Hello friends, welcome back for another episode. If this is your first time listening to exit point, th is isa podcast that features conversations with some of the world's most extreme adventure sports athletes. If you've been enjoying the podcast and would like to support our efforts, please consider subscribing on your favorite platform and leaving us a review. It helps a lot more than you think and if you feel like you've been getting a lot of value from the show.
you can help us keep the lights on by buying us a coffee there's a link in the description to all the people that have been donating we are grateful i put my hand over my heart when i say this because it's been an amazing amount of support and encouragement that you've been giving us your support and communication is what makes this project thrive if money's tight no worries we still wanna hear from you our email addresses are in the description In this episode I speak with Espen Fatness.
Espen has somehow stayed at the top of the discipline, basically from the beginning of wingsuit base jumping. It was part of the community that opened the world's eyes to what was possible and how base jumpers could fly. He is an F A I world champion while representing the Norwegian national team, regularly holds sellout camps in the indoor wingsuit tunnel, and it completes hundreds of wingsuit base jumps a year.
Espin has been part of many film projects and continues to inspire the masses with his creative approach to filming and sharing the air with his partner Amber. So with that, let's get espin on the track. Well, let me focus some of my questions here because I feel like we've got a lot to cover. You know, like recently we've had people on who are specialists in certain domains.
and i feel like you're a specialist in all domains really you have the full repertoire of experience as a champion in competition performance flying you're hugely experienced wingsuit base jumper you've done i mean you name it you've done it professional camera guy acro pilot coach tunnel professional now Maybe we should start with the tunnel, because I think that this has been like sort of at the cutting edge in the development of skill around wingsuiting, and your camps have been a fantastic success.
It's just it's been such a pleasure to see you and Amber throwing these camps. And I have a work schedule that, you know, it's like I get like six weeks in advance, so I'm only able to make plans like at that distance and every time I've tried to come to one of your camps.
it's been sold out so congratulations on that that's truly amazing and so but i have a feeling that you've learned a lot right i mean because part of teaching is is learning and if you want to learn something you teach it and you've have how many hours now in the tunnel well i i have no idea wow ok so that's a lot ballpark figure on every camp we do we have ten days of coaching and they do two hours of coaching each every day so a camp is twenty hours of coaching we do ten camps so we a year so that's two hundred hours of flying it's not actually two hundred hours of flying it's you know sometimes we are spending you know time on our feet in the tunnel when people are on the ropes or leash or you know they need to be spotted in different ways so it's i would say that maybe cut it down to half on Quality time, be in gina flying position, OK, still a tremendous amount of time.
Is there anything that you that stands out in your mind about what you've learned about flying over the last couple of years you've been doing this? It's such a good question. I think that there are two things that stand out from from being at a tunnel a lot #1 is.
the more we can fly the core of our body the center our body and less the wings the more efficient and powerful we become and the second thing is the better control we have from top to toe and from hand to hand the more clean we're going to do things so you know engage core keep control of the leg wing no wiggling around when you do a transition you want to do it soft you want to do it smooth friction air is not coming down to having an aerodynamic helmet or like the perfectionized rig or something like that friction is there something we create by instabilities pretty much that's what i see in the tunnel so and we are always quite unstable i would say at least on a micro level as far as so the less friction we can or like the less instabilities we have in our fly The faster we are, the more powerful we are, the more able we are to stay on level, the more able we are to carve around each other.
You know, do cool moves, you know, get back on level or separate to the group and get to high altitude to pull is it goes on and on. But well, fly with the core and be stable. That's two key elements that I've learned from the tunnel, that whole idea of instability and movement. Really stuck out to me the most because at the end of each session for people who haven't been in the tunnel, the IT winds down and the power sort of dissipate.
The air stops flowing, the wind stops being powerful and it's almost always like a competition to stay in the air to to and this is really a great opportunity to work on Max glide position.
let me don't i mean it hurts me if i'm wrong here yes agreement no no we're speaking in the same language for sure and it's like the very most smallest movement that you make of your leading edge or your body will will disrupt that that lift and so it's like really about being as stable and still as possible it feels like would you agree with what i'm saying here as well especially when you start coming down towards the store point it's really about being stable yeah and i took that away from the last time i went to the tunnel and i feel like it had tremendous value in base jumping particularly but then i also saw other correlations flying my paraglider it was like i started to be a lot softer with my hands and noticing disruptions of the the trailing edge and the leading edge and and really trying to to to not disrupt that airflow and and really keep it as stable as possible so yeah i just wanted to share that i thought it was you know i think a lot of people emphasize The barrel rolls and the transitions and and and really look maybe perhaps past some of the other things that you can gain from spending so much time in the air like that.
But for me that was really what stuck out and that's just piggyback off of what your answer there as far as what you've been learning. And so that's really great. It's a really good point. And I've heard the same from high level candidate policy. And Scott, I think as well, you know this the softness of things is exactly the same. Oh yeah. Oh cool.
are there certain tips that you give your students as far as like what you're saying to control to fly the core of your body are there certain mistakes that seem to to to rear their head with each group of students that come your way for a camp yeah well the the list is quite long i think we are all unique everybody have their their strong and weak sides we all have our challenges I have mine, you have yours.
There are a couple of things that we see that people struggle a bit with, and one thing I see a lot is that people push their heaps forward so they have a dearched default position, and when you end up flying with that position, it becomes a bit locked and people struggle to get away from it.
and it limits them a lot when they need to change your angle in flying or they need to work on increasing the performance in forward speed or glide and i think that's that's maybe the area where we work the most trying to help people to get relaxed comfortable engaged core where you can vary how much you bend in the hip and how you want to you know like put on the throttle or not and you find and find faster or slower or with more power not but i mean there are so many different tips and tricks in this game and what i've experienced though is i learned so much from every camp whenever i'm leaving those camps it's like my head is boiling of new thoughts ideas and learning because every single person i meet on those camps teach me something the learning is happening in between us it's in the you know in the in delays challenge that we have together as a team almost me and another person and it doesn't matter if they are very on a very high level or beginners everyone have a challenge and that challenge me and then we have to fix it together and it's such a journey it's really interesting So I've noticed a way in your videos.
I mean, you and Amber have some of the most sophisticated and beautiful twoway wingsuit base jumps I've ever seen. And I don't just say that to to hype you up. It's like you guys have speed.
you always have some some margin to to flare and pull you guys seem to be so in sync and it's truly spectacular and do you think that that's part of that is from the tunnel the time that you guys have spent together in the tunnel or or is it because let me back up a little bit with that question because in the tunnel you have all of these visual reference points right like there's that aluminum what do you call it crossbar that you can always look at and it's just sort of like seems to be like in the right position as you're turning to keep yourself referenced when you go into the sky that you don't have that reference anymore are those skills easily transferable into the mountains and out jumping out of plains that's a good question i think that if you end up being stuck in a tunnel and you're almost only there you're not truly going to evolve into a high level main center in bay shopping or scattering just like if you're stuck in scattering you're not going to develop a lot in bay shopping or or you know being that pure bay shopper it's in the combination of things that said i think that the reason me and amber Fly well together.
I would say she's the one. I fly the best, which she managed to get the most out of me. Of all the people I fly with, it's more because we know each other really well in free fall. And partly that comes from the tunnel because I just look at her face and I just know you know her body language in their behavior in the sky. And I'm sure you can relate to it with Ellen, that the person you know the best, you can almost like foresee what what she's doing or your partners doing.
And and that is not just coming from the tunnel I think it's coming from from spending time together in in skydiving in day jumping in the tunnel you know I I see the timing on exit I can I can see when she's pushing off a bit later this past or you know all the small little details and a good friend of mine he used to be the chief for the national team in or and skydiving he said that it's you need to do 1000 skydives together before you start getting good at flying together.
that that was from a competition point of view but i think there is a certain level of truth to it because right every scott of it's just like a minute or every patient is a minute so it takes a long time to truly get to know one another in freehold do you guys use comms funny thing about comms i would love to use them but amber don't like it And there is, there is a level of story behind it but she had a really horrific accident a couple years ago and she liked to be in her own head space, especially when she's on the canopy.
Well, I get a bit overly stoked so on in to come I start talking to her like almost like debriefing the jump all we're on a canopy. So lately but haven't been talking Russian intercom. I wish we did though. I think it's a great tool. It is a cool tool. I think that those intercom systems haven't been showcased any better than Fred and Vince's recent video where they flew down the Mont Blanc and he's, you know, recounting like okay, we're going to be turning and going to turn up the speed.
And anyway, worth checking out if you haven't seen it. I know you've seen it, that's been. But they did a fantastic job of showcasing what the power of having Coms are. But I'm kind of going into that direction because.
some people like it and some people like amber don't and i think that they're really nice from my experience but also that that that unspoken communication that you and amber share is always going to be i think more powerful for for for really really nice two ways i think would you would you agree or it's just they're both good The thing is that if you truly want to communicate well without the language, you have to be so drilled. It's kind of like military drill style, right?
If you're next to your special soldier in a special operation, people don't need to talk together. They just know what the partner's doing. But we need language, or we're really good at it, we're due to talking, we're good at listening, or most of us are, and it's a tool that you use in every life.
and a lot of us are missing out of it in in free fall because we're not using intercom and i think it will make us much more able to fly well together and i the only thing about fred and vince that i don't like is that they speak french because i just don't understand what you're saying so i'm looking at them flying down my plane i'm like what did that mean or what did they say there then you know i just i need to learn french because they're doing fantastic things oh man yeah and why don't we talk a little bit so we i'm jumping around here a little bit but i like to do that so so let's roll with it i want to talk a little bit about your your background and starting out where you grew up because i knew i know from personal experience that you had quite a bit of experience in the mountains with adventure sports climbing and skiing can you tell us a little bit about where you grew up and how it affected molded you into the person that you are now i grew up next to the best patients we have in norway i saw them out on my window in the house where i grew up every day and i grew up in a climbing family a mountaineer and skiing family i had all the tools from very young age to to be in the mountain and learn about being in the mountain in all the different ways risking for fun from as long as i can remember i grew up in a sports town and i did a lot of different sports i was never the best in any of them i've always been a bit of this pretty good at a lot of different things And it.
I mean, I've been. I've been competing and climbing and outbound racing and football and jiu jitsu and swimming and I don't know what not. And I liked all of them. It was always like #5. But I still had fun and I met a lot of really fantastic people that were far better than me and taught me a lot of cool things. And the first and foremost I learned to enjoy the nature I had around me.
and i was encouraged to use it and not necessarily compete in it but just enjoy it and conquer and not conquer but just be in the mountains and see the pleasure of potentially putting myself in risky situation and then and then try to solve them in a well thought and smart way i got a bit fed up of climbing when i was young because my dad pushed me far too much and I got a bit over it in teenage years. I never truly left it though.
But when I when I found skydiving and I found air sport when I turned 18, I started to clearly see that there was a place for me here in combining all the things that I learned from a young age into this new, really exciting activity of skydiving and bayshomping and put all the pieces together and I was very fortunate to meet. A guy, his name is Hans Almafield and we became a bit of these like partners in crimes we were we're the same age and we were eager both of us.
And as we all know from from a lot in day shopping and skydiving we if you meet someone that you share a passion with and you are but on the same level and you drive each other in the right direction you can do a lot together. And we became best friends in in jumping and involved together with some good mentors that. Try to hold us back a little. And it just kept on going and going and it just ended up being where I want to be in life. Be i ng. Iwouldn't call myself a base champ anymore, really.
I would rather call me. I was like a paraalpinist, l i keI.
i'd rather just enjoy trying to get up to nice mountains and fly wings with down and that's where i found my place and that's where i connect the most with my childhood and my upbringing and and what i now today do for coaching and and and do my spare time i relate to that a lot as well my dad was a competitive skier and we hiked constantly and and as a family and spending time going up hills and in the mountains is is really what you know i feel like i come back to my roots like that and i feel a lot of the times like when i'm carrying my rig up the mountain that if i even if i didn't have my my wings i would still be there and i think having that kind of attitude is really nice because it's not just like sacrifice to get somewhere to do something it's like really makes the whole process so much more enjoyable so we do there and i mean you and alan you live in one of the most amazing mountain places we have in europe and you have that option you can you can go up there for you know anything from flying down skiing down or picking mushrooms or you know hanging out as a family and it's all connected in this universe of being in nature just because it's nice to be in nature yeah and coincidentally enough we got to share some of that beautiful mountain time with with hans recently that was a total tree so fantastic full circle really nice molda is i could see that being quite a place that would drive someone that wasn't into mountain sports a little bit insane but you were lucky enough to fall passionate into the same things that your folks were involved with was there any moment where you said you know i'm getting out of this small town or did you always appreciate it from day one i always liked that town and i think i think i was one of those that it fit very well for to be in a sports town i loved being part of that community of anything from like team sports individual sports to you know being out in nature and i do have a lot of friends that totally dislike that town whenever young i did leave the town and but but ever since i miss it i'm often home and it's it's still by me regarding the most beautiful place in the world it is gorgeous one of the most beautiful places i've ever visited for sure thank you that's like hearing about yeah so let's talk about skydiving a little bit because what was your what was your first skydive like it was is pretty surreal to start skydiving because i wasn't used to be bad at things i as i mentioned no i wasn't like number one and anything but i definitely didn't suck at what i did and i definitely sucked at my first skydive i think most people do anyways you know it's like i did a static line course it was a week and we were drilling a lot you know leaving that cessna one eighty two and wait for the canopy to open and i just didn't didn't feel it feel it was very comfortable i was quite scared i actually don't remember the free fall of my first skydive and i almost ended up in a bit of troubles after a couple of scars because i just couldn't figure out how to keep my heading but then it started off like five six jumps i started to really understand i don't know not that i really started to understand much but i started at least to get the perspective what was going on and i started to feel a certain level of mastery and it took me i would say ten fifteen jumps before i truly started enjoying it but after that i was completely sold yeah i have a similar story i like i remember like you know because i first had to start with a tandem i didn't do a static line but i remember you know like the door he stands up he says like ok let's go it's super windy and i'm just like my heart is just beating out of my chest and We're walking towards the door and it's just like, holy**** here we go.
And I was scared ******** and it was like, I mean I feel like my vision turned into black and white and I didn't lost all audio and like, you know, I'm seeing things in like 14 bit, you know, and then and then the parachute opens up. I have no idea what was going on in between that. I'm not sure if I breathed or what, but that was the most powerful experience of ever.
you know exceeding my cognitive load my my ability for my brain to process all the stimulation that was coming in and but and i didn't like it because as soon as we were under canopy i was like starting to get motion sick and oh you had that one yeah i've heard that it was amber had the same actually i was so disappointed because you know probably unlike you i started skydiving to base jump and i'm just assuming that about you by the way maybe you can correct me but i was like i was like all my plans were just like fuck you know this sucks and then that changed as soon as i jumped by myself but yeah it was quite a hurdle did you start skydiving to base jump i did not he didn't no what happened was that I didn't manage to get on the national team in Alpine racing.
I wasn't able to succeed at becoming a successful professional Alpine racer and so I had to quit. It was too expensive and it left a deep hole and I know like a challenge action, like doing something where I had a purpose and a goal in what I was doing.
So. i moved to a larger town and i started at the university and i truly felt i need something i cannot just read books and drink there with all these awesome people i need something else something new something that challenged me and i just jumped on a on a scout course i just did a scout course and I knew about base jumping, but I I was pretty certain that I wouldn't do it because it just looked so scary and dangerous and completely wild. Everything you can imagine.
L i keIgrew up at the troll wall and the call burnish story and all these people like and then my dad, he he was, hewas, you know, working for the local Alpine rescue group and I didn't get the best story. So these base jumpers, it just seemed like a bunch of complete lunatics. So.
yeah i just started to try skydiving and what happened really was that on i think it was like skydiving number seven i was lost one out of the out of the aircraft and the the instructor told me because i said i was struggling with heading and they told me just look at me just look at me and just don't let go of my eyes like just like look at me when you when you let go the aircraft and just do that and i did it in a second i go he jumped out after me while it was like you know giving me the thumbs up and smiles and i just looked at him and i was like that was the first time ever i've seen someone in free fall and i was amazed and i i was just looking at him like i i was i can't say i flew relative to him but i didn't lose heading and when i opened my parachute i i just it was incredible was the most wild and incredible experience i've had in my whole life i was just shocked by how cool it was yeah Skydiving is pretty cool.
Skydiving is pretty cool. I had a moment of almost wanting to sell my skydive gear because a little bit different than you. I went to learn in Lodi and immediately was like, OK, I'm going to be winks to base jumper, you know, Lodi was the closest drop zone luckily for me. And did you have, did you have Bill less as an instructor? Oh yeah.
oh no not as an instructor but he was present and and he gave me a talk of like well you know i think i did like skydive number three he was like yeah i don't know maybe you should take up golf and i was like you know crushed like here's the guy who has the most skydives in the entire world telling me that this isn't the sport for me you know and i was like damn it that's not gonna it can be quite cruel yeah it got worse you know i i looking back now i think that my interactions worth bill are finally very positive as and i'm so grateful for what he provided for us and and the ability to do so many skydives at a you know it was fifteen dollars a jump i mean that's like where can you do that you know and every day every good i've had some of my best yeah i've had some of my best day skydiving in lullaby and he is he is hilarious yeah and he make you jump a lot Yeah, yeah.
He's like there's no sitting around. You're, you'rethere in the hangar, you're putting your your rig together and you're getting on the airplane or you're getting out the door. So was there a moment that what I was going to say is that, you know, I sort of, I got a bit disenchanted with skydiving because it was just stop being fun with the wingsuit. And and then things changed and the wingsuits got better. Did you, did your passion for skydiving remain intact throughout that.
Or did you tell me about that? Those days? For me, it was. It was. I couldn't continue skydiving a lot because I just couldn't afford it. Yeah, I was a student and it was just far too expensive. So their shipping was for free. And I was part of a crew in that town, the DKB crew. Bunch of really nice steady people that had an idea together to develop improved methods of tracking, like gear for tracking. And it was really inspiring.
And I saw no need to skydive until 2004 where I'm at Louis Chanel Ber. and the he was this you know world champion skydiver same age as me i knew just numerous of skydives and extremist skilled and just have this legendary Scenes in crosswinds and all of a sudden we were on top of mountain together and I saw him proxy fly, **** out of his *** fly. And it was just like beyond belief.
And he was on intercom by the way, just talking to a photographer to tell the photographer when he came and it was just like the whole scene was just absurd. He was on the level that was so ahead of time, so ahead of anything I've ever seen before. We were just standing up there. Me, Hans Holman viewer to Mary ***** help for a bunch of people and they were just what just happened.
And what happened was the display of the combination of immense SkyDrive skills combined with day shopping and the ability to fly wingsuit and. Yeah, I just basically just jumped off the mountain to get my wingsuit to hike up again to try and do the same and see. Then of course I didn't do it as well as he did, but Amy and Holmes did that kind of like a semi proxy flight in the afternoon and then I decided I had to go skydiving again. Yeah, that was 2004. Was that 2000 I come back for?
Wow. I think it was. Yeah, it was 2004, the summer 2004.
and then matchsticks production seven sunny days you both were featured in that film skydiving or sorry base jumping and remind me of the name of that place you did one of the closest flybys of terrain that anyone had seen until then and it was inspiring john the week for his ability to fly his body in his suit and then but you were also a big part of the proliferation of people's understanding of what was possible with these wingsuits now because you were flying it wasn't just falling through the air it was like these guys are are and there's bat suits flying i mean and it exploded on a viral level i mean people would send me those videos and you know i had heard about base jumping and i was inspired to do it but i feel like that those videos were like one of those It was like an accumulation of ideas that led to me like be absolutely convinced that this is something that I had to do.
And I feel like that movie was like a big, a really big part of it cuz it was just so spectacular. It's, you know, all of this is thanks to Shama Konki, because he.
he was one of the huge stars ski stars with the master productions and he called me the winter before and that's pretty funny because he was definitely one of my biggest role models and when he introduced himself i i just got completely starstruck i just didn't know what to say and he just told me that he wanted to come to norway and learn from from us how to fly wing suits like us and it was just like absolutely this real situation to be in and of course we wanted him and his friends to come and he he brought they brought in the week and national productions or samsung days is basically a display of the week's immense skills and the courage of the festival we we just he was just not totally different level i remember one of the jumps he did from really huge mountain big sucks aware he was going to film on their spot from a friend of mine where he was he was messing around with before we went into the helicopter with the velcro system and he finally got off to the top and he was standing with andreas and he was trying to put a huge photo camera still camera on his ankle with the velcro and what he was going to do was like he really wanted some nice photos of andreas while it was filming him so andreas jumped off the mountain and he he flew as hard as he possibly ever done before in his life luig was right next to him filming him with his camera while he was taking steels from his ankle of andreas and when we landed I'm not sure exactly who said what, but if it was Luik himself that said, oh, it will be pretty cool to film a jump from the ankle like that.
And then the week after we were in the room stall and the producer asked me if I could just do like Luik, but with the camera and the video camera and sure, I could do that and.
and i just flew the line down to the road with this camera placed in the way the week did and the producers did it and i flew my best i wasn't particularly good at flying cannabis theater so i managed to just smash that with expensive lens on landing that's really bad and but the producer came down from the road and he he came down and i just looked at him and said i'm really sorry i just i just i just smashed the glass of the lens And he laughed at me and said dude, no problem, you just made millions.
Wow. And that not for myself. And then they got an Emmy Award for that that camera work and of course well I was wearing the camera but everything else was just a week and producer of together. But still, it was just that whole experience was quite real and very inspiring and.
we have so much to thank luis and shane mcconkey for you know that that explosion of wing sitting being cool and you know it kind of like a comeback into into wing space and a shame i mean i don't think i ever met a cooler human being in my life it was just a definition of being cool wow yeah he inspired so many and you know when i started in lodi he i knew he was jumping there and i was really hoping that i would get to meet him i just wasn't in time we our paths didn't cross soon enough and unfortunately i missed him and it's really too bad the interesting about that time you know like with with shane and lodi and the time was as far as i know there were especially three people and i was shane was miles dasher and j t holmes and the three of them came and never met any of them and we all know miles today and he is just there is only one miles he's such an icon such a legend of bay shopping and little did we know that a lot of the key players at that time that you and i grew up with looking at like wow who are they they they've truly played a part malls and j t and the luis and shane all those guys absolutely awesome they are they are awesome people speaking of of mentorship and the state of wing suiting and and base jumping where do you see us right now because you know i often on these conversations talk about how we're still in the infancy of our sport because you know living in a place like chaminis where you know i'm exposed to paragliding and alpinism and skiing and these sports really feel like they've matured and they've both seen there are all of them have seen their fair share of fatalities and accidents and even on a recurring basis you know there's something obviously different about base jumping because there's that element of jumping off of the cliff that i think that the general public can't divide from like that you know there's this core survival instinct that we have as humans that you have to be able to surpass to be a participant in the sport so while i never think that that you know winksu base jumping will be like a family activity that paragliding has become i still see us in the way that we as a community are still in this growing phase of of learning and mentorship and the path of understanding what is best practice being serious sportsman i'm wondering what your thought is on this it's such a big question and of course i thought a lot about it just like you and many others i think that the main difference between base shipping and paragliding at dimension or climbing is that paragliding is an organized sport that have education system federation have insurance systems you know you have any national federation you have national federations just like scott having and it's the same with climbing i'm used to be like that shipping it used to be this completely unregulated sport of like small communities that try to figure this out by themselves and now it's a huge olympic sport it's it sounds like a like a you know one of the main activities in norway it's like a folk sport it's one of the most popular things you can do to bring your children to the to the climbing center i think patient thing It's it's hard for me to talk about bashing because part of bashing is illegal and the legal part of bashing will always just be this under regulated illegal kind of outlaw thing for good and bad.
And but if we talk about the legal part of the shipping, which is what French people call Para alpinism, which is in some ways in France actually organized now and there are there are federation. We are not organized on a global level and or and or national level for most parts and as long as we are not, we are never going to be like paranoiding.
I think I've heard and this is something I heard more in how to build a society that we need to create a society that are better than the individuals themselves. It's because we as individual humans are capable of doing so many bad choices. But if we create a framework that we can kind of keep each other in chess, we can together create something that is safe or better or more prosperous, for example. Now I am of course when I'm saying this potentially.
You know, igniting this strong urge and a lot of base numbers to say we will never be organized. You know, we are not going to be skydiving and I understand that. And perhaps we will never be. But as long as we are not, we are never going to be, as you know, well fought or safe or organized as climbing or probably like parallel I've heard you talk about.
this in other conversations that we've had in the past and i think that you said that you know rules and base jumping will never work it's they've got to be guidelines and i and i really like that because base jumping is one of the most extreme and i don't mean this you know in the sense of like dangerous but it's extremely it's like the biggest extreme freedom experience that you could have right you know like here you are at the edge of an object and you fly away you know or you fall away and and and nobody's telling what you can't do or not do and it it truly is the greatest freedom experience that i've ever had and for someone to put rules on that you know it's it's tough it's you know like you said there's a societal aspect to it like what we experienced in chemini for example is like okay well you know if we want to preserve this for you know we can't crash into a paraglider there's a lot of paragliders after eleven o'clock so we're gonna stop activity after eleven and then resume once the thermals are too big and all the paragliders have flown away and that kind of makes sense you know and i naively thought that the activity in shamini would continue and be an example of how base jumping could mingle with society and boy was i wrong it's like the most painful thing in mother base jumping for me is that shamini got illegal you know shamini is the most amazing epic then you have been so patiently that if ever existed and will ever exist it doesn't there are no other place like shamani it's the coolest place on the plan for what we do yes i mean we had it for a while yeah we truly lived through you know what the golden age of wink suiting in the mountains and Ellen and I had this conversation just a couple of days ago, and we were like, you know, it's like, **** because it was like a beautiful, like, we've had some very mild temperatures here in the Alps until just last week.
And it was like, man, it would be so good just to go do a bunch of base jumps at Bravant right now, wouldn't it? And it was like, but, you know, maybe it's closed is a good thing for us because it's just so close. It's so easy.
anyway i digress what i wanted to talk about was that you know this the sense of community and mentorship and the state of our sport i think as you say about the guidelines that a lot of these guidelines are sort of kept in check from the people that are around you and the people that look up to you and i think one of the most difficult things in our sport is is just communicating with each other and i know that well at least it has been for me and and you know like watching our friends die can be the most horrific and life changing moments and just just the words are ineffable it's it's horrible it's to tell and and i know you've experienced it and it shapes your communication with people and you really don't want to see it again you don't want them to make the mistakes that you've seen other people make and how do you navigate that scenario when people you care about are making mistakes oh such a difficult subject and it makes me think back at when you and i had the wingsuit base course or the wing space week in luan it was such a good week where you and i truly got challenged in stepping up to be the best person we could possibly be in being good mentors and try and get people good methods to be safe At the same time, we had people in the camp that are friend of ours that we called.
We started calling out the coachables and because they're just like living their own life and we sort of do things that we disagreed on that we were seem to be unable to reach out to them. And that story of seeing, seeing people that I regard, really close friends do things that I regard.
not best practice and then try to get through to them it's really challenging and to be honest is a tricky thing and it's such a gray song because what is the right altitude to open your canopy let's say it's three hundred meters should you tell people if you see them consistently opening to fifty or if you see them every now jump open in a hundred and fifty like when when do you go to them be like a that was a bit low if you had a couple line twists there and off heading you could have smashed into that house or you know there's a kindergarten there and there are power lines there and you know when do you approach them it's hard because we we are all part of this community of people that are maybe not rebels but we don't like rules we we run in some way we we are escaping it by leaving scattering you know because that's where we're being told told off do something wrong and then it's such a freedom feeling to just have that experience you you know explained as standing on top of that mountain and jump off it's the ultimate freedom then if your best friend is coming to back hey man i want you to do something different that's i i haven't figured out how to do it well i'm still working on it I think it's like a life journey, I agree.
And I think to elaborate a little bit on your story, we were in Lowen and there was some people who were already experienced in wingsuit base and we sort of set this camp up where we could film their exits, do seminars and try to raise the level of everyone there, including ourselves and.
the uncoachables were listening very attentively saw some some tremendous improvement and i think by like the last second or last day they were doing the i may be the most hardcore formation terrain flight that had ever been done ever before yeah i know and we were shitting our pants going like fuck you know if something bad happens this idea is just done and and and i totally agree with you there because it was like it was so fucking awesome what they had done and we were all so stoked but at the same time it was like oh shit you know like this has had wasn't something that was regularly done yet and like what is pushing the boundaries in the respectable way that's so i guess we could leave this question unanswered and you know maybe there's people who are like just getting into base jumping or thinking about you know like talking to a friend it's like maybe there isn't any real right answer but i have one i have one thing though that i'm not saying this is the right answer or helping in any kind of way but i have lost some really good friends where i've been sitting there after they're gone And I've been wishing that.
I told them, and it's been haunting me a couple times because I didn't have the courage to tell them to do things a little bit differently. I'm not sure that it would make a difference, but I just didn't tell them. And now they're gone. And that's horrible. Yeah, I know that feeling as well. It's difficult to live with.
moving on to some of your thoughts do you think too that maybe we're progressing in a way because acro flying is so accessible the suits are so good the level is going up generally that you know and to be honest like flying in formation with friends on the base jump can be more fun than terrain flying do you think that this is something a next evolutionary step in our sport yeah i actually think so i think we're what i'm seeing and what i've been seeing lately is that we skydive a bit more and we do more scattering and it's becoming kind of cool to be very able to fly relative to each other and fly really well together and i don't see that many of those like super super hardcore proxy flies where it's like just like you know Pure proxy flight.
And I'm not necessarily like I love a really nice lion, it's it'ssomething about it that is just pure awesome. But that time that we saw let's say about 10 years ago, where people are basically putting chainsaw sound on cutting, you know, branches and trees down the mountain, it's a bit past that point now and we're not seeing where it's quite rare that we see accidents where it's just like.
people just suck at flying and they just impact because they fly really close without knowing what they're doing we are not seeing that much of that anymore and i might be too optimistic here now but i feel that we are moving a little bit past that point now we are improving as as a community something that i think about when we're talking about this is the relationships and you and amber you know have a very unique relationship sharing as i do with my wife sharing our passion and there's an element of danger within our passion obviously and do you feel like communicating with her is easier than your friends or can you talk about risk and how it plays into your relationship yeah it's interesting i we talk about it a lot and we can end up in conflicts around it where we get upset at each other and it can go both ways it can be that she for example feels that i'm pushing her or she can feel that she feels it i'm like or protective and It's tough because I have to let her go.
I have to allow her to just go out and do Wingsuit Bay jumping in the way that she feels like. But I have this touch of insight in me always well, especially if she's jumping in on loans. One example was today I was, I actually did a shift where I was operating a cable car. That Luan Skylifter were released well and verbal space jumping, and it was foggy, kind of on and off fog, and I could just sense I had this touch of anxiety riding me through the whole day. Well, what does it mean?
Because I like to say that I trust her and I do.
but then if i have this special insight it means that i'm afraid that something is going to go wrong and i guess that's very healthy and is very real and very true what we're doing is an activity where there is a probability of something going wrong and we all know that the consequence could potentially be fatal that's nagging me when it comes to my wonderful lovely wife for sure and i'm i'm i'm sure you have felt the same or oh absolutely yeah no for sure and i think i've spoken openly about it before here but we really sort of limited our exposure to technical jumps you know meeting like short starts together because i felt like it was a bit distracting i focused a lot on like how she is doing how she's feeling like and just worry in general like anxiety like you say and i felt like it occupied a lot of my mind while we were jumping stuff like that so it's been quite a few years now but i just chose that those kind of jumps would be for me and my buddies and that wasn't something that i particularly wanted to share with her and it was a point of conflict and i think that she felt like she didn't i didn't trust her skill or this or that and you know i think it took quite quite a few years for us to like Just like work through that kind of conversation to come to a conclusion that it's just like it is what it is and we can still, you know, enjoy plenty of beautiful exits together and just sort of, you know, like save that ******** stuff for for when we're on our own.
Yeah. No, I Ihear you and.
well how to express this i partially feel that it's a it's a very healthy and interesting alarm that is ticking when i feel a touch of excited for her because alan is a very capable patient for and so is amber so if the alarm is starting to go off the alarm should go off in general quite often and and the i have definitely had times when i have felt unsure about whether this was fine for me being somewhere with her and then i've ended up concluding that well then it's not for any of us right now then i personally need to increase my level like i need to get better what i do if i feel like that about an exit point so i think in some ways it's really healthy to be base shopping with the one you love because it makes you very aware of what is what is past the line of acceptable risk yeah i totally agree like personal awareness is so muddled you know it's so much easier to look outward and judge somebody else on what they're doing and where they're doing so yeah totally i agree like it would be so when you're outside of your own boundaries or pushing the limit it's it's hard to tell it's really hard to tell and then you know us with our testosterone running through our blood and then our massive egos it's just it's really a difficult you know area to to navigate and that woman's touch can could be a nice balance i think yeah to have a trusted partner life and and just get get the truth sometimes the tough the tough reality and then have someone it's actually possible to have tough arguments with this humans because i have quite a few few participation me that there are no tough arguments happening it's just we just hike up a mountain and if it's go time it's go time and yeah i guess i guess we grow on being in a relationship like that do you feel that there's elements i mean we might have covered this already that that are make because there are couples out there that maybe just be starting or or or look up to you guys and you know like wow i you know we want to be like them like they just seem to to do all the best things and and there's a you have an element of success in your relationship what are some of those elements outside of communication that that make things successful for you as you know a team and and a romantic relationship you don't have to talk about the romantic side of things i'm just what there's gotta be some ingredients there that you know have made you guys such a power couple there are there are things in in amber's ability to in in air sport that that is her strong side things that i'm just simply not as good as her in it and for example she's a far better backflower than i am she's always been she's a better free flyer than me she's really skilled out face carving and i can't suck at it the i'm a far better climber i'm a much better climber than her i know more about the mountains but in our relationship that there are things that she's just much more skilled in than i am and these are and then also in the way we work there are somehow she's really good at excel sheets she's just absolutely extraordinary and putting up camps well i'm more just hopeless until i'm there with the customers and customer and then i do my thing and i'm not saying that i'm really good at that but i'm just saying that that's where i start working really hard anyways we need each other we really need each other if we're going to if we're going to live this life and have our income in airport i'm kind of lost without her and i think she's going to struggle without me and it gives us i think Whether we want it or not, it make me quite humble in my approach with her.
I know that she has a lot to offer me and she knows to send back and it actually affects the way we behave when we're not working in a good way because we we leave air sport quite balanced and she kind of like she.
she dressed me off in my that sounds really weird dress her up but she knows who i am in airport so when we relax together we feel like we know each other in a way in quite a vulnerable way and it makes us i think function quite well as a couple when we just shut down airport okay so being able to separate yourself from your activity and allowing some vulnerability is what i'm hearing from you yeah but that vulnerability actually is enlightened quite a lot in airport because there are so many times when she see my limits and she need to help me i need help to make things work like i'm just basically without her i'm lost in the work we do in airport it can be for example like we're in stockholm coaching and i just don't know where i'm going with someone i just i need her help so i have to have her help and she looks at it and she tells me you just need to ask ask her to stretch her ankles more or she just need to you know relax her shoulders or making things that i don't see and she see those things and and that dynamic then plays into your life because you've lean you're leaning into her when you need it and you you're familiar with that pattern already because nobody else see that that's something i do with her i just allow her to see where i'm i need help and and where i'm you know my my ability to coach her ability to you know do something is just lost and then it's just i guess she just get to know me really well through that yeah interesting pivoting away from the the dynamic of relationships but the relationship with probably another big presence in your life social media you've invested quite a lot in your social media presence and would you like to talk to us a little bit about your thoughts on it because it's quite a loaded question in a way because it it seems like almost a necessity as a professional air sportsman and but then there's also some some baggage that comes along with it could you do you care to tell us a little bit about that absolutely you know there was a time i think this was in two thousand one it was me and hans home if you're and we he jumped off this really huge illegal war illegal wall in norway that i'm not going to mention name of and being the charger is he just jumped off turned over on his back just to look up at the edge of the mountain that he was believing and when he landed his eyes were just glooming and he told me aspen we need to try and capture this in a way that make people understand how awesome it is we need to try and make it realistic show it show it what it is because this is insane that's why he told me on the landing and then he bought a camera for his student loan it just basically burn off all his money on the camera i actually later on lost his camera off the troll wall that has a different story but But there was this passion that started very early on, and that's what made us make the movie Super Terminal and many other things.
And it's this idea that we want to create images, like videos, like something that tells the story of how it is experienced to Basham and.
i have i have never lost that passion and quite often or i can tell another story about this so in two thousand and nine or two thousand eight i got injured as a long story around that but anyways i i had this period where i was i was questioning myself it was after seven seventy days i was questioning if my motivation was to film And brand myself more than just jumping. So I actually did three years in a row without a camera 2008, 2009likenocamera. Iwasjustlikebasejumpingformyself.
Ievenhadfriendstha two nderifIretiredbecausetheyneversawvideos. Quitefunny. ButIwasjumping. Ijustdidn'tdoitwiththe camera. Andthen I metYuk i summer.
and i just could not figure out what he was doing because he was able to not only proxy fly you know like you know pass by ridges but he was able to kind of consistently fly really close to the terrain overtime and i asked him how do you do this you get like what on earth are you doing how are you able to fly that smoothly or terrain and he just looked at me like you just do it just do it that was the most dumb answer i've heard of that life but that's like yuki style yuki is not the best coach it's really good at flying but it's not necessarily the best coach but he told me to put a camera on and just try and angle things and he just told me a little bit tip and tricks and then i was looking at some of his videos and then i started jumping with the camera again and that's when i noticed that it was as if if i had a camera on i had this extra layer of motivation i love hiking in the mountains i love being in the mountains i love beige jumping i find it really fun if i can combine that with trying to capture things like trying to create something it's as if i see the lions through the lenses lens of a camera idea At that point I just had to admit to myself that that is what I truly love to combine.
Trying to get up to being on top of mountain, being on an exit point at the right time with the right light, with the right conditions, with the right gear and the right plan and then execute and capture. That is what I love and I've always loved it. And I.
post things when i'm proud of it and i am stoked about it and it's been following me for probably actually twenty years now with that little break of three years and i find it awesome and whenever i see all the people post really rare videos and i'm not talking about like hardcore proxy flowing necessarily but it's just like things that inspire me i get so inspired i really like it i really like it and i saw this video the other day it was someone that posted a wings video where they put on a layer of where it looked like it was nighttime but it was a daytime jump i know it was a daytime jump it was part of it and i got really pissed because they're faking it i don't like faking it i wanted to be real i want to just be very very honest with what we post or whatever we capture like try to show it as it is that was the original idea And I don't have a problem with social media, really.
I do acknowledge that I quite often in my life have been choosing to be very bold in my fine, because I have a desire to create something. And that's part of my whole kind of motivation, I think my whole system, it's like a desire to create, decide to.
create something decide to prove something decide to be part of writing this story of our sport to create it's like being part of this journey together with everyone else right truly the social aspect of it you're leading on the social of the social media yeah that's a unique perspective i appreciate it your content is extremely beautiful so yeah i can i can see that you know there's some people that say that talk about a percentage of their capability when they're in front of the lens you know like whenever i'm doing a project and yoke is really good at that as well like the most chill professional ever you know like producers will be screaming running around and you know like he'll he'll come up with his hair messy from like just waking up and you know he's to have a coffee and a shit before anything else happens and he's really kind of like solid on you know he's going to do his thing and that's it but that's not everybody's style and do do you have like a rule for yourself that you know like okay i'm going to be doing this job and i'm going to be only operating at eighty percent or i mean i'm throwing this out there don't let me fill you with with words How do you approach the professional side of things and how much risk is accessible in a professional environment?
I t'sIthink anyone that just have a simple answer to it is I'm not staying lying, but I think it's a bit simplistic. There is an amazing movie out there made many years ago by Jimmy Chin Meru. And it's about The Alchemist and how a highly skilled it's a conduit anchor saying this, but it's about to be a really skilled alchemist is to have the ability to push really far and but nowhere to turn around.
And the truly highly skilled alchemists are able to push up to the very fine little tip of their abilities and still see that moment when I need to turn around. What I'm getting where I'm coming with this story where I'm going at is that? What is really important if me or you or anyone? Is having a client or a mission you know a job in big space. Jumping is to truly know what you can do and what you can't do like to know our limits.
and i don't think it's necessarily right to say eighty percent i do relate a lot to that number but to be quite as clear as you possibly can on what you are able to do and the only way to know that is by jumping a lot like really be current of what to do like know your gear know your numbers know down to the smallest details everything about your exit with your head facing forward sideways whatever you know it is people want you to do and the more you know the more able you are to say no that's i guess my kind of moldy lucid answer appreciate it there's you know probably some people that are listening us to this and and are aspiring to be professionals Do you have any advice for those people?
Wow, it's such a good question. Well, first of all, be patient, because Bay Jumping is a sport where it takes many, many, manyyears to get experience because every Bay jump lasts for a very short time. And yeah, it takes just so many years to truly get good at it. If anyone actually is, I don't know.
Another thing is that if you want to be professional, you want to do it a lot, but you don't just want to jump off a mountain and be proxy flying or charging a lot, you want to figure out how to develop the skills for the decrease risk. So for example, go to the tunnel or sky up a lot, which means.
become a good skydog coach or become eternal coach or move to a place where you can do new reservations in a safe way with lots of awesome people that will help a lot but maybe first and foremost seek knowledge from the ones that are better than you because there will always be people that are better than you that know more than you about anything and if you can meet them and ask them questions and learn from them and jump from them they jump with them and just never think that you know it all then there is hope then maybe in ten years of hard work you could be there gotta put in the time what about positioning yourself for jobs have jobs come your way because of the people you know because of your social media presence because of your website Tell us a little bit about your experience there about finding those jobs.
I honestly haven't gotten that many jobs. Maybe that people think that, but I think for something you have, you have had bigger jobs than I have had. You know, the job you did with Alan there, Don Baran was far bigger than anything I've ever had, I think and but I think it's about.
network it's about getting to know people and again just be very active jump a lot meet a lot of people and get to know one another really well and in the end when someone is hiring someone from a job it's about their skills and how much they can trust you because if you know that like if you are to advice on a jumper to do a job you seriously need to know that that person is trustworthy and can do the job so become that person and that takes time speaking of we talked a little bit about advice and i've noticed that you've got some really good advice recently on birds where people are making some exit errors i'm jumping around again but i really want to talk about this because i think it's a it's a really good one because starting your winksuit is a very important part of base jumping and i read recently that you said someone probably is getting you know not getting all of their they can out of their exit technique can you tell a little bit about what you're looking for in exit technique Well, if you look at exit technique, it's a lot about physics and what we want to see in an exit is whatever result you have further down the line.
Where are you after 20 meters or 3050? A hundred? Often people have especially exits that are at least slightly.
critical or technical you will have some sort of critical point somewhere maybe a hundred meters down or something and if we look at how athletics behave when they are you know jumping as hard as they possibly can or it can be like poor people or dancers they they use their whole body and it comes from the core it's like how are you possibly going to transform your body and you strengthen everything into as much forward power as possible out of that exit point and you don't need to process that on an exit point you can press it into a swimming pool or at the gym or anywhere to be comfortable as an athletic yourself because if you think of an exit point like how to exit there are two things it's create horizontal movement like make your mass move forward horizontally as fast as humanly possible of the exit point and then hit the angle nicely if you can hit the angle perfectly so you don't wobble off for a couple of seconds but you just smoothly hit the angle and you have the forward speed those two things are going to be awesome then if you you're a bit nervous and exit point so you're a bit stiff in your arms and your shoulders and you know you don't actually use your whole body then you're going to lose a couple kilometers per hour and that's going to be many many meters a hundred meters down the line or two hundred meters down the line now the reason i'm saying this is because i'm thinking about this every day in the room where i am jumping hundreds of jumps every year i'm trying to figure out how i can optimize my exit point exit and i'm looking at people around me i have friends that have far better than exited myself and i look at how they do it and i'm questioning how on earth am i going to put that much force into it and then i go to the swimming pool and i push off and i try to test things and i try to feel like how am i going to do this i'm going to put more power into it because i know that it may come a day when i'm on an exit point And this truly matters.
This can be the difference between life and death because I made a couple of other bad choices. For example. And another thing is I never want to be a person in bed shipping that deep inside know that I have a really weak exit and I actually don't fly that well after a couple 100 meters. So I'm constantly finding myself on exit points with my friends and I'm asking them how is this exit point? It's OK and then.
i know that their exit is better than mine and i don't fully have the powerful exit they have i don't want to be that person because i don't need to because me and everyone else you and all of us can fix this by going to the gym and go to the swimming pool anywhere and just optimize it and that day when you're standing at the point it's quite amazing to be there and know that you have really solid safe good exit where you at least have an exit performance that is at least as good as everyone else there there's some certain safety in it there's just so much satisfaction that comes from starting it fast too isn't there when you just know when you did perfect angle with just that explosive push off it's just like it just makes the whole jump better for sure Do you have?
There's one annoying thing I just can't figure it out. Like a couple like 2 seconds after exit, I am the arched and I remain the arched even though I have a noise angle. And then I managed to arch up. You don't. You don't have that. You're arched. How to do that, I'm not sure. I think I've changed my style a little bit since we were jumping together.
i was really aggressive about holding as much air as i could or presenting as much surface area and now i'm not as current and i'm more searching for stability i'm always pushing as hard as i can to some extent always yeah of course i i can totally relate right but i'm i'm i'm more focused now on angle and relaxation so that i don't get unstable because i think that just while flying you're in the most performance performant position there's less stability and so that there's like this balancing act of stability and performance so i honestly don't know i felt like i did know and then now i don't know because what's more important if you don't have stability then you don't have anything and if you have too much performance and you go unstable then you really fuck it up so i don't know maybe i'll have to look back at some of my videos you've had some good ones i've been studying your access actually wow thank you i have i'm not saying this to the plunge that i have yeah there was this slow virtual video i think it's a year or two years ago and i was looking at it several times and i was just like that's a good exit thank you let's talk a little bit before we leave about what you see for the future You know you're you've hit a really nice stride here and you're you're coaching and your camps are doing really well.
You're continuing to winks to coach from the sky as well where where do you see yourself in five or ten years to comment on that it it's it's interesting to have that get that question because one of my one of the people I admire the most is Fred Hugin and he has this extraordinary ability to just.
no one knows where it's going until you see this tremendous amazing project happening and then it's like that's what it did and both him and vintrofet have had this skill so by being very specific on where things are going i'm basically saying things that haven't happened yet but i hope this to happen well i do hope that amber and i will continue having camps for the next couple years we just finished our first full year with running camps and it's been really fun and it's just been becoming more and more fun for every camp probably because we get better what we do we learn so i'm hoping that we're going to do this for many years to come and i'm hoping that we will see more wings and tunnels popping up in states especially i do think we're going to have a tunnel in the states and i do think we're going to have more tunnels down in europe much closer to where you live cool and and i think that's going to be part of my life for for many years to come when it comes to to insubation thing where where i'm very which i'm very passionate about i want to become all year around wingsuit bay shumper and i'm working on fixing my gear better and getting more comfortable with the cold temperatures such as like minus twenty degrees or even colder and combining climbing like alpine climbing with the bay shumping and not bay shumping wingsuit fine and that's my mind is a lot there and the fun thing is that it's because the tunnel because i can test out a lot in the tunnel i can put like ice axis and crampons and poles and all this other stuff in the wings and test out everything i can test the pool i can test out flies i can be in the tunnel and figure out all the little details so i will be able to find myself on top of exciting exit points in cold challenging winter environment being dry and comfortable and hydrated and warm and comfortable with what i'm about to do and that's a that's a dream and i feel it's i have this heritage in the way from my father and he was a very passionate ice climber and alpinist and i want to be more like him i admire him a lot i want to experience what he had done so much in his life and i want to put that into bei champing and i hope we got i'm going to do more of that in the years to come it's so good that's truly where my passion lies to is high alpine base jumping or wing suit base it's it's just so it's just so incredible i mean we talked a little bit about that freedom experience i mean there's nothing like like doing you know hours hours and hours of arduous climbing to find yourself at this incredible flight and exit point it's it's truly spectacular it's definitely where i want to continue my my passion to to drive it's it's it's overdue it's overdue that we we do this together though absolutely absolutely it's so hard too because you know if you have to travel you know so much of alpine base is about having the time off and being in the right position at the right time because like there'll be some years where i get a ton in and it's just seems so easy and then other years where i'm really hungry to do it and the weather doesn't cooperate for my days off and this you know it's it's it's really yeah it's really a right place at the right time sort of game but i agree with you too man fred wow so inspiring so many fantastic projects so so much creativity and it's just like what a what a legend and never ending yeah and just like when you think you know they've done it all like they have another project that comes out and you just close your mind you know like yeah that's cool i'm looking forward to and you too as well like your storytelling ability and and you and amber's dynamic is is truly creative and and skillful and yeah i'm super excited to see what you guys do next with that we're sort of out of time now and i feel like we could just keep going on and on there's so many things that i want to talk to you about like performance flying and how it's been applied to your base jumping and your thoughts on soup progression and but i think we're just gonna have to say we'll do it for another time yeah it's been such a nice time to get to chat with you again it's and we we have been hanging out for for for a while now it's covid and you know like me being far up here and doing and you being down in in mcglow or some in the area and then you're having a family now but it's been really nice really appreciate you wanting to bring me on on exit point and thank you so much thank you well you know you've been highly requested and it's an absolute pleasure my favorite thing about doing this is that it's so rare in life you get to have a focus conversation with somebody that's uninterrupted with our phones and our busy life and this is this whole experience has been quite a pleasure so thanks espen and you said you've agreed to come on for a follow up and i'm going to hold you to that all right that's the deal thank you we hope you enjoyed this episode remember we love to hear from our listeners so please don't hesitate to hit us up big shout out to mark stockwell our sound mixer and coproducer we love you man if you'd like to learn more about this podcast please visit exit point podcast dot com see on the next one i'm.