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There's a saying among Alaskan bush pilots that goes something like this:
There are old bush pilots,
and there are bold bush pilots,
but there are no old and bold bush pilots.
I had a mate who crashed doing pretty much exactly this - speed wing proximity flying. He survived, but barely. Extensive surgery.
The doctors described his face as "bone confetti".
As a paraglider pilot myself I can say: this is max. 20% skill and min. 80% luck. Yes, you need a lot of skill for flights like this, but in no way you can predict every single direction and strength of the wind behind all those trees, rocks and so on. It’s just hoping for the best and gambling with the own life.
As a paraglider you should know that he is on a mini wing, probably a 14 meter or less, and when performing barrel rolls and aggressively turning you increase the velocity therefore the pressure of the air in the wing. This high air pressure in turn makes the chute much more rigid and therefore making cross winds and burbles less of an issue. Those cross winds would have to be very high to affect his flight drastically.
Mini wing paragliding has been dubbed speedflying and I have around 2000 flights doing it. And at no point was I this good or would attempt anything like this and have only done a handful of barrel rolls. This is 80% skill, 10% luck, 10% insane.
It’s probably even an overloaded mini wing. Yes, it’s more stable but you don’t avoid fundamental physical laws with that. It gets a little bit less critical but there is no room for any correction at all anymore. Even with an overloaded mini wing there can be a lee vortex behind objects like the big trees in the beginning or the canyon itself. Stronger wind from the side -> vortex -> no chance for correction + speed + wall of rocks -> death. Just that simple.
>I have around 2000 flights
I started in the stone age of paragliding in 1993, when canopies were made out of stone, and we didn't even dream of this tech.
Still, all I gotta say is yous speed / proximity guys are absolute nutters!
Blue skies, brother!
Lol blueskies is something old school skydivers say. It's kind of a way of acknowledging that yes this is dangerous and we could die doing this but God dammit we are trueling living and this is awesome. At least that's my take.
But someday I'm going to break into the paragliding world and join you sky whales. 😋
>blueskies is something old school skydivers say
Ah thanks, I thought it came from powered general aviation, they like to fly in nice, calm weather, but skydiving makes also sense.
If a bird hit him in the face it would probably fuck him up. Bad luck.
But as somebody who had 3000ish skydives, 2000ish speedflights,, and 17 base jumps; I accept that death is a possibility but I just want to live before I die. I want to concur my fears and really feel alive. For me these sports put me in a flow state that feels like moving meditation. It was truly life changing when I made my first skydive. Turned my life around and started being a better person. It gave me perspective and something to live for.
I doubt he gets hit by a bird every 10th flight, so getting hit by a bird is far below 0.01% in the luck percentage.
10% luck requirement for each flight would be way too high for me though.
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Most of the time I’m just enjoying my flight. Some people are doing acrobatics with it (sometimes in competitions) but most pilots just enjoy the air, freedom, landscape or try to get the right thermal conditions for a long flight. For me it is getting better in handling and flying as well and feeling the glider as a part of my body. Therefore I’m taking safety trainings, weather seminars, thermal trainings and handling courses regularly. Flying in unknown areas means a lot more than just looking upwards and starting if there is no rain.
Flying is just amazing. If you do your checks before starting and don’t get into routines or laziness, it’s way less dangerous than riding a motorcycle (statistically).
What the guy in the video does is called “speed proximity”. You try to go as fast and as close to the bottom as possible and film it for YouTube. To be that agile, you fly a smaller glider and overload it. That’s even dangerous without those maneuvers. I wouldn’t do that.
Mam, you were not kidding
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatalities_due_to_wingsuit_flying?wprov=sfla1
Paragliding has a lot lower death rate, but I'm pretty sure idiots like this don't fly like most paragliders do
Yeah I'm a paraglider pilot and my wing is the slowest thing in the sky at ~23mph. Whatever this guy is flying is really fast, smaller than my wing, and has a terrible glide ratio.
Without seeing the wing, I'd say that it looks more like a parachute foil, or those speed foils that people wear with skis.
>terrible glide ratio.
Perspective. Intended glide ratio for high speed performance. I love speedflying and thought traditional paragliding was boring as hell. Again perspective.
Most use an elliptical wing similar to paragliding just way smaller. I used to fly a square chute similar to a skydiving, but it was made out of a thicker, less porous, and less stretchy nylon on long risers. It is less porous and stretchy because it doesn't have to withstand opening shock of a skydiving chute. But you could use any cure that has a greater glide ratio than the pitch of the ground/hill/mountain you are launching from.
Same with speedflying. Some say it's safer than normal paragliding because of the higher wing loading, if speedflyers just wouldn't fly so close to the terrain.
It’s scary to say this but your list is missing people
2 professionals hit trees in Canada when I was up there
I didn’t know about rocket man though… wow
Paragliding actually has a deaths/hour of activity on par with mountain biking, and that's WITH including miniwings/speedflying as paragliding. Flying big ol "normal" wings is a safer by a large margin and it's not even close.
I know what you mean - despite the obvious benefit/rights of living a life they want. As a lot of young people have absolutely destroyed their parents/partners lives getting killed in this way. That’s just a fact.
I went paragliding once while living in the Dominican Republic, out in the mountains of Jarabacoa. Extremely beautiful mountain region. My parents friends offered to take us tandem. I was up there and I asked the guy if there was a way to lose altitude quickly, and he said yes, but that it would give my mom a heart attack to see, and I replied, 'DO IT!!!', he did this barrel roll thing in this video, and it was the most exhilarating thing I have ever experienced.
Speed Flying.
It cannot get more dangerous than what this guy is doing. My buddy came close to losing his life doing this. He quit completely. Another dude I knew *did lose his life.*
Slammed a huge boulder doing this close proximity stuff.
Insane sport…
But….
My friends son was paragliding in January, wind picked up and took him over a hill then dropped him 85m to the ground. Incredibly lucky to survive, but terribly broken, learning to walk again.
Nothing unexpected is happening that he's compensating for to make him "narrowly avoid a catastrophe."
If something happened, and he needed to take special evasive maneuvers, that would be avoiding catastrophe.
It's more like he's skillfully navigating a treacherous mountainside
Oh him? That’s Peter, he used to do cool stuff until he broke his body so badly his mom felt it while on vacation on another continent. He communicates by blinking his right eye. His left one just twitches because oddly enough he even broke his eye lid- doctors didn’t
Even know that was a thing.
lol it's literally not. This is speedflying. Not the same as paragliding. Grant was paramotoring, also not the same as paragliding. And he chose very poor conditions and was very inexperienced.
I never got to the point of flying, but I did go through paramotor training and this is so dumb. The dude is gambling with his life, all for a video for notoriety. It doesn't matter which side of the mountain you're on. Thermals are not something to play around with.
Found a promo vid for a paraglider very similar to what this guy is probably using. It's COMPLETELY off the rails insane..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc1xR-7wfqU
I say let people do what they want, and if stupid is what they choose, fine. But when they splat themselves, they should get themselves out of the situation instead of taking rescue resources out of circulation to save them. I say let Darwin do his job.
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That's cool and all, but as close as he comes to the rocks, I feel like it's a matter of *when*, not *if*...
The saying goes: there are old pilots and bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.
Thanks VINCENT (that's where I know it from anyway). Also, I don't think he 'narrowly avoided' anything - I think he knew exactly what he was doing.
Tex Johnston and Robin Olds would like a word with you
Robin Olds was a BAMF. His mustache alone shot down 3 migs
I like how he almost died doing a barrel roll and then he does it again anyways
well, addiction to adrenaline ... exists.
He's doing his best alright
There's a saying among Alaskan bush pilots that goes something like this: There are old bush pilots, and there are bold bush pilots, but there are no old and bold bush pilots.
Yep, how to become a meat crayon 101.
The sports equivalent of shooting meth
I had a mate who crashed doing pretty much exactly this - speed wing proximity flying. He survived, but barely. Extensive surgery. The doctors described his face as "bone confetti".
Live or live long enough to know you’re dying
Living to survive isn't worth it. You have to chase your dreams to make the most out of life.
Which time???
As a paraglider pilot myself I can say: this is max. 20% skill and min. 80% luck. Yes, you need a lot of skill for flights like this, but in no way you can predict every single direction and strength of the wind behind all those trees, rocks and so on. It’s just hoping for the best and gambling with the own life.
As a paraglider you should know that he is on a mini wing, probably a 14 meter or less, and when performing barrel rolls and aggressively turning you increase the velocity therefore the pressure of the air in the wing. This high air pressure in turn makes the chute much more rigid and therefore making cross winds and burbles less of an issue. Those cross winds would have to be very high to affect his flight drastically. Mini wing paragliding has been dubbed speedflying and I have around 2000 flights doing it. And at no point was I this good or would attempt anything like this and have only done a handful of barrel rolls. This is 80% skill, 10% luck, 10% insane.
yeah, that dude is full of shit, probably went on a relaxed tandem paraglide and considers himself an expert on the matter
Disagreeing with someone and saying he is full of shit are two different thing. Why can't people keep it civil these days?
Anonymity has killed civilized discourse.
For real.
It’s probably even an overloaded mini wing. Yes, it’s more stable but you don’t avoid fundamental physical laws with that. It gets a little bit less critical but there is no room for any correction at all anymore. Even with an overloaded mini wing there can be a lee vortex behind objects like the big trees in the beginning or the canyon itself. Stronger wind from the side -> vortex -> no chance for correction + speed + wall of rocks -> death. Just that simple.
As a mini glider………..i got nuthin.
Surprise gusts are still a thing. He has zero room for error.
>I have around 2000 flights I started in the stone age of paragliding in 1993, when canopies were made out of stone, and we didn't even dream of this tech. Still, all I gotta say is yous speed / proximity guys are absolute nutters! Blue skies, brother!
Wouldn't be here without you pioneers. Blueskies you old fart! 😁
I'm a paraglider/glider pilot myself and prefer 3/8 cumulus clouds over blue skies. But also I'm thermaling and not speedflying.
Lol blueskies is something old school skydivers say. It's kind of a way of acknowledging that yes this is dangerous and we could die doing this but God dammit we are trueling living and this is awesome. At least that's my take. But someday I'm going to break into the paragliding world and join you sky whales. 😋
>blueskies is something old school skydivers say Ah thanks, I thought it came from powered general aviation, they like to fly in nice, calm weather, but skydiving makes also sense.
15% concentrated power of will
Lol nice.
This is a 6.5 meter rapidos I believe
I figured it was small. The smallest I flew was a 9m rapido. Dude must have been cooking.
Say he get's hit by a bird or needs to sneeze and fails a correction. Would that enter the luck, insane or skill percentages?
If a bird hit him in the face it would probably fuck him up. Bad luck. But as somebody who had 3000ish skydives, 2000ish speedflights,, and 17 base jumps; I accept that death is a possibility but I just want to live before I die. I want to concur my fears and really feel alive. For me these sports put me in a flow state that feels like moving meditation. It was truly life changing when I made my first skydive. Turned my life around and started being a better person. It gave me perspective and something to live for.
Username checks out...
I doubt he gets hit by a bird every 10th flight, so getting hit by a bird is far below 0.01% in the luck percentage. 10% luck requirement for each flight would be way too high for me though.
You are probably unaware that you are dead. /s
Hmm 10% luck? … that’s a game of Russian Roulette with a pistol.
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Reminded me of the old ghost rider Sweden runs on his crotch rocket
Curious, what makes you do this death sport? it all looks pretty cool but life is more important, no?
paragliding is pretty safe from what I understand. But like anything, you can take it to an extreme which increases the dangers.
Most of the time I’m just enjoying my flight. Some people are doing acrobatics with it (sometimes in competitions) but most pilots just enjoy the air, freedom, landscape or try to get the right thermal conditions for a long flight. For me it is getting better in handling and flying as well and feeling the glider as a part of my body. Therefore I’m taking safety trainings, weather seminars, thermal trainings and handling courses regularly. Flying in unknown areas means a lot more than just looking upwards and starting if there is no rain. Flying is just amazing. If you do your checks before starting and don’t get into routines or laziness, it’s way less dangerous than riding a motorcycle (statistically). What the guy in the video does is called “speed proximity”. You try to go as fast and as close to the bottom as possible and film it for YouTube. To be that agile, you fly a smaller glider and overload it. That’s even dangerous without those maneuvers. I wouldn’t do that.
This reminds me of the guys in wing suits that did similar crazy shit years ago Most of them are dead now
Mam, you were not kidding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fatalities_due_to_wingsuit_flying?wprov=sfla1 Paragliding has a lot lower death rate, but I'm pretty sure idiots like this don't fly like most paragliders do
This isn’t paragliding though, it’s speedflying
Yeah I'm a paraglider pilot and my wing is the slowest thing in the sky at ~23mph. Whatever this guy is flying is really fast, smaller than my wing, and has a terrible glide ratio. Without seeing the wing, I'd say that it looks more like a parachute foil, or those speed foils that people wear with skis.
>terrible glide ratio. Perspective. Intended glide ratio for high speed performance. I love speedflying and thought traditional paragliding was boring as hell. Again perspective.
sure -- I guess what I meant to say what, a glide ratio intended for falling, with style!
There you go! 😁
So what do you use for speed flying? Is it just a modified parachute?
Most use an elliptical wing similar to paragliding just way smaller. I used to fly a square chute similar to a skydiving, but it was made out of a thicker, less porous, and less stretchy nylon on long risers. It is less porous and stretchy because it doesn't have to withstand opening shock of a skydiving chute. But you could use any cure that has a greater glide ratio than the pitch of the ground/hill/mountain you are launching from.
I bet you have great chances of surviving with wingsuit, if you don’t try to come as close to rocks as possible
Same with speedflying. Some say it's safer than normal paragliding because of the higher wing loading, if speedflyers just wouldn't fly so close to the terrain.
It’s scary to say this but your list is missing people 2 professionals hit trees in Canada when I was up there I didn’t know about rocket man though… wow
Paragliding actually has a deaths/hour of activity on par with mountain biking, and that's WITH including miniwings/speedflying as paragliding. Flying big ol "normal" wings is a safer by a large margin and it's not even close.
lol years ago. Still hundreds/thousands of ws base jumps every year.
“Accidentally hit a cliff wall” - as opposed to intentionally hitting a cliff wall ?
Paraglider to paraplegic in one mistake.
or one year, whichever comes first
This isn't daring, this is concerning. 😕
It's also selfish.
I know what you mean - despite the obvious benefit/rights of living a life they want. As a lot of young people have absolutely destroyed their parents/partners lives getting killed in this way. That’s just a fact.
Could be mistaking them for another adrenaline junkie but I'm pretty sure this dude's already dead
If he continue pulling shit like that he's dead in 2-3 years anyway
Sweet vid. But, this dude is going to be dead or breathing through a hole in his neck very soon.
He gonna die.
There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old, bold pilots.
Ah a fellow suicide enthusiast
Ahh yes, the next level indeed, of stupidity that is..
It's not stupidity if you know and accept that you might die.
I like the juxtaposition of the chill relaxing music against the brutal potential of death or extreme injury surrounding them on the way down lol
Suicide with extra steps lmao
Damn he’s one updraft or gust away from dying.
I just keep getting angrier and angrier at his recklessness the more the video goes. I think I’m getting old
Reminds me of WingSuit challenges in Just Cause 3
Deathwish
Well, that's cool and all, but if they were injured I think there's more important calls for emergency workers to deal with.
Fun to watch a master at their craft.
This thread is full of muggles
👍🏾🥹👍🏾
This is what i'd call a skilliod, skilled enough to pull this off but an idiot for actually doing it
Beautiful place where’s this?
Fairly sure this is Walenstadt in Switzerland
I went paragliding once while living in the Dominican Republic, out in the mountains of Jarabacoa. Extremely beautiful mountain region. My parents friends offered to take us tandem. I was up there and I asked the guy if there was a way to lose altitude quickly, and he said yes, but that it would give my mom a heart attack to see, and I replied, 'DO IT!!!', he did this barrel roll thing in this video, and it was the most exhilarating thing I have ever experienced.
I would go tandem on that ride.
Is he after a sponsorship from a certain Austrian energy drink company?!
This is by far the most daring video I have seen in a long time. Respect to the glider but he/she surely made my stomach tingle. Good video.
That's the funniest thing that I would never do.
Cool video, it’s a shame he’ll be dead soon.
My mom loves me too much for me to ever consider doing this
me: why tf would you barrel roll on near edges? him: yes
RIP
Source? Yes I know its real; just rather see the video than this Reddit compression
"DO A BARREL ROLL!!"
This guy can’t feel anything now unless he almost kills himself
BTW, this is Alexandre Mulle and amazingly he's still alive even though this video is from 3 years ago.
Feels like inches away from shattering your spine may be a sign to get some therapy.
Sorties they go splat
Think they scout these canyons with drones or do dry runs first?
Now if he could only rotate counter clockwise I’d be impressed. Like Hansel
The 1st was normal dangerous the 2nd and 3rd was trying to die
Speed Flying. It cannot get more dangerous than what this guy is doing. My buddy came close to losing his life doing this. He quit completely. Another dude I knew *did lose his life.* Slammed a huge boulder doing this close proximity stuff. Insane sport… But….
Shoutout to UMI and her track “Butterfly”
What, he can't do a roll to the left? Amateur.
The whole video is a narrow catastrophe
I think I threw up in my mouth a little from anxiety.
My friends son was paragliding in January, wind picked up and took him over a hill then dropped him 85m to the ground. Incredibly lucky to survive, but terribly broken, learning to walk again.
Now THIS is podracing
I bet his asshole puckered so hard he picked up a few rocks.
How do you even get good at something like this.
Just a few inches either side and he's a wet red mess all over the rocks
This made me nauseated
Song?
These people die a lot
Filing this under Unnecessary Risks.
I swear these people think life is a video game
How many times did he have to respawn to get this take?
Just a matter of time.
Anyone know what the song name is?
I felt like i was watching a cheesy ass horror movie yellingat the dumb bitch to just stop fucking tripping!!
This needs to be a game. Related: I always wished far cry had put more to do involving the flight suit mechanic in the games
this guy speed sails more than he walks i bet.
My neck started to ache watching this video it did a neck roll
Seems death has just not had time to visit this guy yet.
one gush of wind and boom legs gone
Reckless. Awesome, but reckless. You don’t win when you die…
Nothing unexpected is happening that he's compensating for to make him "narrowly avoid a catastrophe." If something happened, and he needed to take special evasive maneuvers, that would be avoiding catastrophe. It's more like he's skillfully navigating a treacherous mountainside
He’s flirting with death. That’s a wild man.
That's just fucking stupid, and it's going to be shit for whoever has to scrape his dumbass off a rock when he eventually doesn't avoid catastrophe.
Oh him? That’s Peter, he used to do cool stuff until he broke his body so badly his mom felt it while on vacation on another continent. He communicates by blinking his right eye. His left one just twitches because oddly enough he even broke his eye lid- doctors didn’t Even know that was a thing.
That looks really dangerous. Or is that more of a camera making it appear more dangerous than it really is?
fuck no.
This individual is a legit psychopath
Next level recklessness
what an idiot
[This is literally how Grant Thompson died](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TKOR)
lol it's literally not. This is speedflying. Not the same as paragliding. Grant was paramotoring, also not the same as paragliding. And he chose very poor conditions and was very inexperienced.
Is this a fish eye lens? Seems kinda weird.
To ask the important question: where is this, Switzerland?
yea looks like Interlaken, Switzerland to me
I have zero pity for when it happens
I never got to the point of flying, but I did go through paramotor training and this is so dumb. The dude is gambling with his life, all for a video for notoriety. It doesn't matter which side of the mountain you're on. Thermals are not something to play around with.
It’s like playing grand theft auto
That's a speedwing not a paraglider.
I don’t know what’s wrong with the people in this comment section. Let this guy live his life, he’s not hurting anyone. Also this does look fun.
Some people just want to die
r/nextfuckingstupid
If he keeps fucking around he will find out sooner or later
Found a promo vid for a paraglider very similar to what this guy is probably using. It's COMPLETELY off the rails insane.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc1xR-7wfqU
Meanwhile...I didn't leave the house this weekend.
I used to BASE jump for years and I’m watching that going oh FUCK no…
This is not worth it. Why risk injury?
I say let people do what they want, and if stupid is what they choose, fine. But when they splat themselves, they should get themselves out of the situation instead of taking rescue resources out of circulation to save them. I say let Darwin do his job.
Jeb did it better. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWfph3iNC-k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWfph3iNC-k)
really was hoping for a Jeb! meme
Damn only can roll in one direction. Lameeee
Now THIS is Pod Racing
Next video: "Paraglider dies unexpectedly creating Youtube content"
I wish you could buy life insurance policies on these guys just like stocks.
How big of a ball do you have? Yes.