Saturday 22 October 2022 will take place the first edition of Verti’Cham at the Bois du Bouchet in Chamonix, an event dedicated to trail and paragliding enthusiasts.
Organized by the Chamonix paraglider Rémi Bourdelle, the Verti'Cham is a walk and fly competition with precision landing in biathlon format.
The concept
According to Le Dauphine, theoriginal concept comes from the "hike & fly" which consists of climbing on foot to the top of a summit and descending by paragliding. A discipline that is gaining more and more followers and which is taking an ever greater part in the world of free flight. A route increasingly favored by hikers and mountaineers who prefer to relieve themselves of the weight of the descent.
Verti'Cham rules
Three climbs will be offered from Bois du Bouchet
The Verti’Cham route consists of three climbs starting from the Bois du Bouchet:
- the first one in the direction of Flégère;
- the second one at Plan de l’Aiguille;
- the third one in Planpraz.
Three vertical kilometers to chain for more than 3300 meters of elevation gain, with the paraglider in the back, enough to invite the most keen on steep climbs to challenge themselves against the clock and the weight of the bag.
A unique format in France
Each descent is made by paraglider to return to the starting point for the next climb and only the times of the climb are taken into account to establish the classification.
A new way to imagine trail running in the mountains without all the inconvenience of the descent. If there are several races of this type in France, none has yet combined the speed of the race with the precision of the landing. During each paragliding descent, the runner-pilots are indeed asked to be precise when landing on a target, which failure to reach may lead to penalty laps. Like the biathlon, this vertical competition combines the endurance of the race with the dexterity of the pilot to reach a target on the ground, which is far from easy.
For this first edition, there will be 70 pilots setting off in mass start, alone or in tandem, to tackle the three terrible climbs of the Verti’Cham.
Here is the link of the website dedicated to the Verti'Cham: https://www.verticham.fr
Here the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/people/VertiCham
Source: Le Dauphine Source: www.verticham.fr
