Escaping the Mistral

Meteo Blue and Aeroweb are the two forecasts I most use here, and they both had Saturday being good for flying at St Andre. In fact, Meteo Blue's forecast looked epic. But the Mistral had returned and I thought it would be too windy and turbulent, so I decided to go to Montclar. It escapes the worst effects of the Mistral, you take a chairlift up to launch, it's lovely and a relatively simple place to fly.

Unfortunately, at this time of year it's a 1hr 30 drive to get there (tourists...). And when I arrived I discovered that the chairlift isn't open on a Saturday. It was a close decision whether to just walk up or to go to St Vincent les Forts; I decided to do the latter.

St Vincent and Montclar are both on the same mountain (the Dormilliouse). If conditions are decent, most flight plans start by getting above the Dormilliouse. But there are a lot of differences. Montclar has a huge launch area, is higher and is a thermal site; even in a competition it doesn't feel very busy. St Vincent is a drive up site, launch is tiny, when the Mistral blows it gets very busy and most flights start with quite a bit of ridge soaring until a thermal arrives. Top landing right beside launch is the standard approach at St Vincent and all this is in the center of the village; so there are lots of spectators and lots of professional tandem pilots. In fact, it feels like a little bit of the Northern Alps that has escaped south.

I was one of the first pilots to arrive. There was clearly plenty of wind and staying up would not be a problem. I had a nice early flight but conditions were pretty weak - it's a west facing site and starts working relatively late. Most people were ridge soaring just above launch height; I found a slow thermal that got me half-way up the Dormilliouse but then it fizzled out. I decided to top land and wait for conditions to strengthen.

Conditions were much easier on my second flight and I managed to get above the Dormilliouse. The views were absolutely stunning but I didn't get photographs to do them justice (too bumpy for manual photos, my helmet cam was 'full'). At this point, a standard flight heads SSE along a ridge; but that was exactly downwind and the strong wind would complicate logistics. So I flew out from the peak and completed a nice little triangle before top-landing.

I would have taken a third flight, but the wind was slightly stronger. The number of pilots, the relative inexperience of some, the tricky launch conditions and the small size of launch were all great for the spectators. But they resulted in a long wait for anyone wanting to launch and a few anxious moments. I decided it wasn't worth the risk or the wait.

There actually was a petanque competition going on just by the landing area. One pilot's top-landing attempt went a bit awry and he landed in the middle of game. No-one was hurt, but I couldn't help wondering what the petanque rules say about such an event....

As I suspected, the only flights at St Andre were early morning sled rides, so I felt it was worth the trip.

First flight
Second flight
Some pics
Info on St Vincents