| Flight details: | Phil Ettinger and I had had a pleasant but un-epic week at St Andre, flying five days of out six (I went up a local via ferrata on the windy day). The pleasantness was marred by a fatal crash which Phil witnessed when a pilot suffered a collapse low on the slopes of the Cheval Blanc.
Our final day, Friday, was forecast to be nothing special, with climbs to 2100 metres or so, but a nice light and westerly breeze. After a difficult start, with pilots distributed at ridge height north from launch, it got a bit better. The Lambrousse ridge was even more crowded than launch had been, with a lot of confusion about which way each mini-gaggle was thermalling, but eventually I found enough height to head over the back towards Cordeil.
I arrived (by luck) at the rim of the plateau at exactly the right place and time to find the big climb that a few others were scratching in search of -- although I knew something was there, as white-and-blue lightweight Ozone wing was already in orbit above the mountain. I thermalled up chased by a green Delta 2, who caught me eventually. We headed to the summit of Cordeil, where the Delta and two vultures found the really big one -- we were rocketed up fast but not unpleasantly to 2950. I wondered about heading downwind to see how far I might get -- Italy, maybe? -- but it was the last day, and I fancied flying back to town. So I set off for the Crete des Serres.
My mistake was taking a straight line, rather than going over Maurel, which my friend Dieter did shortly afterwards. My sink rate wasn't much worse, but he was vastly faster, as I hit the valley wind on the Crete's north-west face. But I managed to scrape round on to the west face, where staying up became easy. Dieter pushed right down to the south end, but halfway along I decided to find out whether I could make it back to launch to complete a triangle. A couple of minor climbs over town did the trick, and Dieter and I reached take-off together. With the wind switching occa |
