We can see Coma Negra from our house and it looks only a couple of kilometers away. It’s much further, and at over 1500m high, with a long windy road to it, it takes over an hour to get to it, and then you have to walk up. We haven’t been often, and when we have, we’ve barely flown, for one reason or another. Quini and Amadeu are the local experts and we have asked them to let us know when they go there. We bumped into Quini at Bellmunt yesterday and he was planning a day out at Coma Negra for today. We didn’t need to be asked twice. The meeting place for Coma Negra is in the cafe at the bottom of our cliff. We met Amadeu, Quini, Edu, Jordi, Alfons and respective partners and kids and headed up the road and up the mountain.

At the parking it was off to the west, but very light. I was expecting a top-to-bottom, which isn’t too bad; it takes a while to fly down, you have to cross a couple of ridges and then have to negotiate a steep valley landing, so it’s more interesting than your average plummet. Once we had all got to the top, it was much windier and way off to the west, so we decided to wait and see. We would have stayed on the west face, but there’s an accepted wisdom here that the sun will bring it on, so you just go to the normal launch.

When it got to 1.30pm, and despite the wind picking up, Amadeu decided to take off. With it being off, he had a 60% collapse just after getting airborne, which we thought didn’t bode well. He headed straight to the landing field and it was a rock n’ roll ride to the valley. Alfons was next. He also went straight out and down. By this time we had serious doubts about wanting to fly. It took them ages to get down. Quini went next and went straight up, like being popped out of a champagne bottle. He turned left (east) and went screaming downwind, and once he turned back, he was basically stationary. He kept going up, still trying to go forward to the landing area, but he was drifting further and further east. It’s almost certain he was in wave. There aren’t many safe (or easy) places to land between Coma Negra and Oix, or Coma Negra and our valley, so we were willing him to turn and run. To us it seemed as if he had reached El Mont, so we were a little reassured, but then we saw him sink and we knew he had gone down in Sadernes… not a good place to be.

Meanwhile, it was getting gustier, and we were not inclined to fly, but our lift had gone, as all the cars had been driven down to the landing. We waited it out until 4pm, but the wind was still too strong and the direction too far off. We tried to get in touch with Quini, but there was no reply from his mobile so we were getting more worried about him all the time.

Eventually, we packed up and walked back down and Amadeu came back to pick us up. We did finally get a call from Quini and he had landed high up a mountain in one of the only landable fields in Sadernes, near St Aniol. He didn’t have his speed bar connected and was at the mercy of the wind, but he said he wasn’t too worried. With his height, he felt he could always reach a suitable landing field.

So, another time at Coma Negra and another time not flying. It’s a stunning place, but it would be nice if our luck there changed.

See photos of today.

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