Our friend Peter Thompson has just set a new FAI North American Triangle record on the Zeno 2, right in his own backyard.

He reports:

“On August 11th I flew a new FAI triangle for North America; and I believe a new record for the Americas overall. I have been working to complete a record setting flight on this line for the last four seasons. Last year I came 1.5 kilometers from reaching that goal but fell short. I knew that the line would go bigger and that I just needed the day and the weather. The problem here is that good flying days are really rare, especially for triangles. We either get shut down by strong winds or overdevelopment. I saw August 11th in the forecast and had my gear ready and my schedule clear. As the days are getting shorter, I knew that my chances for another opportunity after this weather window were quite slim.

The beauty of starting from Aspen Mountain is that you can launch really early by U.S. standards; on this day I launched at 9:17am. The challenges of flying in this region are numerous. Staying below the 18,000 ft (5,486 meters) airspace is a major obstacle, so leaving climbs well below cloudbase and below the legal limit was part of the plan. The flight was mainly over fairly deep roadless terrain, tons of big jagged mountains and some desolate desert hill country as well. Fortunately the third led of the flight is over decent civilization before a final deep mountain section for the finish.

I was tempted to go for 300km on my extension of the final leg, but it seemed to be too much of a gamble, and I felt happy to leave that as a goal for future flights.

I was thrilled to be on my big mountain machine, the Zeno 2, for this flight. The glider's performance and robust stability gives me the most incredible feeling in the rowdy air over the deep Colorado mountains”

Way to go, Pete! Cheers from all the Team.

For Pete’s flight track:

https://www.xcontest.org/world/en/flights/detail:PeterThompson/11.8.2025/15:17