Saturday, February 16, 2013

Getting cold feet


Although you get good flying in the winter in St Andre, it's a bit of an acquired taste. You've got to overcome the snow to get to launch, fly by yourself over daunting terrain (no-one else is crazy enough to do it) and - of course - endure the cold. Apart from that, it's a barrel of laughs…

The forecast was for some good flying this weekend and I haven't had much air-time recently, so I decided to brave the elements on Saturday. I tried to avoid the worst of the snow by going up the west side of the mountain (from Moriez) but there was still plenty of it. I arrived at launch with damp feet, had a chilly lunch and launched into a stiff breeze. 

There was lift everywhere and initially it was quite pleasant to boat around. I headed N to the Allier, but my feet got cold, and at around 2000m I lost interest in getting higher. I came back to land at Moriez and, as I lost altitude, my feet got warmer. By the time I decided to stay up for a little longer, I was well below launch height over the valley, but it was easy to get back to launch. I found if I stayed around launch height, my feet were ok and the flying was quite pleasant. So I boated around for a while - spending more time looking for sink than lift - before landing after about 1 hour 30 minutes.

If I have got Google+ to do what Picasa used to do, there should be pics here