Blog Posts in Category: Austria

Bleispitze Hike and Fly

Alastair BegleyAustria, Paragliding, Walking Short Link

I thought that when I returned from India and then the UK the mountains would have their winter coat, unfortunately they do not yet, so I decided to make the most of the sunny still conditions and headed to climb the Bleispitze above Bichlbach and fly back down. As I could travel there for free using the Deutschland ticket, I elected to take the train despite it taking significantly longer than driving. I was surprised at the amount of snow in the valley at Bichlbach and as I headed up the valley towards Berwang, but these valleys hardly get any sun at this time of year so it hadn’t melted despite the sun over the past few days. I had planned on heading up via a much less well trodden path which involved heading steeply up to join a ridge which runs up to the summit. I could find no trace of a path as I walked past the turn off, and when I used gps to work out where it should be, it appeared to traverse across steep grassy slopes which were covered in wet snow. Due to this. Read the full article…

Vorderunnütz Hike and Fly

Alastair BegleyAustria, Paragliding Short Link

Having bought a new hike and fly setup I was very keen to make the most of the autumnal hike and fly conditions and use the equipment. With a beautiful weather forecast I had planned to climb Vorderunnütz for the fourth time (third hike&fly) with Becky&James and we had a last minute addition of Manuel. I particular enjoyed my new equipment which fitted in a 22l rucksack, while Becky had her usual paragliding setup and Manuel had a full XC setup. It made the walk up so much easier and the glide down so much more fun than on a full size wing. The walk up was enjoyable with ever improving views until we got to the snow line, which was surprisingly low for the time of the year. While it has mostly gone from a lot of the exposed slopes, between the small trees which are so common on the mountains it definitely remained and was pretty deep in places. Eventually we emerged from the small trees and the going eased significantly. As we emerged from the trees and could see the full slope up to the summit, it. Read the full article…

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…

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.

Greifenburg Paragliding

Alastair BegleyAustria, Paragliding Short Link

With another good forecast I headed back down to the south side of the main ridge for another attempt at a big FAI triangle, yet again it did not go to plan, however on this occasion I only have myself to blame. Everything was a bit of a rush as my original plan was to head to Sillian, however when we got there we found that Saturday was the rest day for the lift, I did not think to check that a Gondola which I knew was operational was running on a Saturday! We hastily made our way to Greifenburg, where Becky drove me up to the Emberger Alm which saved some time. After a quick walk up to the start place I setup and quickly launched, it was clear that the conditions were good, but not as good as forecast with a much lower cloud base. The first leg went well until I got to the valley crossing which had to be taken in order to make the route a 100km FAI triangle, for some reason, despite knowing that I was way too low to make this crossing easily,. Read the full article…

Sillian Paragliding

Alastair BegleyAustria, Italy, Paragliding Short Link

With a great forecast for the day in Osttirol, I decided to head down to Sillian for a day, hoping to manage a 100km FAI triangle. The day started later than I was hoping, however there was still plenty of time to make the triangle as I started. The first section of the flight went pretty smoothly, although I would have liked some stronger thermals, however on my first major valley crossing I realised that there was a much stronger west wind than was forecast due to Föhn over the main alpine ridge between Bruneck and Innsbruck. This resulted in two problems, firstly I had a poor glide and secondly I dropped down into the Lee at the end of the valley crossing. When this was combined with also dropping through an inversion layer resulted in thermals which were impossible for me to climb in, really strong pockets of rising air which were far to small to complete a turn in. After fighting for ages, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t going to work and made my way to land in Italy. Thankfully getting back to Launch was. Read the full article…

Tölzer Hütte, Hölzelstaljoch and Grasberg

Alastair BegleyAustria, Walking Short Link

After abandoning a multi day hut-to-hut hochtour in the Ötztaler Alpen due to the excessive snow and terrible weather forecast, we decided to make the most of the booked holiday by heading to the beautiful Rißtal for an overnight hike. We started by heading into the Tölzer Hütte via the most direct way as we were concerned about the rain, needless to say we could have taken the longer variation as the rain came later than forecast as to start with we somehow just missed it, but when it came, it certainly came with plenty of thunder and lightening. The walk up to the hut was hot work in the humid weather, but the walk was nonetheless enjoyable with views into the Karwendel and a nice path. After not too long we arrived at the hut and enjoyed the afternoon playing games and having a few beers in the hut. We even sent Katherine for a run up the nearby peak after we had been at the hut for a few hours and before the rain came. The next day we woke up to a glorious morning and enjoyed a. Read the full article…