Results

The official pre-Worlds blog

Jeff O\\'Brien\\'s blog

Jamie Shelden\\'s blog

Monday, June 30th.

With the wind reported to be 1 km/h north at Laragne-Chabre we went back up the hill next to Laragne hoping for thermals to give us a breeze to launch in, up the southeast face. The forecast also included cu-nimb later in the afternoon.

The task committee came up with three tasks, but looked at the conditions just before the pilot briefing at 11:30 AM, and made a decision on one that showed the most promise with blue skies to the south. We don't hear about the other tasks.

The wind was mostly north at the hill, light and every so often up the south face. The launch opened at noon, with the first start time at 13:40 (two hours and ten minutes after the pilot briefing). Three start times total, twenty minutes apart.

I looked at the launch conditions and saw that they were poor and that it was a long time to the first start window. I figured that given these conditions it would not blow west before 2 PM, and that I needed to wait for good thermal development over launch to pull up the breeze and make for safe launching. So I didn't get into my harness, but went around and checked all the launches.

Launches went really slowly on the right hand side, the launch where I'm supposed to be launching from. There seemed to be more from the middle launch, but a number of these launches were sketchy, often with pilots not running far enough. I headed up to the top left most launch to check out conditions there. There were fewer launches happening and conditions were poor with wind often over the back.

Luis Rizo Salom was encouraging pilots to launch and pushing. There were at least two pushers, Robin was one of them. The conditions were quite poor. Robin Hamilton came to launch and now as the pusher he had to launch or get a zero for the day. He had a little better than nil wind and ran hard down the carpet onto the scree. Soon boulders were flying every where as Robin, who had been running hard all the way, almost plowed straight into the hill, and knocked out the rocks at the last second.

Then Luiz, also pushing, ran hard after him and came even closer to smacking in hard on the hill side as he came to the path down below which formed a little ledge and he pushed off from it at the last possible moment. So much for Luiz's judgment about the quality of the launch conditions, but then he was forced to launch after pushing.

I went back down to my glider wondering if I would be launching at all, and assuming that I wouldn't be. A cu-nimb was forming to our south right on the course line between turnpoint 1 and 2. It was already blowing out ice crystals high into the atmosphere that were spreading to the east over the valley and Laragne. It sure didn't look like we would have a task. We could hear the thunder and Jeff Shapiro, in the air, reported lightening.

I moved to the middle line as it was going faster than my original launch lane, but then it stopped as the hill side got shaded from the cu's overhead. Finally my original launch line started moving again, and I headed back over to it. The launch conditions had finally improved and I felt great relief. It was coming up slightly and I took off five minutes before the first start clock.

There wasn't any lift at the hill side, the lee side really, but I saw a pilot getting up well further to the south away from the hill side. I joined him in 500-600 fpm. There were nice cu's right overhead and it was a smooth ride up. I didn't worry that much about the nearby cloud of Marge Simpson hair. The next start time was in fifteen minutes and we were climbing fast.

Then Nicole got on the radio and said that the task had been stopped, basically cancelled, because of the cu-nimb on the course line.  We headed off to land at the camp ground.

Two more cu-nimbs formed in the same location spreading lots of upper level clouds over the valley which quickly dispersed (within half an hour from birth to death). It was mostly sunny with lots of cu's every where and plenty of flying going on, a truly beautiful flying day, like yesterday.  Perhaps the task committee can figure out tasks that are appropriate for this area in these mountain conditions.

Andreas and others flew to Pic de Bure and back. 3000 meter cloud base. Sunny all day.