january 08, 2012 08:14am

Starting 2012 in Valle de Bravo

Within a day of arriving in the Pueblo Magico of Valle de Bravo, we had settled in to the rhythm of the place. We awoke each day in our room at Meson de Leyendas, a 17^th Century convent turned bed and breakfast, and sat down in the garden for a big, delicious breakfast amid banana trees and sky-high bamboo plants. Fueled up, we made our way out to the cobblestone street to flag down a taxi or find a van to take us to the El Peñon launch.

A hundred wings all balled up and ready to fly on the launch looked like a giant garden in bloom. The gaggle of pilots began to form shortly after the first few good cycles came spinning up the mountain and when we were ready, we launched into the egg beater of circling wings, turning left or right depending on the date.

Valle de Bravo is a world-class paragliding site and it is known for big air and lots of cross-country potential. Each day, pilots flew over El Peñon (“the monolith”), over the wall, to “crazy thermal,” over peaks and ridges in several directions, landing at the LZ, or the lake back in town or in a field somewhere in the area. The possibilities were amazingly abundant.

Many pilots made their way to Jovan’s, an open-air family restaurant, out in the countryside between town and the launch. Each day, the food was different and we could see all the dishes in their big pots and pick and choose a few scrumptious items with fresh squeezed juice. Everyone told stories of their flight, where they had gone, what they had seen, how their landing was or what they had to do in order to get out to a rode.

Most pilots were there in groups with a guide or had been coming to Valle for many seasons to fly. We were new there and on our own, but had a great time meeting so many awesome people from all over the world. On the van rides to launch or back to town, we told and heard crazy stories and laughed and laughed and laughed. I hope we’ll see some of our friends from Montana, Wyoming, New England, Texas, Montreal, and Germany again sometime.

We missed one epic flying morning (thinking it would be blown out), and took a trip to see the monarch butterflies at the Sanctuario at Piedra Herrada. The hike up took about 40 minutes and was a beautiful, clean, well-kept trail. Millions of butterflies clinging motionless to the fir trees looked grey and dead with their wings closed and weighted the branches like heavy snow. As the sun heated the trees and air, the butterflies took flight to travel downhill to drink water. When the air filled with butterflies all around us, the sound of their wings enveloped us. It was definitely something to see.

The town was packed with people traveling from Mexico City and locals out in the town center during the holidays. The street food was unbelievably good and highly recommend the al pastor and chorizo tacos at Taco Alley (of course), pambazos, the churro stand on the road down toward the Santa Maria LZ, the corn guy on Boca Negra, the homemade sweets and the frijolitos on the road to the left of the church. And everyone was right; Dipao is a great restaurant. It made for a perfect birthday dinner!

We both fell in love with Valle de Bravo and hopefully someday we’ll be back!

 

 

Posted By: Melody

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september 26, 2011 07:19pm

Post-SkyPack: 1000km and Still Learning

Wow, what a trip! The Alps are huge and walking and flying in them is among the most wild outdoor adventures that we've had. Take a look at our best of the best photos to get a little vicarious taste of what it was like.

It's the whole package that makes a trip through the Alps so captivating. The whole range is full of so much history, mountain culture and natural beauty. Long distance trekking in the Alps is very different than in the United States to be sure. There really isn't any "wilderness" in the Alps that is not covered in ice. However in the absence of wilderness, there is an incredible network of valleys that are, in many ways, lost in time. Traditional life permeates the alpine regions of some of the most modern countries on Earth. In the Alps, the biggest surprises over the next ridge are in the villages, the kind people, the cheese and the meats.

We're estimating the total distance trekked on our journey to be right around 1000km. Our luck gave us what was described on more than one  occasion as "the rainiest summer in the Alps in 20 years." This fact led us to find ourselves walking the vast majority of the route. The soul gets damaged after so many climbs to the top of a mountain only to be greeted by an approaching front or cranking wind over the back. Still, we did get some amazing flights and some truly remarkable new paragliding experiences. We launched from the top of mountains where perhaps no one had launch a paraglider before having only seen the valleys below on maps. We flew cross-country, landed in a town soccer field and wandered in to figure out where we were only to find a music festival in full swing. We stayed in refugios, camped in Japanese Gardens and were taken in by an incredible Austrian ski guide.

Vol bivouac is a captivating and extremely challenging endeavor. One that we could spend our entire flying careers toying with and tweaking and mastering.

There will always be so much to learn out there in the mountains, in a thermal, along a ridge.

Here's to the wild hunt!

Sati & Melody

If you'd like to check out all the photos from our trip please visit our 2011 gallery.

Posted By: Sati

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august 18, 2011 10:22am

Dolomiti!

(written a couple weeks ago)

After a true water logging in Switzerland and Austria, we opted to jump down to the southern Alps. Thankfully, my parents were game for a big change of plans as they were meeting us in Austria and they had planned to hike there. They met us in Innsbruck in the pouring rain and we all ran together to Sudtirol, a region that was part of Austria until after WWI when it became part of Italy. From St. Ulrich, we took a cable car to the ridge where we began our first hike in the Dolomiti. The weather was still unstable, so our pace had to be swift, but we were all blown away by how dramatic the scenery was. We knew that the pass would be the crux of the hike, but Sati and I were not expecting to bring Joyce and Egils on a hike with cables! Heh heh. It's one thing to lead friends on hiking or canyoneering or BC snowboarding routes. It's another thing altogether to bring your 60-something and 70-something year old mother and step-father on a trail in a foreign land. And like the Italian families we see here climbing steep, rocky, muddy trails through these mountains, mom and Egils were champs! They smiled and laughed right through the hardest parts (even on our next, more difficult, climb). We arrived at Refugio Puez right at beer thirty and sat in awe of the landscape among sheep and rabbits, surrounded by people of all ages who just love to hike. Awesome.

Sati and I continued on in the morning ushered out of camp by a white-faced brown sheep chasing rabbits behind the refuge. We hiked across an absolutely magnificent plateau through a white rock tunnel and out to another valley while my parents hiked back to town. Horses whinnied in the distance hidden behind chalky boulders somewhere in the table land while the cloud base dropped toward us. We decided that the weather was too dangerous to fly down to the valley.

 

We passed another refuge and shortly after that began to meet hikers climbing up from the valley desperate for us to tell them that they were nearly to the refuge. It was still the morning and I couldn't quite understand why they were so sweaty and out of breath. Italian hikers, like I said, are so hearty and happy. Then the trail made it all clear, dropping through a 25 foot wide chute with switch backs, hand rails, mud and stairs for a thousand feet at least, and finally just easing off to a very steep trail. Whew!

 

A couple days later, we had made it to Cortina, where we again met my parents in the pouring rain. We stayed the night at the strangely awesome Hotel Corona where they gave Sati and I a bedroom, a second bedroom and a bathroom with a tub for the price of one room and where both choices for the entree at the restaurant were veal. In the morning, we would set off on a hike to another refuge. The woman at the Tourist Office had said that the hike should be about two hours and would be fine for people of all ages. There would be a set of cables at the pass, but a good hike.

 

First, let me say that the hikes in the Dolomiti were absolutely spectacular. The views include towering spires and deep chasms and are grand, grand, grand. Many of the trails were made by army guys during the war; army guys with good knees, long legs and strong hearts! As we picked our way up a steep, immense scree slope, trying not to knock boulders onto each other, I wondered what my parents were thinking. I also wondered what treats the trail would hold for us on the other side of the pass. We stopped for lunch at the pass and Sati and I traced the route of the trail only to find it seem to end abruptly about half way up a sheer cliff face in the distance. We glanced at each other uneasily and ate our deer salami and cheese sandwiches. Far ahead on the trail we watched with great anticipation as a couple of hikers approached the cliff on the trail. They were specks in the distance (and I don't mean "speck" as in Austrian bacon) and as they reached the end of the trail at the rock wall they stopped and seemed to be shuffling with their gear or taking a break. Sati and I stared expectantly while my mother and Egils oohed and ahhed about the view. Finally, the first of the two hikers started forward again, while the second waited. The hiker seemed to traverse the cliff face like Spiderman with a sheer drop into the valley below. The second hiker followed and they both rounded the far corner of the face. Sati and I swallowed our lunch and got ready to continue.

When we arrived at the cliff, I asked my parents if they were ok with the cable traverse of the cliff. They said things like, "What do you mean? Of course," and, "Why not?" And across the cables we went, not looking down, not stopping. The switchback cables after that were a breeze and we rounded the ridge about three hours into the hike. The hike became a scramble of interesting downclimbs on worn-smooth limestone and wet earth. My parents were careful, and so, so happy to be there. The first view of the refuge and the otherworldly aquamarine of glacier-fed Lake Sorapis surrounded by a thundering natural amphitheater of commanding peaks absolutely broke my brain. Even an absolute drenching a half hour before we reached the refuge could not dull the excitement we all had to be in such a place. It was amazingly beautiful.

We had fallen in love with Italian refugios and after Sati and I said our goodbyes the following day to my mom and Egils, we knew we'd try to stay in at least one more. A few days later we found ourselves to be the only guests in the Refugio Chiampizzulon on the downslope of the Italian Alps. During a games of 45s our hosts brought us out complimentary homemade cake to go with the Prosecco we were drinking. You can't have Prosecco without cake! They treated us to some antipasto as well and we all ate our dinner together in front of the wood burning stove. After dinner they opened a bottle of Nonino Amaro, which had been our favorite as well, and we shared some chamomile grappa aromatica that we had picked up along the way. Lemoncello was had and we laughed and laughed. In the morning, they gave us a gift which they boxed up in a cardboard box, which I would carry for the rest of the hike and they wouldn't let us leave without some homemade biscuits for the trail.

I'll always remember our time in Italy with fondness for the warm, comfortable huts perched among massive Dolomiti peaks.

 

Posted By: Melody

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july 24, 2011 12:47pm

A Bright Spot in the Storm

(written a few days ago)

A couple days ago, we jumped on a train just to be in a warm, dry place for a while and make a bit of progress on the journey. As soon as we stepped out of the train station in Klosters, I could tell that our last town in Switzerland was going to wring us out for more Frankencents than we wanted to spend. After wandering around the pristine town in the drenching rain looking for a place to stay for the night, we were pointed to the Adventure Hostel. The room was 120 CHF (~ $145). Did I mention that this is a room at a hostel? But we took it. It was clearly going to be the cheapest option. Besides, the place was basically a place for guests of this mom and pop adventure company. The proprietor, Wim, is a super sweet paraglider pilot guy. I was so happy to find a friendly Swiss guy who was willing to chat with us. I think it was about three sentences into our conversation when he revealed that he is Belgian and he moved to Switzerland for the quiet. Well, he certainly got that! It's the quietest place on Earth.

After a kebab, Europe's burrito, we settled into the attic to watch the final women's world cup game and drink a couple beers.

The next morning, Wim got us free passes onto the gondola to get us partway to Schlappinger Joch, our pass onto Austria. I had begun to picture Austria as a sunny, happy shangri la with laughing, jovial people skipping through the edelweiss. After the stillness of the Swiss German culture, I had become starved for friendly faces. I knew it, of course, and we joked about the disappointment I could be setting myself up for.

Although the clouds didn't open up at the border to shine warm rays of non-stop sun on us, it really was like we stepped out of the Twilight Zone when we met our first Austrians. They yelled hello from far away, they waved, the kids hid giggling behind rocks to jump out on the trails, they waved from cars and porches, they asked where we were from... They laughed! Oh, the sound of laughter was like a giant umbrella and a down blanket by a warm fire. Did I mention that it's freaking cold here still?

Ok, as I mentioned in a short update recently, we met the Nicest Guy in the World. The following day after a stormy night spent in a guest house in Gargallen Ostreich, we were searching frantically for a campsite after a decent, sunny day of hiking, before the next round of horrible weather set in. We had been caught out in the rain in similar circumstances only the night before and really wanted to pitch the tent and have dinner before it started dumping.

We happened upon a log building with a huge picnic table in it and a ever-flowing fountain of drinking water out front and a WC in back. Nearby was a small climbing area with a good spot to pitch the tent. Two locals were hanging out talking when we pulled up and started inhaling our snacks and staring, longingly at our maps. We were sort of waiting for them to leave so we could really settle in there.

As it turns out we really hit it off with Harry, a fifty-something guy from the village who was happy to practice his English and answer our questions about how to find and choose a good local cheese, why all the water flowing out everywhere here is potable, what the heck was the deal with the massive reservoir down the road, etc.

It had begun to rain and Harry was on his bike. Before he left, he suggested we just camp right in the shelter. Yes! He said he'd swing by layer to see if we would like him to set up a tour for us through the biggest energy plant in Europe.

We were laying in the tent a few hours later listening to an audiobook when Harry appeared with a bottle of wine and three glasses. We talked for a long while about his 1979 crazy trip through 38 of the states and our summer trips, what it must have been like for the Swiss during WWII, skiing here and skiing in Tahoe, more about cheese, and all kinds other other things. As he got up to leave, he invited us for breakfast the next morning (today).

His house is a beautiful place with an open layout and massive windows and a sliding glass wall with views of the mountains and all the rain. He had gathered about ten kinds of local cheese, homemade strawberry jam, alpen rose spun honey, several breads, meats. I liked every kind of cheese he shared, especially the sauerkase and the sharper of the berg kase. The honey was insanely good and makes me want to try more spun honeys at home. Harry insisted on packing up a little of each cheese for us to take along with a pile of bread. What a sweet guy. He almost made us not care that it has been raining all damn day again. Like the woman at the tourist office said, "At least it only rained once today."

 

 

Posted By: Melody

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