WILL GADD, GAVIN MCCLURG

Will Gadd, Gavin Mcclurg

On August 1, Gavin McClurg and Will Gadd were spiraling upward in paragliders above Canada’s iconic Mount Robson. The thermal lift of air rising from the south face was pulling them upward at thousands of feet per minute—conditions couldn’t have been better. The two paragliders were moving so quickly that an A-star helicopter, there to film the start of a 400-mile-long journey down the spine of the Canadian Rockies, was having trouble keeping up with them. Over the roaring sound of the wind, McClurg could hear Gadd laughing maniacally. Thirty-five days later, the two men would reach the United States border to complete the longest air journey by a paraglider and redefine the standards by which the sport is measured.

“It’s been months and my blood pressure still elevates [when] thinking about it,” says Gadd, 47. “The coolest things aren’t defined by numbers or geographic lines; they are defined by what’s going on in the landscape. We could triple the length of the flight we just did, but I don’t think it would be any cooler.”

McClurg and Gadd had never flown together or even met before their trip, but they did share an adventure pedigree. Both are world-class kayakers. Gadd is best known for his ice and mixed climbing, a discipline he has stood at the leading edge of since the late 1990s. McClurg has sailed more than 170,000 nautical miles in pursuit of remote kiteboarding and surf locations. They shared the desire and skill to push the sport of paragliding. In paragliding races, like the famed Red Bull X-Alps, progress can be made by both flight and by foot, so when weather turns bad pilots simply walk, something Gadd and McClurg equate to a kayaker portaging a rapid.

“It turns into backpacking,” Gadd says. “We aren’t backpackers. I want to fly.”

Gadd and McClurg practice the evolving discipline of vol-bivy, French for “fly camping.” This is a fringe sport even by adventure-sports standards. According to Gadd, in Europe, there are about 80,000 paragliders. In North America, those numbers shrink to 6,000. Among that population, Gadd estimates that there are maybe 50 pilots that are using paragliders to make long, multiday journeys across rugged landscapes. Most of those flights happen in the Alps, where a road is never more than about ten kilometers away.

During their adventure in summer 2014, the pilots used thermals to gain altitude and then glide forward until they were able to find another thermal. In this fashion, they were able to leapfrog across a landscape. Their route crossed only five paved roads on the way to the border. When conditions were favorable, they were able to travel over 60 miles. Most often the fickle Alpine weather made travel sporadic and they could fly only 15 to 20 miles. At the end of each day, the pair tried to find a suitable landing zone above the tree line. This proved to be the biggest challenge.

“There was a day where we flew 50 miles without a single place to land,” says 42-year-old McClurg, who currently holds the North American record for the longest single paragliding flight (240 miles) where the pilot launched by foot. “That was special. It made me shift how I think about flying.”

After successfully identifying a landing zone, they would camp for the night, and, the next morning, weather permitting, launch from the spot where they landed. All forward progress along the route was completed through flight. When they hiked, it was only to retrace their flight path in order to find a suitable spot for takeoff.

"It was absolutely terrifying terrain to fly through," McClurg says. "We had to break all the rules of cross-country flying to get through huge sections of the route. You just don’t fly over terrain where you can’t land, and we had to do it continuously."

A crash, bad weather, or damage to the wing could potentially require several days of bushwhacking through grizzly country to get to a road where they could hitchhike or meet a waiting vehicle. At one point, while pinned down by weather at Kinbasket Lake for four days, the two men considered building a raft from downed trees as an escape plan. Fortunately, the weather cleared and they were able to continue flying along their route.