On the July 17th, 2011 athletes from around the world including Great Britain's Steve Nash with the support of Richard Bungay will race non-stop through the Alps to the Mediterranean Sea, with just a paraglider and a pair of hiking boots to help them, their every move tracked by advanced technology and broadcasted to an audience of millions. 

The 2011 race begins in Salzburg, Austria and finishes in Monaco. In between are eight turnpoints in Austria, Italy, Switzerland and France that force the participants through 864km of treacherous mountain terrain.

More information on the Red Bull XAlps challenge can be found here www.redbullxalps.com Why not follow us now or chat to us and others following us on  

Dim lights

The X-Alps race stopped for Team GBR1 rather abruptly yesterday, after I flew into a Forbidden Zone. We both thought it necessary to explain to those following us exactly what happened on Thursday 28th July:
On Wednesday evening I was climbing the eastern side of the Noturo pass from Chiavenna in Italy across into Switzerland. On the way up, thick cloud closed in making progress much slower than expected. This resulted in me launching later than planned and hence not having sufficient time to utilse the full glide distance from 2097m. With the 21:00 land by time getting uncomfortably close, a full stall to lose the excess height was the only option; this cost about 5km of ground that would now have to be covered on foot! This had a knock-on effect the following day, as the preferred option for Thursday's take off site was Cimetta above Locarno, ironically chosen over two nearer take offs as there was less airspace issues with it. The 32km hike to the launch we had identified on Google Earth was hard because it was all on tarmac, followed by a 1000m climb; all after starting out at 04:10 following 3.5 hrs sleep!
When I got to the grassy take off, it was dead with no upward air movement; surprising because the forecast had predicted good thermals. Then a good look out to the sky in front hinted that this take off was sat at the same level as the inversion layer. This meant that I would have to climb higher, much higher to the recognised paraglider launch site at Cimetta, another 650m of climb. Usually I would knock this climb off in less than 1 hour, but after 10 days of constant climbing and hiking, my climb rate was about 500m per hour. Hence by the time I got to the top take off the sky in the direction I was headed had turned nasty, with a huge cu-nim cloud dominating the Valle Vigexxo and effectively blocking my progress. As the storm developed, with zaps of lightning and rolls of thunder, I thought the best bet was to head for the mountain top restaurant and consume some coffee and cake. After waiting an hour or so, it seemed to be clearing to the west but with another storm building to the east. It was still raining when I spotted 5 or 6 local paraglider pilots hiding under a small building with the same intention to fly once it had cleared. I went over for a chat, as my intended flight direction took me into a deep valley which I knew had very few landing options. One of the pilots, Roland an ex-PWC pilot, explained that it would be only possible to fly to Intragna. Past this point, there were no landings for 8kms!
Then the rain stopped and the sky to the west was definitely clearing, so I decided it was launch now or have to walk down some 1400m. In my haste to get ready to fly I forgot to unfold the sheet of paper with the details of Locarno airspace that was in my helmet, instead stuffing it into my backpack. The local pilots helped unfold the wing and within minutes I was in the air. I turned to the west away from the scary storm cloud that was growing behind me, still flashing with lightning! I radioed Richard to confirm that I was now flying and would have to land at Intragna, this became my only focus. He told me that the sky behind me was threatening and to watch out on landing because there were lots of helicopters where he was situated. Then he reminded me "to be careful of Locarno Airspace"..........at which point I turned to the north realising I was close (see tracklog screenshot). Then I looked at the Compeo flight instrument which confirmed I was very close with the distance away from the zone at 70m, 80m, 90m increasing. At this point I wasn't sure if I had infringed the zone, so I concentrated on landing safely. This I did in the local football field without any issues, well apart from being locked in until Richard found the groundsman.
I told Richard that I may have infringed the airspace, he calmly told me that he would check once we got back to the camper. After 1 hour of Richard checking and rechecking my tracklog, it was definite that I had gone into the 100m penalty zone, but maybe not into the exclusion zone. We called the race director to tell him what had happened, he said they would check and call us back. One very long hour passed before they came back to say that they were 90% sure that we were in the exclusion zone, they would confirm in the next 30 minutes.
At approx. 20:30 I got a call from Christoph Webber, the race director, confirming we were out! We were 108 metres inside the forbidden zone, which meant 8m metres inside the exclusion zone.

This afternoon I ran my final training session around the local hills of Helsby and Frodsham. My Suunto T6C has been recording every training session since Jan 1st 2011 and today I clocked up 2000kms of running, hiking and biking - oh and 47569 metres of altitude gain! I have been steadly increasing the weight that I have carried on my back, eventually running with 9kgs during training.

Tomorrow Richard & I leave for the Alps, so we'll keep posting info on this site and Facebook as it happens.

We are currently busy studying the route. Here Tom Payne's excellent XCPlanner program is proving to be invaluable. This uses data from Skyways which was developed by Karel, Petr and Ondraj at XContest.org.   Here's the first section of the route.