10/05/2020
Green Brothers: “The day we broke the world record…”
At 4,810 m Mont Blanc is the tallest mountain in Western Europe.
It’s also one of the busiest, with cable cars strung across its flanks, bringing in thousands of skiers, climbers and mountaineers each year.
With easy access and good weather forecasting available, it was the perfect spot for a Green Twins’ adventure in 2015: an attempt on the altitude world record for tandem paramotoring.
The record was first set in 2000 by British pilot pilot Kevin Bates and passenger Jane Brooks when they reached the mighty altitude of 1,334 m ASL above Wales. Two years later France’s Frederic Jacques and passenger unknown pushed the boat out and got to 3,036 m above Savines le Lac in France.
Almost unbelievably that stood for a decade, until Ryan Shaw (USA) came along with passenger Deanna Lucky. Together they smashed the 4,000 m mark and reached 4,605 m, launching from Peoria, Arizona on 12 July 2012.
To break the record with style the brothers would have to take off, get to 5,000 m.
“The pile of equipment that we had was enormous! We must have had 1,000 kg of stuff. We had 60-80 liters of fuel, camera equipment, the two paramotors, harnesses, wings, mountain gear”, says Ant Green.
“There are a lot of problems flying at 5,000m. There is less oxygen so you need less fuel too, in order to have the same balance of air/ fuel mix.
The jury rigged a system so we could adjust that mix while we’re flying. We were monitoring exhaust gas temperature, head temperature and the RPM. Those are the main things that are crucial.
We only had to adjust the carburetor four times in the flight, at 500 m, 1000 m, 1.500 m, 2.000 meters.
My brother and I flew the gliders”, says Ant Green. “My passenger was Eliot Nochez, a really good pilot, speed-rider and skier. Tim’s passenger was Pierre-Emilio Medina. Ulric Jessop acted as our official observer. He works for the Paragliding World Cup and had just come back from a competition in Brazil.
In the end we took off about 5 pm and managed to climb up before using a mix of thermals, dynamic wind and power to get us to the summit. Once we were there we floated around a bit filming until we dropped to idle and headed back. I got to 5,066 m and Tim made 5,030 m. We landed at 6.30 pm.
In the end it didn’t take very long. They are powerful engines. It took less than an hour to get up there”, ends Ant.
“At such a high altitude, the risks were not few and yet we had no problems, thanks to our engines“.
