Judith's blog

Another rainy day, although we did get a phone call from Johnny, who thought there might be a flyable window at Santa Brigida during the middle of the day. Even if it had been, we didn’t want to get our gliders wet and muddy, so declined.

Geoff got on with some proper work, but I was feeling a bit unmotivated, so messed about doing jobs and then settled down to some proper displacement activity: looking at some stats for the blog. It made interesting viewing, although I have yet to do a proper in-depth analysis (not that I ever will… Geoff has shamed me into not wasting good working days from now on.)

Anyway, from a quick glance, we’ve had more than 30,000 podcast and web cast downloads from the site and interestingly, the largest number of downloads for the winter flying podcast are in the months of June/July/August; and the largest for flying in alpine conditions in December/January/February. Go figure.

2 Comments »

After weeks of sunny weather we got some precipitation today. So we worked and then I went out to lunch with the family. Japanese. Yummy.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

1 Comment »

It would have been a great flying day, but we decided to go skiing instead. Our season passes are not valid over the holiday period, so we need to ski while we can. With no precipitation here for ages there isn’t any more snow, but they’re making it when they can. The snow quality was not quite as good as the other day, but the wall-to-wall sunshine and more pleasant temperatures made it a really lovely day.

We went up to the top of the resort, but with better snow low down, we stayed in the mid and bottom pistes and dodged the ski schools until lunchtime, when the place became deserted. Seems like they were too tired to come back for the afternoon session, because we seemed to have the place to ourselves.

Bad weather is coming up from the south tomorrow, so no more fun and games for a few days.

See photos of today.

No comments yet - please add one »

Geoff writes: it was a pretty bad forecast for today, but when we woke up it was sunny, and stayed that way for the rest of the day – and much warmer than recently, too. So we had another flyable day – nine out of the last ten days have been flyable here, mostly at Santa Brigida, but other sites have also worked on some of the days. Yesterday was so thermic, probably every site near here would have been good.

So today was still pretty thermic, but much less rough than yesterday. Amazingly, for a weekend, when we turned up at Santa Brigida we were the only ones there. A phone call brought Johnny out, and a couple of others turned up and flew very briefly. So pretty deserted really. Maybe everyone had been put off by the forecast. It was flyable until late afternoon, when it finally switched off.

And as for the forecast, at 8.00 am it was saying it was rubbish today. At 11.30am it changed completely, to say it was going to be sunny and warm. I guess whoever does the meteocat web site finally looked out of the window and realised what a piece of garbage the 8.00 forecast was.

No comments yet - please add one »

We’re catering for 15 tonight, so I thought I’d better make a start with pastry cases, etc. in the morning. By the time I was ready to go, it was too late to contact the HG pilots to see about sharing lifts up El Mont, so we decided to go to Santa Brigida instead.

There seemed to be wind on the way, but when we got there it was too light to stay up. There was also a lot of cloud around. Geoff gave it a go anyway and promptly went down. He got a lift back up with Enric and Marc. By the time they were back it had picked up a lot and had become quite gusty, but the sky was also breaking up and the sun was starting to poke through. Marc did mention that he thought it would be very unstable and that any sunshine on the ground would trigger a thermal. The temperatures where certainly cold, but you could feel it rise as soon as the sun hit you.

Once we got in the air, it was very thermic indeed. I got a consistent 3m/s to 800′ ATO and then pulled out… too cold for me, despite my six layers. It was possible to get much higher and I watched Marc core a real screamer. He was rocketing up. On the ground, the wind was getting stronger and stronger. Geoff and I both had several goes at top landing, but were unsuccessful. It was too windy to go far behind the trees and anywhere near the edge had you shooting up again, and it was rough near the edge too. After four goes and nearly and hour in the air, my hands were frozen and I decided to bottom land with everyone else. Apart from the cold, the conditions were really spring-like. El Mont would have been a good choice too. The hang gliders had a great hour and a half in strong thermic conditions.

Party in the evening went well, with friends, neighbours and parents coming. And the food was a success too.

See photos of today.

No comments yet - please add one »

The forecast was for no tramuntana, but west wind instead. The same cold front that brought all the snow to the UK was due here this evening and there was a weather warning for snow and cold weather. Geoff, who admittedly isn’t a weather guru, assured me that it would be flyable. He had it on good authority from WeatherOnline. I wasn’t convinced, but we had a bet on, so went out to see if we could get a fifth day of excellent conditions at Santa Brigida.

With clear blue skies and little wind here, I was actually more optimistic than my forecasting led me to believe, but spotting the duvet effect at Puig Sacalm gave us our first doubts. It was SE at Les Planes de Hostoles, so we got all optimistic again, but at Santa Brigida the front had come in and it was cloudy and howling from the west.

We did the shopping for tomorrow night’s annual Christmas soiree and then elved ourselves for Christmas. We don’t send cards, so here goes…

See our Christmas video. You may need to wait for it to download before it starts playing.

2 Comments »

Our first day of the ski season! Bit less windy today, but still very cold. The ski resort of Masella had announced that they have some fancy new machine that fluffs the snow up and can make even the artificial stuff into powder, so despite only 30km open, we went up to have a go.

There isn’t any snow off-piste, but they’ve made the most of what is open and the skiing was excellent. We skied every piste we could get to by chairlift. Strong winds closed the higher lifts and we couldn’t be bothered to take a button lift – too cold. I had on six layers, and no bits of flesh exposed, so I was actually warmer than I was yesterday.

Can’t wait to go again next week.

See photos of today.

No comments yet - please add one »