After I wrote the article for the SwissGlider magazine about my RunAndFly adventures, I thought that I should have written also about the most special of them. It happened last autumn, but I will write about it now anyway half a year later.
It was a Saturday in September. The alarm clock rang as usual at 6AM. I got up, drank a bit and got dressed. Soon after, I started to run. Since I didn’t have to go to work, I decided to go to the Euw which is higher and farther than the takeoff I usually run to, halfway up the Urmiberg. To get to the Euw, I usually run through the forest up to the the cablecar that goes from Morschach to Stoos. While running up in the Ingenbohl forest, it was still dark but the air looked clean and calm. After the cablecar, the track becomes steeper, and running half an hour uphill also left its toll. That’s why I usually hike this part. While hiking up to the Euw, I observed that a layer of fog was starting to build up. By the time I reached the intended takeoff, the fog layer was quite compact and covered all of Brunnen and Schwyz. Only above Ibach there was a hole big enough to fly through. When I was done with preparing the glider, also this hole was closed. I waited a couple of minutes hoping the fog would lift again.
After a while I figured instead of waiting, I could climb through the rocks all the way to the Fronalpstock. But there was one limitation. Because it was my birthday, my wive prepared my favorite meal: filet in a dough. Hence I wanted to be absolutely certain to be home for lunch. I wanted to climb this route for a long time, and so did my 12 year old son. It was actually good that I did it the first time without him. Now that I know it, I wouldn’t go with him yet. By the time I reached the summit, the sun had risen, but the fog still covered everything from Rickenbach to Brunnen.
Only the Moutathal valley was fog free. So I could fly down to the Euw, as Morschach was also in the fog, and run down the hill back home from there. Or I could fly to Muotathal, and run home from there. This might be farther, but more or less flat. I opted for the latter, as I thought I would be home sooner with running on the flat. The flight was quite nice, actually my longest to date with the single skin glider.
After I packed the glider, I started running. But after only two km, still far from home, I was exhausted. My body didn’t recover during the flight from climbing 1’500 meters with little to drink and nothing to eat. I only carry essential stuff for the RunAndFly in my backpack. That doesn’t include money nor a face mask. Thus I could not take the bus. So I tried to hitch hike. But who would give a ride to a guy in clothes that were soaked with sweat a short while ago during a pandemic? A couple of cars left me standing. But after a while on older guy picked me up. He told me he would never in his live fly with a paraglider. And it turned out, he went to school together with my father. Those coincidences are sometimes funny. He drove me to Ibach. And from there I went back home on my own, half running half walking.
When I analyzed the GPS track afterwards I saw that I only needed little more than two hours from Brunnen to the Fronalpstock, not counting the stationary time for preparing, waiting and packing on the Euw.
Tag: RunAndFly
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My most special RunAndFly
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Run and fly with the XXLite2
Before I participated in the rollibock trophy in Fiesch last October, I thought my paraglider equipment was fairly lightweight. The glider is a regular Mac Para Marvel, but the Advance Lightness 2 harness is optimized for weight as the name implies, as well as the accompanying backpack. With helmet, gloves, sun glasses, flight computer and clothes, the equipment is slightly less than 14.5kg. When I started paragliding in 2002, a normal equipment was about 20kg. For reference, My tandem equipment is around 30kg, and my competition equipment also was in that ballpark.
When I looked around the participants at the rollibock, I was astonished by the small and light backpacks they had. They were literally running up the mountain. When single skin gliders were first released, it didn’t spark my interest. They were a strange appearance, and the flight characteristics looked slightly frightening to me. But a lot has improved since then. Some models have tubes along the leading edge, others from front to back. They have a lot better characteristics and performance than the first models. I started my research in the internet. Some models weight only 1kg.
Best of all, I started thinking how cool it would be to combine hill running with paragliding. I try to run once a week from Brunnen to Morschach and back. Depending on my daily condition, I make it up to the cable car, or I turn around shortly before I reach Morschach. I always prefer running uphill. Especially since I started getting cramps in my forearms on the descent, sometimes even extending from there. It only happened on longer tours, and only on the descent. After a while I found out that it was caused by dehydration, and I took detours to water sources. I didn’t want to carry anything when I go running. But carrying an ultra light paraglider is something entirely different.
So I asked the loal flying school for an Ozone XXLite 2 glider for a test flight. November is the worst month for flying in Switzerland. The weather is mostly bad with lots of fog, and most cable cars are closed for revision. When the weather was finally flyable, somebody else grabbed the wing already a couple of times. In early December, I finally got to try it. I didn’t really know what to expect. Some people I talked to, praised single skin gliders as great and fun, while others dismissed them as falling out of the sky like a stone. I completed two flights from the Rothenflue. Take off was very nice both times. With the slightest blow of light wind, you can bring it above the head and maintain it there. Also without wind it was easy to get airborne. The handling was surprisingly similar to a regular paraglider. It doesn’t flare as well as a regular wing, but it does flare somewhat. I didn’t know beforehand, but most single skin gliders apparently don’t flare at all. Apart from the handling, I was mostly interested in the performance of the glider. Of course it was not made for performance, and is far from regular gliders in that respect. The teacher from the school providing the glider told me to expect something in the range of a school glider at the time I started flying. When I checked my XCTrainer in the air, I mostly saw glide ratios between 6.5 and 7 with speeds around 35km/h. For comparison, my regular glider has a glide ratio of around 9 and a current high end comp glider is slightly above 10. The trim speed again seems to be different from other single skin gliders that apparently mostly fly less than 30km/h.
My resume after the first two flights was that the flying characteristics are good enough, and the small and ultra light package is just astonishing. In short, I ordered one on the same day. Luckily the forecasted delivery time was was much shorter than I expected.
A week after ordering, I picked up the new wing including the super light harness that I didn’t see before. Of course I bought the glider at the flying school where I can pay with Bitcoin.At home, I installed the special lightweight carabiners and the speed system. But the weather really didn’t look good. We had occasional rain and very strong wind for days. I added a ribcap and gloves to the kit. With this addition, the backpack now weights 1.8kg.
As the first chance of getting good enough weather, I went to the Zugerberg. Instead of the usual walking to the takeoff, I ran. The light backpack really doesn’t bother at all. Even with light wind from behind, the glider took off flawlessly. The gliding ratio was enough to clear the trees halfway down. When I started paragliding, some school gliders had to land before the trees here because they didn’t glide good enough. Also the landing was smooth. The only thing that was strange was the cold wind flowing around my butt. Usually it is very comfy in my cocoon harness. The equipment is packed rather quickly into the backpack, and I was ready to run up to the train. From the train of course I ran again to the car. So my first flight with the new kit was not a pure “run and fly”, but I can say that it works as I envisioned. Now I’m ready for the real “run and fly” adventures.