Add Category
Posted
Flying down the side of a sulphur-breathing volcano, reaching speeds of more than 100kph and melting a parachute in the process — this is the sport of speed flying.
Key points:
- Speed flying evolved from the sports of paragliding and skydiving, emerging in the mid-2000s
- Sunshine Coast-based Kristan Fischer uses the sport to explore remote places around the world
- Speed flying, like all other forms of flying, is regulated in Australia, and pilots must be licensed by the Hang Gliding Foundation of Australia
Inspired partly by paragliding and skydiving, speed flying — which has been gaining popularity since the mid-2000s — is all about getting to the bottom of the mountain as quickly as possible.
For Sunshine Coast-based speed flying pilot, skydiving instructor and outdoor guide, Kristan Fischer, it is another exciting way to explore remote places.
"It's an exhilarating feeling, and it's an interesting way to be able to go see the world," Mr Fischer said.
"Just being able to make your own tracks, running lines and in the back of your head thinking that maybe no one's ever been here before — that's definitely a massive driving factor."
Mr Fischer and friend Lawrence Alexander travelled to the untouched wilderness of remote far-east Russia in August 2018, in search of adventure and speed flying opportunities.
Their destination was Kamchatka, a peninsula jutting into the Pacific Ocean to the north of Japan.
"It's essentially Russia's version of Alaska — it's full of active volcanoes, the largest grizzly bears in the world," Mr Fischer said.
"We went and got lost there for about three weeks, just mountaineering our way up volcanoes and flying off on our speed wings."
Over the course of three weeks, the pair hiked 250 kilometres through dense forest and high-altitude tundra and ascended more than 14,000 vertical feet summitting four volcanoes.
Mountaineering and ice climbing, they experienced -20-degree blizzard conditions, a magnitude-6 earthquake and encountered grizzly bears.
Their journey culminated with an "epic" 10-minute flight down the 2,741-metre high, sulphur-spewing volcano, Avachinsky.
Taking on Avachinsky
The pair began their final summit push at 3am, trudging through fresh snow 50cm deep.
As they reached the peak, the heat from the volcanic crater had melted the snow, revealing fluorescent yellow and red rocks.
"There was so much steam coming up from inside [the volcano], we were struggling to breathe a bit on the edge. Everything was very acidic," Mr Fischer said.
The pair laid out their wings, careful to avoid hot rocks littered around the rim, and with a few short steps took flight, passing over steam vents on their perfect, 10-minute descent.
"When I got to the ground I was just so elated with everything, but then I started inspecting the wing and there were a whole bunch of holes starting to form from the acids," he said.
"So yeah, that was the end of our flying for that trip, but it happened to be our last flight anyway."
Plans for the next speed flying adventure are in the works, this time to the mountainous Central Asian country of Tajikistan.
"It's home to some really amazing mountains … we'll try and summit as many of them as we can and also try and fly off them if we can on the day," he said.
Need for speed
Speed flying evolved from the sports of paragliding and skydiving, emerging in the mid-2000s, author of the HGFA Basic Speed Flying Guide, Tim James, said.
"The thing with speed flying is the mechanism for industry is huge and the distance between you and the ground is usually measured in inches not thousands of feet," Mr James said.
As technology around skydiving parachutes evolved, Mr James said athletes began looking at different ways to use them.
"I was in France in '89-'90 and I watched guys launch off the Alps with skydiving rigs; it was the very beginnings of paragliding," he said.
"In the 2000s skydiving wings got smaller, but paragliding wings didn't.
"That's when people figured out it (a smaller wing) was a really great way to get down a mountain really fast.
"People started using little wings to get down mountains in a really exciting way, and because of the speed involved it was named speed flying."
The sport attracted followers rapidly, Mr James said, but with no training or safety information available, injuries spiked.
In conjunction with other speed pilots around the globe, Mr James released a training guide in 2011, which is now used to train pilots in Australia, through the Hang Gliding Foundation of Australia.
Speed flying, like all other forms of flying, is regulated in Australia, and pilots must be licensed through the HGFA.
"There are hundreds of flying sites registered by HGFA all around Australia," Mr James said.
"You can't just pick a mountain and go jump off it.
"If someone was interested in getting into speed flying, a great way to do that is go and do a tandem paragliding flight and find out about the process through a registered training centre."
Topics: sport, travel-and-tourism, extreme-sports, maroochydore-4558, marcoola-4564