The very cold weather has continued, with overnight temperatures around -15C and below freezing all day. The big dump of snow we had at the start of the week is still fluffy white powder. Saturday morning was cold, sunny and clear - what to do?
Success is never sure for a hike and fly in the snow. The hike can be quite a challenge in itself and there's no guarantee you'll be able to launch in deep snow. The winds are also more fickle than in summer, with stronger winds above the boundary layer and less anabatic wind to overcome an inconvenient meteo wind direction. Added to that, Aeroweb's flying forecast mentioned the possibility of turbulence. Despite all that, I couldn't resist a snow shoe hike and fly on Chalvet; if flying wasn't possible, I'd just hike down!
With lightweight gear, I normally get to the west launch in 90 minutes. Today, it took very nearly 4 hours! The snow was lovely but very deep and, even with snow shoes, it was very hard work. I was the first person on the mountain since the snow fall; the only tracks I saw all day were animal tracks. Brushing a tree could result in snow pouring down the back of your neck. Some trees were like spring loaded traps; you'd brush them, the show would fall off and they'd jump up and whack you.
Eventually I got to the W launch and got my gear ready and stamped out a runway. There was a little breeze so I knew I could inflate my speedwing, but could I run fast enough to get airborne? If I couldn't, I would struggle to get back down before dark. Fortunately I managed to scrape into the air.
The LZ was a completely featureless huge white field. As I set up on final, I realized I had no way of telling my altitude. I was wondering how high I was when I realized I was on the ground. Not the most elegant landing!
My speedwing is drying in the spare bedroom and today was a lot of hiking for very little flying, but a very memorable day! A few pics
No comments:
Post a Comment