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deja vu, all over again... |
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Morgon
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Well,
not quite. The forecast was the same as yesterday's, the clouds over
Trainon looked the same and I took the same tow as before...but the flying
was totally different. No painful scraping to get above Authon; instead,
all the clouds worked as I would have liked. I
took the "lowland" route to the parcours (over les Monges,
Oratoire, etc), reaching Morgon in quick time. There was some bleating on
the radio about Guillaume not working too well, so I flew south for a
while to allow the mountain to cook, then returned north again to find
that Guillaume was now working very well; the only difficulty was coping
with both gliders and paragliders on the slope. |
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I'll get you one day!
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I
flew through the col de Terre Blanche and took a climb at tete de Vautisse,
then crossed the St Crepin valley to find another climb north of the tete
de Peyron. I definitely did not want to revisit Prachaval today. I reached
Mt Thabor on the edge of the Maurienne but, seeing no clouds further
north, I decided (yet again) to abandon hopes of reaching the Mt Blanc
today. Interestingly, I could see that damp Italian air had penetrated
into the Bardonecchia valley - getting low there would be a one-way
trip. |
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Barre des Ecrins
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And
so it was back to the Ecrins for some more sightseeing. I flew to the west
side of Pelvoux and into the Valgaudemar. The conditions looked really
good to the west so I headed in that direction, flying between the cumulus
tops as cloudbase descended. Routing to the north of the pic de Bure, onto
the Obiou ridge, I continued west until the clouds ran out, some way
beyond the col de Claps. Turning east
again, I started to find problems getting back to the Ecrins from the pic
de Bure. Climbs were getting weaker and harder to find. At Guillaume I
decided to head for home, joining Dormillouse for my final climb. There
was a huge lump of cloud hanging over the ridge, cutting out all sunlight,
and there was very little wind, which is why that final climb never came.
So it was a straight glide for 33km over the lumpy bits, arriving at a
respectable height for a decent circuit. |
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Unlandable
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