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Promises!
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Why do I do these things? The last thing I said before
launching to David Walsh, my co-pilot for the day, was "I promise I
won't do a 'Jean-Pierre' and release from tow too early". So we towed
to Hongrie where I released too early, thereby condemning us to an hour of
scratching in the weeds before inching our way back towards the cumulus.
Fortunately (if that is the right word) we didn't miss too much northern
Alps action due to low cloudbase on the parcours and mutterings from a Pik
pilot of rain on Blayeul.
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Glandasse
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The conditions looked better for a trip to the west and, as I
hadn't been to the Vercors so far this year, we decided to wander over the
mountains to the west of the Durance, passing well to the west of the
hang-gliding World Championships launch site on Chabre. After passing the
col near Aspres we struggled a little with a lowering cloudbase but we were
confident that the western face of the Glandasse would work in the westerly
breeze, and so it proved. I hadn't properly ridge-soared here before, but
can report that it is indeed a magnificent ridge and well worth the visit
when the remainder of the Alps are unavailable.
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Vercors
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On our way back south, as we crossed into the Aspres valley
we saw two massive anvils ahead of us, one seemingly covering the
Barcelonnette valley and the Mercantour, and the other, of slightly more
interest to us, just to the south-east of Sisteron. We kept an eye on the
latter while we had a go at ridge-soaring the western face of the pic de
Bure, an activity I always find difficult due to the lack of scale on that
face; as David observed, the surface looks like sandpaper, and it is hard to
judge how close one is to the mountain.
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Developing cu-nims
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We abandoned our ridge-soaring exercise for the charms of
circling in thermals, edging ever closer back to base while keeping a
watchful eye on the developing storm. As we patrolled the sunny edge of the
cu-nim we spotted two bursts of lightning in the Jabron valley, and rain
pouring down on Sisteron town. We decided that an early landing might be a
reasonable plan, so we let down into the circuit. Interestingly, Mike had
landed earlier using RW36 in a light westerly, while we, only fifteen
minutes later, used RW18 in a strengthening 15-knot southerly. That would be
the outflow from the cu-nim then.
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Black, black - it's all black...
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