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Ride and Glide Italy: Volcano Tour

Published on:
31 Jan 2016

Tobi Böck, Jochen Schweizer et Felix Wölk font le tour des volcans are cycling through Italy to fly Europe's most active volcanos. Felix tells the story: The idea: An ecofriendly paragliding adventure, no airplanes, no cablecars, no cars taking us anywhere. Just our legs and thermals, sometimes a boat to cross the sea. Our luggage: Tents, sleeping bags, a heavy bag of camera equipment and 3 Ultralights with OZO and F*Lite harnesses. We started with road bikes from our home base in Bavaria, Germany, to escape from Germany's upcoming winter direction south. Our goal: Cycling through whole Italy to climb Europe's most active volcanos and fly them (Mt. Vesuvio, Mt. Stromboli, Mt. Etna) Start: 12th of November. Vesuvio near Napoli was a kind of warm up, although we had to spend the night at the crater to fly it. A strong northern breeze took us above the thundering crater of Mt. Stromboli, which is nonstop active. A devilish view from above.. We reached Sicily at the beginning of December, a time Mt. Etna (3352m) showed intense activity for more than 2 weeks. Climbing it was forbidden, we did it anyway, and took off from the edge of its main crater. The 30 minute glide was a fantastic flight above a deep black surrealistic landscape. We had our feet on the ground for 5 minutes when the huge mountain erupted again. A black tower of thick smoke went skywards. Right out of the crater where we took off. We couldn't do anything but stare at this enormous 'something' that seemed to come straight out of hell... And I must admit that the idea of being there about half an hour ago made me feel a bit uneasy. There was no talking among us anymore, and no joking. In this moment our party of succeeding with our project turned to humble silence. -Felix Woelk Check out the photo series and story over on INSTAGRAM.

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