The forecast was good – blue but unstable, with SW winds, which would increase later. They set an ambitious 101km task, which most of us were pretty excited about. Launch opened as soon as they could in case it got too windy on take-off. Since it was a three kilometer exit cylinder around launch, I didn’t think there was a great rush to be off, so I took off 20 mins before the race start. I got the best start ever. I was higher than everyone and set off just after the gun and got the first turn point with the lead gaggle. I have never been in the lead gaggle before, so it was pretty exhilarating. We all sped back to the Montsec de Ares ridge to get high before crossing the gorge to the Monsec de Rubia ridge. You can go along the lower ridge, but if you have enough height, then the higher ridge is the safer one. By the time I got the height to cross others were already ahead of me and I could see Kirsty and another pilot ridge soaring up the ridge.

I dropped onto the higher ridge, but far from soaring along it, I slid down the rocks. This put me and Klaudia Bulgakow in the dip between the ridges, where the air is pretty dead. A French pilot managed to work a broken thermal and get up, but I was too close to the rocks and was half in and half out of it. Eventually I had no option but to fly back to the end of the ridge and fly around the front of the lower ridge, loosing height all the time. There are no landing fields round there (in fact there is only one landing field in that area and I was miles from it), so my options were getting limited. I could land in a car park in the mouth of the gorge, but I assumed there would be a very strong venturi effect there, and if I got it wrong, there would only be the road or the river. There were two small clearings in the trees, so I chose the higher as my plan A and would use the other, slightly larger one as my plan B. It was a tiny clearing and I brushed a small tree with my body coming in, but landed unceremoniously, but ok. Klaudia radioed me to check I was ok and I ran to watch her land in the bigger clearing below, not envying her having to put down a comp wing in such a small sloping space. She had to stall the wing before she overshot, but landed unharmed. I packed up and then tried to walk to the dirt road I could see along the mountain. I had landed on old overgrown terracing, so kept having to find the edge where the path was, since the walled drops were too big climb down with the paraglider on. I eventually got down to the path and then walked down to Klaudia. By the time I got there I was pretty hot and tired, since it is about 37C here. We called for retrieve and then waited. To make a long story short, it took some hours of waiting and then a long 4×4 adventure higher up the mountain to get Emma and Sophie, before getting back to HQ four and a half hours after I landed. I was hot, headachy and dehydrated, so got a few liters of water down me and then off to bed.

Today’s task has changed the leader board – Laurie landed after a few kms and Kirsty is now winning the comp. Ruth had the hardest flight of her life, but came third today, landing only 5km from goal.

P.S. last night’s kayaking was a hoot. We got there and were all allocated a single or double kayak. I went out with Jordi, the comp medic, and soon the lake was filled with the sound of giggling, singing and people playing kayak dodgems. Once we were out on the lake, it was magical in the full moon light. We caught up with others who had gone into a side arm of the lake and got drenched by the boys who just can’t resist a water fight. At 12pm, we decided it was time to head back, so we set off. The only problem was that the guys on shore had switched off all the car lights and we couldn’t find the jetty. Calling them didn’t help… there was nobody answering. We eventually found the cars and everyone was either chucked in or splashed so much that we were drenched. But on getting out of the lake, we found the vans abandoned and no rescue boat in sight. With everyone now cold and shivering, we decided we needed to get back and dry. My spare clothes were mostly wet, but at least I had a dry pair of shorts. The vans luckily had keys in them, so we commandeered one of them and set off. It’s such a heap of old junk it couldn’t get up any inclines and every time we came to a hill we all had to get out and walk and/or push the van. Bearing in mind that most of the women were in underwear, we made quite a sight. We got back at 1am.

Turns out that the organiser guys had come back in the rescue boat after we had left, counted the kayaks and realised three people were missing, so had to search the lake to find them, while we were all off to bed!

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