Colin's Flying Trips

Belgian Paragliding Open. Laragne, France 2011

2011-08-31T02:52:00.000-07:00

Photo: Marko Väyrynen

Well last week we had the Belgian Paragliding Open in France in windy Laragne. Unfortunately we only had one task due to the Mistral conditions. The one task we did have was an ambitious 101km square task taking us over some of the breathtaking scenery of the Pic de Bure quite someway north of launch. Conditions were quite bumpy with strong thermals and a few inversion layers so I had the glider do a couple of funky things but sorted it out quickly. I had a great start and was leading for some of the way at the beginning but was caught by a few others and we formed our lead gaggle. Multiple choice of routes past the Pic de Burre towards the last turnpoint meant that we split up and went various ways. I chose the more direct line that had a large section of flat lands to traverse while others did a slightly longer but less risky route connecting a couple of ridges. Ultimately nobody got to goal as we were all hampered by a strong headwind under the inversion and the leaders all decked it at 85-90km. I landed at 86.7km but was quite quick and managed the third highest leadout points for the task. However some pilots managed a couple more kilometres and so I finished 10th out of 120+ pilots but was only 40 points shy of the winner (who got ~700 points). Due to the weather I was subsequently denied the chance to fight for a podium place.

I'm at the PreEuropeans now in St Andre, the first task is tomorrow so let's hope for some better weather.

2011 British Open - St Jean de Montclar, France

2011-08-17T05:40:00.000-07:00


Start Gaggle - Photo Andy Smart

Well it's been a while since I last posted - A lot of things like work and weather have been getting in the way of my flying this year - ho hum. But at the moment I'm enjoying myself and am in the middle of a 6 week flying trip. I'm a wandering paragliding bum living out of my new camper van and a third the way through doing three paragliding competitions: The last round of the British Champs in St Jean de Montclar, the Belgian open in Laragne and then finally the Pre-Europeans. All of them are in Southern France; I've just finished the British round and am now relaxing on the shores of Lake Como in Italy with family as I write this.

The ban on open class gliders seems to have really shaken things up a bit and I quite like the fact that punters like me flying ordinary serial gliders have a chance at winning these comps now. I'm flying my usual bad racing style and finished 3rd out of 150 pilots (and top Brit) for one of the two tasks - this is the second time now I've arrived over the goal field with no other gliders on the ground, it's a nice feeling! The other task I raced myself to the ground, not an unusual outcome ... I hope soon to find the balance between racing and gearing down with the aim of being fast and consistent. One thing for sure is I like to race - bimbling around the course isn't for me.

Lets see how the next two comps go - in the mean time I'll order another becks and read a couple more chapters of my book, not a bad life ..

A Win at the Winelands

2010-12-27T13:20:00.000-08:00

An intimidating launch

So I came first in the serial class at the South African Winelands PrePWC in Porterville! But more satisfyingly I came 15th overall in the open class out of 120 pilots beating some seasoned competition pilots on their hot ships. I’m still somewhat amazed I did so well and am trying to figure out exactly what I did that was different to my last two competitions. It has definitely boosted my confidence somewhat which can only be a good thing. Because of some unusually bad weather we only had three tasks (63.9 km, 63.7 km, 66.8 km) but they were good ones with a little bit of ridge flying and a lot of flatland flying. This was great practice for me as I’m not so great at flying over the flats away from the consistency of the mountains.

Flying with Julian Robinson high over the flats

The launch was very small with only enough room for two gliders side-by-side, the thermals were powerful so we had to carefully time our launches to coincide with the brief lulls. While watching the R10 pilots launch I felt the usual mix of hilarity and horror that really did nothing for my confidence. Somehow I managed (with a lot of help from our meet director Rob Manzoni) to launch and once in the air I would do my ‘thank god for that’ and ‘I must do more ground handling’ mantra.

The open class winner - Paul Schmit from Belgium

Task-1: I got to goal in 11th place only 6 minutes behind the task winner Paul Schmit on his R10.2. I only took the strongest of climbs and found the elusive convergence line in the Citrusdal Valley. I was particularly pleased with my average speed for the 64km task of 31.38 km/h which is very fast for me.

Task-2: An elapsed time race where I came 14th overall. I was only a few seconds behind a bunch of other gliders but being an elapsed time race meant that I didn’t know this until the results were in as we all started at different times. If I had known that it was going to end up so close I would have tried harder to beat them. For this reason I’m not a fan of elapsed time races.

Task-3: To maintain my serial class lead all I had to do was get to goal. So I decided to fly conservatively and cruise around the course being careful. I flew like a plonker! I only just made goal in 42nd place and on several occasions I was just seconds away from decking it along the course and was even out of my pod harness with my landing gear down (my feet) only to be saved by the weakest of thermals. This was a real learning experience for me; I will from now on fly the best I can and stick with the better gaggles …

The long ridge north of launch

This was a nice way to end the 2010 flying season. In 2011 I plan to participate in another 4 FAI category-2 competitions; so let’s hope the learning process continues as well as it did in 2010.

India Again - Oct 2010.

2010-11-26T10:33:00.000-08:00

India this year wasn't so great: We had a flying ban during the Commonwealth Games, a very unusual weather pattern with violent storms lasting several days that was even reported on the front page of India's national newspapers and to top it all a bit of Delhi belly. But for me the main problem were the crowds on Billing launch; the place to some extent is becoming a victim of its own success, so I'm not sure I'll go again until things change a bit. Being India this may take some time ...

Anyway I made this short video flying my light weight kit along the front ridge of the Dhauladhar mountain range, part of the southern Himalayan chain.

Paragliding in Bir India Oct 2010 from Colin Hawke on Vimeo.

Boomerang GTO

2010-09-29T13:10:00.000-07:00

A nice promotional video of the Boomerang GTO flying in the French Alps - I've got a red one and they do seem to go very well.

Gin Boomerang Gto , shooting 2Alpes & Annecy from Jean-Mi ARA on Vimeo.

British Open. Saint-André-les-Alpes.

2010-09-08T09:16:00.000-07:00

Gaggles forming after the start window opens

I've just returned from another competition, the second round of the British Open in Saint-André-les-Alpes in Southern France. This place has a rather fierce reputation and it lived up to it with ten reserve parachute rides and several crashes. I'm embarrassed to say that I was one of the unlucky pilots who threw their rescue parachute during a particularly weird day in which we had a lot of incidents. But I hasten to add there were no serious injuries.

In general I thought the competition was incredibly well run; we had six tasks (62km, 82km, 88km, 68km, 86km, 77km) during the week in which the first and last were stopped due to deteriorating conditions but still scored.

I didn't do so well in this competition as I was very inconsistent. In task one I almost made goal but it was stopped for safety reasons, task two I got drilled pushing against valley winds about half way around the course. In task three I went down on my emergency rescue parachute. Task four I did well and got to goal in reasonable time. In task-5 I took off too late when a huge area went into shade killing off all thermal activity. Finally, task 6 was stopped when I was half way around the course due to increasing winds. So in this open I only managed 104th place out of 150 pilots. This result combined with my Slovenian results meant that I was placed 26th out of 66 British pilots in the Championships which I suppose is OK for my first attempt at competitions but in reality I wanted to be in the top 20. Hopefully I will improve with more practice; the next competition I've entered is the South African open in December ...

Task-6

There is no denying that this competition had way too many incidents but it is hard to work out why this is the case; was it to do with the venue, risk taking by the pilots, task setting etc? There is an interesting discussion about this on the paragliding forum here but as it stands there are no obvious answers. What I will say is that the organization was second to none. We were all issued with personal tracking devices so the position of all 150 pilots were known at all times during the race. There was a safely committee; a subset of pilots evaluating the conditions around the course on their own radio frequency. The main safety frequency was monitored at all times by a very experienced meet director. And we had a very sophisticated retrieve system which coordinated the retrieval of downed pilots throughout the course and brought them back to base. The support team was quite simply amazing.

Where I landed under my rescue parachute.

80km Declared Goal flight to Home

2010-06-28T01:53:00.000-07:00

Approaching a lovely cloud
Light southwest winds were forecast yesterday with some good thermals predicted, so Julian Sears and myself shared a lift with Bob Johnson and his family down to Wiltshire. We went to the Pewsey Vale area just south of Marlborough, specifically to a little 60m bump of a hill called Rybury. I decided to declare a goal flight back home to my house in Princes-Risborough in Buckinghamshire, about 80km to the northeast.

But when we arrived it didn't look too promising as the sky was empty with everybody sitting around waiting for things to improve. But by midday people were able to scratch and just about stay airborne. A little later we noticed a couple of gliders climbing out and going cross country from Milk which is another little hill next to ours. I wondered if we had chosen the wrong hill again. But an hour later Bob managed to be the first to get away from Rybury soon followed by Simon Twiss. I was determined and finally managed to climb out in a very weak thermal. After a short glide towards the golf courses in Marlborough I was rewarded with my second climb. The crux of the flight was definitely at a village called Lambourn. Here I got very low, about 300m (~1000ft) above the ground; I aimed for a small 30m wooded ridge downwind of the village hoping that it might be releasing a thermal. Luckily it worked for me and I climbed out to 1729m (5669ft) back up to cloudbase in a few minutes. Drifting with the thermal I realized I was about to enter a boundary of some 5500ft (actually FL55) airspace. So I did a quick 180 degree about-turn and flew a few minutes to get some distance from it and then did a spiral dive to get me down to 5000ft so that I could safely glide on to my next destination. I flew to the west of the Harwell nuclear facility (P106 prohibited airspace) and the ring of the brand new Diamond Syncrotron and I remembered visiting the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory there back in the late 1980's whilst still at university. I flew on to Didcot Power Station where I out-climbed a couple of sailplanes to get back to cloudbase. I had a good look at Oxford and thought how nice it looks from above with the river Thames glistening in the sunshine. I carried on to the south of the Abingdon parachute drop zone and north of RAF Benson and RAF Chalgrove (where the Martin-Baker company tests ejector seats). Finally, and with all the difficult airspace out of the way, I aimed for the Chiltern Hills and home. I landed in Princes-Risborough exactly as planned, i.e. near the Bird in Hand pub for a pint, only a 5 minute walk from my front door. No car retrieve necessary, how refreshing!
Didcot Power Station

I found out later that the two pilots I saw climb out from Milk Hill were Emile Vanwyk and Richard Bungay and both were flying Boomerang GTOs like mine; they landed in Cambridgeshire for an amazing 154km. I'm sure I could have flown further but probably not as far as that though. They are both outstanding pilots; Emile & Richard took first and second place in the Serial class of the British open in Slovenia, whereas I placed in at 31 ... There is something special about flying home though. My flight can be seen here or here. Thanks for the lift Bob & Julian.

British Open. Slovenia June 2010

2010-06-15T12:07:00.000-07:00

The all important task board
One of my goals for 2010 was to enter some competitions and I specifically wanted to enter the British Championships. This is a high level competition and as I essentially have no real competition experience I thought It would be a great learning experience for me. I was also keen to see if this would add a new dimension to my flying.

First I must explain how this competition is set up. The 2010 championships are made up of two separate competitions in Europe; one in Kobarid in Slovenia and the other in Saint André-les-Alpes in France. These individual competitions are known as the British Opens and have up to 150 suitably qualified pilots of any nationality participating. They each last a week with as many daily tasks set as the weather allows. The British Championships are then just the combined results of the British pilots who do both of these open competitions. There used to be a UK round as well but this year it was dropped as historically the weather has been too unreliable to make it justifiable. So this year it started with Slovenia and it turned out to be a wonderful venue. It is a 70% tree covered and sparsely populated country with very little heavy industry and lots of mountains to fly over and fields to land in; perfect for free flying.

Green and not so rolling hills
Together with friends Tom Kane and Hugh Ginty we rented a lovely apartment just a short walk from the competition headquarters, it was the perfect place to relax after a hard days flying. We arrived a week early to get some practice in with local guides Brett Janaway of XTC Paragliding and Toby Colombé of Passion Paragliding. Although the week didn't start off great weather wise we did eventually manage some reasonable cross country flights and get a few lectures on competition flying from Toby. Importantly, it also allowed me to familiarize myself with my brand new glider, the new Gin Boomerang GTO. This is Gin gliders latest high performance EN-D serial class wing, a real hot ship ...

Doesn't she look nice!
The competition went really well. We had great weather and managed to get in 6 cats cradle tasks in the area. High level winds meant our arena was somewhat restricted to a couple of valley systems but the tasks were of reasonable lengths (69km, 57km, 59km, 62km, 73km and 64km).

Some big clouds brewing
As I'm a competition novice my strategy was to keep it simple, not to race but just try to get to goal everyday. After two days of doing this and finding that 100+ pilots were getting to goal I decided to start racing; besides it's just so much more fun.

So in task three I went around the course at speed trying to race, amazingly I was in the first handful of serial class gliders to make goal. But as it turned out I missed the last turnpoint by a couple of hundred meters, I had inadvertently pressed the 'next waypoint' button on my GPS when trying to go to my final glide page. I got a good amount of distance and leading-out points, so I actually got the same score as if I had bimbled around the course; what a plonker!

Task four saw me get to goal pretty quickly in 37th place. Considering there were 20+ seasoned competition pilots above me mostly flying those ridiculous Ozone R10.2's I was very pleased with myself.

Task 5 was frustrating, I was racing too much, got low and ended up getting stuck for half an hour kicking trees finally making it in 60th position. Task 6 was slightly different, I had made a conservative decision to top up height between turnpoints and avoid getting low and possibly getting stuck like the day before. But it evidently wasn't needed as others jumped in front and pushed me down to 62nd place.

So some mistakes were made and only the experience of lots more competitions can help improve my performance. I certainly can't blame the glider, it's a great wing and has heaps of performance and provides a lot of feedback about the air I'm flying in - it honestly felt a bit of a handful at first but I've nicely settled in to flying it. In fact pilots who got first and second place in the serial category were flying the same wing. The overall results can be seen here and the serial class results here. I got 69th place and considering I'm new at racing paragliders I'm reasonably pleased with myself. Roll on Saint André!

25km from Mt Bakewell, Western Australia

2010-02-20T16:24:00.000-08:00

A video from yesterdays short 25km flight. There was just too much high level cloud to get very far; that's my excuse anyway.

Sun, Sun and more Sun

2010-02-13T14:47:00.000-08:00

Work has brought me to Western Australia for a two month contract with a small oil company in Perth. As I was leaving England to go to the airport snow was falling, on arrival I was greeted with 34 degrees and crystal blue skies; what a contrast! It's late summer here and the landscape is scorched, it hasn't rained in months and water restrictions are firmly in place. I know the place quite well having spent nine years in Australia, six of which were living in Perth. So the memories are being jogged out of retirement everywhere I look and after only a couple of days being here it's all starting to look a little more familiar; even my accent has a little Aussi twang returning! I met up with some local pilots who took me to one of their XC sites called Mt Bakewell, a small hill above a town called York nestled next to the Avon River. However the names are the only thing that resemble O'Blighty as in reality it's a charming little sun baked town out in the wheat belt of Western Australia.

As usual I was way too optimistic and had planned various big XC options the night before. Eric a local French expatriate, Bruce (the same Bruce I met in India recently) and Rod had all done their weather homework and thought that once the temperature reached a magic 32 degrees an inversion would break and we would all sky out. It didn't quite happen that way as nobody seemed to get much above 1300m (4265 ft) and combined with a little too much east in the wind meant that I was staying local. Eric and Rod have both managed 150+ km flights from this site so it does have potential. The launches were pretty sporty though! A reasonable meteo wind combined with strong thermals meant that it was often howling on launch and you had to pick your moment and wait for the lulls to get off safely. A lull here means that there is a big thermal sitting out front blocking the wind, so once off you often get hoofed up in a screamer (paragliding parlance for zooming skywards in a thermal). My first launch here caught me by surprise and I got off in a rather ugly fashion, but armed with this experience my second was text book. A nice day out all in all. Thanks to Bruce and Eric for making it happen.

Eric on his Aircross U4

Snow, Snow and more Snow

2010-01-12T07:28:00.000-08:00

Photo: Julian Sears

Well I've been out flying a few times in the last couple of weeks. The UK has been gripped in an unusual cold snap, with lots of snow and road closures. The UK always seems to grind to a halt in two or more inches of snow. Luckily though I've got a couple of very close flying sites that allow me to do some local soaring. Granted it's not the most interesting of flying, but it's nice to do now and again in the winter and helps keep the wheels oiled so to speak. In the picture above I'm launching my Axis Venus-1 in deep snow at Chinnor Hill in Oxfordshire, it's a very pretty place normally but when snow covered it's absolutely beautiful.

I've also been flying at Dunstable Downs a few times. Jamie Adams put up a little video clip shot on his new camera, the matchbox sized Hero Gopro HD. He can be seen flying his Axis Venus-2 and I'm somewhere in there flying my red&white Venus.

Paragliding Dunstable from Jamie Adams on Vimeo.

I'll be off to Australia in February for a couple of months of work and will take my wing; it'll be shorts and tee shirt flying, hooray!

Incredible Pakistan - Videos from 2009

2009-11-26T04:10:00.000-08:00

Christian Rankl just put up some great footage of his trips in Pakistan this year. I'm going again next year and have some projects in the planning stages, I may even take the video camera. Check it out.

Paragliding in Pakistan from Christian Rankl on Vimeo.

Also have a look at the 2009 Pakistan Expedition by Demian, Rufo and Romain. Fantastic!

And Matty Senior with Brad et al.

Bir India, October 2009

2009-11-01T07:15:00.000-08:00

Bir is a village set on a plateau above the Kangra valley in the state of Himachal Pradesh in north India. It's a friendly place full of rural Indians, Tibetan refugees and a surprisingly large number of paraglider pilots from all corners of the globe. The reason for its popularity is the Dhauladhar mountain range, part of the southern Himalayan chain. Many spurs run down from this range and on one of these the Tibetan government-in-exile is headquartered in McLeod Ganj above Dharamsala. The main paraglider launch site of Billing sits on another spur and from which classic flying in spectacular surroundings can be made, either on the front ridge, or over the back in the more serious mountains. It's been on my paragliding wish list for some time and so I finally went on a trip in October, and what a trip it was! It started off with a 10 day guided tour with Jim Mallinson, Eddie Colfox and John Silvester aka the Himalayan Sky Safari boys but I ended up staying on my own for an extended month long flying adventure.

Spur after spur after spur ...

I'll start with an account of the guided trip and then describe some of the classic flights in the area that I managed to do (sometimes several times) with lots of pictures and a few track logs. No doubt it will be a long post but it should give you a flavour of the place and hopefully persuade one or two pilots who haven't been there yet to go and taste it for themselves.

The Himalayan Sky Safari Guided Trip.

First off I think I should start with answering a question I've recently been asked several times by fellow pilots - "Why take a guided trip if you are an experienced pilot already, can't you just go on your own to Bir?" Of course you can! But remember this is India with all its quirks and consequences. If you can afford it then it makes some sense to take a guided trip on your first outing there. You hit the ground running; acommodation, food and local travel are all taken care of. Being relieved from any organisational burdens gives you more time to actually enjoy your hard earned holiday. More importantly you have at hand the people with a wealth of local knowledge and experience of the area you'll be flying in. If you are a cautious pilot (which is no bad thing) being guided will likely give you better flying experiences, as on your own you'll likely be too conservative for the conditions on the day. Finally, the safety advantages are obvious, especially as Himachel Pradesh doesn't have rescue facilites to haul you off the mountain like you have back home in Europe or the US. Having an accident in the mountains of India can have big consequences as some unfortunate Russians have recently found out.

The motley crew. Darwin, Eddie, me, Jim and John (Bruce absent).

Back to business then, what did I do with those guided days?

102km Flat Triangle with Jim Mallinson
I must have been doing OK on the evaluation day as Jim took me 'over the back' on the first real flying day. What a great day it turned out to be as we ended up flying a 102km flat triangle in 4 hours 45 minutes at heights close to 5000m. Thanks Jim!

Me from Jim's perspective

See here for the track log. The route took us initially over the back of the front ridge in to the bigger mountains and then towards Dharamsala the 'high way'. From there we went back to Bir along the front ridge jumping from spur to spur.

Another of me from Jim's perspective

It was a very strange day for me, as I was being 'guided' I basically just followed Jim around the sky. My instructions were to stay near the leader and not go off and do my own thing ... I obeyed my leader and made sure I'd do a couple more turns in the strong climbs, this put me just behind and quite a bit above Jim most of the time. I can climb and control the glider pretty much automatically so being deprived of any decision making meant that my brain wasn't really doing much except to look at the views and take some pictures; a very pleasant experience. After landing back at Bir I didn't feel tired one bit after almost 5 hours of flying but I did feel a tiny bit guilty that I hadn't really earned my first 100km triangle ...

Jim from my perspective, can you see him?

60km Mandi flight
This was a nice day with all of us - that's Darwin, Bruce, John, Eddie, Jim and myself all flying together as a group. I'll explain this route in detail in a following section as it's a classic and probably one of my favourite flights in the area (in fact I did it a couple more times on my own).

Mandi town, photo courtesy Nishant Sharma

Mandi is quite a large town 50km east along the ridge from Billing. On this particular day we first top landed on a spot on the ridge for lunch, the place is nicknamed Camp360 for its panoramic views. We probably spent too long chin wagging and eating as we relaunched a little late and couldn't find that last crucial climb that would have given us a stress free final glide into Mandi. Instead I had a slightly nail biting end to the flight worrying about the myriad of electrical wires spanning the river. Most of us landed on a rocky sand bank on the outskirts of the town but Jim, who was heroically leading out, landed a little short ...

Two days bivving out - Hobbiton and Camp360
I had prepared for the expected (and any unexpected) nights out by obtaining light weight bivouac gear: specifically a sleeping mat, bag, bivvy sack and even a very light weight wood burning stove(!) that all neatly fitted inside my harness. Needless to say I was keen to try it all out.

My kit being used. Notice the whisky, essential bivvy gear ...

So we all took off and flew 30km west towards a ridge nicknamed Hobbiton by Jim and Eddie, this was due to a collection of small shepherds huts suitable apparently for Hobbits. The ridge, a perfect thermal trigger, was pumping as usual and top landing was pretty tricky. It took me quite a few attempts before I finally got the glider down safely. Eventually all of us landed but Bruce had a slightly harder landing than most ... Several shepherds saw us arrive and joined us for a cup of tea made on my new wood burning stove I might add! Then our fluent Hindi speaker Jim had a conversation with the Shepherds who asked to use our satellite phone to order new provisions, lucky them!

Our shepherd meeting. Bruce looks a little uncomfortable ...

We collected wood and spring water and set about making a fire and putting on the dinner, oh and multiple brews as the English do. Whisky was supplied by Bruce and John Silvester showed off his camp fire culinary skills. A great night out, enjoyed unanimously by everyone. The next morning we launched and flew almost 50km east to Camp360 and did it all again. But this time in luxury as the camp was prepared by the Colonel and his staff providing us with a great evening meal and comfortable tents to sleep in. Quite a few other pilots flew in for the party as well. The next morning we flew back to Bir for a well earned shower at the Colonel's place.

The morning launch

That was pretty much the end of the guided trip. A fantastic effort was put in by John, Jim and Eddie to make it a very enjoyable holiday. The following section just details several what I like to call classic flights that I managed during the couple of weeks following the tour.

The 90km Dharamsala Out & Return
This is a classic flight that can be completed almost any day during the flying season. It's not easy however, you have to fly fast as the autumn day starts around midday and is essentially over by 4pm. I managed to do this flight a couple of times on my own and both times I only just made it back ... One of these flights can be seen here. There really isn't anything special you do on this flight, you just jump from spur to spur obviously using the eastern faces more on the way out and the western faces more on the way back. You save time by climbing as fast as you can and only climbing enough to get to the next spur and the next climb. The recognised turn point seems to be just past the slate quarries on a ridge above McLeod Ganj called Triund.

You can see the spurs running right to left off the main ridge.

The 50km Mandi Run
I've already hinted at this before but I really enjoyed the original flight to Mandi we did on the tour so much that I flew it a couple more times on my own. The ridge gently drops over 1km in altitude over its length and gets noticeably flatter towards Mandi. What makes this flight so special is you really don't have to thermal that much and you spend most of the flight just skimming along the top of a ridge waving at the people working in the fields or shouting Namaste to kids playing in their back yards. You really are connected to the ground on this flight, really special.

Unusually high above the ridge to Mandi - it's much better lower.

The final 15km is a little more stressful as the landing options are few and far between and don't forget about the wires, they're everywhere. So you need to keep a keen lookout if you're unlucky enough to be getting low. One of my track logs can be found here.

Flying over Victoria bridge to land on a beach near the burning ghats and temple.

The big one: A 60km high flight to Manali
I've known about and heard about this flight for some time, it's a committing flight through the big mountains 'over the back' northwards to the buzzing town of Manali. I managed to do it this year with Tom and Scott, a couple of Scottish pilots staying at the Colonel's.

Heading towards Danesar and onwards to Manali.

I talked over the route with John Silvester before I attempted it and what became obvious is that you just pick your own route through the mountains to connect with the Kullu valley as late as possible - the exact route depends on the height of the cloudbase and what mountain cols you can get over. As it turns out we had 'only' a 4800m base and had to skirt around Danesar and its lake. Near there Scott and I got separated (he missed a climb I took) and Tom was 30 minutes or so behind us so I was on my own. I just took a couple of climbs and glides and another col and flew out into the Kullu valley at Manali. Then I managed a simple glide to the Solang landing area in the north of the town. Scott joined me 10 minutes later and finally Tom arrived in orbit above us 30 minutes after that. We had a quick bite to eat and then endured the 6 hour jeep ride back to Bir.

Scott on glide towards the big stuff.

What a great flight it was with spectacular views. But it also felt a very committing flight as going down early meant a very long walk out and a long bus ride back. I'd certainly always carry the bivvy kit just in case ... The track log of the flight can be seen here.

So that was my month flying in Bir. A great way to end the 2009 flying season.

Dreaming

2009-09-03T04:53:00.000-07:00

I missed some unusually great flying days in the French Alps recently. The 19th and 22nd of August will be go down in the annals of French paragliding as some of the best in the last decade. There were a lot of high flights and amazingly 13 pilots even managed to make a top landing on Mont Blanc at 4810m (15774ft). It's a shame I wasn't there to experience it but at least I get to see some videos. In a couple more weeks I'll be in the Italian Dolomites and then India for some great flying, weather permitting ...

Massif du Mont Blanc, 4200 m à l'Aiguille de Bionnassay, Dôme de Miage. from Stéphane Boulenger on Vimeo.

And here's the way we do it in England, a bloody great video!

Pimple Queens XC Clinic from pimple queens on Vimeo.

25km from Coombe Gibbet

2009-08-07T14:21:00.000-07:00

Tom Kane and Carlo Borsattino Skywalking

I managed a 25km flight (with turn points) from Coombe Gibbet today in what I thought were quite tricky conditions. It was all a bit scratchy at first but I finally managed to climb out with Tom Kane to a pretty low cloudbase of around 3700ft. We had three climb&glide cycles (one of them a very low save) before finally decking it. I landed in an organic farm and one of the owners drove me to the train station in Whitchurch; he seemed to know quite a lot about paragliding and was obviously used to gliders landing in the area. Some other Thames Valley pilots did better so it'd be interesting to see what gets put up on the league.

Tom Kane on glide

32km from Rybury

2009-08-02T10:56:00.000-07:00

Kirsty Cameron at base high over the Wiltshire countryside.

There was a sudden break in the atrocious weather today so I went to Rybury for a fly. It was quite busy with people skimming this tiny hill but I managed to climb out with Kirsty Cameron and avoid the chaos. Briefly at the roughly 5000ft cloudbase there were three of us circling; there was Kirsty on her Skywalk Poison-2 and Chris Jones (I think) on an old Nova Mamboo. We all went on glide in different directions no doubt each with their own tactics in mind. Mine was to fly to a nice looking cloud that I thought was building but was rewarded with nothing much. So I continued on a glide towards Hungerford hoping for some lift from the town but got a lazy climb before I got there. Whilst climbing in weak but usable lift I noticed Kirsty circling high in the distance and Chris and another glider climbing well underneath her. I thought they were reachable on glide from my position so I broke the cardinal rule of never leaving lift and went on what turned out to be a death glide towards them. I hit major sink along the way and that left me with very little height to work with when I did hit the bottom of their climb. I ended up landing and watching them glide in to the distance. It was a bad decision and I should have stuck with my climb and got on with my own flight instead of trying to join the others. Kirsty ended up flying to Reading for 65km or so, nice. Still my little 32km was a nice flight with some great views over the Wiltshire countryside.
As usual I landed at a nice pub! I watched paragliders fly overhead whilst having a pint in the sunshine, not so bad I guess.

The pub with paragliders overflying me!

Curse the British Weather

2009-07-17T02:38:00.000-07:00

I am writing this watching and listening to the rain and wind hammer against my living room window and I'm cursing the British weather again. Why is it that the UK seems to be a magnet for low pressure weather systems lately? They bring the strong wind and often the rain so it's not been very conducive for paragliding for the last couple of weeks. And it's past midsummer already! I expected to be flying a lot more and as I've turned in to a bit of a cross country snob it's been even more frustrating. But there have been some small windows that have just about been flyable and some people have managed to put some flights on the league, but nothing epic. I've managed to get some very windy flights in at Bunster Hill in Deryshire, the Long Mynd in Shropshire as well as locally around here at Chinnor Hill. But I've not managed or been particularly inspired to go cross country so I still have only one flight in our UK league. I'm waiting patiently for the 'Big Day' but Murphy's law dictates that I will be doing something else when it comes along and so will miss it ... I do have a couple of pictures from the last two weeks below. I wonder why England looks so green?

Looking down at Long Mynd on a windy & cloudy day.

Cherry picking a flyable window at Chinnor before it became too windy.

SIV above Lake Annecy with Jocky

2009-06-26T10:36:00.000-07:00

photo: John Porter approaching our caravan park.

I just returned from a very enjoyable SIV course in Annecy in the Northern French Alps. SIV is a French acronym for Simulation d'Incident en Vol or in English Simulated Incidence in Flight. Basically you get to put your glider though all sorts of configurations that you'd usually prefer not to see it in and then learn how to deal with it. So you learn things like recovery from max amplitude spins, flat spins, canopy collapses, stalls etc. All this is done above a lake with a safety boat and comforting radio guidance. We stayed in a nice caravan park at the South end of the lake right next to the SIV landing field. The course was organised by Jocky and his team at Escape and was flawless. We also managed to do a bit of free flying each side of the course with a few flights from Marlens, L'Anglettaz and Semnoz as well as the popular Forclaz and Plan Fait launches.

I met a great bunch of pilots who were on the course with me. Paraglider pilots seem to come from all walks of life; we had oil workers, kitchen worktop specialists, graphic designers, nurses, trainee fast jet pilots and even a professional cage fighter!

An SIV course is thoroughly recommended ! ...

80km in Greifenburg Austria

2009-05-22T04:21:00.000-07:00

The weather has been pretty awful in the UK with a constant low pressure system hanging around giving high winds. So after looking at the forecast for Austria I decided to pop over to try and do some big triangle flights in Greifenburg with Trias a Scottish pilot. I had my mind set on a classic 115km triangle and so went to the take off in Embergeralm to have a go at it. This is the first time I'd been here and was pleasantly suprised with the setup; a nice take off area and next to it a place to have coffee and cake. You have to pay a small fee for this convenience but it was money well spent I felt. The main landing area in the valley is similarly setup and although there is no cable car there is a regular navette or minibus service that takes you to launch for 5 Euros. So I managed to fly two sides of my triangle for a total distance of 80km but the last leg was difficult and so I landed near a train station to make an easy retrieve back to the hotel. The cloud base was quite low at about 3200m as we had more humid southwest meteo winds, but with drier easterlies the base can get much higher apparently. It was challenging flying but fun so lets see what the rest of the week has in store. My flight can be seen here

62km from Nant y Moel in SE Wales

2009-05-03T05:35:00.000-07:00

I did a great little 62km flight yesterday from Nant y Moel in SE Wales on one of the rounds of the British Club Challenge. I'd never flown in SE Wales before and was looking forward to flying from a new site, but as soon as I turned up I was doubtful that any decent cross country flights could be made as the sky was grey with a low cloud base. But as I was there for the Dunstable club I persevered and although hard work I managed to pull off a reasonable flight; perhaps even one of the best of the day. My strategy was to stay over the higher ground and away from any sky that looked grey and overcast. This meant I had to glide cross wind in a more northerly direction between climbs, I think most other pilots went further to the south in a more downwind direction. I passed over Merthyr where the British Open hang gliding competition was starting and joined a gaggle of hangies in a climb, probably much to their annoyance. Once high enough I carried on my merry way to get a more peaceful climb a few kilometers downwind only to find several of the hang glider pilots zooming over to join my climb, nice to reciprocate the favour! The rest of the flight was the usual mix of glides, getting low and climbing out. But when past Abergavenny I was faced with the choice of which way to fly to get past an airspace restriction, the D-147 danger area which is the Madley Satellite Earth Station I could clearly see from the air. I chose to fly north of it as the sky looked better, but it was the wrong decision and the one that put me on the ground. I landed in a sheep filled field and a nice lady drove me to the nearest village where I waited in the pub for my retrieve (Thanks Steve and Tanya).

Tracklog can be seen here or here.

A Great Time in the French Alps

2009-04-29T02:01:00.000-07:00

Yours truly in restitution with Mont Blanc behind. Photos by Tom Payne

So after Austria we drove to France and met up with James and Joe who that night persuaded us to 'Ninja camp' in Annecy which involved my drinking a load of wine and sleeping on the ground, not so great for a 40 year old with a recovering back injury. Again Adam and I were a couple of days early for the course so we did a couple of flights one at Planfait in Annecy and another from St Hilare du Touvet.

Tom Payne (2009 X-Alps competitor!) was the organiser of this weeks mountain masterclass and as soon as I met him I realised that he had put a lot of effort in and that I was going to learn a lot from him. He brought along two helpers Toby Colombe (a very experienced local paragliding guide and XC pilot) and Quentin King another XC hound local to the area. We spent considerable time going over maps of the Northern French Alps learning about valley winds and convergence areas and generally getting a good understanding of the aerology of the entire area. The meteo winds were not ideal but they managed to select some great sites to fly from. We did a great little 40km XC from Montlambert which was hard won and very rewarding as well as visiting new sites to me such as Chamoux and Verel. We also flew from Planfait and St Hilare again.

Quite a wierd experience for me was an evening flight from Chamoux where I took off at 7PM and landed at 8:30PM struggling to get down! It was of course restitution or magic lift but I've never had it so strong and smooth; climbing to over 2000m in 2-4 m/s lift without really having to turn was a quite strange experience for me, especially as it was so smooth you could feel the wake turbulence from other gliders.

A fantastic weeks flying and more importantly it has given me the knowledge and confidence to plan some big XC's in the mountains. Thanks to Nicky Moss of Axis Paragliding UK for organising the trip!

Posing again for a Tom Payne photo ...

Zillertal Open 2009

2009-04-28T06:40:00.000-07:00

My first paragliding competition! A bit nervous obviously, mainly because of the start gaggles; the thought of 100+ pilots flying aggressively close together did give me some concern ... Wagga and Nicky both very successful comp pilots (British team) gave me lots of tips and dispelled a few of the nerves I had. Although it was just a local Austrian League comp it was attended by most of the Austrian Team and had a few of the big names there. It was a two task race-to-goal comp on two successive days.

Interestingly I found the race starts not too stressful. Obviously we were all competent pilots and although the flying was close and aggressive everybody was observant and predictable.

The first task was extremely frustating for me as my new Flytec 6030 all singing and dancing comp vario died on me and I was forced to use my backup GPS which I've never bothered to learn to navigate with (duh). So I attempted to learn how to use it mid flight with lots of traffic around me wearing thick gloves, not ideal! It wasn't very successful and I ended up following other pilots around the sky most of the time. This strategy worked some of the time until I flew a few kilometers too far past a turn point to a free flying pilot that wasn't in the comp! The acronym RTFM comes to mind 'Read The Fxxxxxg Manual'. The good news is I did the task and got in to goal, the not so good news is that I went over the goal line in orbit 2000m above the valley floor over an hour after the winner got in! I sheepishly handed in my instrument in the download area and sneaked out before the laughing started. You live an learn.

The second task was much harder and a lot fewer pilots got in to goal, so the fact I only got half way around didn't bother me too much and I got a reasonable amount of distance points. I did however stay up in to the night learning how to use my GPS. I also was keen to fly faster and so pushed on low not taking climbs to their maximum and using a lot of speed bar. Not really the best strategy for the day. Again you live and learn.

Anyway although I only came 37th I did learn heaps about comp flying and am really keen to do more.

Zillertal Open 2009 Results.

A five hour flight (almost)

2009-04-28T04:05:00.000-07:00

Climbing above the Ahorn Spitz (click the image to see the sailplane between my lines).

So this was the first day of the course run by local guide Kelly Farina. We all headed up to the Penkenberg launch where we had a weather briefing and given a 102km task to fly around the local mountains. But conditions were strong with climbs around 6-7 m/s and strong north winds to contend with. Not unexpectedly things were especially rough in the sunny leeside climbs, so much so that only 10km in to the task Kelly cancelled it for safety reasons. Most of the guys soon landed but Kelly, Wagga and Joe heroically carried on trying to take a wider line further out in the valley which was reasonably successful. I was a little disappointed and as I'd already flown to the end of the valley a couple of days previously I decided to go exploring. I had in mind the task of climbing up over the top of the Ahorn Spitz mountain which looked spectacular still in its winter coat. But that was only going to work later in the day when the sun would warm its more west facing slopes (the other obvious faces would have been leeside), I therefore had several hours to kill before I went for it. Not keen to get a kicking by staying in the leeside conditions deep in the western side of the valley I decided to try and soar the north slopes of little side valleys on the more windward eastern side despite the limited solar heating. On the main valley crossing I spotted a lone glider doing exactly what I had in mind and joined it, it was Adam! Together we worked weak little climbs on the Gerlossteinwand. Eventually I got enough height to safely head over the top of its ridge to fly around the corner into the main Zillertal valley where I got a much better climb that took me to cloud base. Now high on the eastern side of the valley I decided to fly south and try to get above the Ahorn ski area which would be my base for an assault on the Ahorn Spitz and also where I could kill some time. Unfortunately whilst climbing out above the ski resort I noticed Adam over a kilometer beneath me struggling to get up and regretted not radioing him about my climb when I left him in the side valley (although to my defence he did look like he was doing ok when I left).

Watching the skiers above the Ahorn Ski Resort

I then just relaxed and waited patiently for the afternoon sun to come around. I'd play little games such as aiming my gliders shadow at the all the people sitting at the tables outside the resort restaurants who would subsequently peer up at me hopefully not too annoyed. I'd also fly close to the cable car when it started its regular journey down in to the valley waving at the skiers. I drank a load of water, ate a bunch of fruit bars, had a leak (no not on the skiers!) and with the sun arriving and feeling refreshed I headed around the base of the Ahorn Spitz to look for a climb. After noticing some cloud forming I connected with a great climb that took me all the way to base; two sailplanes spotted me and joined me in the thermal one just above and one just below. It was great climb and we ascended 1235m (4050ft) in 10 minutes at an average climb rate of around 2 m/s to a max altitude of 3050m (10,000ft). High enough for me to fly close to the iron cross on the summit and see the footprints of climbers. After that I went for a fly up the valley skimming base before finally calling it a day at just under 5 hours flying. A great day out all in all.

Looking east over the Ahorn Spitz

Zillertal Valley, Austria

2009-04-28T03:09:00.000-07:00

Looking north up the Zillertal Valley

Adam heroically managed to do 95% of a 14 hour gruelling drive through the night to a little town in the Zilleral Valley in Austria called Mayrhofen. We had decided to arrive a couple of days early so that we could do some free flying on our own and get used to the spring alpine conditions before the course started. This turned out to be a good decision as the dreaded foehn wind came through later in the week putting a stop to a lot of the flying. There was a moderate southerly wind at altitude so we managed to do a nice 33km flight up to the end of the valley to the north and part way back; the following day we had northerly winds so we ended up doing more of a local flight closer to Mayrhofen. It was great to be flying high over alpine terrain again.

Axis Mountain Masterclass 2009

2009-04-28T02:40:00.000-07:00

I've done quite a lot of flying in the month or so since my last post. Thanks mostly to being selected for the Axis Mountain Masterclasses "intensive courses aimed at developing alpine flying skills with a strong focus on mountain cross country; including aerology, route planning and cross country decision making".

As I had limited internet access on the road I will follow this up with a few separate posts covering the highlights of the trip.

Spring Cleaning

2009-03-24T12:35:00.000-07:00

video by Markus Kinch

We have had a surprisingly good period of weather locally this last week and so I've managed to get out a few times and do a bit of flying and sort out my kit for the big Alpine flights coming up in April. Spring is most definitely here and the thermals have awoken from their winter sleep. I even managed to do my first cross country flight of the season from Chinnor, not exactly a huge flight but nice all the same. We had quite a strong temperature inversion which meant that I could only climb up to about 700m (2300ft) in the thermals but this was enough to get me to West Wycombe which is close to the London Air Traffic Management Area [LTMA] although I think there might have been scope to take a more northerly direction to get a bit further but it wasn't really the day for it. But most of all it gave me a chance to try out the modifications to my harness as I've put in new ratchet pulleys (as used in dinghy sailing) and also installed a three step speed bar. Together these modifications have taken the load from my legs that I was suffering from last year in headwind transitions when on bar.

I also tested out my reserve system at the Thames Valley Club 'Big Fat Repack' by sliding down a zip line from the top of Reading sports centre and deploying my rescue parachute. It all worked fine and opened reassuringly quickly. I then carefully repacked it all back in the harness, lets hope I don't have to use it for real ...

A big thanks to Markus Kinch our local veteran hang gliding pilot for making nice videos of the days flying.

video by Markus Kinch

The 2009 Flying Season is Almost Here

2009-02-26T02:05:00.000-08:00

Photo by Markus Kinch

Well it’s been a while since my last entry. Not a lot has been happening flying wise as apart from being in the cold and wet European winter I’ve also been steadily recovering from my accident that occurred in Bassano at the end of last year. Thankfully I’m almost back to normal with just some residual pain that should slowly diminish with the aid of a bit of physiotherapy and time. There has been some local flying though and especially nice were the soaring flights over the Chiltern Hills in Oxfordshire after the unusual winter snow. Everything magically came together to give us a great winter day out with fresh snow, sun and the wind at the right strength in the right direction.

You can’t start the year without some free flight goals and so this year I’ve made some. So in no particular order here they are:

(1) Get through the year accident free!
(2) Do an SIV (Simulation d'Incident en Vol) course.
(3) Get better at ground handling and kiting my wings.
(4) Enter 6 qualifying flights in the British XC league.
(5) Get a 100+ km XC flight in somewhere.
(6) Put at least 100 hours flying in.
(7) Enter a paragliding competition.
(8) Fly a classic route in Europe that I haven't done yet.
(9) Fly somewhere big again – Hindu Kuch, Pamirs, Karakorums etc.
(10) Attempt a small vol-bivouac trip somewhere.

I don’t expect to get them all (I’ll try very hard to get the first one in), but it’s nice to have something to aim for. I already have plans in the pipeline that should address at least some of them. I'm looking forward to it!

Video by Markus Kinch

Bassano: Low saves, Fun and an Accident

2008-10-21T04:42:00.000-07:00

Straight after the Dolomites we went for a week to Bassano (Italy just 50 km northwest of Venice) and stayed in Tillys in Semonzo just below the Monte Grappa ridge, famous in free flying circles. Every day was flyable and some days the thermals were quite strong 2 to 6 m/s, not bad for October.

The picture above shows three flights (red, green and yellow) that I made during the week. They all start out cruising along the thermic ridge and end up pushing out in to the very stable flats later in the afternoon when they start to work. Although no huge distances were flown the highlight for me were some of the amazing low saves that I managed to pull off, at some points climbing out to cloudbase from only a hundred metres or so above the ground. A flight is always more memorable when you have to work hard to stay up.

However it wasn’t all good news. I managed to fracture my back (T11 vertebrae) doing a silly mistimed swoop landing into the Garden Relais landing field. Amazingly, I was being X-rayed less than an hour after the incident and I'd like to thank everyone who helped out. I spent 3 days in hospital in Castelfranco Veneto and am now back in the UK looking forward to a month in a back brace. Unfortunately I’m supposed to be flying in India now but I had to cancel obviously, it'll be there next year. Needless to say a lesson was learnt.

Aerial photo of me being stretchered into the ambulance.

This is probably the last trip/flight of the year. Lets hope next season is as good, barring accidents!

Paragliding in the Italian Dolomites

2008-10-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

September 28th, 2008.

The Dolomites are one of the best flying sites in Europe but they are only flyable for six weeks a year. There must have been over two hundred gliders on the Col Rodella take-off with paragliders, hang gliders and rigid wings setting up everywhere. Pilots were fighting for a space to launch and out in front the house thermal looked frantic with sixty plus gliders circling in close proximity. It was quite frankly a zoo.

The task for the day was a simple 23km circuit flying over some of the main peaks of the area, the Sasso Lungo, Sella Group and Marmolada. Although it was a stable day the conditions seemed unusually turbulent and it quickly became evident that the sunny south faces were in the lee as the north wind had strengthened quite a bit. Kelly came on the radio asking us to be careful as he had already witnessed a hang glider tumble and a paraglider pilot almost falling into his canopy, not good to hear. Adam and I pretty much did the route, both getting to the Marmolada and both getting drilled in the strong valley wind to land a couple of kilometers short of the main landing field in Campitello. Flying at over 3000m gave some spectacular views of the Dolomites.

September 29th, 2008.

The Rosen Garten was our first objective today. It was even more stable than yesterday but with much less of the troublesome north wind. However, we did have strong temperature inversions and climbing out was tricky. Only Adam and I managed to break through the inversion to get above the main peaks and needles of the Rosen Garten. Later both Kevin and Adam managed to find that elusive strong climb and get back above the Sasso Lungo and then stay above the inversion while the rest of us slowly tired of the traffic beneath it, finally giving up for a nice beer at the landing field.

The next few days we had a lot of high level wind with a low cloud base and so cross country flights were definitely out. Instead we went for a boat about above the aerials west of the Col Rodella launch a few times.

Mont Blanc, September 2008

2008-09-25T10:45:00.000-07:00

Well what a trip! Unsuccessful but fun none the less. The plan was simple, climb the highest mountain in Western Europe (Mont Blanc, 4808m) and fly off the summit with paragliders. I'd already climbed to the summit and flown off (Dôme du Goûter) almost 20 years previously and wanted to have another go but the mountain had other ideas ...

So Andrew, Jay, Hoppy, Chris and I had a bash but the weather just wasn't cooperating at all. We decided to climb the 'Normal Route' which is a non technical route which ascends up via the Goûter ridge, Dôme du Goûter, Bosses Ridge to the summit. But it was windy, windy, windy. Ascending up to the Goûter ridge was more like an ice climb as snow had recently fallen and was all the way down to the tramway station. Needless to say that there were loads of spaces in the normally packed Tête Rousse and Goûter huts as the weather forecast was not the best. Andrew entertained us by teaching us various card games and Jay brought the whisky ... Boy it was cold, really cold.

When the summit morning came at 3am we all set off without our gliders to have a summit attempt. Did I say it was windy? Yes it was really windy. We trudged up to about 4300m just below the Dôme du Goûter but had to turn back due to the wind and the fact we couldn't feel our hands and feet anymore.

Great fun with the lads and we did get to fly our gliders a few times although not from the summit. Congratulations to Jay and Tom for getting to the summit a week later. They and Hoppy even managed to fly from the Goûter ridge!

French Alps - July 2008

2008-07-11T00:21:00.000-07:00

I’ve been really keen to do the ‘out and return’ cross country flight from Chamonix to Annecy via ‘La chaîne des Aravis’, it's an obvious 40km mountain chain connecting the two regions. It looks to be a spectacular flight and it's on my must do list. So I popped over to France for a few days to see if I could attempt it and also get used to my new glider an Axis Vega-II. Unfortunately the meteo wind together with a low cloud base made for difficult cross country flying, so I was forced to be happy just to poodle about locally in each region.
I managed to get over 11 hours of flying on my new wing in just three days and I’ve definitely fallen in love with her. She climbs really well, has nice flat turns, great sink rate and a good glide; what more could you ask? I guess I’ll have to leave the Chamonix to Annecy run for another time ...

Pakistan May/June 2008

2008-06-30T07:05:00.000-07:00

From an early age I had always been fascinated with the big mountain ranges of Northern Pakistan with those exotic names like the Pamirs, Karakoram and Hindu Kush. I loved to read about the various climbing expeditions visiting these high and remote regions and I’d imagine scaling their 8000m peaks like K2 and Nanga Parbat. In the last few years I began to hear about the exploits of pioneering paragliding pilots in this region and again dreamed to go and experience it for myself, albeit this time at the slightly older age of 40.

But those stories of extreme bivouac trips, flying at hypoxic altitudes in some of the strongest conditions and remote places on the planet were a little intimidating to say the least. But then an American pilot called Brad Sander came to my attention, he had been doing some great flying in the area last year and I began to see that perhaps mere mortals like me could also visit. So with a sense of adventure and more than a little trepidation off I went for a month long flying trip to Northern Pakistan!

In less than 12 hours of travelling I was in a jeep with Brad bouncing along the famous Karakorum highway looking up at the glistening ice covered mountain of Rakaposhi (25,550ft) on my right. I recalled gasping when I first saw this video of John Silvester’s incredible flight over this monster mountain a few years back. We arrived in Karimabad nestled amongst the stunning scenery of the Hunza Valley. In our hotel I met up with John Silvester, Eddie Colfox and Alun Hughes coincidently there to do a bivouac trip along the fabled silk route and also a Canadian mountain man and pilot called Josh. I was in great company and I had the feeling that this was going to be a special trip.

And so it was, I flew higher than I had ever flown before getting height gains of over 3000m (~10,000ft) above take off. With launch altitudes sometimes above 3600m (~12,000ft) it meant that occasionally we were still climbing at over 6700m (~22,000ft)! Brad and I had organised oxygen but I found it a little cumbersome to use and often flew without it. Needless to say I felt a little hypoxic at times and absolutely exhausted after only a few hours of flying. Generally the conditions were strong and sometimes quite turbulent, but it was manageable with a good dose of active flying. I also experienced my strongest climbs with an average of over 8 m/s (~1500 ft/min) and peaks of well over 10m/s (~2000 ft/min); if I wasn’t too close to the terrain then it didn’t bother me too much. That said, getting the first good thermals of the day still needed a fair amount of scratching and sometimes, more often than I’d like to admit, I’d lose it and land after only 10 minutes of flying. As it can be a long jeep ride or even a multiple hour uphill slog back to launch it is not something you want to do too often.

There is an incredible amount of relatively safe cross country potential here for an experienced mountain pilot. Virtually all of it is virgin territory as there are only a handful of local pilots and very few visiting ones. There really doesn’t have to be any flying over really dangerous terrain, places where you cannot glide to get a good landing. You can pick conservative routes that follow ridges and valleys close to roads and rivers. There are plenty of villages that you can glide to if you bomb out and all the people are incredibly friendly, they will often offer you tea and food and welcome you into their homes. If you want inspiration then last week Brad just completed a fantastic and relatively safe flight of 249km from Booni to Hunza, a 9 hour epic to heights over 25,000ft. So it looks like he broke a lot of records with that flight and I'd be happy with something much more modest.

On one memorable cross country I flew into a valley and was flushed to the ground in big sink, so I chose a beach next to the river to land on that was close to a small village. Unfortunately I got hit with a bit of rotor and landed ungracefully in a small prickly bush. I just lay there on the sand for a while, exhausted, hot from multiple layers of clothes and other paraphernalia. Suddenly a man, still covered in shaving foam, came running down to help me and checked me over for injuries. With the help of other villagers he organised everybody and got my glider out of its prickly predicament, packed it and carried it up to where Brad had expertly landed. After watching both of us land, one of the villagers, with a wry smile asked if I was untrained! Humour is universal as they say.

This trip for me was an exploratory one, testing out gear for high altitude flying, getting to know the area and its potential. This is a place that I will visit often, not only for the flying but also to visit the friendly people and to seek out its breathtaking scenery.

Thanks to Brad for his help during this trip (and for providing the photos of me flying on this page).