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Sea-breeze
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Hmmm - not convinced
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The morning sky bore little relationship to
the forecast, as vast patches of medium level cloud drifted slowly from west
to east, with a corresponding drop in heating, so I delayed completing my
rigging until I saw a clearance arriving. Alex
had already towed a couple of gliders to Trainon and suggested I might be
better off with a tow towards the west, so that's what we did.
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Above us lay what appeared to be a very large
and very high cumulus, but the odd thing was that none of it appeared to be
working at our level. I released near the lip of the gorge de Meouge where I
did find a strong thermal, on the edge of a crete where one would normally
expect. A post-climb tour of the other local cumuli again failed to deliver
lift, confirming that I should continue to search for rocky edges in the
traditional method.
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Valgaudemar
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Cloudbase appeared to be a whopping 10,000ft
in the valley, although routes to the north appeared to be blocked by heavy
overdevelopment. That didn't stop me having a go at the western edges of the
Ecrins, although getting rained on while searching for something better than
a one knot thermal rather re-focused my ambitions. This was clearly not
going to be a big day, not for me anyway.
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I decided to give the parcours a go. I lost
little height crossing the valley from the pic de Bure to Dormillouse,
arriving at around 8,500ft to find that the ridge was working a treat. I
followed it all the way round to the montagne de Coupe, where a top-up made
the remaining glide to the lac Ste Croix easy. On
arriving, at around 8,500ft, I saw a bank of lower cloud with 8/8ths to the
east and a higher sheet of mid-level stratus to the west.
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Sea-breeze front
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Ed and Robin, flying 13, believed this to
have been a sea-breeze front, and the 10 knot south-westerly slamming
against it provided enough lift to reach the south of the lake. My
explorations was over for the day. A long glide directly back to Sisteron
was easily achieved. Not a great distance day, but instructive at the local
level.
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Pont d'Aiguines
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