AnnecyWe woke up to sunshine and found the Flyeo school, who we are doing the SIV course with next weekend. They were closed. We had a coffee in Talloires and I accosted a group of pilots to ask them for information on where to go flying. One of the group was Phillipe from Espace 3D who offered us a ride up the mountain, and gave us a comprehensive briefing of the landing area.

On arrival at the launch, it was very light and stable. Some low airtimers went off for top to bottoms, but we waited for some credible signs that it was actually working. The first buzzard had me rushing for my gear, but two guys went down in the sink after the thermal. I waited another five minutes and then launched and got up. The wind was very south and the thermal drifted me along the ridge. It didn’t last and I headed back to the same source and flew around in broken stuff while Geoff and twelve Polish pilots watched to see if it was worth launching too. Ten minutes later I was in the landing field and watched Geoff launch, maintain and then climb up. By this time the Poles did think it was worth launching too, and everyone lobbed off. Geoff had a nice hour boating about looking at the scenery, which is just stunning.

I had a coffee at the bar and then Phillipe came back down to collect his clients and offered me another lift. What a nice man!

By the time I got back up, conditions had improved enormously. It was very thermic and people were getting high enough to climb up the ridge behind. I got to 1000′ ATo, but lost a lot closing my harness. I then thermalled around, but had been warned by Phillipe that with a south wind at altitude and a north wind at surface things could get churned up a bit. The drift in the thermals was still south, but I started to notice that there were waves and whitecaps on the lake from the north. People were starting to head down to the landing field and I decided that knowing nothing about the place and the valley winds it would be preferable to be down rather than to find out the hard way what strong winds on the lake mean. I flew down deliberately, but in the event, it was fine and it would not have been a problem to continue flying. However, a local agreed that it was better to be safe and usually whitecaps mean trouble.

Everyone was really friendly in the landing field and on launch and the scenery is just breathtaking. This evening a warm front has come in and we’re hoping it will go through tonight, rather than lingering into tomorrow.

See photos of today.

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