True story.
Seven years ago I sat on the cliffs of Iceland dreaming I could fly. I was up on a cliff in the west fjords listening to a song called Are Batur, by Sigur Ros. It’s definitely one of my favorites of all time. At the end, in true Sigur Ros form, it build and builds and then explodes in a heavenly orchestration of glory. I may have shed a tear, but the influence it had on me was so profound. It took me to a place where I was flying over this beautiful place and not just looking at it from the edges. It was just a fantasy since the reality of that could never happen… until it did. I learned to fly at home and a friend organized a tour to be the first ever to explore the depths of Iceland on a paramotor. The ultimate dream had come true. The ability to go where there are no roads — particularly no tour buses— blesses us with a humbling advantage. Over volcanoes, lava fields, and skies untouched. Enjoy. Spoiler, northern lights appear.
Once in a while it actually rains a lot in southern California. And it’s usually in the early spring. With the right amount of luck, an explosion of orange poppies burst out all over. Freeways back up and no-name towns become sudden tourist attractions. I heard they even had to shut down access to the trails due to overpopulation of visitors. Well, not if you fly. Seeing this range of flowers all over kind of makes you feel like you just landed in the Wizard of Oz’s Munchkinland.
One of the problems/addictions you get from creating images for a living is feeling the need to always take a camera whenever you go that might have the potential of being awesome. Well, there’s a lot of potential out there and it’s a HUGE struggle to just go and leave the camera behind. Often I fail, and gather footage that I just don’t know what to do with. Some of this stuff I feel is great and would have never seen the light of day if I didn’t do something with it, so I started a little theme called “Venture Flights”. It’s like a two minute adventure but it’s exploring somewhere new. Below are the first 4 episodes, each with their own different kind of feeling. It tends to go with the playlist I listen to as I fly, because sometimes you want to chill and vibe out, other times you feel like a rock star. So there you have it. Enjoy.
There will be many things I’d like to blog/share that really don’t fall in line with my professional work, like this one. But who cares! If you like a good pow-day then you’ll probably appreciate this. I just love skiing powder so much I felt like sharing my POV from my helmet cam recently. So sad winter is coming to a close. It was a great year!
Shane and I fly out — ski launching our Scout Paramotors on a frigid winter morning up to Washington Lake, UT (10,000ft).
Lakes all around with untouched powder made for ripe conditions to fly by, land and build a few snow caves to stay the night. After a very successful fire built on snow, we settled in for a warm night in our caves.
The next morning the wind was blowing and gusting even harder. I thought I’d still try to ski launch out of there but a quick change in wind and heavy powder made for an entertaining (soft) crash. With good fortune too, as we immediately saw clouds aloft blowing by in excess of 40-50 mph. I would have been taken to Wyoming had I got off the ground.
Facing the reality that we can’t fly out, we had to ski out with our motors on about 14 miles back to the cars. We told our wives that if we didn’t report that afternoon to send in the rescue party. It was insanely strenuous but we made it out.
If you’d like to get into the sport, I highly recommend checking out the pros at flyhalo.com.
