paragliding

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    Wild Camping

    (written sometime last week)

    I have to admit that I often felt like a dirtbag hiking through France. The French people are stylish relaxed, sipping pastis or coffee and loving life in town, not on the trails. For a place that reveres its mountaineers, there were so few distance hikers… until we reached Chamonix. Suddenly, everyone walking around had an ice axe and a farmer tan. Returning to the campground loaded down with grocery bags, we noticed a steady stream of semi-rough-looking folks headed in the same direction also carrying grocery bags.  At camp, everyone else was also cooking their pasta meal amid piles of gear. We were just two more adventurers in the crowd. Everyone else was climbing Mont Blanc, but for the first time in weeks, we blended in.

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    Observations on a Sky Camping Trip:

    (Written 7/2/2011 as well)

    The French have quant little towns down to a science.

    The big valleys in the French alps get REALLY HOT.

    Annecy, the paragliding mecca is really fancy.

    Often trails don’t go or don’t go where you want them to.

    The mountains are big.

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    Our Vol Biv Journey – As the Wind Blows

    (Written 7/2/2011 – Sorry for the delay, the keyboards here are really different!)

    Bonjour,

    First of all let me say that we both have fallen in love with France. Where else can you hike through alpine meadows in the morning, paraglide into a random village, enjoy a pastis in the afternoon and find a field to camp in before dark? The people are joyful and down to earth and can melt my heart with the way they sing their greetings and thank yous. We are learning a bit of French, but must rely on hand gestures and good humor to get information (few people in the places we are traveling speak English). This has proven to have quite lengthy and tiring consequences from time to time.

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    Where Are They?

    While we’re out wandering through the Alps this summer we wanted you to be able to follow us, see where we are and what we’re up to. So, we created the “Where are They” doohickey! By clicking on “Where are They” on the bottom navigation for this page (yep, right down there) you can view a map that will show you where we are (amazing!). The map is updated when we use our GPS. Every time we use our GPS to find out where we are, you’ll know too. What’s even better is if we have our GPS running while we’re hiking or flying the map will update and you’ll be able to watch our progress in almost real-time. That way, when we get that epic XC flight you can watch it unfold! On top of that, you can send us messages right from “Where are They.” How awesome is that?!

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    Here Comes the Gram Weenies

    We are officially weighed in…Down to the gram!

    We’re both super excited about how our pack weights for our trans-alps trip have turned out. Both our base pack weights are nice and light, our paragliding gear comes in at about half of a standard kit and our total pack weights are looking sweet. Melody’s pack weighs 31.5lbs with 3 days food and fuel and mine is 36.9lbs with the same. Now that we can carry across the Alps!

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    Frankenharnesses and a Sea of Sil

    It amazes me how much gear we can make for a trip on which we are each only taking one backpack. But, oh, how much these backpacks can hold! Sati and I have been busy in our shop making and customizing gear for our trans-Alps trip. Here is a list of what we’ve made or modified so far:

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    Spring Training

    The sun is finally coming out in the rainy (usually , this year) Bay Area. That combined with the fact that we had to say goodbye to our winter cabin in Tahoe last weekend has given way to spring training!

    Last weekend we headed out to the Briones Reservoir for a 15.5 mile hike. The trails that we used are on East Bay MUD land. I’ve always wanted to visit them but until recently (at least we discovered recently) you needed a hard to obtain permit to legally hike them. Now, you still need the permit but they are much easier to obtain. A quick trip to the EBMUD website and you can buy a 1 year permit for $10, so we did.

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    France -> Switzerland -> Austria -> Italy -> Slovenia

    Video go here

    The planning for our vol bivouac trip continues. We’ve just about got our route nailed down. For the last few months I’ve been studying maps of the Alps, getting acquainted with paragliding sites and flying regions, reading forums and generally madly trying to soak up as much information and I can about how a couple might sky camp their way from France to Slovenia around the alpine arc. I’ve learned the names of many a valley and have become truely inspired by the kind of hiking, flying and adventuring Melody and I will be doing this summer. The Alps look really amazing!

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    Winter “Training”

    //

    Melody and I figure that a trip around the Alps by foot and by paraglider probably requires some sort of training before hand. On our PCT trip a few years ago we definitely learned that the best training is the hiking that you do in the first couple weeks of your trip. But….Having a trip like ours on the horizon is also a wonderful opportunity to call all that outdoor stuff that we love to do “training.”

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    Vol Bivouac Across the Alps

    Vol Bivouac literally means “fly camping” though, it is often referred to a “sky camping” in English. I think this is because sky camping just sounds cooler. Sky camping is a form of backpacking where you travel by foot and by (paraglider) wing. On a pure sky camping trip you would not use any form of motorized transport. You fly cross country when the conditions are right, you hike when you can’t fly, camp in the wild at night and are fueled by the spirit of the adventure!

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