Category: Competitions
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Into the heart of the Morgon…
Well, guess what? Task canned at 1600, conditions switch on at 1610! C’est la vie 🙂 Oh well, pas de probleme, Hugh and I had a mission, and that was to fly to the Morgon – a massive lump of rock to the north of the Dormillouse. We climbed up to 2800m at the Dormillouse…
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Task 2 – A tale of two flights…
Beautiful conditions today – perfect for a great task and some stunning photos before the start… I had a great start and for most of the way to TP1 there was no one in front of me – that’s a first 🙂 But after the second TP I, along with quite a few others made…
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Good news and bad news…
Well the good news is that we’ve had our first task today, a 63km race to goal starting at 1600. The bad news is that it was stopped before anyone made it to the fourth turnpoint because of difficulties in getting a helicopter to two injured pilots who had crashed on the ridge behind takeoff.…
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Comp day 3 – Sod’s Law
Briefing at 1000 – sunny but too windy. Rebriefing at 1300Â sunny but windy and forecast to remain windy. 1400 – first gliders appear above St Vincent. 1415 – ten gliders above St Vincent, climbing high. 1430 – we’re at St Vincent preparing to take off, and by 1500 I had climbed out level with…
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Comp Day 2… no task, but not no flying!
Briefing at 9am then rebriefing at 11am… Sunny but too windy so team Avon decide to hire some mountain bikes and take the easy way up the hill (ie. chairlift) for a afternoon’s biking. Amazingly there were no incidents or injuries despite the fast decents on gravelly tracks. We had actually seen quite a few…
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Exorcising the demons…
On Friday 5th August I finally got to fly after not flying for over a month during which time the wider paragliding community suffered its blackest week ever first with Xavier Murillo dying in Chile followed shortly by the deaths of the two pilots flying in the World Championships in Piedrahita. Even though I was…
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Light at the end of the tunnel…
At 16:22 local time today (15:22 BST), 11 days, 4 hours and 22 minutes and 864km after the start of the race in Salzburg, Christian “Chrigel” Maurer touched down for a perfect landing on the float anchored off Monaco to mark his second successive X-Alps victory. He’d flown a superb 65km flight in difficult conditions (headwind,…
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Normal life comes to a halt…!
Yes, I’m talking about the 864km Red Bull X-Alps paragliding and hiking race from Saltzberg to Monaco. And I challenge anyone to visit the live tracking page and not get hopelessly addicted after 10 minutes! There are two British athletes, Steve “Gnasher” Nash (GBR1) and Jon Chambers (GBR2) – they’re currently in 7th and 17th…
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A humbling task…
Perhaps it was the six hours driving on Thursday evening that contributed to my poor score, but whatever, Friday’s XC task from Milk Hill in the North-South Cup was a rather humbling experience for me, and I hope I’ve learnt a lot from it. The story starts on Thursday evening – Fiona, Angus and I…
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Join the Advance XC team and get a new glider for 2011!
Advance is to contribute to the development of paraglider sport competition by promoting cross country flying with the formation of a new international XC Serial Team. (Read more here…)
Advance paragliders in the West Country 