Thursday, 2nd September 2010 (France)
Posted by Judith on 03 Sep 2010 at 10:53 am | Tagged as: Competitions, Flying, France
Feeling better, I decided to go up the hill with everyone. The reports from yesterday’s task were scary. The task was up in the high mountains, past the Cheval Blanc and back. Another blue day, the height gains were impressive, but this also meant people were climbing through the inversion and shear layers. By the end of the task, the incident count was five reserve deployments, including Mark Hayman, who has a stable fracture of a vertebrae and has broken a wing off the same bone. He’s walking and not in a brace, but will not be able to fly the rest of the comp. There were two other incidents, with Kirsty and another pilot in trees. Conditions were described from ok to ‘fruity’. Having only witnessed one parachute deployment in 15 years of flying, I think this is a little excessive. I prefer to do my SIV courses separately from my XC flying and I really don’t like how wild this place is and how strongly the valley winds blow.
So today, we got up in the early bus and then the wind was strong over the back. We assumed it would come more on with the thermals, but even when the window opened, it was still often 90 degrees off and people were launching from the south take-off, whilst we were on the west. The launch conditions did come good and everyone got off safely.
The task today was out front in the valley, where you could just about see the turn points. I was much more relaxed about it and set off reasonably early and got straight into a thermal. The trick with the start was to place yourself downwind of the first turn point, which is the other side of the valley. So you do the hard work getting across the valley (via a top up ridge), and getting high, in the hour before the race starts. I got to 8500’ and got onto the top up ridge easily. Others were marking a thermal that would get us over to the ridge we needed to be on. It was all going fine, when the guy in front of me had a big blow-out and lost most of his wing. Since I was heading in the same direction, I assumed I would be hit by the same turbulence. I didn’t have the stomach for it, and turned away. On thinking about it, if I was free-flying, I would not have taken off in the middle of the day, not chosen to fly where we were and not chosen to fly in an area I feel so out of my depth. This competition is all about pushing myself so far out of my comfort zone that I am actually not enjoying the flying in the slightest. And in that case, why am I doing it? Decision made, I flew down to the landing field to have a day off. I’m in danger of scaring myself to the extent that it will have an adverse affect on my confidence, and given how great I felt after Ager, I don’t want to do that. I feel that the main thing I would learn here is to push myself beyond my point of fear and I already know I can do that. So I’m done with the comp. From now on it’s just fun evening flying and a holiday. I’m much happier now.
There was another parachute deployment during the task, and although people said it was mellower, I’m still pleased I just did my little hop.
No photos… too scared to take my hands off the brakes. I hope to take some in a nice evening flight.
11 Responses to “Thursday, 2nd September 2010 (France)”
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I’m sorry you’re not having a great time flying in St Andre, Judith. I live here, and I’m not going to say you’re wrong to feel as you do. I think it’s a relatively complicated place to fly (and I’m not speaking as an expert), but I don’t think it is more dangerous that other places (I think all places are dangerous, unfortunately).
I don’t know why there were so many deployments the other day, but I suspect at least some of the risk factors were avoidable. Anyway, hope you end up with a nice stay here – whether you fly the comp or not!
I’ve had some truly epic flying in St Andre. But also some very scary flying. In every comp I have flown there, there have been incidents caused by the strong turbulence. Rocky mountains, tight valleys, very strong sunshine and meteo wind don’t make good bedfellows! I think the landing area next to the lake is not in a safe place, as it’s at a valley junction, and a strong breeze can suddenly come up the lake in the afternoon.
My view is that there are much safer places in the area to base a comp than St Andre. Lachens seems a safer bet to me. And I’ve never really understood why Laragne isn’t used more for paragliding comps, as it is safer than St Andre … less intimidating terrain, weaker valley winds, and wide open valleys with good landing options. And on a good day, it is possible to fly from there into the bigger mountains, including those around St Andre!
St Andre is still an absolutely incredible place to fly though, if you can choose your days ….
Andy
i don’t know much about this. but you’ve done a hell of a lot lately and you’re prob quite tired, physicaly and emotionaly. you’re right to go on instinct. i think you’ve done brill this summer- so enjoy yourself
Well done Judith ,good call . No point flying if you’re gonna scare the crap out of yourself after all don’t we do this for enjoyment?
I remember flying in St Andre a few years back , a group of our guys went off in the peak of the day and hey presto , four reserve throws and a bunch of my mates needing clean pants, ha , ha , glad i didn’t fly till later.
A great place but deserves a lot of respect.
Have fun and fly safe.
Hi Judith,
Indeed a good call.
Thought i’d add a bit of a ramble…
Knowing when not to fly is a pilots greatest skill.. St Andre is an intimidating area to fly requiring a plethora of piloting skills and attitudes to fly. Commenting here as a ‘veteran’ of several previous StAndre Comps going back to ’96 and through various levels of personal flying develpoment through those years, the conditions seemed ‘usual’ for the time of year. Statistically i would expect that the number of reserves and incidents were rather similar to previous.
There are a number of ‘top’ pilots who have been hurt in St Andre, & having personnally witnessed most of them having had major blow-outs at best and at worst visited them in hospital. And of course my own incidents too !. (Talk to Leavesley about my one on the Dormeause run in 08, which took everything i had to get out of.. !).
Putting 140+ pilots of various experience levels out into such conditions therefore will result in incidents. The whys and wherfores of each incident come down to individual choices to both launch in the first place and then in continuous in flight decision making to ensure a lowest risk flight. It would be good to get a breakdown of each incident and the individuals involved in those deployments to see any trends, however for any single depoloyment there are probably several more incidents which could have just as easily resulted in a chucking..
It takes a lot of time in such strong and complex conditions before any pilot can gain the necessary experience to fly XC never mind chomping thorugh a task, however it is a personal choice to fly there and many pilots relish the challenges. (i still do, and still have a lot to learn too). I will fly there again and probably in a comp as it is probably the safest way with so many in the air indicating conditions and an infrastructure of awareness amognst the pilots and the organisation. I would allways recommend events to developing pilots to gain from the dissemination of information and development of personnal skills. One of which is to know ones current limitations and then use that as a springboard to their next stage.
SO it does raise the question as to whether it is such a good venue for the majority.
Are we doing this for those who have the cahoonies for it or to find out who has the skills to ‘win’. What are we measuring? Is it about limits of endurance (both physical and mental), or is it about finding who can make the most of a sky on a given day.. and if so how is that best measured? and where?..
The paragliding game certainly needs nurturing through events, but theres no point if those events hinder or stop pilots from enjoying this wonderful sky-game.
I hope you can get plenty of clean air-time back in the UK before the winter kicks in… oh btw theres allways Australia, the challenges are somewhat different over here..!.come see!.
Hi Doug,
Sorry I didn’t get a chance to say ‘hi’. I did loiter, but you were talking to someone else and I didn’t want to interrupt.
I have to disagree that there are no safe places to fly. There are hundreds. There are loads of sites where you have to have someone do something really stupid in order to crash.
What caused the accidents last week (as far as I am concerned) was the combination of some of the following (in no particular order):
1. High performance wings
2. Strong valley winds
3. Complicated valley systems that need to be learnt before you can fly there safely
4. Tasks that required some lee side flying
5. The pressure pilots put themselves under to perform in comps
6. People not having the experience and skill to be on the wings they were flying
7. Lack of currency
8. Lack of awareness of one’s own skills
9. Strong northerly upper winds, lower SW winds which caused a lot of shear layers and turbulence (made worse due to the lack of clouds)
At the end of the day it’s up to competitors to decided if they feel it is appropriate to fly. St Andre can be perfectly safe if you take some of the above factors out of the equation. My comments on the blog were a discussion about my views of how safely I could fly there – not being a mountain pilot, being cautious and flying a slow wing that caused me problems in valleys. Knowing my limitations, I decided not to fly much. I’d go back to free fly, but it will take some years before I am convinced that a racing comp in St Andre really is for me.
Judith
P.S. Dave, I’d love to come to Oz, but I’ll have to settle for six months in Spain instead!
😉
Sorry we didn’t get to talk, Judith.
I agree with your points, but most of them are general ‘competition problems’ rather than something specific to last week or St Andre. While I occasionally fly comps, I think they pose special dangers for all the reasons you list. I write occasionally on accidents in the US, and a large percentage of this year’s accidents have been in comps.
When I said “I think all places are dangerous” what I meant was “flying is dangerous, wherever you do it”. Most pilots I know that have hurt themselves or worse have done it at relatively ‘safe’ sites.
Regards, Douglas
There’s an interesting discussion on PG Forum developing, at http://www.paraglidingforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=34026
Whatever the reasons, I think we do need to do a lot of soul searching as to why we had such a high number of incidents. Nearly 10% of all the competitors is way too high. As Gordon Bishop said on the DSC forum: “One way of thinking of a reserve is as a ‘last chance’ before serious injury/death – is it safe if 10 people (plus the tree and cable landings) used their last chance?”
Food for lots of thought…
I’m just going to make one clarification to what I said, then I’ll shut up. When I talked of the danger that comes with comps, I really mean ‘the dangers due to the way some pilots fly in comps’.
You can use comps as a challenge to skill and an organized flying holiday; but you make your own decisions about whether to launch, where it is safe to fly and when you should go out an land.
Or, you can fly in dangerous places (either because it is quicker or there are other pilots there) and keep flying in dangerous conditions because the task hasn’t been stopped. Sometimes, comps bring out the worst in pilots. From what I saw, the majority of the deployments at St Andre were due to pilots being in dubious places and hoping to get away with it.
The competition organizers can only do so much to make things safe – it’s the pilots that are flying the wings!
Douglas
PS I went for a run this morning and passed the LZ; Calvo and another of the organizers are still ‘clearing out’ HQ after the comp, 3 days after it is finished. These comps involve quite a bit of work!
Couldn’t agree with you more!
And no need to shut up. It’s good to have the discussion.
🙂
J.
My incident (mushed glider, followed by rotation into mountainside, with gilder in tree) was caused purely by pilot error, resulting from a determination to make goal at the end of an arduous task. The incident had nothing to do with the fact I was flying in St Andre. The accident would not have occurred if the following where NOT in the equation:
1. I understood the stall point of my glider better. I’m new (less than 40 hours) to both the make and model of the wing I’m now flying.
2. I had not been in a competition. The fact I was, compelled me to make a transition with inadequate height, given the distance of 1-2 kms I had to traverse, in order to not fall behind the competitors just ahead of me in the race. This error, culminated in me then flying the wing too slowly, low, in a turbulent area, in a desperate attempt not to have to fly out and land less than 3km short of goal, which would have been rather depressing – although with hindsight not as depressing as having to wait several hours on a mountainside, not knowing if I or my glider would be in a fit state to fly the remainder of the competition!
I have learn my lesson, very, very fortunately without serious physical injury.
Kirsty x