We hopped on the 10:30 shuttle bus up to launch but were unfortunately greeted by a north wind. The launch is on the spine of the ridge and the north side has some shear vertical bits so you have to be quite committed to launch in that direction and in fact there are signs discouraging you from trying it (and these are warning signs in France!). We waited for about half an hour and then the thermic cycles started to come up the south face. As usual, impatient Ian (now nicknamed “Gans” from his northern England way of saying “gone”) was off first, soon followed by Tim, Kes, Alex and then me. Harry had chosen not to fly and was hanging out in the river gorge for the day. Kes took off down the ridge and probably wasn’t patient enough, leaving lift before he should of. Unfortunately he landed out in the valley after about half an hour. He had inspired me to start heading down the ridge but when I saw him getting low, I kept staying in any lift I could find, so in the end, he definitely helped me. Ian had his best thermalling flight with over an hour and he even had difficulty getting down into the dolphin shaped LZ on the mountain. Alex wasn’t enjoying the bumpiness of the day and headed to land only to be greeted by massive sink which almost caused him to end up in a tree. Tim and I headed west along the ridge with 3 or 4 other paragliders. The ridge is probably close to 10 kilometers long and at the end there was a gorgeous rock face that curled to the north. Working along the ridge, a number of times I’d climb up in strong lift and then have to consciously head to the edge of the cloud in order to avoid being sucked into it. Getting close to a gap between the ridge and the rock face, I watched as Tim and two of the other paragliders lost hundreds of meters of height. I was entering that area with at least 300 meters more height than them but I encountered the same downer...literally. They all broke left, to the south of the face but I decided to head the other way. When we first arrived on launch, there was a lovely cloud street down the ridge and then clockwise around to the north in this great big circle. That was what a few of us thought we should try and I decided to stay on that task.
In flight:
I started to contemplate landing options as I eeked towards a slightly rocky ridge with another antenna on it (there seems to be a lot of these in France) and eventually I found lift. It’s amazing in this sport how you can go from desperately desiring lift to all of a sudden being freaked out by it. Within five minutes I was up towards cloudbase and running away from a cloud. Then as I crossed another slight valley, I lost 500 meters and went through the same cycle again.
Pic from my new HD camera, unfortunately with some condensation in the lens cover:
At this point I was beginning the return leg towards Laragne and I was happy with the flight so far. I considered which of two ridges to use to head back to town and the more southerly one had a “Marge Simpson” en route. This was a term I had just heard the day before from Alex I think. Imagine Marge’s big hair, well a cumulus cloud (the big puffy ones) that is that kind of shape is very dangerous as it represents massive lift (being taller than wide). Well I wanted to avoid this one although I believe I ended up hitting one side of it and it actually helped me more than hindered. I made it over to a ridge with the largest set of antennas around and worked that ridge. It got a bit weird there with the lift not feeling consistent. I figured that I was hovering around convergent lift. I gained some height and went for another valley crossing to the east. There was a ridge over there that if I got one more solid climb, I could soar all the way back to the campsite. I made it to the ridge and began my ascent under a cumi that was also occupied by two sailplanes, one of which had a propeller (and obviously an engine...a nice get out of jail card!). I lost one of the gliders into the cloud and although my goal was to get to 1000 meters above launch before heading on glide, I exited around 900 and ended up having more than enough height. Enough so that Kes, down in the campground, talked me through doing some wingovers. I didn’t do too many but they felt quite big and full of energy. I landed after flying for 3 hours and covering over 55 kilometers of terrain and I was quite pleased that I had actually flown the task that I had decided on while up on launch. This was easily my best cross country flight I’ve ever done!
Post flight campsite discussions:
That evening a guy, Richard, who Alex had taught paramotoring through his company Sky School, arrived from Switzerland in his helicopter...nice way to get around. He was going to join us paragliding tomorrow.
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