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| Lac
Ste Croix |
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| Today looked
distinctly unpromising. Sheets of high cover were moving in from the west
and the normal local hotspots were in shadow. Bob, being Bob, decided to
launch anyway and a few minutes later I followed suit and climbed away
from Hongrie in a thermal that was best described as "soft".
Then followed the usual hassle of escaping the cuvette. Six thousand feet
is normally more than enough to get away but it took me three re-tries
from Hongrie before I managed to hop past Trainon and onto the Vaumuse. On
the plus side, I was three and a half hours quicker than yesterday. |
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| Lovely
cloudstreets giving 6 knot climbs and 8000ft bases led the way past
Puismosson and the lac Ste Croix. I turned round at the lac d'Esparron,
aiming to get onto the parcours where the conditions looked even better.
A couple of weak climbs on the Coupe and a cracker at
Couard got me to 9000ft at the Cheval Blanc. The summits of the Trois
Eveches were in cloud, but the ridges worked as expected in the southerly
breeze.
As I motored further along the parcours it looked like
the entire Sisteron valley lay under thick overcast, and at that point I
reckoned there wasn't too much left in the day.
At Dormillouse I found an unusually smooth 8 knot
thermal that took me to nearly 11,000ft, 1,500ft higher than the general
cloudbase on the parcours. As this was clearly wave-induced I went on the
hunt for some southerly wave, concentrating on the lenticulars forming in
the Barcelonette valley in the lee of the parcours, but without success. |
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| I flew
back south, planning to look for wave off the Lure, but apart from getting
a hammering over Pellegrine (probably rotor) I saw no useful climbs there.
I do recall reaching 25,000ft over the Jabron valley in my old Jantar 1,
using southerly wave, back in the days when airspace rules were more
accommodating. So no joy with the wave today, but 250km and 5 hours
of flying on a duff day seemed well worth the effort. |
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