Monday, July 12, 2010

Escape from Lambruisse

I left Etienne (my son) in bed and sneaked away for a flight. The ride up on the shuttle was quick, but there wasn't much action on launch. It looked like a slow day and I launched towards the end, but didn't have too much trouble finding lift. Clouds were building from the S, so heading N was the obvious thing to do.

Everything went pretty quickly until Lambruisse. I had a glider ahead of me and a little higher and I saw that he was in huge sink; so I took a route further to the W but found myself in monster sink too. I managed to get into the slope above the village and at least escaped the worst of the sink. There were some little bubbles of lift in the sink and I concentrated on working them as best I could. I saw another glider land as I went from slowly descending, to maintaining and then very slowly climbing. After about 5 minutes things improved to the point when I could do a full 360 in weak lift.

A few minutes later I was back at ridge height, wondering what to do next. I decided to head to the Grand Cordeil, hoping for a return to St Andre. I really wanted to get high here, because I had to fight a strong wind to get back. But, despite arriving well above the peak, I couldn't find any decent lift; by the time I was level with the peak I decided to try another approach and headed N and cross the Thorame valley.

My intent was to get high on the other side of the valley and then head N to Allos. But this didn't work either and I ended up landing at Thorame Haute and taking the petit train back to St Andre.

I tried two things at the Grand Cordeil, and neither worked. This left me wondering if I was too indecisive; maybe if I had committed to one route or the other, I'd have found the lift I needed. But, I have to say, I was very happy with my flight - especially working my way back up at Lambruisse.

Etienne was up by the time I was home and we headed down to the lake for a swim!

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