On the second day at Tegelberg I had planned to fly east after take off, through the Ammergebirge and then with the aim of seeing how far east I could fly, as this would give me an easy journey back to Munich. Unfortunately as per the previous day, the day took a very long time to get going at Tegelberg which meant that I didn’t launch until 14:20.
Thankfully after this late launch I was able to take a good thermal up through the invasion layers to well above the summit. At this point I abandoned my plan as the clouds to the east didn’t look very good, but the clouds to the south did. As I vaguely knew how a number of different flight areas/mountain ranges joined up, I decided to head south and see how it went.
The initial part of the flight was very scenic, although with some slow climbs due to shaded out ground, and it was really special to be able to fly over the Plansee and along to Lermoos with absolutely fantastic views. Unfortunately the Gartner Wand was completely shaded out at this point, so I climbed as high as the weak thermals would take me before gliding towards the Sonnenspitze and the Mieminger Gebirge. As I descended on the long valley crossing I dropped into a very strong valley wind, which was converging from the north and the west valleys. This created a lot of turbulence and I wasn’t sure if I would be able to climb back up, but thankfully when I positioned myself north of the Sonnenspitze, I was mainly in the outflow from the north and managed to soar up to above the summits and back into the thermals.
The thermals above the Sonnenspitze were very rough, but as I was well above the terrain I elected to continue along the Mieminger Gebirge. This was fairly committing as to my right I had Innsbruck airspace to avoid and to my left a narrow valley which wouldn’t have been ideal to land in. But due to the south facing cliffs it was almost certain there would be strong thermals despite the northerly wind, I just had to stay above the summits. This was no issue as I went along the ridge, but I was surprised when I arrived at the end to find no thermals, I definitely had to commit further south from the ridge.
As I left the ridge I was expecting a final glide to a tricky journey back home, however as I crossed the valley to the north the valley was cast into shade due to the setting sun, which released a massive thermal which took me all the way up to the airspace limit before a 20km final glide back to Farchant, and a very easy train ride back to Munich.
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