After Zell am See we flew at Werfenweng (pronounced "verfenvang") , another ski hill with a gondola. One nice thing about this site is that the landing zone (LZ) is a short walk from the bottom of the gondola so you can easily get multiple flights.
I got lucky and had my favorite flight ever. It wasn't the longest (about an hour and a quarter) but it was by far the most spectacular. I managed to stay up in the launch area for long enough (about 10 minutes) to catch a good thermal that I managed to ride all the way up to cloud base. That gave me the height to cross the valley to the ridge on the left of the photo below.
At first I couldn't find any lift over there and I was afraid I was going to sink out, but then I noticed two other gliders had followed me across and had found a thermal out front. I joined them and soon got back up. That gave enough height to head out across the huge face where I was lucky enough to find lift and get on top of the ridge with fantastic views of the mountains beyond. To be honest it was a little scary flying beside 1000 foot high cliffs! There was someone on top of the highest peak and they waved as I flew by 100 feet away. I returned to the thermal out front and regained enough altitude to take another lower pass across the face. By this time my hands were freezing and I was getting cold. (In addition to being colder higher up, the constant 40 km/hr wind as you're flying adds significant wind chill.)
Unfortunately I didn't set up my video camera on this flight and I was a little too nervous about the flying to get out my still camera. Here's my route:
And here's a 3D visualization on Doarama (best full screen)
I got lucky and had my favorite flight ever. It wasn't the longest (about an hour and a quarter) but it was by far the most spectacular. I managed to stay up in the launch area for long enough (about 10 minutes) to catch a good thermal that I managed to ride all the way up to cloud base. That gave me the height to cross the valley to the ridge on the left of the photo below.
At first I couldn't find any lift over there and I was afraid I was going to sink out, but then I noticed two other gliders had followed me across and had found a thermal out front. I joined them and soon got back up. That gave enough height to head out across the huge face where I was lucky enough to find lift and get on top of the ridge with fantastic views of the mountains beyond. To be honest it was a little scary flying beside 1000 foot high cliffs! There was someone on top of the highest peak and they waved as I flew by 100 feet away. I returned to the thermal out front and regained enough altitude to take another lower pass across the face. By this time my hands were freezing and I was getting cold. (In addition to being colder higher up, the constant 40 km/hr wind as you're flying adds significant wind chill.)
Unfortunately I didn't set up my video camera on this flight and I was a little too nervous about the flying to get out my still camera. Here's my route:
And here's a 3D visualization on Doarama (best full screen)
No comments:
Post a Comment