Friday, 9th April 2010
Posted by Judith on 10 Apr 2010 at 09:03 am | Tagged as: Flying
Lots of agonising this morning about where to go. David T. thought Snowdonia would be the place to be, with light winds, better cloudbase and mountains to play with. Elan Valley was also a possibility, but after phone calls to half the population of Wales we decided on the Glydders. Martin and Mick decided to come along too.
There was high cloud when we got there, but there seemed to be a blue hole developing over the site. Two pilots had managed to scratch up and were high above the top, sporadically pushing forward or to the west. David set us a triangle task of Glydders – Llanberis – Snowdon and back. He got straight in the air while the rest of us where still getting our breath back from the walk up. He got up and started to test the air, while everyone launching subsequently struggled to get above launch and had to bottom or slope land. I got off and had a valiant scratch, but couldn’t turn in any thermals because I was just too close to the ground. I managed to slope land just below launch, so I got a second chance.
Meanwhile, David came down for a revised task briefing. The wind was flowing up all three valleys so it was going to be tricky to do our triangle, so the new task was get up and see what’s possible – which by a lucky coincidence is the standard task I normally set myself. Since David seemed to have trouble getting down to top land, the conditions were obviously lifty, so Geoff launched and easily got up. John Sylvester, me and another pilot followed and it was a hard, slow scratch up the face. I worked my way into the bowl, but spotted David thermalling out front, so I skipped 400 feet of scratching by jumping into his lift. We eventually got over the top of the ridge and what stunning views! Snowdon, the sea, steep valleys. It was just breathtaking.
High cloud came back in and it was a big rough in places and I decided I didn’t have the height to jump onto the ridge behind, so we decided to try to fly to Capel Curig and beyond. The valley wind had set up, so the ridge didn’t really work, but we got blips on the way down and I managed to thermal off the end and onto the next ridge, but from there it was either get up high or land with the others outside the pub. Prospects for a thermal looked bad and beer looked very good, so I flew down to land with Geoff and David.
Mick, Martin and John Thompson came along and we had drinks and then coffee and scones with jam and cream. Lovely.
Geoff writes: we should have gone to Elan Valley. At least one person went XC from there, and in light SW, it seems a much better bet for a good XC than Snowdonia does. We’ll definitely go there on a similar forecast in the future. Shorter drive too.
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