Judith's blog

The strong winds forecast materialised in the night and I was woken twice by some hefty gusts. Some of the more brittle trees below us have blown over, but no damage to our house.

The wind isn’t strictly tramunata now, but a north wind due to squeezed isobars – we’re in the middle of three pressure systems. I was glad we went skiing yesterday, since today they were forecasting ‘torb’ (nevasca or viento blanco in Spanish), which is a snow/ice blizzard caused by strong winds. It can cause a temperature drop of over 20C and causes whiteout conditions. We skied in torb last year and the top of the resort was shut as the temperatures (with wind chill) dropped to -50C.

We considered going out to try and fly, but the weather stations were giving N or NNE in Angles and St Feliu de Pallerols and we can’t spare the time just to go on the off-chance that it’s flyable. We open the next conference to presenters on Wednesday and need to get everything ready, so when it’s not guaranteed flyable, we need to get on with it. Gorgeous sunny day though….

No comments yet - please add one »

We had the choice today of going flying or skiing. With tramuntana wind forecast, the chances were it was going to be good at Santa Brigida. On looking at the forecast more closely, we have a strong wind warning for tomorrow and according to the Catalan Met office “winter will return on Friday”. The Snowforecast is giving windchill temperatures at Masella tomorrow as -23C in the middle of the resort. That sealed it – we were going skiing today, flying tomorrow.

With the snowboarding world championships on at La Molina, it took a while to get up to Masella. Once there, conditions were really good. The termperatures were cold, but acceptable, and although the wind was increasing throughout the day, it was never so windy that they closed any lifts. There was a dusting of new snow and they have made a lot more artificial snow, so there were more good runs, and the cold meant nothing got slushy. We skied for five hours and even saw a sail plane being towed up from Cerdanya. First one we’ve seen this season.

Report from Mike this evening was that Santa Brigida was really good. Very thermic with max height gains 450m ATO. Here’s hoping we get similar tomorrow and Saturday.

See photos of today.

No comments yet - please add one »

Geoff writes: a bit dull, and we have a lot of work to do, so we stayed in. Weather nice again from tomorrow, though a few days of high winds are expected.
 
 
 
 
 
 

No comments yet - please add one »

The forecast for today was for sun, but with a lot of high cloud. This would suppress the temperatures a bit and so it seemed the perfect day to go skiing! We set off in a baby blue sky and it stayed that way all day, with just a little bit of high cloud here and there. The snow has been melting and there is a lot less off the pistes, but they have done their best to maintain what they have and the snow quality was excellent until lunchtime. There’s 50km open at Masella and we set ourselves the task of skiing every open run, but by midday the sun had warmed the lower runs too much and we stuck to the top pistes.

Cumulus started to pop in the valley and we bitterly regretted not throwing in the gliders. It would have been an ideal day to ski in the morning, and then go have a fly in the afternoon. As it was, we finished a bit early. My knees were a bit sore from pushing it on some of the red and black runs. But when the snow’s nice…

See photos of today.

No comments yet - please add one »

Geoff writes: we’ve been out the last seven days, skiing or flying (and yesterday, failing to fly) so we decided to stay in today to catch up on some work for our fast approaching conference. The forecast was not that good either, and in fact it was cloudy here (and east of here) all day, though nice and sunny inland, including at the ski resorts. So we got a lot of work done, which was good.

The weather is getting much cooler over the next week, which is good for the skiing – even if it doesn’t snow (though some is forecast for Wednesday) the snow quality should be good.

2 Comments »

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.

1 Comment »

Geoff writes: we’re in a period of high pressure with strong inversions – nice warm, sunny weather, blue skies, but bad for flying, too stable.  We did consider canning the flying and just go for a walk, but we decided to do a bit of work in the morning, then go out early afternoon. The actual wind forecast was light southerlies, so in the end we decided to go to Santa Brigida, where it’s rarely not thermic, and if the wind is on, it works ok in ridge (dynamic) lift. In spite of being a SE face, Santa Brigida often doesn’t work in a southerly, because of the way the wind comes through the valley, but the forecast was so light we were sure it would be on. But, surprisingly, when we arrived it was both strong – blown out – and north west. Quite a few people were in the parking, looking a bit disconsolate.

We phoned Oriol who had gone to Bellmunt, and he said it seemed ok there, light winds, on the hill, though no-one was flying yet. So we promptly went there (having told the other pilots to go there too). Not a long drive, given the new tunnel, though driving there no-one was flying – but as we arrived at the bottom, people were starting to launch. Scratchy at first, it got better. Judith and I launched in quick succession (there was a queue, we had to wait to get off) and I had a nice, interesting flight. There were thermals, but weak, but there was also some ridge lift. It helped that there were half a dozen other pilots flying at the same time, indicating the lift. No-one got any great height, my best was around 450 feet ATO, and it got a bit bumpy higher up, but it was fun. Great views, and a nice change from Santa Brigida – and, to be honest, a much better day than we had expected.

See photos of today.

No comments yet - please add one »