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We arrived in Switzerland a few days early for our
next stop on Eagle Paragliding’s 2007 follow the sun world tour. We did
North America in January, South America in February, and are hitting
Europe in May, specifically the French Alps. I’m guiding this tour with my good friend Nick Greece from Jackson Hole Wyoming who is now working for Cross Country Magazine since they merged with Paraglider Magazine. We are lucky to have Jamie Messenger here to work as a guide as well. Jamie is a British pilot who has many seasons of experience here in the Alps. We have the editor of Cross Country Bob Drury coming down as well, and he promises to bring quite a slideshow presentation. We arrived jet lagged on Wednesday May 16th, and adjusted on Thursday as the rain came down. We woke up Friday and were treated to some nice post frontal flying. We toured the peaks around Lake Annecy here in France. It was one of the most beautiful flights I have had in my life. This place is amazing. Our biggest climbs were 800 to 1000 a minute up, and we topped out at 6100 feet. They get to 9000 on really good days here. We managed to fly a 51K course which included a peak hopping excursion around and across the lake, and a semi committed crossing to get back to our chalet. I had one low save that made making goal super sweet. Here are some pictures Jamie and I took of our flight. |
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| This is the launch at Lake Annecy. Cloud base was really low early on,
and it didn’t get soarable until 1pm as cloud base started to rise.
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| That’s me in the burgundy and grey UP Trango 3. This wont be the last
time Jamie is above me on our flight. We end up climbing up to base here
and heading off to the right along a ridge with some nice peaks.
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| Jamie looking back at me as we glide away from launch after our climb
out. |
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| This shot is actually later in the day, but it shows the transition we
make after we made another climb to base. We came in just above the small
little open field on the bottom right of the image. We ridge soared along
a bit then connected below the big rock where it came together nicely.
This was on the first go round. Once we had done our lap around the lake
we came in about the same spot them climbed up above the big rock on the
right and flew about 14k to our chalet. While on our tour of the lake we
climbed out at the first big rock, jumped to the second rock you see in
the middle of the picture, and then made the transition across the valley
to the mountain you see on the left side of the image. We didn’t get any
shots of the glide over or us thermaling over there. |
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| Here is a shot of Jamie gliding away from the mountain you just saw in
the distance on the left in the last image. He took a line over the spine,
and I saw a little cloud street over the lake which proved to be a good
line. |
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| 6. After taking the picture of Jamie I get on course in an attempt to
intercept the spine across the lake. |
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| I came into the spine with decent altitude, and managed to hook a
thermal then it got a bit sinky and the trees weren’t shaking that much so
I skirted along trying to maintain altitude looking for a thermal. You can
see Nick up ahead getting in tight. I got deep and stinking low.
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| I pushed away from the ridge and headed out to the left. You can see a
little dirt road which leads up into the trees. I ran out to the edge of
the tree line where this road meets the fields and found a little bubble
that got stronger every few hundred feet. The thermal lifted me from the
spot next to the little dirt road to where you see Jamie coming in over
me. This thing turned into one of the strongest thermals of the day for
me. I was stoked to get back in the ball game and join up with my homies.
Nick saw me climbing and decided he wanted some too. |
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| We played around on top of this ridge and thermalled once we were
established. You can see a good shot of the route we took across the lake
from right to left. |
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| 10. We topped out and put it on glide back to launch, and I had to
throw out a shaka. |
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| We missed some shots between getting back to launch and climbing out
and then getting up and going over the back. Some of this was a little
committed and we were in the lee so it was more active than any other part
of the flight so we opted not to take pictures. Once we got out of the
deepness we came into this ridge line and cruised up toward that peak with
the big cloud above it in the distance. We had to get right up next to the
rock on that peak to hook it, but the air was really sweet. |
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| Once we got up to base above that peak in the last picture we went
over the back and glided into the valley where we are staying. I had some
time to take in the beauty and trip on all the huge peaks covered with
snow everywhere. Look at the mountain which is sort of centered at the end
of the valley in this picture and you will see where we landed. My finger
is pointing to the field next to the place we are staying. |
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| Here is our LZ; it was actually like top landing. It was poppy coming
in and we could have kept going but we were tired and thirsty for beer.
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| Jamie funking it down since we had some extra altitude to burn
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| Nice shot of Nick cruising just over the town where we are staying as
we look down valley from where we came. |
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| 16. I had some altitude to funk it down as well. So I’m here at the airport picking up the pilots who are all arriving today. I imagine I will be busy and may not have time to post more stuff anytime soon, but check back in a week, and I’ll try to have some fresh stuff. |
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Paragliding LLC
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Phone 805-968-0980
Fax 208-361-9899
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