The first official day of the 37th Coupe Icare Festival. Well, it started slowly for us...we all needed a bit of a sleep in after the previous night’s escapades. The day’s weather started promising but soon a high overcast layer settled in. It was still flyable but difficult to find any lift.
Kes about to launch:
Gans taking off:
On my first flight I was able to maintain my height for a while just above the ridge. I have found here that it’s much easier to stay over the top of the ridge than to climb up above it from below. I eventually headed out to the landing zone with a bit of height and tried a few wingovers but got a nice collapse on one side of the wing which got the heart racing a bit. There were a couple of other paragliders landing at the same time as me but with such a big landing zone it wasn’t a big deal.
In flight:
I hopped on the free shuttle bus and on the next flight I pretty much just headed out over the landing field. This time my wingovers were better so I was pleased with that. In the LZ, Alex and a bunch of others were hanging about. I was keen to go up again as was Gans and Phil. Gans and I had an interesting green beer from the local region while waiting for the bus. Unfortunately once we got up to St. Hillaire we could feel a few raindrops...I guess that’s all the flying for today.
Gans drinking refreshing green beer:
Hanging out at the campsite, we heard and saw an acrobatic plane starting a show in front of the mountainside. The prop driven plane is the same type that they use in the Red Bull Air Races. This guy was super talented and he put his machine into some wicked manoeuvres such as flying super slowly upside down while barely gaining altitude. About 20 minutes later the next act appeared. This guy wasn’t so dynamic but it was quite interesting. It was a one man hot air balloon but not like one I’ve ever seen before. His balloon was a squashed sphere of some type of see through plastic (more than one person made the remark that it looked like a large condom). He was suspended below by a thin looking line that was at least 10-15 feet long. He had a couple of little propellers that he used to move through the air with great ease....very cool.
The "condom" balloon (right in the centre of the pic):
That evening, with it raining, the best activity was to head to the cinema where they were featuring various free flying or adrenaline type sports related films. One of my favourites was a silly Czech movie about some guys with bad wigs and beards base jumping into a cavern that was protected by a maniacal frog...yes, a frog. Another film about speed riding (skiing with a small paraglider) was dreadfully boring, which is tough to do...to make an adrenaline based sport dull! They also showed one about Ewa Wienierski, a German woman who survived being sucked up inside a cumulonimbus cloud up to 10,000 meters! I had heard this story numerous times before but she went on stage after the film and talked a bit more about it...quite amazing!
Ewa, the German pilot that survived going up to 30,000 feet in a paraglider!
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