SAFA Skysailor Magazine

39 SUMMER 2025/2026 | December-January-February SKY SAILOR You and Remy once set out to do a 300km triangle around the Alps. What was that adventure like? Yeah, that was near the end of my first full year of flying. My partner and I were chatting about doing a 300km triangle around the Alps. We had friends in the different valleys, so the idea was to just fly through, visit people, and vol-biv our way around. We literally shoved our tents into our harnesses and just took off. It was the end of the season, so the days weren’t huge. Our biggest flight was about 40km – the rest was walking. I was on an Ion 6 and Remy was on a Mentor 5. Nova actually wrote a little story about it afterwards. I loved the feeling of travelling with a paraglider, just seeing what the day gave you. Some days were just sleddies, and we’d land and think, ‘Okay, let’s try a dif- ferent mountain,’ then hike up and camp somewhere else. That trip really got me inspired to move through the mountains with nothing but your feet and your wing. One of my dreams was always to fly from one end of the Alps to the other – like a mini X-Alps but on your own terms. Europe makes this so easy: There are valleys, food, and public transport everywhere. You can just go. That whole experience made me realise how cool adventure flying could be. You’ve said your flying style doesn’t really fit the typical Australian XC or comp mindset. What is your style of flying? I’d call what I do ‘adventure flying’. I think that style is more common in Europe, but here in Australia I find a lot of the culture is about numbers and distance. That’s probably because we don’t have a ton of terrain that’s suitable for top landings, multiple flights in a day, or alpine lines. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just different, and my XC skills have improved from flying here. But I’m not a comp pilot and I’m not a huge distance pilot, so sometimes I feel a bit out of sync with those concepts. For me it’s all about being in the moun- tains. That’s where I came from, doing ski touring and mountaineering and moving through terrain on my own two feet. Flying is just another way of being in that environment. So I look at what the day is giving me, and see what kind of line or little mission I can make out of it – maybe