For some weather related reason, which one I'm not sure as this all took place in French, all the other pilots signed up for the shuttle bailed, leaving only me to go up, and I was not enough of a load to make it worth the time to take me up. Funny, the other van with Stella as the driver, was full, in spite of her reputation of fast driving (I get car sick). Fortunately a local pilot (Nico from Sisteron) came by and offered me a ride to the top. He drove fast also, but he said he drove slow. I belched all the way to the top, just to keep from throwing up.

We stopped at the lower north launch just to see what the action was. There were pilots there. I noticed the actual launch area in the air yesterday. It is a wide black mesh, meant, I assume, to keep you from slipping. The launch it good and steep and was facing right into the northwest wind, which was forecasted to be 10 knots, compared to eight knots yesterday. It seemed like the perfect place to launch to me. I unloaded my glider and a little later Nico unloaded his.

Of course, the locals said no, be careful, get off early, you will have to scratch on the north side which is in shade, it is weak, go to the top. Hmmm?! Looked good to me. Certainly I was more concerned about having a good launch than having to scratch. I scratched the whole week at the East Coast Championship, so what's the problem with scratching? Although it is not as nice right next to the hill side.

There were six pilots setting up when I got there, and I was told to get going before the south side heated up and the "wind" switched. Okay, I was the second one off the hill. I wonder what the rest of them were waiting for. This time I had a little more mental space to set up my launch, get my wings level, get the attitude angle correct with respect to the slope, at least it seems to have been that way. I wish I had more either memory of it or more cognition and thoughtful preparation. It would also be nice if the launch area was as long as the grass fields at Blue Sky and Highland Aerosports.

Off launch I went west up the ridge line but found nothing. I came back toward the launch and toward town and down the ridgeline to where the ridge line is lower. There were bits and pieces of lift and I started working them. Two pilots launched soon after me, turned right and stayed above me on the ridge top, or just below it. The lift was a little better than zero, but not much.

After ten minutes of scratching around. I headed further east down the ridge line and got above the ridge as it fell away. There were bits and pieces of lift but not much. After a while I thought I would just go fly over the town as it seemed to be such a thermal generator, or it was the day before. Sure enough, out on the "flats" there was plenty of lift. I found 400 fpm drifting back over the LZ, getting back to launch level. The thermal continued on up, but I decided that there wasn't much of a point today and went back to the LZ to get down.

Of course, that was as hard as it had been the day before and it took a while. As I finally got low I went back over the field once again just to check out yet again the flag and the wind direction. Sure enough it had switched 90 degrees, no longer coming from the town, from the northwest.

I kept watching the flag as I made a cross field approach (it is plenty big), and sure enough it switched an additional 90 degrees to come from the southeast. As I was in the middle of the field, I just turned the glider around as the wind sock moved around and landed into the wind, amongst the tall poppies.

Doesn't seem like there were many pilots on the hill today. There were many short lived cu's forming above it later in the day, so much for the inversion. There were a lot more cu's here than there were yesterday. The winds continued to be light in the LZ, which is currently filled with 250 school kids flying kites (or attempting to fly kites, as they have to keep running to keep them flying.

Seems to me that flat land flying is alive and well getting over Laragne to get up. Much better than the north side of the mountain. Have a nice launch off the north side, fly around to Laragne, catch the house thermal and get high. It also seems like the locals are more concerned about getting good lift than having a good launch.

Yesterday's carnage involved Mart, who had to call Heather Mull, the steward at the Europeans, to tell her about his blown launch, with his glider precariously perched at the top of the cliff (which is why he had to go get a rope to retrieve it). Also, before Mart, Tony, a Welsh pilot. This carnage made me think long and hard about where I wanted to launch and in what conditions.

The latest word is that Mart's glider is still there as of this afternoon (Friday 4 PM). Apparently he did more than he let on to me. He went down over the first cliff and stopped before the second much bigger one. At 5 PM they were out on the hill side trying to get to the glider which is in the trees.

I wonder how the meet officials will handle all this. Life will soon get very difficult for them.

Belinda's photo of the village of Laragne-Montéglin and the mountain Laragne-Chabre.