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Laragne

Tuesday, 28 September 2010 12:19 administrator

Laragne 2010
Photos by Giles Morris

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Well, all travelling went well, accomodation and hosts and guiding by chris white all fantastic !

1st day flew XC north to south from St Vicent ? almost to St andre (approx 38km) very nice and up to 3106m asl (1870 above launch) max 7.9m per second best lift, 3 hour 39 minute flight. big scary mountains. ace.

2nd day blown out so pottered around a bit and cut foot jumping into not very deep waterfall (dumb ass !). lovely scenery though.

3rd day a little windy still on launch at chabre so we were all a bit jittery and did a lot of para waiting/procrastinating. eventually after getting martin off a few of us flew for some nice soaring/thermalling for 1hour 19mins, then shot over the back to fly 7.5km back (almost) to our accomodation.  Then all off for a nice evening soaring flight at another site to the west and got another hours flight. sweet.

4th day looking like a good day to go from chabre, so all up to the top for a warm up flight/ top to bottom (nice 34 mins for me).  Then back to the top for the main flight of the day.The planned route was to the north and off we went,  things went to plan for me, Bill and Simon

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Barrule - Onchan

Monday, 10 May 2010 11:30 Simon Atherton

The wind was forecast to be light NE to N so Keith and I decided to give Slieu Lewaigue a try. Got there just past 11 to see Watty taking off. He had a quick top to bottom, too light, so hung around for a while. It was not really getting any better so we bit the bullet and joined by Giles, all walked up North Barrule from the Hibernian.

Got to the top to be met by a nice breeze on the ridge. Although there was not much sunshine it was obviously quite thermic with seagulls going up. We all took off pretty much together and went up. It was very up and down with the wind obviously not strong enough to let us maintain. Watty marked a nice thermal over the saddle so dropped in beneath and got quite high, drifting over the back, probably 150 metres or so above. The lift went (prob still there just did not want to go too far back) so headed back to the ridge and got nailed into the ground.  Think we all came down shortly afterwards.

Had a short walk back to the top and then took off into a more solid breeze and managed to stay up. The day had now clouded over so it was a big surprise to get into a nice thermal with Keith over the saddle again. This time followed it well over the back and into the valley behind. Probably got to cloud base (300m above take off?) with Keith about 10 metres above and headed off toward the lump behind Dhoon. The glide was not sinky but it was really quite surprising to see Laxey wheel so close and probably a ‘do-able’ glide away. Keith headed off toward the fields above Laxey wheel and I nudged west over Agneash village where I got the lightest of broken thermals. This, coupled with a nice northerly drift gave me enough height to get over the Laxey Valley. The thermal got better and I was soon back over 600 metres above sea level.  I drifted with the thermal over my parents place by Fairy cottage, really quite high. I guess the lift petered out somewhere between Ballacannel and Baldrine but it was still buoyant. Picked up some lift again and just kept doing some lazy 360s drifting south all the time about 1km in land of the White Bridge straight. 

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