Schmittenhöhe Paragliding

Alastair BegleyAustria, Paragliding Short Link

With a decent forecast for the end of August I took the day off to head to Schmittenhöhe for a day of flying, with no particular objective other than to stay in the air for a while and enjoy the scenery. My thoughts were an out and back to Pass Thurn, heading onwards into the Zillertal or heading north back in the direction of Munich. Everything started working pretty late, but I was one of the earlier pilots to take off and the initial climb went well and I climbed away from take off with the fantastic views, however my transition to the next climb did not go well, and while scratching I made the mistake of turning too low and was flushed over a ridge. This meant I flew into the Lee and it didn’t feel great so I made a long glide out of the turbulent air. This lost me so much altitude that I dropped back down below the inversion layer, and despite my best fighting I could not get back above it. After landing early again, I was pretty frustrated, checked the wind and it looked. Read the full article…

Annecy Paragliding

Alastair BegleyFrance, Paragliding Short Link

With a week planned in Annecy, but the weather looking fairly unstable, we decided to head down a day early so that I could fly on the best day of the week. It was certainly a good decision, but it was still not a flying day due to late afternoon storms and a slow start to the day. I met a group of English speaking friends at the landing site, who I ended up spending most of the morning with on launch while we waited for it to turn on, which made it a pretty social day. When I took if it quickly became apparent that it was not going to be a big XC day, but rather a good day to get to know the site and admire the, frankly magnificent, views. The flying was pretty rough when above the lower inversion layer, with strong thermals, wind shear and another layer above that. Nonetheless it was a really enjoyable flight and it was great to have a flight without any big xc pressure. As the day went on the thunderstorms were clearly building, but I managed to squeeze in. Read the full article…

Hochiss

Alastair BegleyAustria, Walking Short Link

With Martin visiting it was time to head back to do our usual visitor circuit from the Rofanbahn, as it is such a spectacular walk without being too long. While I have now seen these views quite a few times, they never get old as they are so beautiful looking over the Achensee into the Karwendel. We made good time to the summit which meant that we were back down at the lift station for a lovely lunch and beer at the Erfurter Hütte, before we headed back to Munich for a lovely dinner.