Sneaked Flight

A surprise this morning - low clouds and we can't see the mountain. We know this will burn off, but still it's a bit of shock. All forecasts indicate bad weather coming in from the NW - the issue is when and how bad (e.g. showers or storms). Not a day when the locals chose to fly; I had missed yesterday, tomorrow didn't look great, so I thought I'd maybe sneak in a short flight.

I went up with one other pilot, Chris. Launch was clear but the cloud base in the Buech valley was below launch. All the peaks we would normally fly over had very low clouds over them. There was a thick layer of cirrus or alto-cumulus stopping the sun from doing its job. No other pilots on the hill. Hardly encouraging.

The surrounding clouds lifted a little, Chris launched and sank out. I was going to drive down, but noticed the clouds were a little higher on the nearby peaks. I launched into a thermal, quickly climbed 1,400 feet but was then being squeezed by clouds and headed N. On the next peak, the same problem - a low cloud. So I decided to try the valley, but that didn't work. So I flew back towards Laragne to minimize the retrieve, landed and got a couple of lifts back to HQ. There I borrowed a bike and went up and retrieved the car - it was a DHV1 bike but a DHV0 rider!

In fact, the bad weather never really arrived; after I landed base continued to rise and if I'd launched 30 or 45 minutes later I might have had a much better flight. Anyway, not a great day, but not too bad either.

Tracklog -> http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/263923