Slam’ was a gift from nature.” The Belgian might attempt the altitude record another year, but the expedition has inspired new ideas. “Now we’re talking about one day landing on top of an 8,000m peak,” De Dorlodot says. “This would be another dimension.” Watch Flying Between Giants on Red Bull TV; redbull.com

“I FELT THE HYPOTHERMIA ALL THE TIME. YOU CAN’T FEEL YOUR HANDS OR FEET. BUT YOUR HEAD AND THOUGHTS ARE THE REAL POWER”

When Bárbara Hernández swam a record 2.5km in 45 minutes in the icy waves of Chile Bay, off Greenwich Island, just 100km north of the Antarctic mainland, the water was a blood-chilling 2.23°C. The Chilean swimmer dubbed the ‘Ice Mermaid’ was in agony, but she was driven on by the majesty of this precious environment. “The swim was so crazy but beautiful,” she says. “Being there with penguins and whales and leopard seals in the middle of nature was my dream. The water is so clear and blue and deep.” Hernández, 37, completed her Guinness World Record for the longest polar ice swim on February 5, 2023, with no thermal protection. “I don’t wear a wetsuit, just a swimsuit, goggles and swim cap, without [insulating] grease,” she says. “It’s a unique way to enjoy and be part of nature.” She travelled there on a Chilean Navy tugboat and was accompanied by specialists

in hypothermia. By the finish, her body temperature had dropped to 27°C – ten below the norm, and eight below the cut-off for hypothermia. Afterwards, her support team helped her raise it slowly with warm blankets and serums. “It was an extremely painful swim,” she admits. “I felt the hypothermia all the time – I’m not special. After the first 300m, you can’t feel your hands or feet. But your head and thoughts are the real power – and your purpose. Why do I do this? Not for recognition or the record. My purpose is my love for the ocean.” A trained psychologist, Hernández understands the power of the mind. Her goal was to draw attention to the beauty and vulnerability of Antarctica, and she accepted her pain as a price. “This was about raising awareness of climate change – how it is possible there’s no snow in February? [My swims are] for the glaciers and all wildlife. In the Arctic, you now see green moss in the ice because the temperature is higher. I was expecting to swim in 0.5°C.” The Chilean grew up swimming in indoor pools but was inspired by a love of adventure to try open water. She has since swum extreme challenges across the globe and become a multiple iceswimming world champion. Hernandez trains hard in pools, cold lakes and glaciers, but this swim was unprecedented. “Of course I was afraid,” she says. “But Antarctica was my dream for 10 years.” Hernández believes she leaves part of herself in the water after each swim. “I belong to those waters, and they have part of my heart, fears and hopes for ever. I need to return one day.” Instagram: @barbarehlla_h

SHAWN HEINRICHS

Frozen adventures

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Chill factor: Hernández breaks a Guinness World Record with her polar ice swim in February

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Frozen adventures

Helmcken Falls. The spinechilling name evokes a Tolkienesque battlefield, or a Gothic horror movie. And even world-famous ice climber Will Gadd sees this eerie Canadian waterfall – which in winter transforms into a frozen citadel of glistening climbs – as part heaven, part hell. “There is no place in the world like Helmcken Falls,” explains the 56-year-old Canadian. “Imagine a giant stadium with a roof on it and icicles hanging down everywhere. And you’re like, ‘Right, I’m gonna climb those!’ It’s so unlikely and so fundamentally, terrifyingly ridiculous that every time I walk in there it’s over-thetop intense. It’s the most interesting, complicated, difficult environment I climb in. And it has the best ice climbing on Earth.” That’s big praise from an ice-climbing superstar who has previously ascended a frozen chute by Niagara Falls, and icebergs off the coast of Labrador. “Helmcken is visually stunning, but it’s about what you hear as well,” Gadd continues. “Massive pieces of ice the size of trucks

break off the waterfall, making loud crashing noises. It feels like someone’s thrown a grenade into the hole.” Gadd’s latest expedition to the 141m-high Helmcken Falls, located in Wells Gray Provincial Park, British Columbia, came in February 2023. His goals were to try “cool new routes” – Dire Wolf, Instaspray 2 and Bombs Away – recently forged by his friends, and to secure epic footage using prototype drones for an immersive new film. “It will be an amazing experience where you sit in a theatre that actually tilts and moves,” he says. “It’s a magic way to share Helmcken Falls with the world.” But the expedition was even more compelling because the Canadian ice climber was returning to a place where he almost perished. During a 2014 expedition, in temperatures hitting -30°C and numbing his mind and body, Gadd was hanging 100m above the falls when he saw, to his horror, that rope vibrations had caused his carabiner to unscrew. “I was connected to my rappelling device by a couple of millimetres of steel,” he remembers. “If it had moved a few millimetres, I would have gone into the hole. A hell of a situation to be in. You get a massive hit of adrenaline. I basically did a one-arm pull-up on the rope and reset the carabiner.” The experience left him with PTSD. Every picture of Helmcken triggered Gadd’s anxiety. But he confirmed his mistake head-on, reaffirming his safety protocols and, crucially, talking about the experience. “In my outdoor world, often when people have an incident they don’t talk because they’re embarrassed and also it’s scary. So I’ve shared that story to show that even

though I’ve been doing this for a very long time, I still make mistakes. I hope it inspires our outdoor culture to change a bit.” Gadd admits that his nervy return “fired a pretty big part of my reptile brain”. But he turned raw fear into ice-cool focus. “I use fear as a stimulant to switch my brain on,” he says. “But to go back, face your fear and engage with it and have an absolutely fantastic time… that’s one of the coolest things you can do in life.” He faced freezing spray and falling ice, but the edgy climbs were spectacular. “Ice climbing is still a form of magic to me,” reflects Gadd. “That it works at all is ridiculous – we climb a frozen skating rink up an overhanging wall. So every [autumn], when it starts to freeze and snow falls, I swear to God my pulse goes up five beats a minute. Because I know what’s coming and it’s gonna be awesome.” redbull.com

JEFF PATTERSON, CHRISTIAN PONDELLA/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

WILL GADD / ICE CLIMBER 34

“MASSIVE PIECES OF ICE THE SIZE OF TRUCKS BREAK OFF THE WATERFALL, MAKING LOUD CRASHING NOISES. IT FEELS LIKE SOMEONE’S THROWN A GRENADE INTO THE HOLE”

Solid state: “Ice climbing is still a form of magic to me,” says Gadd, pictured scaling Helmcken Falls in February

Frozen adventures

With avalanches booming in the distance, Greg Boswell is hanging upside down on the sinister, overhanging rockroof of Bring da Ruckus, the ‘toughest winter route in Scotland’. It’s January 12, 2023, and he’s deep into a worldfirst ascent of this terrifying new route on Shadow Buttress in Lochnagar in the Cairngorms. But today’s extreme winter conditions are, in fact, his ally, making impossible climbs like this just about possible. “It can’t be climbed if it’s not frozen,” says Boswell, who gave the ascent a difficulty rating of XII 13 – the highest in Scotland. “There are big, loose flakes in the roof, and minimal footholds. You’re standing on ice crystals, so you need full-on winter. And the loose flakes must be bonded with the ice gluing the rock to the mountain, so you can only climb when winter freezes it all together.” The Aberdeenshire-based winter climbing expert had known of the daunting 150200m ascent for some time. But his decision to climb it that day was spontaneous, having just tagged along with fellow climbers Jamie Skelton and Hamish Frost. “That’s sometimes best,” he says. “If I’d planned it, I’d have been nervous and fighting the demons in my head. But everything felt right.” Boswell was also inspired by the evocative scenery. “It’s like someone opens a box of magic every time winter rolls into Scotland,” says the 32-year-old. “It was howling

with wind, snow crystals flying everywhere and catching the light, with the sun turning the plaster-white crag orange. It was like the Disney film Frozen. We thought, ‘We have to climb something cool today!’” Scotland’s ‘pure’ climbing ethics meant Boswell didn’t use fixed bolts, instead placing protection as he climbed. And he ascended ground-up, navigating difficulties as they arose, the climb was full of surprises. He began by ascending a vertical crack, then reached the overhanging roof, covered with brittle rock. He froze. “I was worried that if I fell I’d pull the flake off and it would rip the cams out,” he says. “You stand on the ledge and you don’t want to leave.” Eventually he tried a huge arm-span across the roof, using moves that would wow a Hollywood stuntman. “I had two fingers on each axe to get as much length as possible,” he says. But one axe got stuck in the roof, so Boswell lowered himself down. On his second attempt, an axe ripped down

and he slipped. He considered quitting: “But I just tanked some Haribo and gave it one more go. This time I managed to scrape over the lip.” Then came a perilously steep and exposed head wall, its tiny footholds hidden under ice. “I was scratching my axes and couldn’t find any [foot] placements, which meant my arms were really drained. Then, just before the top, one foot blew off the non-existent foothold while I was moving an axe, and I started to ‘barn door’ [peel] off. But I gave it everything and swung onto the ledge. It felt amazing.” Boswell’s headline-making ascent has inspired other winter adventurers worldwide. “It was cool to see the climb hit the mainstream news,” he admits. “Lots of people say it got them psyched to do their own big winter project.” gregboswell.co.uk HAMISH FROST

GREG BOSWELL / CLIMBER 36

“THE WIND WAS HOWLING, SNOW CRYSTALS WERE FLYING EVERYWHERE… IT WAS LIKE THE DISNEY FILM FROZEN”

Clash of clans: Boswell conquers Bring da Ruckus, ‘the toughest route in Scotland’, in January 2023

Gushing with praise: Serrasolses described his Svalbard trip in August as ”the next level in kayaking”

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Frozen adventures

DAVID SODOMKA, DAVID NOGALES/RED BULL CONTENT POOL

ANIOL SERRASOLSES / KAYAKER

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“THE SEA WAS HITTING THE ICE WALL AND CARVING IT… IT COULD COLLAPSE AT ANY TIME”

Aniol Serrasolses has kayaked in wild rivers around the world, from Patagonia to India. But his August 2023 expedition to Svalbard was the first time he’d tried an Arctic waterfall. On the Austfonna glacier – located on Nordaustlandet island, just over 900km from the North Pole – the Spaniard and his teammates kayaked down icy meltwater rivers, then plunged off glacial waterfalls, over 20m-high walls of ice, into the Arctic Ocean. “The first time I did the waterfall drop, it felt like I was floating in space,” says the 32-year-old. “When we went over the huge falls into the sea and I looked up at a wall of ice, the dream was accomplished.” Serrasolses’ Arctic dream began when photographer Paul Nicklen’s shot of pristine waterfalls thundering over a Svalbard ice wall fuelled his imagination. “There are millions of rivers on the glacier, and the biggest create beautiful rapids which carve a path through the ice,” says the kayaker, “so you find things you wouldn’t on a normal river, such as drops, holes, big ice walls and those huge waterfalls into the sea.”

With a small team that included other kayakers, boat crew, guides, filmographers and a drone pilot, he sailed for 36 hours from Longyearbyen, the world’s most northerly town, to Austfonna. When Serrasolses saw the 20km-long wall of ice, chunks of it falling into the sea, he knew must be pin-sharp: “The sea was hitting the ice wall and carving it… it could collapse at any time.” The lesson was clear: “Do it fast. Enjoy it, but get out quick.” It was summer in the Arctic, but the melting glacial water offers a warning as well as a wild ride. “With climate change, there’s gonna be some huge impact on rivers,” says Serrasolses, who has released the dramatic footage in a new film, Ice Waterfalls. To find the best meltwater rivers, they hiked up the ice cap and used ladders and crampons to cross rivers and crevasses. Identifying the first ice river to kayak – they called it ‘No Man’s River’ – the team set up a ladder and pulley system to access it. “The first river was 2km of rapids and amazing stuff,” Serrasolses says. “Then I dropped off a ninemetre waterfall into the sea.” The second river – ‘Phillip’s Ladder’ – was even bigger. “It was three or four kilometres of wild water, all visually stunning, ending in a 20-metre waterfall,” he says. “Just to get there took a 10-kilometre traverse over the ice.” On the journey downriver, he faced canyons, ice walls, whitewater, drops, eddies and snow bridges. “It was a dream, with beautiful locations and spectacular views,” he says. Up on the glacier, the roar of the meltwater was deafening, and the cold made every move harder. But Serrasolses was rewarded with his wildest trip yet. “This is the next level in kayaking,” he says. “I’ve seen a lot, but this was insane.” Watch Ice Waterfalls on Red Bull TV from December 19; redbull.com

MAN OF THE PEOPLE

US rapper and activist KILLER MIKE has been fighting for the rights of regular people almost his entire life. Here, he talks about the importance of community, his optimism, and how his late mother and grandmother

inspired his most personal album to date

Words WILL LAVIN 40

Photography NEIL GAVIN THE RED BULLETIN

Holy spirit: Killer Mike, photographed for The Red Bulletin in Kentish Town, north London, in November 2023

”This album honours a lot of women, ’cause they’ve been my counsel every step of the way”

Killer Mike

t’s been 11 years since Killer Mike last played a solo show in London. The 48-year-old Grammy-winning rapper is in town for a special one-off concert as part of his High & Holy Tour, performing tracks from his acclaimed, introspective 2023 album Michael to an audience outside the US for the first time. “The UK has always had a special place in my heart,” he tells The Red Bulletin as he poses for pictures in a studio near Kentish Town, north London, ahead of the gig. “[There’s a certain] sense of style. I like how enthusiastic people are.” Mike – real name Michael Render – is still based in Atlanta, Georgia, where he grew up. Best known as a rapper, he’s also a proud father of four, a husband, an entrepreneur and an activist brought up in the Southern tradition by his grandparents. Mike discovered rap music at an early age through his mother, and it wasn’t long before he was writing and performing his own rhymes, inspired by the likes of Ice-T and Run-DMC. He released his debut album, Monster, in 2003 after being discovered and signed by Big Boi, one half of legendary Atlanta rap duo OutKast. In the years since, Mike – whose nickname comes from his ability to “kill microphones” – has built a sizeable fanbase both as a solo artist and as one half of Run The Jewels, the supergroup he and rapper-producer El-P formed in 2012 after working on Mike’s fifth album, R.A.P. Music. And last November Michael received three Grammy nominations. But his work as a social and political activist has garnered just as much attention. Mike is outspoken on subjects such as social inequality, police brutality and systemic racism, the profundity of his words and his powerful delivery making it difficult for people not to pay attention. Armed with a fearlessness he says he got from his late mother Denise, Mike was a key voice during the George Floyd protests. Footage of his impassioned plea for protesters in Atlanta to combat police violence by

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Southern fried: Mike is giving back to the Atlantan community that shaped him

taking the fight to the polls, delivered alongside the city’s mayor, was shared around the world in 2020. These days, he considers himself more a mobiliser than an organiser, working to inspire a new generation of activists through his music and the various social initiatives he’s part of. Here, Mike discusses his roots, how we can all make a difference, and why it’s taken him so long to introduce himself… the red bulletin: You’re a long way from home right now. How did growing up in Atlanta shape you? killer mike: [My childhood] was amazing. I grew up living with my

grandparents. My parents were just teenagers when they had me, and they were smart enough to understand that my grandparents should raise me, which gave them an opportunity to be adults, so we kind of grew up together. I grew up in Collier Heights, a mixed-income community that was started in the 1940s by Black people for Black people. So the poor people were Black, the middle-class and working-class people were Black, and the rich people were Black. All my heroes and villains were Black. The aspirational world of Black Power was a Black reality for me. I’ve never felt second-class. I’ve never felt like there was something I couldn’t do or achieve. I understood that 43

Killer Mike

things like systemic racism existed and that it was going to be more difficult for me at times, but I knew that if I persevered and was qualified – overqualified – then I had a shot. That’s all that life really owes you: opportunity. So it was more about choices I made. One of those decisions was choosing to sell drugs as a teen. What led you down that path? Common sense. Everybody was doing and selling drugs. If you wanted Jordans or money to go to the prom and [you could spend] $50 to make $150, common sense would lead to that. We were just children. We didn’t have the capacity to understand the gravity of the things we were doing. Did it ever land you in trouble? I’ve never been to jail, but early on in Allen Temple [a housing community in Atlanta], when the old people started complaining about us being out there trapping, the police gave us an opportunity. They told us, “Hey, man, you know them folks calling? Don’t keep coming out here.” They beat our ass, took our dope, took our shoes and left us just laying there. I just remember laying on the ground, looking up at the sky like, “I gotta do this shit different.” You continued selling until your early twenties. What made you quit? When OutKast gave me an opportunity, I remember I got my advance and went and bought 14 pounds of weed. Big Boi found out and had a talk with me, like, “You got to decide what you gon’ be. Do you wanna be a rapper or a drug dealer? Because I’m not investing in nobody I’m gonna have to come get out of jail.” That was it. I remember sacking everything up and getting off everything and never looking back. When did you first start rapping? I was nine years old. My mom is only 16 years older than me, so rap was her music

first. Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five, Whodini… I got all that from my mom. I remember Roxanne Shanté sent my mom a personally signed picture when I was a kid. Just seeing this 15-year-old girl body older dudes on record [Shanté made her name winning rap battles], I was like, “Ah, man. If this girl can do this, I know I can do this.” You’ve said previously that Michael is the album you’ve always wanted to make. What made now the right time to go ahead and do it? When the world stopped [during the COVID pandemic] and a lot of people died, I realised I could have been one of those people. I didn’t want to die without people having met me. They knew me in proxy to OutKast. They knew me in proxy to the crunk movement. They knew me in proxy to my political views and social advocacy. But they just never met me via audio, like they did Nas and Jay-Z. Like they did OutKast. Like they did 2Pac and Biggie. They got a chance to meet these people and grow with them. People never really formally got that chance with me, and I wanted them to know before I go: this is who I am, and this is why I am. A big part of who you are is your work as an activist. When did you first start getting interested in activism? I’ve never not been interested in activism. My grandmother had me politically active as young as five years old. [Black civil-rights activist] Andy Young ran for mayor of Atlanta in ’80, ’81, and she had me door-knocking with her on the hem of her skirt. She was the type to take me to city council meetings and neighbourhood meetings. When I would ask her, “Why do I do this, Mama?” She’d say, “Because that’s what you supposed to do. You’re a member of a community. You’re supposed to be advocating for those who can’t advocate for themselves. You’re supposed to be helping your neighbour.”

“I’m not ready to give back any right my ancestors had to earn through blood, sweat and tears” 44

In your experience, what sort of action brings the most change? A vigilant proletariat – citizens poking their nose into what politicians are doing. That’s it. I like it when people remain vigilant and [keep an eye] on politicians. And that’s from a very local level. That’s not you yelling at each other about who should be president; it’s making sure you know who your local prosecutor and judge are, who your city council representative is, [and asking them] “How are you making sure the federal money that comes into your jurisdiction makes its way to the streets, to the people?” That’s what I saw my grandma do. With all the turmoil going on in the world right now, do you feel optimistic or pessimistic about the future? I have to feel optimistic, because the pessimism is so dark and evil that I dare not give in to looking at it for too long. You’ll get hopeless and you’ll get numb. We’re living that darkness now when we can see the state oppressing and crushing people and people not pushing back against it. I want to make sure everyone’s First Amendment rights are honoured. I represent a group of people who have only been free about 60 years. I’m not ready to give back any right that my ancestors had to earn through blood, sweat and tears, just to make other people comfortable. Can we really change the world? We’ve done it! We’re only 60 years out of apartheid in America. They call it ‘Jim Crow’ because it sounds like a cartoon or something, but it was apartheid. My parents were born in 1955 and 1959, so they grew up in apartheid. I have to believe we can change things, because change has happened in my lifetime. Your emotional plea amid the George Floyd protests in Atlanta in May 2020 captured the attention of people around the world. Do you think that moment changed the course of your career? I don’t think like that. Everything changed for me as an individual when I realised I loved rap music; when I was that little nine-year-old boy on that album [the cover of Michael features a childhood photo of Mike]. I don’t need Black suffering to be THE RED BULLETIN

“I’ve never felt like there was something I couldn’t achieve”

Killer Mike

Is that why you felt it necessary on Michael to remind us you’re human? Absolutely. It was important, because people don’t remember they’re human. People want to be their ideology. They want to be the perfect version of whatever they’re in. But there is no perfect version – it’s just me trying to be better than me every day. Some days I’m gonna get up and get my three miles in; some days I’m gonna get up and all I got is one. But I’m human, man. I’m capable of throwing a perfect game, capable of making mistakes. I always tell people, “Hey, one day I might make a mistake, and when I do, I’m going to apologise. Just forgive me and let’s get back on course.” That’s it. The album is dedicated to your late mother Denise and late grandmother Bettie. Why was it important for you to honour them? You gotta honour your ancestors, man. Even on my first album [I did it]; I was just clumsy about it. But now you know who I am, what I’ve been and who I’ve been, I have an opportunity to honour my mom, my grandma, my baby’s mothers, my aunts. This album honours a lot of women, ’cause they’ve been my counsel every step of the way.

Mike drop: “Everything changed for me as an individual when I realised I loved rap,” he says

successful. There’s some people who thrive on the next moment because that gives them a moment. I actually didn’t wanna be there – [fellow Atlantan rapper] TI asked me to go. But when I did get up there, I just told the truth. Many rallied behind you during that time, but you also received criticism from some others. How do you handle public scrutiny? I’m just gonna do my best, and if you got a better way to do it, that’s fine. I ain’t got time to argue. It’s not my business what your opinion of me is. It’s my business to take care of my family. It’s my business to take care of my community and remain focused on making sure that the kids who come 46

“All that life owes you is opportunity” behind me have more opportunities than I did. That’s my business. Does batting off the negative comments take a toll? You just gotta turn your phone off, man. Go fishing, smoke some dope, cruise in your old-school [car]. I still got the life I wanted, so I accept the things that come with that.

On the track Motherless, you talk about the depression you’ve faced following the loss of your mother and grandmother. How are you feeling about it all now? I haven’t been able to perform the record without weeping in some kind of way, whether it’s just one tear or a full-on cry. I’ve grown to understand that I’m never gonna stop missing Denise, so I don’t stop talking to her. Her and my grandmother are still very much a part of my daily routine in terms of acknowledging them. How does that help you with the grieving process? I believe that energy doesn’t die. So whatever my mom wanted to wield for me out of the physical form, she’s even freer to help me be stronger, to help me be more motivated. She always [told] me and my sisters that she left the best of her in us. That’s why I don’t often think about how hard I’m working, or about slowing down anything, because I know I have a mission. Killer Mike’s album Michael is out now on Loma Vista Recordings; killermike.com THE RED BULLETIN

THE LONGEST RIDE Tenacious English motorbike racer VANESSA RUCK has tackled some of the world’s toughest desert challenges, enduring mountainous sand dunes and temperatures of 52°C to cross finish lines no other woman has crossed. But, just a few years ago, merely sitting on a stationary bike in her driveway was enough to cause debilitating panic attacks. The story of how Ruck became a two-wheeled

adventurer has more twists and turns than a rally track

Words RUTH McLEOD Photography SIMON CUDBY

Taking control: Vanessa Ruck, photographed for The Red Bulletin in Iceland in August 2023

Vanessa Ruck

he growl of enduro bike engines replaces the distant roar of waterfalls as 11 riders cross a 60m-wide riverbed in Iceland’s mountainous interior. “Whatever you do, don’t stop until I tell you to,” shouts Skúli Már Gunnarsson, the formidable, bearded Icelandic biker leading them. An active lava pool sits beneath a large glacier above them, making the area prone to flash floods as daily volcanic activity triggers unpredictable waves of melted ice water that could sweep the riders off their bikes. “That was wild,” says English rider Vanessa Ruck through her raised visor, once safely across. “As we were coming out the far side of it, I could see water nearing. It’s so exciting that something like that is even possible.” Though two of the riding party on this six-day adventure will end up breaking bones due to the varied and demanding Icelandic terrain, Ruck is in her element. She’s used to the rigours of multi-day rallies, riding alone with a road book and compass through inhospitable landscapes, against the clock. Already this year she’s competed in the Morocco Desert Challenge, a punishing eight-day, 3,000km event made even more brutal by a heatwave. Only 40 per cent of riders in the moto category completed all eight stages, and Ruck was one of them. “The riding temperature was 52 degrees,” she says. “The sand is so hot, it’s like being on a grill pan. People died in that event; they didn’t come home. At one point, I was rehearsing in my head what I’d record on my phone if something happened to me, because I knew that if I 50

had a mechanical failure or had to stop for any reason in that temperature, my body would shut down before anyone would get to me. I just knew I had to keep going.” By comparison, a guided ride in Iceland is a holiday – though Ruck’s not here for fun. The 37-year-old motorbike racer and adventurer is training for her next challenge, set to be her toughest

yet. The Africa Eco Race, which starts in late December, is a 14-day, 6,000km slog across four countries. After a ceremonial start in Monaco, Ruck will board a boat for Nador, Morocco, then cross the Western Sahara, Mauritania and Senegal on her KTM 450 Rally Replica, finishing in Dakar. “It’s going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, for sure,” she says. “Two weeks THE RED BULLETIN

“Iceland is my number one place to ride. It’s phenomenal for enduro”

Surging ahead: Iceland’s roaring rivers and volcanic terrain provide a stark contrast to Ruck’s rally experiences in the sweltering, sun-parched deserts of Africa

where you’re burning between 6,000 and 8,000 calories a day. You’re putting your body through extreme stress and endurance. I’m actually terrified.” The eight- and nine-hour days Ruck is putting in here in Iceland will be key to building the strength required to withstand the punishing race schedule. “Iceland is phenomenal for enduro THE RED BULLETIN

riding,” she says. “You’re constantly kind of tweaking and learning and figuring out the best way to corner, as every corner is completely different. The scenery is mesmerising, but you’re also so engaged with how technical and varied the terrain is here. There’s everything from black, sharp volcanic rock to wide-open swathes of soft sand

and ash. It’s my number one place to ride. You just have to accept that unexpected situations will test you.” This is a decent summation of Ruck’s attitude to life in general. She has chased adrenaline rushes since childhood, having ridden an ATV around fields from the age of 13. As a young teen, posters of ponies shared space on her bedroom walls with 51

“I’ve grown up with the attitude of ‘learn from it, brush yourself off and get back on’” Folk hero: “I’m not making folk music that everyone’s heard,” Jackson says. “I always embrace my uniqueness. Not everyone will get it all the time”

Vanessa Ruck

TIBI HILA/RED BULL ROMANIACS

pictures of the Bowler off-road vehicles Ruck was “absolutely obsessed with! I dreamt of a Bowler Wildcat being my first car, which is clearly not practical – it was the sound of them, that power”. Ruck was so keen to drive on roads that she began her first lesson in her parents’ car at one minute past midnight on her 17th birthday. Once she had her licence, next came a skydiving qualification, then her motorbike licence in her early twenties. She chalks up her attitude to hanging around with her elder brother and two male cousins while growing up in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. “I’d always try to be strong and stand my ground,” she says. “I definitely got beaten up a bit trying to join in their games. My parents were good at not treating me differently.” On regular holidays to Newport, Wales, Ruck’s brother and cousins would kayak in an estuary with a current too strong for her to safely navigate at the time. So her father tied a long rope around her so she could be hauled back if she got into trouble. “It was always a case of making it possible for me,” she says. “I didn’t realise how grateful I’d be later in life for the resilience and strength it gave me.” Though these are qualities that help Ruck excel in her chosen sport, she had to call on them long before she began racing motorbikes. In fact, motorbikes were never actually part of her life plan. Go back to 2014 and Ruck was a fiercely ambitious director of marketing for a big

“I hope that everything I share is helping to inspire other women” firm, working long hours and getting her adrenaline fix from less petrol-heavy pursuits: wakeboarding, surfing, climbing, kayaking. Then, that March, when Ruck was 27, she was cycling the mile from her office in Oxford to a wakeboarding lake when a car jumped a red light and pulled out in front of her. With no time to swerve, she hit the side of it, her right shoulder and hip taking most of the impact. Over the next seven years, she’d undergo seven surgeries to reconstruct them both. “There’s been a lot of time where I’ve been bed-bound, stuck staring at that same annoying piece of paint on my bedroom ceiling, dependent on my husband to take me to the toilet, to brush my hair, to put my socks on,” she says. It took an inevitable toll on her mental health, too. “I definitely was not OK,” says Ruck of her first few years of recovery. “It was very difficult to keep having to go back under the knife when it felt like I was making progress. Suddenly you’ve got to go back to being on crutches and being bed-bound and learning how to walk again. I was diagnosed with depression

Turning up the heat: Ruck competes at Red Bull Romaniacs in 2021. She was one of only six women riders taking part in the notoriously gruelling hard-enduro event THE RED BULLETIN

and then change disorder, which basically meant I no longer saw myself as me; I spoke about myself in the third person. I wasn’t Vanessa – Vanessa was this strong, fit, capable person from before the accident, whereas I [saw myself as] broken and pathetic.”

t was early on in her recovery that Ruck discovered motorbikes. Unable to return to the sports she’d loved prior to the accident, she realised riding a motorbike might be manageable. And it would cut down on her commute time as she battled to hold down a full-time job on top of managing her recovery. In late 2014, she bought a Suzuki Bandit 600. But putting the theory into practice was tougher. “I don’t know if you’ve ever cried in a motorbike helmet, but it’s really awkward,” she laughs. “You can’t get your gloves in, your visor steams up, it’s a right mess. It’s easy for me to joke about it now, but there were so many moments where I had fullon panic attacks just sat stationary in my driveway. I didn’t want to be on that bike. I’d nearly died on a bicycle – why on earth would I get on a motorbike? But through pure determination and stubbornness, I got on that bike. The car driver who hit me had changed my body, but she was not going to control my future. I was also lucky to have been around horses as a kid. I’ve grown up with the attitude of ‘learn from it, brush yourself off and get back on’. I knew each time I got back on that bike it would become a little easier.” After a few months, Ruck realised she was no longer just tolerating being on the bike; it was satisfying her natural craving for adrenaline. Next, she bought a Harley Davison for road riding, then a scrambler, then an enduro bike. “People ask why I haven’t gone back to kitesurfing or wakeboarding,” she says. “I think at first it was a defence mechanism, because I knew I’d compare myself to who I used to be. My body hurts; it doesn’t function like it used to. Riding motorbikes was something completely new. Then I got addicted to the thrill of it.” When physically unable to ride, Ruck says just being able to polish her bikes in the garage was calming. They became signs of a better life ahead, something to aim for. They also opened another avenue to pour her energy into when she was stuck at home. She began to build an online presence as The Girl on a Bike, sharing details of her recovery and the increasingly adventurous bike trips that 53

“I don’t know if you’ve ever cried in a bike helmet, but it’s really awkward” have taken her to 29 countries to date. “Social media can be toxic, negative, fake,” Ruck says. “People don’t tend to share the lows, the struggles. I wanted to show everything, to put my cards on the table.” On Instagram, shots of Ruck in bed post-surgery when she was unable to get up sit alongside smiling posts from the races and bike meet-ups that had started to become a lifeline. And her following began to grow. In 2019, Ruck decided to give up her day job. “Commuting and doing rehab three times a week, which included hydro physio, shockwave therapy, seeing the osteopath and acupuncture, nearly killed me,” she says. “Alex, my husband, and I worked out that if I quit my job, we’d be OK for 13 months. It was exactly what I needed rehab-wise, and it would enable me to see what The Girl on a Bike could do. I don’t think I ever envisioned so

Epic burn: during the Tunisia Desert Challenge in 2022, Ruck burnt out her bike’s clutch and had to sit in the midday heat for almost eight hours

many people getting energy from my fight, and the energy it’s given me for the recovery. I’ve never looked back.” A large part of Ruck’s motivation is to open up the bike scene generally – and the rally scene specifically – to women, who still make up a tiny fraction of the riders taking on these events. “It’s a very male-dominated environment, which is why women shy away from it, I think,” Ruck says. “It’s intimidating. Plus, in most sports, women don’t do the same thing as men. They do slightly less weight, or fewer laps, or a shorter distance. Whereas in the rally world, it’s irrelevant: you’re doing the same distance, the same route, on the same size bike, same amount of kit. I genuinely think that, overall, it’s more difficult for the average woman during these races, compared with the average man. “But I hope that every time I share anything, it’s helping to inspire other women. And not because I’m showing this world in a glamorous, shiny way. I’m showing you the truth; the hard, gritty reality of it.”

uck’s wheels roll over coarse black sand created from a mix of volcanic ash and crushed lava rock. She turns her head occasionally to take in a vast rocky valley to the west, crisscrossed with channels of white water and bathed in lateafternoon, late-August sun. After seven hours of riding, a wide, rock-strewn river up ahead signals that the end of the day’s riding is not far off. Though she has pain in her hip, Ruck is still feeling good, strong. This bodes well for the Africa Eco Race, which is looming large on her horizon. Just two years ago, Ruck had never taken part in a rally race. Now she has completed eight. Her journey into extreme competition started with an appearance at the 2021 edition of Red Bull Romaniacs, held in Romania’s Carpathian Mountains, which many describe as the toughest hard-enduro event there is. Ruck was one of only six women to compete among hundreds of male riders, tackling huge boulders and logs in front of a crowd of thousands. It gave her the confidence to compete at her first-ever rally, the Qatar International Baja, which she entered with British rally legend Patsy Quick, and which became Ruck’s first

experience of roadbook navigation, and desert- and dune-riding in inhospitable heat. In spring 2022, Ruck took on the Tunisia Desert Challenge, an eight-day moving bivouac event that pushed her harder than anything had before. “This was more technical terrain and harder navigation than the Dakar,” she says. “I had a night in the sand dunes, awaiting rescue after my bike electrics failed, and I had to make a campfire. It sounds romantic, but I promise you that being in the middle of the dunes, hours from anywhere, on your own in the pitch black, is terrifying. Then, the next day, I burnt out the clutch on my bike and sat in the midday heat for seven-and-a-half hours.” After sitting beneath her bike in an attempt to find shade from the 45°C heat, Ruck was helivaced out. “I was very close to the line on that one. It was scary. I had three drips and painkillers. I woke up in the middle of THE RED BULLETIN

Vanessa Ruck

for my pain – I’m in survival race mode. When I get off the bike at the end of the day, it hits me like a freight train. And I can’t race without painkillers. Some people question whether that’s sensible, or whether I’m making bad life choices – but whatever, they don’t live in my body.”

VANESSA RUCK

Doubling down: Ruck is set to return to Iceland in the summer – this time on four wheels, driving her dream car, a Bowler Defender, in a 4x4 rally series

night after a nightmare about being stuck in a desert for a third time, and I just went, ‘I’m done. I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.’ But when I woke up in the morning, I was like, ‘Right, where’s my bike?’” Ruck went back out into the desert and eventually became the first woman ever to cross the finish line. “Finishing the race was the most empowering thing I’ve ever done,” she says. “For the first time since my accident, the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through was something I’d chosen. I got a lot of power back that I hadn’t had since the accident. It was an incredible feeling.” From the outside, Ruck’s decision to compete in these perilous, painful challenges, especially after what she’s been through, may seem hard to understand. “Yes, these races are brutal,” she says. “I guess there’s something sadistic about the desert that I really enjoy. I love the adrenaline, the endorphins THE RED BULLETIN

“The accident [in 2014] completely changed my perspective on life” when I’m on a motorbike. I think the key is that I am so unbelievably engaged in the moment. “When you take a desert rally hundreds of kilometres off-road through super-technical terrain, sand dunes, riverbeds and desert floors, you’re navigating using a piece of paper with French acronyms, symbols and compass bearings [written on it] while riding a motorbike at race pace and carrying your food and water for the day. And I’ve never been so mentally and physically engaged in anything in my whole life. When I’m doing that, there’s no capacity

he angular metal cabin that will house Ruck’s group for the night has appeared on the horizon, incongruous against the remote rocky wilderness. As the riders finally reach it, gear is removed, pats on the back are exchanged. Ruck eventually sits down on a rock with a cider as Gunnarsson sets up a barbecue to cook pork steaks. Ruck will be up again at 6am to go for a run, getting in as much training as possible. But for now she can relax. “There’s no Hilton, there’s no glamour,” she says, “but I’ll sleep well in that dorm room tonight.” There are two more days of the trip left before Ruck flies home to continue her training in South Wales, where she now lives. As much as Ruck’s accident has taken away from her over the past nine years, she says that, had it not happened she probably wouldn’t be sitting here. “When you look at the U-turn the accident took me on in life, the amount I’ve learned as a result of that,” she says, “even though I’ve had some of the darkest, most brutal days because of it, I’m pretty confident that without it I wouldn’t be doing these races. I wouldn’t have the same sense of gratitude or appreciation. It completely changed my perspective on life.” But there are also threads of continuity. Ruck is set to return to Iceland in the summer, on four wheels rather than two, as she competes in a 4x4 rally series driving her dream car: a Bowler Defender. It came about through a chance meeting with Bowler’s head of motorsports in Morocco, as if the gods of fate had been paying particular attention to the walls of Ruck’s childhood bedroom. She has already competed in the UK series this year and now hopes to race in Europe, possibly opening a new stage in the evolution of Vanessa Ruck, the rally racer. Her accident may have forced her to change direction, but it’s Ruck herself who has somehow navigated her way to exactly where she’s meant to be. thegirlonabike.com 55

BIGEYE JACKS Baja California, US, 2020 “These days, a lot of what we hear about the ocean is bad news. So, for me, when I see a huge school of bigeye jacks like this it shows there’s still a lot of life there. It’s very important. In my work, I want to show the beauty of nature, and [images like this] give a lot of hope. This was taken by my assistant and shows me taking my chance to shoot these fish. You must have patience in my line of work. There are a lot of ingredients to a good photo, and as a photographer working with the natural world I do everything I can to be in the right place, at the right moment. But you also have to rely a little bit on luck.”

INTO THE BLUE

GREG LECOEUR has always been fascinated by the unknown worlds that exist underwater. Having given up the family business to follow his passion, the photographer shares breathtaking images of sea creatures to inspire us all to protect them

Greg Lecoeur

For a long time, Lecoeur’s passions remained hobbies. He studied business at university and followed in his father’s footsteps, founding a company dealing in commercial electronic scales. But at 32 he found he could no longer ignore his urge to explore the underwater world. Lecoeur sold his firm, packed a bag and travelled to countries including the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador and Honduras, teaching scuba diving while, his camera never far from his hand, remaining determined to make it as a photographer. Now 46 and completely self-taught, Lecoeur’s incredible images have made him one of the most respected photographers in his field, and the winner of awards including Underwater Photographer of the Year and National Geographic Nature Photographer of the Year. He has explored some of the planet’s most beautiful and inhospitable seas to capture an array of creatures, from sharks to crocodiles. “I do get nervous,” Lacoeur says of shooting large predators. “But I don’t just dive in; everything we do is based on observation and research. And I’m always respectful – I am in [the sea creatures’] environment.” In 2019 he visited Antarctica for 12 days – a lifelong dream and a challenging

“I’d like to inspire people to reconnect with nature” reality. “To get into the black, icy water, which was minus one degree, it was about overcoming the mountain in my mind,” he says. “Once I was in, it was like another world. I was just focused on the amazing things I was seeing. I didn’t feel the cold.” Today, Lecoeur shares his experiences with a global audience, using his surprisingly intimate shots to help raise awareness of underwater biodiversity and our need to safeguard it, in the hope that his images might pass on his passion. “I’d like my work to inspire people, to reconnect them with nature,” he says. “Every good picture should tell a story, and through mine I hope people will become more curious about the incredible natural world around us.”

JAVIER ECHEVARRIA

hotographer Greg Lecoeur has been fascinated by wildlife and the ocean since he was a young child. While growing up in Nice, France – where he still lives – Lecoeur was inspired by fellow countryman Jacques Cousteau and would spend countless hours reading about wildlife and marine biology, and exploring the sea by snorkelling and freediving from the beach near his home or off his uncle’s boat. Lecoeur remembers when, aged 25, he decided to add photography to his growing set of passions. Having bought a boat of his own to explore the Mediterranean Sea, the Frenchman had a chance encounter with a pod of pilot whales while out alone one day. “It was incredible,” he recalls. “People don’t really expect to see whales in that area. I turned off the engine and just sat and watched them all around me. When I went home and told my family and friends about it, they couldn’t truly understand what I’d seen. I decided then to learn about photography, to be able to communicate to others my experiences in the sea.”

THE RED BULLETIN

HUMPBACK WHALE Tonga, 2019 “During the summer, humpback whales travel from Antarctica to tropical areas to give birth, and I remember this encounter very well. The sea was full of whales, but to photograph them you need to find the one that’s curious about you. This one was more than curious: she was actually a little bit crazy and came very, very

close – but she was also extremely gentle. These creatures are around 15 metres long and weigh maybe 30 tonnes. When you get this close to them, you can see all the details of their skin: the markings, the texture. And their eyes are amazing – they really look at you. It was a very powerful moment.”

“An otter came diving from out of nowhere and – boom – I got the shot”

OTTER Shetland Islands, Scotland, 2016 “I was actually in Scotland looking for birds. I was really interested in seeing the northern gannets and also puffins. But I met a photographer friend there who does otter photography, and one day we went scuba diving in the sea in the area he thought they might be. I saw one diving, it came from nowhere and – boom – I take this shot. I love this image. It was a fascinating place, too.”

Greg Lecoeur

SARDINE RUN South Africa, 2019 “Here, you can see dolphins chasing sardines during the annual Sardine Run [when billions of the fish migrate along the South African coast]. For me, it’s the most spectacular wildlife show on Earth. In this photo, you can see only dolphins, but so many predators are drawn to this – often there are also birds, sharks, sea lions, whales, even penguins. When you’re in the water with all of that, it’s crazy. There’s a lot of adrenaline – you can really feel the power of nature, because these animals are so skilled at hunting in water. It makes you feel small and slow by comparison. I’ve documented it several times and it’s complicated. You need to spend a lot of time at sea to find the right place. Sometimes you have to wait for a few days, or even weeks, for the chance to capture good action. But when it works, it works very well.”

AMERICAN CROCODILE Cuba, 2015 “Here is my good friend [world record-holding freediver] Pierre Frolla with an American crocodile. When you see one in the water, it looks like a dinosaur. I asked Pierre if he wanted to come with me to Cuba to do this, and at first he was a bit scared. But that was the point for me: to demystify crocodiles a bit, to show we can coexist with nature, even big predators. Showing humans in the water with a crocodile was something new. We often prejudge, and I want to challenge misconceptions and encourage people to be more curious. We were, of course, careful and there are rules to respect, but the crocodiles were actually very shy, not aggressive.” THE RED BULLETIN

Greg Lecoeur

GREY SHARKS Fakarava, French Polynesia, 2018 “This location is famous for sharks. During the day, hundreds of them rest in the current and appear almost motionless. Then, when night comes, they hunt, which is why there are so many of them all together. To work at night, I had a small light on my camera to spot the sharks, and then strobe lights fixed to my camera to shoot with – the sharks don’t react to the light at all. It can, of course, be dangerous. To capture this safely, you have to really know what you’re doing as both a photographer and as a diver. If the fish [that the sharks are chasing shelter behind you], the sharks will move you, let’s just say.”

“By day, the sharks appear motionless… Then, when night arrives, they hunt”

CRABEATER SEALS Antarctica, 2019 “This was one of the best encounters of my life. We weren’t expecting this scene, but suddenly we came across these seals. They were curious about us but focused on playing and socialising together while we watched. To see these animals swimming in this landscape was very special. I was at the end of the world, in such a cold place, with that amazing light, and these animals just appeared. I felt like I was in a dream. It was like magic.”

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Greg Lecoeur

“When these seals just appeared, I felt like I was in a dream. It was like magic” THE RED BULLETIN

VENTURE Enhance, equip, and experience your best life

ICE BREAKER

ED SMITH/BERGHAUS MEDIA

MATT RAY

Winter mountaineering in the Cairngorms, Scotland

Top form: adventurer Matt Ray and guide Ron Walker look up at the tower of Cnap Coire na Spreidhe in the Scottish Highlands

VENTURE Travel

“If either my guide or I slip, or the snow layer breaks, we’ll drag each other down onto the band of granite that sticks out of the snow like rows of broken teeth”

have a death grip on the two ice axes that I’ve hammered into the wall of snow in front of me, while my crampon-shod feet kick through the thin crust of ice. As I search for grip at 1,100m, an Arctic wind harries anything remotely loose, turning snowflakes into a barrage of tiny projectiles that feel like icy needles on the bare skin of my face. Thinking hard about my every move, I focus on shifting one ice axe at a time so that I’ve always got three points of contact in the snow – you don’t get an advanced warning when these narrow blades of metal lose their purchase. A short rope attaches the harness around my waist to the fist of my climbing partner, Talisman Mountaineering guide Ron Walker, but it’s mostly for morale. If either of us slips or the snow layer breaks, we’ll drag each other down onto the band of granite that sticks out of the snow like rows of broken teeth, before being spat into the howling chasm below. It’s early April and I’m in the heart of the Cairngorms, on the mountain range 68

Ice man: Walker leads the way up a rocky chimney; (top) crossing the Cairngorms plateau THE RED BULLETIN

VENTURE Travel

Reaching your peak Despite its remote setting in the Scottish Highlands, Cairngorms National Park is easily accessible via flights to Inverness or direct trains to Aviemore. The latter of these provides a great base for any adventure and is home to numerous hotels (including dedicated outdoor-skills training centre Glenmore Lodge), qualified mountain guides and winter-skills courses, such as those run by Ron Walker at Talisman Mountaineering. talisman-activities.co.uk

ED SMITH/BERGHAUS MEDIA

MATT RAY

Hang tight: the frozen chimney is a challenge to climb in crampons, wielding ice axes

that gives the UK’s largest national park its name. Home to four of the UK’s five tallest peaks, the range is renowned for its rock climbing, scrambling and Munrobagging – the challenge of summitting a Scottish mountain more than 3,000ft (914m) high. But, come winter, its tundra climate – where temperatures have been recorded as low as -27°C and winds as fierce as 283kph – makes it a paradise for extreme-weather mountaineers. Walker says polar adventurers come here to prove their skills in these uniquely challenging conditions: “In bad weather in the Cairngorms, it doesn’t matter what THE RED BULLETIN

kit you have, if you can’t find shelter it’s a survival situation.” Today’s wind chill makes it a balmy -18°C, which means doing everything with gloves and hats on. Frostbite is a real danger, and my 40L pack is stuffed with emergency supplies, including a two-person shelter. Having set off from the Cairngorm Mountain centre two hours earlier, we’ve hiked the 8km up to Cnap Coire na Spreidhe (1,151m), across a layer of névé – icy snow that’s been partially melted then refrozen and looks like a layer of icing on a cake, sometimes smooth and at other times whipped up by wind. The

hard layer makes the going easier than ‘post-holing’ our legs through knee-deep powder, but the higher we go, the greater the risk: “human-triggered avalanches are possible on steep and extreme terrain,” says the Scottish Avalanche Information Service’s forecast. I don’t mind admitting I’m fairly intimidated by this. After abseiling down into a freezing white cloud in an area called the Northern Corries, we’re aiming for one of Walker’s ‘secret’ local spots – a climb up rock, ice and compacted snow – but must cross 70m of unprotected snow-wall first. I may have climbed outdoors before, but my comfort zone of ‘holiday’ routes at the Dorset seaside seems a million miles away. Dealing with the complexity of ropes and gear while swaddled in multiple layers of high-tech clothing as an incoming blizzard tries to peel me off a cliff is a whole new level of difficulty. I’m out of my depth, and I know it. But, as Walker says, “There’s no 100-per-cent certainty about anything – you have to learn how to minimise the hazards.” As I take a deep breath, clouds part above us and sunlight shines through tinkling ice crystals in the air, turning the doom-laden scene into a heart-stoppingly beautiful snow globe. Feeling inspired, I start to move, and before I know it we’re at the base of the climb. Walker uses metal climbing gear to build an anchor for us to clip into and 69

VENTURE Travel Welcome to wilderness Covering 4,528sq-km, Cairngorms National Park is the largest in the UK – almost twice the size of the second biggest, the Lake District – and is home to four of its five highest mountains: Ben Macdui (1,309m), Braeriach (1,296m), Cairn Toul (1,291m) and Sgor an Lochain (1,258m). A third of all UK land more than 600m above sea level is located here. The park covers less than two per cent of the UK, but contains 25 per cent of its rare and endangered species, including golden eagles and wildcats.

crampons to ‘grab’ onto bits of rock feels alien and precarious, and I have to blink through the blizzard to find good edges. When the route disappears into a deep cleft, I’m forced to wedge my

“Ice crystals in the air turn the scene into a beautiful snow globe”

Light relief: winter sun greets Ray at the top of Cnap Coire na Spreidhe

body inside, kicking holes in the snow, finding shallow grooves in the rock for my ice axes. As the ascent steepens further, the snow collapses and the rock becomes smoother, leaving me no alternative but to push my crampons into rounded edges of stone that betray me as soon as I put weight on them. Each breath of sub-zero air sears my lungs as I slip off holds with the horrible sound of metal scraping stone. The strength bleeds from my arms, and I wonder if I’ll make it. Imagining Walker dragging me up this chute like a sack of potatoes steels my resolve, and I burn the last of my energy, bracing my feet on opposite sides of the chimney and trusting that my crampons will hold as I pull myself up. As I reach the top, a wave of gratitude washes over me. Climbing is a game of trust, and, in the end, finding trust in my abilities brought me to the summit. Sometimes, confidence comes from facing the storm. Matt Ray is an action sports and adventure journalist and photographer who has battled through frozen lands everywhere from Norway to British Columbia. He blogs at adventurefella. com; Instagram: @adventurefella THE RED BULLETIN

ED SMITH/BERGHAUS MEDIA

then disappears off up the nine-storeytall granite tower. As I stand alone, I’m buffeted by the icy wind and feel the coldest I’ve been all day. I lose the feeling in my toes. Just as I start to shiver uncontrollably, three hard tugs on the rope signal it’s my turn to climb. My mentor is out of sight, so I’m on my own with whatever skills I can muster. At first, I climb the outside of the tower. Using ice axes and

MATT RAY

Cold sweat: the mountaineers rely solely on sure footing and ice axes to avoid falling hundreds of metres in a wind chill of -18C

Quality products since 1993

MIKKEL BANG

VENTURE How To

Access all areas Want to really see the world? Having completed the ultimate travelling challenge, Thor Pedersen has some expert advice

Long-term travel is no holiday, says Thor Pedersen, but it can offer something more lasting than R&R. He should know: the Dane made travel an extreme sport with his mission to be the first person to visit every country in the world without flying. Pedersen set rules: he had a shoestring budget, had to spend at least 24 hours in each of the 203 countries, and couldn’t return home until it was done. It took him 10 years. “I was naïve!” he laughs when asked why he began his project, Once Upon a Saga, in 2013. “I had a career in shipping and logistics; I’d just met a woman and got an apartment. But when I realised no one had [achieved this feat], it struck a chord with me.”

After a decade of living out of a backpack, getting held at gunpoint, being stuck in Hong Kong for two years during the pandemic, and marrying his long-distance girlfriend twice – once online in 2020, and later in a ceremony in Vanuatu – Pedersen is a changed man. “The world’s a much better place than it’s given credit for. There’s not a country I couldn’t promote positively. But travel isn’t a holiday. A lot of the time, I was in mental or physical pain. I was exhausted. “I believe we’re not meant to take the easy route in life. I got to test my own personal limits, but I didn’t reach them. I’m now a lot braver. I speak in front of big audiences without feeling nervous. I can talk to strangers, get into strange cars: my radar for who to trust is pretty good. My passport says I’m 44, but in terms of life experience I’m much older.” Here, Pedersen shares some hard-won wisdom…

Stick to your guns

Stubbornness, Pedersen says, is one of the most important traits an adventurous traveller can possess. “You have to be almost psychotically stubborn at times. I had this moment in Central Africa about two years

crocodile, dog, insects, pig’s testicles, mashed goat’s brain, cow’s skin like a slab in a soup… Back in 2013 I was picky, but today I eat whatever’s put in front of me.”

“There’s not a country I couldn’t promote positively” Thor Pederson, globetrotter

in, at the Cameroon/Gabon border. I’d been back and forth so many times, and every time they’d need more paperwork. I would go back to the capital – a two-day bus drive away – get it and then return, only to be denied again. I started getting migraines. I couldn’t take it any more. So I decided to fly home. I gave up mentally for about 15 minutes, until a voice in my head said, ‘They’re not going to win. There’s a path through this. You’ll find it and prove wrong everybody who thinks you can’t do this.’”

Taste the world

“Eating local food creates a richer travelling experience – it tells you about where you are. I ate camel, horse,

Take your time

“Without air travel, you feel the size of a place. You see the landscape, the farming tools, the clothes, flora and fauna… And you meet more people. My fondest memories are of people. In maybe two-thirds of the world, when you’re on an empty bus or train, the next person [who gets on] will sit next to you because that’s the only seat where they can gain conversation. Meeting people is like a reverse lottery where you usually win. I have now met people in every country, and I know people are just people, wherever they are. In North Korea, for example, people still fall in love, start families, like good food. Travelling removes your prejudices.”

Embrace the unknown

“When you leave your usual life, you don’t know what awaits you. Three of the vessels I travelled on are now on the seafloor. I contracted cerebral malaria in Liberia. I felt lonely. I was held at gunpoint and thought I’d die. But the good times are just as significant. I was in Congo, travelling on top of a truck for two days – me and maybe 50 others, packed in with cargo. It was uncomfortable and the sun was barbaric. We were totally covered in dust and dirt. At sunset on the first day, a woman next to me starts banging this plastic bottle and singing. Then another woman starts singing, then a man… Before I know it, everyone on the truck is singing the song as we move through this stunning landscape. It was beautiful, extraordinary… something Elon Musk will never experience. Then they stopped singing and it got dark and miserable again. But those 15 minutes were magic.”

thorpedersen.dk 72

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ONCE UPON A SAGA

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Photography JOE McGORTY 74

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VENTURE Fitness

GETTY IMAGES, TFBI

JESSICA HOLLAND

he start of a new year is an ideal time to focus on boosting your health, but this needn’t mean forcing yourself onto a treadmill in a soulless gym. Growing evidence suggests that simply wandering among trees can trigger a host of physiological benefits, including improved immune function, regulated blood pressure, a reduction in stress hormones, enhanced cognitive functioning, and increased resistance to chronic pain. These health benefits are not simply a side effect of shunning phones, traffic noise and other people. Dr Qing Li, a leading expert in forest medicine and immunology based at the Nippon Medical School in Tokyo, Japan, has demonstrated that chemicals released in forests, known as phytoncides, actually enhance the activity of white blood cells that fight disease. In Japan, shinrin-yoku — ‘forest bathing’, or soaking in the healing power of trees — has been practised for decades, but the rest of the world is catching up. In the UK, forest bathing is already being prescribed by the NHS, and UK research body The Forest Bathing Institute is working with experts such as Dr Li, as well as with councils and government departments, to better establish the practice as a health intervention here. Gary Evans and Olga Terebenina, co-founders of The Forest Bathing Institute, oversee the training of forest bathing guides and run sessions for groups in patches of ancient British woodland. “You’re standing in a narrow path of sunlight coming through branches,” says Evans, describing a typical session. “There are evergreen yew trees, holly oak, silver birch; moss and lichen hang from the trees. I ask people to look around at the oranges, reds, yellows, the massive range of greens, as well as the whites, browns, blacks,

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pressure. Move slowly. Find somewhere to sit. Absorb the atmosphere. This stimulates the parasympathetic branch of the nervous system. Connect in the way that feels most enjoyable and relaxing.”

Breathe deeply

When stressed, we breathe rapidly, using the top of our lungs. “A more natural way is from the bottom of your lungs, using your diaphragm,” Evans says. “If you’re in a forest, this will flood your system with fresh oxygen and potentially beneficial chemicals in the air.” Even if you’re unable to leave the house, Evans says, you may be able to replicate some of these effects by burning oils containing alpha-pinene, d-limonene and cineole – chemicals found in Scots pine, citrus peel and eucalyptus.

Start small

BREATHE

Call the copse Health doesn’t have to mean gym routines and a visit to the salad bar. An increasing body of research indicates we’d all be better off in the woods

greys. Often, any stress in my head starts to fade away and I begin to feel a different connection to the environment and the other people there. When stepping beneath a canopy of trees, people feel as though they’re being held. There can be tears as emotions are released, and tears of joy, too. It’s magical.” Here are Evans’ tips for feeling good in the forest…

Easy does it

“When walking or cycling in the woods for exercise, you’re aiming to elevate your heart rate,” Evans says. “But the purpose of forest bathing is to lower the heart rate and blood

Evans recommends that people aim to forest bathe for at least two hours every two weeks, and says the ideal location is a large area of mixed, ancient woodland, because of its richness and complexity. However, he adds, “The main advice is to just find a manageable starting point. Don’t dismiss what’s on your doorstep – you will get a lot of the same benefits by going to a city park. You’ll find yourself wanting to do it more often.”

Listen up

“There are often tears as emotions are released” Gary Evans, forest bathing expert

Mindfulness can enhance the experience, Evans says, but he doesn’t advise listening to guided meditation or anything else on headphones, unless it’s to block out the sounds of a crowded park. Instead, he says, “Listen to birds and the natural soundtrack of the forest as you feel the sun on your skin. Touch moss. Focus on the beauty around you. This can help you avoid the frustration of a busy mind. No one ever said it was easy to practise mindfulness, but with time it comes naturally.”

tfb.institute 83

A skater glides across a frozen alpine lake, its glimmering surface reflecting the towering 3,000m-high mountains that border the icy expanse. A snowboarder jumps off the chairlift on a bluebird afternoon and weaves down wide, perfectly groomed pistes, with hardly another soul in sight on the mountains. A skier speeds down the steeps of one of the world’s great race runs, where sporting history has been made time and time again, while nearby an ecstatic family jump off their toboggans and pile into a cosy traditional mountain hut that embodies Austrian Gemütlichkeit – the cosiness, friendliness and joy that lives in abundance in these mountains. This is winter… the Austrian Way.

Perched on the edge of a picturesque lake, Zell am See is the essence of alpine tranquillity – but around this quiet town there’s a whole lot of skiing, too. The Kitzsteinhorn Glacier above Kaprun is a spot of glimmering beauty. The Black Mamba run on the glacier is special, winding down to Langwiedboden on gradients of up to 63 per cent. Back in Zell, the blues and reds are ideal for intermediate cruising. A weekly winter programme means that yoga classes, torchlit walks and guided snowshoe hikes are easy to join – and you can head to the Tauern SPA if you want to kick back and fully relax. Lifts: 46 (121 with Ski Alpin Card) Pistes: 138km, including Maiskogel & Kitzsteinhorn (408km with Ski Alpin Card) Nearest airports: Salzburg (80km), Innsbruck (147km), Munich (200km) Elevation: 760m-3,000m Highest mountain: Kitzsteinhorn, 3,203m

Kitzbühel

St. Johann in Tirol The historic, hidden haven of St. Johann in Tirol is the perfect getaway for a family-friendly skiing trip without compromising on big mountain views (or the opportunity for a snow-splashing, off-piste powder day). Skiing on the snowassured side of the 1,996m Kitzbüheler Horn, you’ll have stunning views of the Wilder Kaiser range. There are also more than

170km of cross-country trails weaving around the area, while off the slopes you can skate on the illuminated 1,800sq-m ice rink in town, embrace the peace of a winter hike, or go on a snowshoe adventure in the moonlight. Lifts: 10 Pistes: 40km Nearest airports: Salzburg (64km), Innsbruck (99km), Munich (161km) Elevation: 659m-1,604m Highest mountain: Harschbichl, 1,604m

Kitzbühel is a marvellous medieval ski town, much loved around the world as the host of the annual Hahnenkamm World Cup race, which takes place on the Streif – one of the world’s steepest and most spectacular downhill racecourses. Still, there are plenty of pistes for all levels here. Long blues on the Kitzbüheler Horn and Pengelstein are ideal for beginners, while there’s a huge variety for intermediates – and mighty fine tree lines and touring options. The 12th-century town is utterly charming, with a plethora of shops to browse, while skating rinks and horse-drawn sleighs make even a short stroll feel like a postcard-perfect dream. Lifts: 58 Pistes: 233km Nearest airports: Salzburg (80km), Innsbruck (95km), Munich (150km) Elevation: 770m-2,000m Highest mountain: Kitzbüheler Horn, 1,996m

CHRIS PERKLES, KITZBUEHEL TOURISMUS, KITZSTEINHORN, TOURISMUSVERBAND KITZBUEHELER ALPEN ST.JOHANN IN TIROL

WINTER, THE AUSTRIAN WAY

Zell am See-Kaprun

PROMOTION

Glimmering beauty: the view from the Kitzsteinhorn Glacier in Zell am See-Kaprun

St. Johann in Salzburg

Endless options: Kitzbühel has pistes for skiers of all levels

Less than an hour from Mozart’s birthplace sits scenic St. Johann in Salzburg – and a symphony of tranquillity and snow. Stay in the family-friendly Alpendorf district and you won’t need a lift to reach the slopes. It’s ski-in, ski-out here. Explore the Snow Space Salzburg ski area on the 12 Peaks Trophy challenge, which includes 10,000m of vertical downhill, or ski tour or toboggan on the local

mountain, Hahnbaum. Gorge on Käsespätzle – the Austrian mountains’ indulgent answer to mac and cheese – or Pofesen, a local take on French toast with sweet plum jam. Lifts: 69 Pistes: 210km Nearest airports: Salzburg (60km), Munich (200km) Elevation: 648m-1,808m Highest mountain: Gamskogel, 2,188m For more information, go to: austria.info/en/winter

VENTURE Calendar

to 30 December CHRISTMAS FILMS

5 to 19 January DAKAR RALLY The world’s toughest motor race celebrates its 46th anniversary in the Arabian desert, but it’s still younger than almost every winner of its elite T1 car category. Last year’s champion, Nasser Al-Attiyah, turns 53 ahead of the 2024 rally, but change is coming: Brazil’s Lucas Moraes (pictured) came third in 2023, aged 31, and now American Seth Quintero is T1’s youngest-ever entrant at 21. Red Bull TV is bringing a fresh approach to the fortnight, with a studio talk show featuring unfiltered interviews with drivers on everything from adventure and innovation to psychology and cheaters. redbull.com

Elf is 20 years old this Christmas. That is, of course, a blink of the eye for elves, who surely live for hundreds of years, but sadly not for Buddy, the star of the movie, who was a human brought up by Santa’s little helpers as one of their own. He’d be 56 today (the age of Will Ferrell, the actor who played him). Still, the film can be enjoyed by audiences of all ages as part of the BFI’s Christmas movie season, now in stunning 4K IMAX, with the cinema’s foyer transformed to replicate Elf’s New York department store setting. Other festive classics in the season include The Nightmare Before Christmas, this year’s Wonka and (obviously) Die Hard. BFI IMAX, London; bfi.org.uk

December NEW YEAR AT THE MANSION Where are you headed this New Year’s Eve? If it’s to this party, you still won’t know where until 48 hours before – that’s when the secret location is revealed. The Mansion London is a “night house” – a welcoming gathering that feels like going out and staying in – never in the same place but always somewhere grand. To ring in 2024, this roving residency of revelry is hosting two lounges and three dancefloors filled with DJs, VJs, live acts, stilt walkers and fire-eaters, with free consultations from a clairvoyant – someone who might have been more useful 48 hours earlier. A Victorian venue, Zone 2, north-west London; themansionlondon.com 86

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VENTURE Calendar

to 28 January RED BULL CLIFF DIVING WORLD SERIES FINAL

MARCIN KIN/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, BFI, DEAN TREML/RED BULL CONTENT POOL, MARISSA ALPER, ACCIDENTALLY WES ANDERSON

It’s the extreme diving contest where competitors plunge into water from heights of up to 27m at epic locations across the world. But in 2023 it was the finale of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series that took the biggest leap. Set to make its New Zealand debut at Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour in November, the event was postponed after a rahui (Maori for restricted access) was imposed to protect divers from a nearby sewage leak. With the waters now given the all-clear (literally), find out which two champions take the crown. Streaming live on Red Bull TV. redbull.com

29 December to 21 January KAGAMI March 2023 saw the loss of Ryuichi Sakamoto, the 71-year-old Japanese musician who – both solo and with Yellow Magic Orchestra – created hits such as Behind the Mask and Riot in Lagos, helping pioneer techno and hip hop. He composed movie scores including 1987’s The Last Emperor (winning the Oscar) and 1983’s Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (he also acted in it, with David Bowie). This concert was one of his last works. Wearing mixed-reality glasses, audiences can walk around a digital Sakamoto performing among 3D visuals. Of the project, he mused, “This virtual me will not age, and will continue to play the piano for years, decades, centuries.” Roundhouse, London, roundhouse.org.uk THE RED BULLETIN

December to 17 February ACCIDENTALLY WES ANDERSON In 2017, Brooklyn couple Wally and Amanda Koval started an Instagram account of travel photos that seem straight out of a Wes Anderson film. Today, @accidentallywesanderson has more than 1.8m followers. A book followed, and now this exhibition – seven rooms of pastel-hued whimsy, beauty and majesty. Old Brompton Road, London; feverup.com 87

OFF TO THE HOME OF

* LÄSSIG!

* Cool and laid-back – or “lässig” as the Austrians say

Holidays, events and downhills: 10 reasons not to miss the Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn in Austria

PROMOTION

SAALBACH.COM/MIRJA GEH

HOME OF LÄSSIG* The Skicircus consists of the Salzburg winter sport resorts of Saalbach, Hinterglemm, Saalfelden and Leogang, plus Fieberbrunn in Tyrol

FREERIDING

FREERIDING MECCA The freeriding scene comes together in Fieberbrunn, whether for ski holidays or the Freeride World Tour

The powder in the Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn is sugary-smooth, and freeriders are never happier than at their mecca: Fieberbrunn. The never-ending off-piste runs show the wild side of the Kitzbühel Alps. The most impressive lines are on the Wildseeloder, where the Freeride World Tour elite will make their mark again in March 2024. It isn’t only the professionals who learn everything there is to know about mountain safety here; amateurs and beginners do, too. There are avalanche transceiver search fields at the Schattberg summit and Zillstatt lift, where you can train to use the device and learn to track down those buried in the snow. LOCATION: Wildseeloder, Fieberbrunn SLOPE GRADIENT: up to 70 degrees FREERIDE WORLD TOUR: Fieberbrunn is the only stop on the elite freeriding tour in the German-speaking world. You start on the North Face of the Wildseeloder at 2,118m and descend more than 620m

saalbach.com/freeride

ROUND TRIP If you’re going to attempt The Challenge, you’ll need to be very fit, and manage your time well

SKI YOUR LIMIT! Sixty-five kilometres of slopes in seven hours – think that’s easy? Then take The Challenge, the longest ski circuit in the Alps. It outclasses even the renowned Sellaronda circuit in South Tyrol or the Hochkönig tour. One tip, though: keep the aprèsski to a minimum, because there won’t be much of a lunch break. This tour is designed for hardcore sports enthusiasts, though the 32 lifts help you cope with the 12,400m ascent. You can start The Challenge at any lift. You reach the finish line once you’ve done all 32. THE CHALLENGE: 65km, a 12,400m climb, seven hours, no break Ski ALPIN CARD: a ski pass covering 408km of pistes in the three premium skiing locations – Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn, plus the Schmittenhöhe in Zell am See and the Kitzsteinhorn in Kaprun

saalbach.com/thechallenge alpincard.at

3 TASTE GUARANTEE Kaiserschmarrn is just one of many culinary delights to enjoy at the mountain huts

THE UNMISSABLE TASTE OF KAISERSCHMARRN Airy, fluffy and light – words that describe both the snow in the Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn and the Kaiserschmarrn. Kaiserschmarrn has always been the après-ski cherry on the cake, whether you’re going for a rustic experience or something more chic. Don’t miss out on the Kasnocken (pasta dumplings with cheese and onion), Kaspressknödel (pressed cheese dumplings) or Pinzgauer Bladl (a savoury pastry) either. After a long day’s skiing, you can put your feet up at an après-ski bar, cosy hut or inn with music. And there’s all that and more at the White Pearl Mountain Days. The spring programme combines mountain yoga, snowshoeing, DJs and live shows with culinary highlights from the region, created especially for this multi-day event. WHITE PEARL MOUNTAIN DAYS: March 22-31, 2024, in the Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn. Free MOUNTAIN HUTS MAGIC: more than 60 huts

saalbach.com/winterhuts

PROMOTION

LEAPING AHEAD Can world speed champion Vincent Kriechmayr (above) repeat his success at the 2025 Alpine Ski World Championships?

SAALBACH.COM/MAKEART/CHRISTOPH JOHANN/DANIEL ROOS; ERICH SPIESS

SKI LIKE A WORLD CHAMPION

The label ‘world-class’ is doubly true when it comes to skiing here: Saalbach Hinterglemm will host the finals of the Audi FIS Ski World Cup in March 2024. Things don’t get much more exciting than seeing the skiing elite racing for those decisive World Cup points. The best skiers in the world will compete on the same Zwölferkogel course at the FIS Alpine Ski World Championships 2025, too. And the cool thing is that everyone else can still ski during the races. The finish area will host 15,000 spectators max, but you’ll get a ringside seat if skiing yourself. The omens for Austrian success couldn’t be better as five golds sparkled at the sun-kissed World Championships last time they were held in Saalbach Hinterglemm, back in 1991. THE AUDI FIS SKI WORLD CUP FINALS 2024: March 16-24, 2024. Tickets via the QR code THE FIS ALPINE SKI WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS 2025: February 4-16, 2025. Tickets go on sale in March 2024

saalbach.com/worldcupfinals saalbach2025.com

HIT THE GROUND SKIING Looking for a place to stay? You’ll find a place to rest your head at saalbach.com. A tip: ski-in, ski- out means you can reach the slopes on your skis from anywhere in the Skicircus

MOUNTAIN ROCK Snow rains down from above at the BERGFESTival, not confetti from a cannon.

BERGFESTival The mountain really gets in the groove when the ski season opens with a fanfare. The BERGFESTival lineup showcases the Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn in all its vibrant diversity, with the rhythms of rock, indie hip-hop and electronic music fusing seamlessly. The Broilers, Wanda, Beatsteaks, Alligatoah, The Hives, Kraftklub, Seiler & Speer and Christina Stürmer have all played here on open-air stages and in quaint chalets and clubs. Every year, the parties on the mountain go hand-in-hand with 270km of ski-slope fun and various other winter activities. Book your accommodation online on the festival page and you’ll save yourself the ticket fee. BERGFESTIVAL: December 2024, Saalbach TICKETS: €106

berg-festival.com

6 GARAGE PARTY The epicentre of RaveOnSnow, in the car park beneath the Schattberg lift

RAVEONSNOW The RaveOnSnow electronic festival began 30 years ago, and Saalbach Hinterglemm has now been its home for 28 of them. It has since become one of the largest winter festivals for club music. More than 60 artists get people dancing for 50 hours on 12 dancefloors. It’s difficult to resist – when the sun’s out, you’re on skis and snowboards; when the sun goes down, you can dance to the finest techno, house and tech house at a different kind of après-ski party. The party takes place in the underground car park, the market square or alpine huts. The highlight is an open-air party at the Schattberg in Saalbach. This year’s line-up includes Pan-Pot, Tini Gessler, DJ Hell, Klaudia Gawlas, Joyhauser and Anna Reusch. RAVEONSNOW: December 14-17, 2023, Saalbach and Hinterglemm. TICKETS: starting from €150.

raveonsnow.com

PROMOTION

3 DAYS OF JAZZ

The 3 Days of Jazz festival offers exactly what it says on the tin: a long weekend of jazz and improvised music. Every summer, the internationally renowned Jazz Festival Saalfelden is a big hit, presenting stars from the world of jazz; this winter version is a bit smaller, but aims to be just as interesting. Twice a year, you can immerse yourself in innovative sounds right in the heart of the Innergebirg area of the State of Salzburg, exploring new and surprising music that’s best experienced live. The locations are the main stage at the Kunsthaus Nexus in Saalfelden, the historic Mining and Gothic Museum in Leogang, the spacious acoustics of the city church in Saalfelden, and the cosy Stöcklalm restaurant in Leogang.

SAALBACH.COM/MARKUS LANDAUER/LINDA ZECHMEISTER/CHRISTOPH JOHANN; MICHAELGEISSLER

MUSICAL VOYAGE The 3 Days of Jazz festival offers innovative jazz sounds

FIRST LINE AND EARLY START Attention, early birds: if you want to be first onto the freshly rolled and untouched slopes, you’d best go for the ‘early start’. The first cable cars will take you up the mountain from 8am. The ‘First Line’ ski experience in Fieberbrunn is an extra treat. A group of no more than 30 people, accompanied by local guides and a cable-car operator, is allowed onto the mountain at 7:30am, before regular skiing begins. After you have christened the freshly prepared slopes before everyone else, a local mountain breakfast awaits at 9am in the Pulvermacher Almhütte. Enjoy! EARLY START: at selected lifts in the Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn, from 8am FIRST LINE: in Fieberbrunn only, from 7:30am; 30 people max. Price: €78

fieberbrunn.com/firstline saalbach.com/earlystart

3 DAYS OF JAZZ: January 26-28, 2024, Saalfelden and Leogang TICKETS: starting from €10

jazzsaalfelden.com

SALUTE TO THE SUN Early risers have the mountains in the Skicircus to themselves

SIMPLY THE BEST You can have fun skiing in any conditions in the Skicircus, be that on the slopes or on wild snow trails

CHASING SLOPES

WORLD CHAMPION SERVICE The Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn is also a world champion when it comes to service. You’d be hard-pushed to find so many high-quality ski schools, guides, and ski and rental shops elsewhere

Once the snowcats have levelled the slope, the snow forms a fine rib. Crushing it is a thrill for piste riders, but short-lived. However, in the Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn there’s all sorts of skiing fun: on humpback slopes, in the pipe, through fresh powder, or firn-gliding. The main thing is that you come with friends. Snow trails are currently experiencing a particularly actionpacked comeback. The natural forest paths close to the slopes are shaped by nature. Natural waves, crests and terrain changes are refined with steep curves, wave paths, jumps and corners. The result: maximum downhill fun, like in the good old days. Fancy a go? The snow trails are also shown on the interactive piste map. INTERACTIVE PISTE MAP: an interactive map available for download

saalbach.com/pistemap

PROMOTION

TRAIL RUNNING ON THE ROCKS

Snowshoeing slows the place, is contemplative, and immerses you in nature with every step. But a fast run on snowy trails also has its charm. In the Skicircus Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang Fieberbrunn, runners can find trails of crunchy snow in the winter and explore this wonderland at speed. And once you’ve run it, a winter hike will provide new perspectives on nature. There’s a 140km network of winter hiking trails in the region for you to discover with a guide or on your own, and the winter hiker ‘Sun Card’ covers all tours. WINTER RUN 1 – SONNSEIT PROMENADE CIRCUIT: 8.8km, 137m altitude change; takes one hour and 29 minutes WINTER RUN 2 – ULLACHTAL LOOP: 7.5km, 196m altitude change; takes an hour WINTER RUN 3 – TALSCHLUSS [END OF THE VALLEY] – LINDLINGALM: 14.1km, 242m altitude change; takes two hours and 19 minutes

SAALBACH.COM/CHRISTOPH JOHANN; SALZBURGERLAND TOURISMUS/MARKUS BERGER; SAALBACH.COM

saalbach.com/wintersun TAKING THE MOUNTAIN AIR A hike in the home of Lässig will provide crystalclear memories

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Semi-Rad Adventure philosophy from BRENDAN LEONARD

“When I was training for my first marathon, 150 years ago – OK, it was actually 2006 – I decided that during my first-ever 20-mile run, the longest I’d ever done, I’d listen to some music. I didn’t have a ton of time to put together a playlist, so I started loading Fela Kuti tracks onto my then-girlfriend’s MP3 player (Fela has a lot of long songs). That was the last time I ever listened to music while I ran. That day, I realised around the two-hour mark that I love music but I don’t necessarily love running 100 per cent of the time, and listening to my favourite tracks during the long, hot hours of pounding the pavement might ruin my relationship with Fela Kuti’s work. So I quit. Now, I just listen to my thoughts, which is probably way more insane when you’re out running for four-to-five hours.”

The next issue of THE RED BULLETIN is out on February 13 98

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