Turner takes to the sky

Mammoth local competes in Red Bull X-Alps.

Mammoth local Dave Turner entered his fifth day of competition in Red Bull’s X-Alps on Thursday, July 9. He currently sits in 21st place out of 32 competitors, but has days left to close the 20 kilometer gap between he and the top 10 racers.

Red Bull has put on the 1,038 kilometer hiking and paragliding adventure race across the Alps every two years since 2003. The event draws many of the world’s top adventure and “vol biv” (a combination of cross country paragliding and backpacking/camping) pilots.

Pilots must travel with one support team member, with no technical or outside assistance. Support team helps with logistics, strategy, food, and medical support. Pilots race between the hours of 5 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., with a mandatory rest period after. According to the Red Bull website, some athletes will cover hundreds of kilometers on foot by the time the race is over.

Participation is by invitation only, and this year Turner, after racking up a series of impressive solo flights in the Sierra Nevada and Alps since he began paragliding in 2010, was invited as one of two “wild card” athletes.

Turner started the race on July 5, and with 629 kilometers to go, will likely continue for another three to seven days.

“Not everyone finishes,” said Turner’s girlfriend Tawny Thomas, who has been keeping in touch with Turner as he races. “Actually, very few people finish.”

Thomas added that “This year the course is supposed to be significantly more complicated, difficult, and challenging.”

This year racers will have to get from Salzburg in the northeast corner of the Alps all the way to Monaco in the southwest corner, while having to tag ten turn points along the way.

Thomas said that while this is Turner’s first official paragliding competition, he’s no stranger to challenging cross country paragliding treks.

“He’s flown the length of the Sierra Nevada range, and also the width of it, which was very dangerous and got him into a lot of newspapers,” Thomas said with a laugh. She said the danger in flying the width of the range lies in the fact that there are no valleys to land in, which makes flight “more dangerous and committing.”

Turner also set the California distance record for paragliding at 278 km.

What’s more, “He flew the Alps on his own in 2013, and then he flew it solo one direction in 2014, and then we flew it tandem back right after he finished,” Thomas said. “He had actually flown more or less the length of the Alps four times before doing this, so this will be his fifth time doing it.”

Thomas said Turner first became interested in paragliding in 2010 when he was living in Yosemite Valley. He had a reputation at that time as a formidable big wall climber (Turner completed the largest ever solo big wall climb in Patagonia, spending 34 days alone on Cerro Escudo).

“I think he just saw a video on YouTube of somebody speed flying, and he decided he wanted to get into it,” Thomas said. “He started coming out to Mammoth all the time to fly, and just kept getting more and more into it, and then we met, and in December of 2012 we moved over here together.”

Thomas said flying in the Eastern Sierra is good practice for an extreme event like the X-Alps.

“The Owens Valley is notorious for its thermal strength,” she said. For those who may not know, thermals are warm column of rising air that pilots seek out to gain altitude, stay up for longer periods of time, and travel farther distances.

“This area is known pretty much worldwide for having some very, very strong conditions, so it means that you can fly very long and very far, but it’s also a lot more dangerous,” Thomas said.

But in spite of Turner’s advantage in the race, given his experience with these challenging conditions, Thomas said that currently Turner and his supporter Krischa Berlinger have been struggling with bad flying weather.

“It’s been rainy, overcast and windy, so I think a lot of the pilots are doing a lot of hiking,” Thomas said. “But they’re only a few days in, so the weather could clear up.”

Nevertheless, “Every time I talk to him he’s in really great spirits and he seems really excited,” Thomas said. “Dave is a man who is perpetually psyched.”

You can track Turner’s progress and read his Red Bull Journal updates on the Red Bull X-Alps website at www.redbullxalps.com.