Mens

The forecasts for today were hard to interpret After some head scratching, I headed to Mens with 3 other pilots (Rod, Chris and Johan). Mens is on the north side of the Col de la Croix Haute - this marks the divide between the Southern Alps and the rest of the Alps (and often, the good and the bad weather). But it is relatively sheltered from N winds and we reckoned it would work today (as the Mistral slowly ran out of steam).

Mens is a lovely village as well as a flying site; we had a nice lunch there before heading up to launch. There we found at least 40 pilots; the local club competes in a club XC league and the idea was that all members would fly 20 Km, thus winning the comp for the local club. This seemed good news for us foreigners - the locals thought this was the place to fly today!

Alas, this wasn't the case. There was a strong inversion; it rose as the day went on, but it limited my flying to 1800m (6,000 ft). At least 2 of the club members got through the inversion, but most pilots were flying around launch height. With the number of pilots and lack of lift, things got interesting - I seemed to find several mini-gaggles where 4 pilots were turning left and 4 were turning right.

After around 1 hour, my three companions had landed and I flew out to join them. Just before the LZ, I found one weak thermal and decided to take it for practise - I rode it for 2,000 feet, with weak 50ft/min gradually getting stronger. It was my most enjoyable climb of the day.

Not the greatest of flying, but Mens is a very scenic site and the local club members were very friendly.

Tracklog -> http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/261764

Pics -> http://picasaweb.google.com/DMMullin/Mens30August#