More Laragne

There has been a lot of rain in the last two days (fortunately in the evening, so we've been able to sneak in some flying). This is limestone country, so there are very few oveground rivers (most drainage happens underground). The river (La Meouge) below the local flying site (La Chabre) has been transformed from a blue river into a muddy torrent. Kids still play in it, but they emerge covered in mud.

The rain left the ground humid and this seemed to cause some huge cumulus clouds very early. We went up La Chabre and the wind was very slightly from the North; you can launch to the North, but it's hard to find a thermal there. We decided to try to fly a triangle and to head W. The wind became more neutral as we waited and it was obvious we could launch over the S side. I did a reverse, I think everyone else did a forward and there were weak climbs available.

The big problem turned out to be the clouds; there were monster clouds around, base was low at around 2100 meters, ridge height is around 1350 meters. So you had to operate in a pretty narrow band; I had to work hard at the end of couple of climbs to stay in clear air. Over the ridges, there were enough thermals to make progress easy - away from the ridges it was much tougher, especially if it shaded out. We flew W, then S and tried to get head back E, but almost everyone sank out within a couple of Km of each other. Two people manage to 'properly close the triangle', I just couldn't quite reach the climb to make that connection - a sunny ridge where everything else was shaded.

Later in the day we went to a 'glass-off' site to the west; but it wasn't quite soarable - except for a local tandem pilot flying with a four year old child!

A really interesting day's flying....

Tracklog -> http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/260077