| Flight details: | This was the third day of my week in Greifenburg with Kelly Farina of Austrian Arena. Sunday was a bit of local flying; on Monday, after a windy start (which didn't stop some of the locals) we waited until the afternoon, and then had a good cruise around the valley, with Robert Smith completing a 40k flat triangle. Tuesday was forecast to be the big one...
We're staying at a guesthouse high up on the mountain, above launch, and soon after 10 we saw a couple of paragliders climbing slowly past our terrace. With a stronger west wind than predicted, Kelly was in no hurry to get into the air. While we waited at launch, I counted more than 30 hang gliders ready or being assembled. By noon, gliders were staying up reliably, so off we went - me first, and after gliding out a little way I found a climb that took me to base behind launch at about 2600.
While the rest of the group took a little while to catch up, I set off on glide to the west -- the plan was to reach a turnpoint 16k along the ridge, then come back and go east of launch, cross to the south of the valley, and down to the landing field for 60k.
The glide was quite buoyant -- taking me to the fringes of the excellent clouds -- and on it I saw Robert on his Aspen 4 catching me up, with the rest not far behind. Climbs were plentiful, the headwind light, and things looked good (although I did get a frontal to keep me awake). A couple of km from the turnpoint I got a bit close to the big power lines, according to some helpful advice later from Wolfgang, who as well as our host at the Fichtenhieml is a very experienced hang glider pilot -- his weather predictions have proved spot on. But over I went, climbed again with Robert and Simon, and made the turnpoint (Roger Turner and I had set our GPSs to a generous 1 km radius!)
The first couple of kilometres of the return journey were a bit of an ordeal; strong climbs with fierce edges, another frontal followed by a nastier asymmetric, and then Kelly's comment |
