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Mont Blanc from the Vanoise
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WeatherJack isn't the only Met man to get it slightly wrong; today turned out to be far better than we
had thought. We launched late today, at about 1:30pm after the Duo grid had been successfully dispatched. Within 20 minutes or so we were finding cloudbases of 8000ft in the valley and 10,000ft not too far away at Montserieux. This called for some fast flying to take advantage of the likely higher cloudbases in the Ecrins.
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| From Colombis I flew to Chabriere and the ridges that run down the southern side of the
Orcièrres Merlette valley, finding 8 knots and 11,000ft. Then I tracked up the spine of the Ecrins as far as the pas de la Cavale, where I
passed into the St Crepin valley. There was evidence of wave as I tracked towards the pic d'Agneux, and another thermal
there gave me 13,000ft. |
Pelvoux
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Aosta Valley
Vanoise
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As it still looked good to the north (blue skies, hardly any cumulus), I carried on towards Mt Thabor and tracked along the ridges to the Aiguille de Scolette and then Mt Cenis in the Sollieres valley. There were better Cu on the northern side and I was soon over the col de Carro and heading
towards Aosta along the ridge on the western edge of the val de Rhêmes.
Trouble was, I was finding a 25 knot westerly at this altitude (13000ft) and
was a little concerned about wave damping out thermals - on the other hand, I did pick up some strong lift away from the ridge-tops, and I supposed that these were wave-enhanced.
Across the Aosta valley, I saw that Mt Blanc was totally free of all cloud while the route to the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa was covered by a lowered cloudbase. Mindful of the time and the strong winds, I decided to tip a wing into Switzerland at the
col du Grande St-Bernard and retrace my steps.
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Making my way up to the col de Carro I found that I was not quite getting the thermals I wanted, and it was almost a last-ditch effort under some scrappy Cu 5km from the col d'Iseran that I finally got enough of a margin to cross back into the Sollieres valley. From that point it was easy to get the high climbs to cross the col d'Etache into the St Crepin valley and then on to Guillaume, Morgon, Dormillouse and home.
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Lac de Serre-Ponçon
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