The met brief indicated the prospect of interesting conditions! The upper airflow was still northwesterly and this interferes with the setting up of a reliable valley breeze. The sky was clear blue and the air temp was soon climbing to 30°C. Climbing off the winch was easy, but as we gained height and moved off to Juere it became more of a struggle and we often had to retrace our steps or just keep working small sections to climb. Usually once you could get your wingtip over the crest of the ridge the lift really got going and you could relax, well only just a little.
JB had a real brush with the dragons, flying over the Juere col, too low to to try the bowl, and pressed on to the Authon, arriving just at the top of the scree slope and the bottom of the vertical face. As Jaques Noel used to say the scenery down there gets very impressive. At that height, JB was still "local" to St Auban and so was obliged to head that way searching along the Vermeuse ridge line hoping for a thermal. After a good hour of scratching, he fought his way back to rejoin M5, who had been killing time trying out our planned 12 km race track around the ridges of Authon and Auribeau.
A good climb off Auribeau, sent us on our way to the Parcour which we discovered wasn't working particularly well but we were able to eventually climb to the top of Tet de L'Estrop and then head back for the La Motte valley.
Heading home from the Parcour, with Cheval Blanc in the backround.
A sobering sight met us in the bowl of the Monges, the mangled ruin of an LS6 being attended to by a mountain rescue team. The pilot was apparently stabilised and helicoptered to hospital. Unfortunately a grim reminder of the ever present perils of soaring in the mountains.
A tricky day but which really brought home the need to be aware of your airspeed close in to the mountains and conscious of your escape route to your local out-landing field
