A five hour flight (almost)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.