It's been a pretty windy Spring in the French Alps, but a ridge of high pressure built over the France and the Western Alps over the weekend and I took a half day of holiday from work on Friday to take advantage of it.
On Friday I took off with my friend and fellow Axis pilot Damien de Baenst from the Planfait take off. It's my favourite site. It's relatively low (900m) but the aerology is fantastic, meaning that as you climb up to the Dents de Lanfon you look down on take off. It's a real escape. The other main Annecy take off - Col de la Forclaz - is higher, and is a better choice in some weather conditions, but you don't get the same sense of "climbing out" as you do from Planfait.
From the Dents de Lanfon (usually called "the Teeth") we headed north to Parmelan where great 3m/s climbs catapulted us up to over 2000m. The air was exceptionally clear that day, and it felt like you could reach out and touch Mont Blanc, over 50km away to the West.
We headed back to the Teeth and then crossed over the lake to the Roc des Boeufs. Anyone who has flown in Annecy will know that these are classic flying routes. Here it took some time to find a way through the inversion at 1600m, but we both eventually made it through and headed for Margeriaz. I arrived somewhat ahead but found that the north tip of the ridge was only working weakly, so I continued round to the west face. Which was dead. Not a single peep from the vario. Now without enough altitude to get back to the north side, and stuck in the stability, it was suddenly all over and I was left with just enough time to chose a landing field. I radioed back to Damien to warn him and he was able to stay on the north side and continue his flight, eventually landing at the entrance of the Maurienne valley.
At this point I cheated. It was late in the day and there was no time to walk up to another take off, so I stuck my thumb out. Anyone who's landed in the Bauges mountains knows that there is very little traffic and getting home can take a long time. However, I was lucky, and after just 20 minutes a young guy stopped. His beaten up Peugeot 205 barely held together, no doubt shaken apart by the thumping hardcore techno music he was playing. The tempo of the music was matched only by the speed of his driving (and he was a local who knew the roads). It was great fun (and I loved the music), he kindly dropped me off at the Revard (4 Vallees) take off, and just one hour after having landed I was back in the air again.
Here the goal was clear: get back to Annecy. It was late in the day but I knew the route. The stability was still there, but my Axis Mercury climbs and glides amazingly so, despite being a lot lower than I would have wanted for several of the transitions, I was still able to make it back. In the landing field I met fellow first-time X-Alps competitor Ronny Geijsen who was in Annecy to test his newly-arrived wing and fly in the PWC. There's no book about how to prepare for the X-Alps, so we eagerly swapped notes about gear, training and strategy. He's also a thoroughly nice chap.
On Saturday I headed, again with Damien, to a new take off for us both at the south end of the Aravis mountains. Not much more than a small clearing in a forest with magically fewer line-snagging rocks than your average mountains side, it was a real discovery. We launched, once again, in to stable air on the wild, steep SE face of Mont Chavin.
It took an age to climb out. Every metre was hard won in the 0.3m/s thermals, and ten minutes work would every now and then be wiped out by a few seconds of -3m/s sink. It was galling. After several attempts to break through the inversion at 1800m I gave up and decided to do something different. With another Mercury (not Damien) and two DHV 2s headed West over the classic site of Marlens and on to the SE faces of Tournette. This was a flight that I had heard was possible, but I'd never tried before. On this day, with the stability, I fully expected to land early.
But somehow, despite the weak and broken thermals, we were able to soar up in the slope breeze and finally broke through to more unstable air above. To get through an inversion on a paraglider you've generally got two options: either find a large and strong enough thermal that's powerful enough to break through to the air above, or tuck in tight to the terrain, kick trees, and work the slope breeze. Today, only the second option was possible. But it worked! The slope breeze gave way to reasonable thermals and eventually we popped through in to steady 3m/s climbs up to cloud base now at 2500m.
This was a new route for me, and I remembered Aidan Toase's advice for the X-Alps: "You have to be happy flying alone over unknown terrain", so I resolved to explore as much as I could on this flight. I flew straight past Annecy, not bothering to turn in a thermal full of competition pilots preparing for the Paragliding World Cup. Alone at Parmelan, I found an incredible 4m/s thermal that launched me in to orbit and used this to head north.
Despite having lived in the area for several years, I had never flown these mountains before. Sous Dine, Sur Cou and the Pointe d'Andey came up and I cruised past them. My only knowledge of this area came from driving to the ski resorts of La Clusaz and Grand Bornand, and my memories consisted mainly of narrow tree-lined valleys with no landing options.
Several pilots have remarked on Alex Hofer's flying attitude: he flies with total confidence. There's no need to worry about having nowhere to land if you're not going to land. If there have been thermals in all the south-facing bowls so far, then so will the next one, even if it doesn't have a big grassy field to land in at the bottom. So, I adopted a new mental tactic. At each decision point, I asked myself: "what would Alex Hofer do?".
It's scary at first, but it works. I chose a remote col where there should have been convergence between the southerly thermal breeze and the northerly meteo wind, and indeed it worked. Elsewhere I flew into a high a tree-lined bowl and it worked as well. When you're high there are landing options that you can't see from the ground: the glide angle of your paraglider means that you have a large search radius, and you only need one decent field in that area to be safe. But you shouldn't worry about the details of identifying an actual landing field. Instead, I think the trick is to focus not on what happens if you don't find any lift, but rather the focus on where the lift actually is.
Finally I ended up flushed through some sink and too low in the low level stability to get up again and landed out. Five quick and easy hitches with several interesting people got me back to the valley below my car, but I knew (and had planned) to walk up from the valley floor to where my car was.
1000m height gain, 15km along the road, all with 25kg (40% of my body weight) of competition wing and harness on my back took just under three hours, fuelled only by a bit of leftover couscous and half a litre of energy drink. It was a good slog and almost dark when I got to the top. Incidentally, the road has 41 hairpin corners. It's reassuring that I can do it, and the only damage was a small blister on one toe because I was stupidly wearing normal cotton socks. It'll be a lot easier with Alex supporting me: proper nutrition, moral and tactical support, and a change of socks and shoes every now and then.
Sunday was the first day of the
Paragliding World Cup. It's a long-term personal goal to compete in the PWC. I went along to the competition to catch up with friends there and to meet several of the X-Alps competitors. Watch out for the British Force of Mark Hayman, Jamie Messenger and Craig Morgan. Of this year's X-Alps athletes, five are there: Toma Coconea, Vincent Sprungli, Primoz Susa, Ronny Geijsen and Helmut Eichholzer. It was great to finally meet the legend that is Toma Coconea and his supported Gigi. Toma, the poor fellow, wanted to run up to take off but had been told that he had to take the bus! My friend and 2007 X-Alps competitor
Ulric Jessop was also there and it wad great to catch up with him and get loads of tips gear and tactics.
I had the privilege of wind dummying for the competition, taking off just before window open to find out if anything, anywhere was going up. Luckily for me, the inversion at 1260m was just begining to break as the competitors launched, and I got a bird's eye view by parking myself over the middle of the course and watching the race. I've got to say, these PWC guys (and gals) are really fast. It's a great ambience on the ground, but once in the air everyone is focused on maximising every thermal and pushing as much bar as possible on every glide.
Flying competitions is definitely a different set of skills to the cross country which I've been focusing on. In fast and full-on competition you have a defined task, you're flying during the strongest part of the day, and you have the world's fastest pilots around you to help you find lift. Flying XC, typically on your own or in a small group, flying all day long, and adapting your route to the terrain and the changing weather conditions is another set of skills. It's a real sign of maturity in the sport that paragliding has now evolved in so many different directions.
Alex arrives in Geneva on Wednesday for the final month of preparation. The race start feels awfully close now.
Judith Mole and I have just done the follow-up podcast on the race and it's aftermath. Have a listen to it on Judith Mole's paragliding podcast page.
Right now there's a thunderstorm in Geneva. The lightning is spectacular and the rain torrential. There's just a thin sliver of clear sky sandwiched between the towering clouds and the crests of the Jura mountains. The light has an metallic blue quality, illuminating the city in eerie surgical glow. I've never quite seen anything like it.
Alex and I have a whole host of weather information sources at our disposal. For the general long term forecasts we use TopKarten which publishes the output of the American GFS model (click on the link then click on GFS). This gives us forecast pressures and wind speeds at different altitudes, precipiation, cloud cover and more esoteric variables like CAPE which allows us to predict the chance of thunderstorms. You can click on the "+6" and "-6" links to animate through the forecast for the next two weeks. We'll use the output of this model to make the grand strategic decisions, for example do we take the north route through Chur or the south route through Bellinzona?
The first thing to look at is the wind speed. Meteorologists prefer to use pressure altitudes rather than elevations. To first approximation, 850hPa corresponds to about 1500m -- the altitude at which we normally fly -- and 500hPa corresponds to about 5000m -- the summit of Mont Blanc. Wind speeds less than 10km/h at 1500m are "go anywhere" days and paraglider pilots can fly in any direction. Up to 20km/h pilots can still fly but it's difficult to make progress against the wind, and above 30km/h we are grounded.
If there are also light winds at 500hPa then expect some very long flights, if you see a "snake" of strong winds (Stromlinien) over the Alps then it means that jet stream is near and flying will be difficult.
The precipitation (Niderschlag) is accumulated over several hours, so a little bit of light blue is not a worry: it means the occasional shower at worse. However, once you start seeing purple on the forecast charts then you can expect a wet day with limited flying opportunities between the rain clouds.
During the 2007 race I was glued to the internet, following the teams' progress through the Alps. Suddenly my phone rang: it was Aidan Toase: "Hi Tom, it's Aidan -- I'm trying to find a take off but I'm in the cloud and I can't see very far. Can you have a look on Google Earth and see if there's one near me?" Thanks to the live tracking I could find Aidan's exact position as he was on the phone, and was able to tell him that if he walked a few hundred metres north through a forest he'd come to a clear area where he could launch.
Technology has made an incredible difference to how we paraglide. Through the internet we have access to the latest detailed weather forecasts and up-to-the minute information from the sites. Using Google Earth and online databases like Paragliding Earth and XContest's incredible Skyways Map we have fingertip access to experience that would otherwise take years to acquire. Once in the air live tracking systems like Leonardo Live allow others to follow our progress in real time and are a great safety feature. Pilots who were flying ten years ago may remember analysing every word of the TV news forecast and somehow organising to go flying without using mobile phones. How archaic it seems now.
The 2009 live tracking, written by Harry Gergits, will be even better this year, with live updates every minute. Red Bull Mobile are supplying us with Sony Ericsson C702 which talk to our Brauniger Compeo+ altivario GPSs via Bluetooth. The Compeo+ collects a minute-by-minute log and packs eight track points in to an SMS which it sends every eight minutes.
Suunto are supplying us with their new Suunto Core watch which includes an altimeter, compass and thermometer. All these features will be very useful for navigation in the mountains. For example, you can use the thermometer to measure the environmental lapse rate as you walk up to launch to get an idea of the atmospheric instability on the day.
Those of you who know me will know that I have a bit of a fetish for computers and have written quite a lot of software for paragliders. If you're an XC pilot then be sure to check out my XC planner and to analyse your flights with my Google Earth flight analyser (now integrated in to Leonardo). There are also a few geekier projects on my GitHub home page.
On Wednesday I'll finally be able to collect the harness from Sup'air. I've chosen to use a third generation Altirando XP. Sup'air are producing a special version for the X-Alps which is a couple of hundred of grams lighter than the standard version. It's a really nice harness in the air, nicely aerodynamic with the removable leg cover and with some excellent back protection in the form of an airbag. Equally importantly, it reverses to become a very comfortable rucksack. I've asked for a couple of minor modifications to adapt it better to my rather skinny body shape. Stay tuned for a more detailed description of the X-Alps gear towards the end of the week.
Finally, the race start is just fourteen days away now. It's scarily close and the first long term forecasts have just been published. Two weeks is an eternity in weather forecasting and you can't really believe anything they say, but I can't resist peeking! The current forecast is that Austria will get quite a lot of rain the day before the race but race day itself will be dry with light winds at 1500m, which means that we'll be able to fly from the first turnpoint above Salzburg, the Gaisberg. The winds at altitude are moderately strong Westerlies, which could be a problem for making progress in the air. We're racing from East to West, against the prevailing winds and consequently the 'hard' way. This is the Red Bull X-Alps, after all...
My supporter Alex Raymont is an excellent pilot himself, having been Canadian National Champion in 2003. We also weigh about the same so we can fly each other's wings. On Sunday we flew a wonderful XC together from Annecy, me on my Axis Mercury and Alex trying the Axis Venus 2 that I'll use in the X-Alps. As you can see from the photo above, cloudbase was low but the clouds were tall. We carefully threaded our way through the Bauges mountains to the Dent d'Arclusaz and back. Alex was really impressed by the handling of the Venus 2, and especially its climb performance: it seems to be naturally drawn in to thermals.
Back in Annecy we stumbled across the two Japanese pilots competing in the Red Bull X-Alps this year. The photo above is of Kaoru "Ogi" Ogisawa (fifth in 2007) flying in front of the Dents de Lanfon on his 2009 gear. I think he wins the prize for the most stickers on his glider!
Right now flying conditions are not good in the Alps. We're in the dreaded "goutte froide" situation. This occurs when cold air sweeps across the Atlantic Ocean and a blob on the end breaks off and floats around the Mediterranean Sea. It's visible on the temperature chart on the right as a big orange "bite" centred over the Adriatic Sea and is a low pressure system.
The winds blow anticlockwise around a low pressure system in the Northern Hemisphere and these winds collect moisture from the Mediterranean Sea and dump it as rain on the Eastern end of the Alps. You can see on the precipitation chart on the right that today is going to be a very wet day in Austria and Northern Italy. No flying there.
At the same time there's a big high pressure system over the British Isles and the North Sea. The winds blow clockwise around these and the air is squeezed between this high pressure and the "goutte froide" and accelerates, i.e., it's windy. At the West end of the Alps (Geneva) this cold NE'ly wind is too cold to flow over the Alps so it flows around them and is further squeezed between the main body of the Alps and the Jura mountains. It's the classic "Bise" wind: cold, dry and strong. Right now in Geneva it's about 40km/h at ground level and 60-70km/h at altitude. Further south, this wind blows down the Rhone Valley past Lyon and becomes the "Mistral" in Marseille.
It's been a pretty windy Spring in the French Alps, but a ridge of high pressure built over the France and the Western Alps over the weekend and I took a half day of holiday from work on Friday to take advantage of it.
Aidan very kindly shared much of his experience of his two previous races and good humouredly answered my incessant questions.
On Thursday I met up with two-times X-Alps veteran and 2009 competitor Aidan Toase to check out route around the area of the Simplon Pass and the valley to the Matterhorn. We explored potential take offs and landing areas, and discussed route options in the area. Although it's a classic paragliding highway, it will still be a complex section to negotiate during the race: we have to fly around airspace at Sion (the same airspace that cost Martin Müller the title in 2007), we're flighting the strong valley winds, and the area around Martigny where we need to cross to Chamonix Mont-Blanc takes the full brunt of the valley wind and is always very, very windy indeed.
My X-Alps wing arrived on Friday! Thank you Axis UK! She's a beauty: 6.3:1 flat aspect ratio and racing trim giving her accessible comp wing performance and weighing just 4.8kg.
Saturday, day 1. Conditions were expected to be tricky and indeed they were! Although the airmass was unstable, rising atmospheric pressure restricted their upward movement. The result was small, weak, snotty thermals that seemed to form randomly and then peter out after a few turns. You'd occasionally hit a 2m/s thermal, but most of your time was spent grovelling over the trees in 0.2m/s. The Task Committee set a 49km task around the local area. Most of the field, including me, bombed out at around 20km, simply running out of options at the third turnpoint, but a few pilots persevered. PWC Champion Anja Kroll won the day, getting to goal in 3h20m and 35 minutes ahead of the only other pilot to complete the course.
I was really happy with the wing. I was flying in my normal cocoon harness which put me 5kg over the top of the weight range and yet I was still able to climb well. The air was turbulent behind the spurs in the lee of the valley wind and yet on a day when two wings ended up in the trees I had nothing more than a tip collapse.
On Saturday night I got to test the X-Bus, my first night in the support vehicle. It's brilliant! Comfortable, plenty of space to stand up and cook inside, light, heating, music, and a warm night spent in my down sleeping bag. It's a home away from home.
Many launched quickly (although a few decided to take the bus down) and those who did fly were rewarded with a stunningly beautiful flight. The weak thermals of yesterday had been replaced with solid two and three metre per second climbs. I took one to over three thousand metres and with stunning views in all directions, including the lakes of Interlaken and the unmistakeable 4000m trio of the Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau peaks, one of the turnpoints in the 2007 race: see the photo at the top of the post.
I've finally found a camper van for the race. Provisionally named the "X-Bus", she's a 1992 Ford Transit Nugget Westfalia. Four seats, four comfortable sleeping places, and enough room inside to cook in bad weather. The engine (a 2.5 litre diesel) and the bodywork are both in good nick. Will do the job, basically.
Axis have sent me the first photos of my X-Alps wings. All being well I should receive her next week.
According to Cross Country magazine (edition 119, page 62), competing in the X-Alps costs €7,150, of which €750, over 10% of your budget, goes on maps. I can well believe it! You need every part of the Alps covered at 1:100 000, the turnpoints at 1:50 000, and the most difficult sections at 1:25 000. When you realise that you're likely to walk or fly 1,600km, i.e. one thousand miles, that's a lot of cartography.
Work's been really hectic over the last month so I've had very little time to update the blog. Here's a quick summary of what's been happening:
So I recently visited the Axis Paragliders in Brno in the Czech Republic. Brno is the Czech Republic's second largest city and has been home to Axis since the company was founded in 1990. They have recently opened a second factory twenty kilometres from Brno and manufacture some gliders in Sri Lanka.
Safety is a primary concern of the design team. This evident throughout the range, even in the company's flagship competition wing, the Mercury. It isn't a question of getting the hottest glider possible through the tests, but instead paying attention to safety characteristics beyond what the certification measures. For example, the profile and trimming is carefully designed to create a glider that wants to fly and does not remain in deep stall. For pilots, this means that if we're flying slowly e.g. to top land on a UK ridge or squeeze in to a small landing field then if the glider starts to stall then when we raise our hands the glider immediately starts flying forward again. Gliders without this characteristic would dump you on your back.
Skinning up on beautiful snow.
The sun creeps over the summits, leading us upward.
A lone ski tourer heads for an unknown objective.
Refueling before the final slopes.
Natalie skins up the last few metres to the col. Behind her is the Point Percée (2750m).
Luc rips up the heavy powder on the descent.
It's snowed a lot and I've been out to play. On Saturday I headed in to the mountains with the Amis Montagnards mountain sports club to tour up to the summit of the Roc de Tavaneuse (2156m) above Abondance in the Chablais region. Conditions were challenging with piles of fresh snow and flat light, but our Chefs de Course, Mark Schaerrer and Patrice Rouiller, led us expertly on a brilliant tour with three amazing ascents and descents totalling 1700m of height gain, cumulating with the spectacular NW couloir of the Point d'Ardens (1959m). I'll let Mark's excellent series of photos tell the story, here (click on "diaporama" to see them full screen).
The most iconic mountain in the Alps, the 4478m Matterhorn is part of the huge Monte Rosa massif which straddles the border between Switzerland and Italy. The only way from one side of the massif to the other is by foot or by air, there are no bridges or tunnels for the supporter's car. Driving from one side to the other takes several hours: Cervina (Italy) to Zermatt (Switzerland) - only 13km apart as the crow flies - are 232km and 3.5 hours distant by road via the Grand St Bernard pass. This turnpoint will likely be the most challenging of the 2009 Red Bull X-Alps, both physically and logistically. It could make or break several athletes in the race.
Heading just north of the summit, the lowest pass to Zermatt is at 3400m. High mountain glaciated terrain, and the far side is flat enough that if you were to fly from the col it's unclear if you would out-glide the huge Gorner glacier (shown in the photo on the right taken by Zacharie Grossen) to reach a safe landing in Zermatt (1600m). Assuming you do make it to Zermatt, then you find yourself trapped by 4000m summits in all directions and it's another 1800m vertical ascent through inhospitable glaciated terrain to a col to regain the south face of the Monte Rosa massif. Those without mountaineering experience need not apply.