Chrigel blasts onto the flats

Chrigel Maurer has had ‘the most inefficient day’ in the history of his five Red Bull X-Alps editions he said this afternoon. ‘I covered 20km in 12 hours’ he explained as he hiked along the road in the flatlands of Italy.

Maurer had three flights today – the final one cut short by storms and airspace.

‘The first one was a nice glide. The second one I hiked up and took off but was too late to recognise the wind had changed, so I landed and had to hike up again.

‘The third was good and I got high, but there was a lot of wind, too much wind from the south. I had to turn and fly out to the flatlands.’

The plan for the day had been for ‘classic hike and fly’, where an athlete climbs a peak then flies down before climbing again.

Instead on his final flight the forecast afternoon storms developed and he found himself having to escape them. He flew east, hitting more than 100km/h, before spiralling down to land.

The situation was made worse by having to avoid airspace, which he only narrowly did. ‘I was almost pushed into airspace. I was this close’ he said afterwards.

Now, it’s a footrace for the next 12 hours. ‘The next launch able site is 70km away on the Tende Pass,’ he said. ‘The GPS says 12 hours, so not so bad if my knee holds up.’

Photos by © zooom / Harald Tauderer / Huawei

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