After a few non-flyable days, which coincided with me being down with a head cold, we had a very enjoyable flight yesterday. Nice thermals, cloud base at 5500 meters and no wind to speak of.

Alex is the next one to get my cold so he should really not be flying and Glen is lacking motivation. The first flies for a few hours and then gives up and the second slides of the hill and lands. We don’t want to end up with big retrieve drives so we opt for a triangle flight. Due to the restrictions imposed on us we can’t fly much further to the south, which limits our scope somewhat. From our launch above the town we cross the valley to the East. From the valley floor one can’t see past the steep scee slopes as they rise too abruptly. Behind them however lays a chain of mountains with some 5500 meter peaks. The rock is mainly limestone with some metamorphic mixed in. There are some beautiful vertical walls that drop down for hundreds of meters, spines that lead the thermals to the main ridge and summits that would not be too difficult to climb. To the south the chain tapers off to the valley floor after about thirty kilometers, which is as far as we are allowed to go. To the North is our usual route to Booni where the chain culminates in the bulk of Booni Zoom Mountain before dropping down to the valley at Mastuje.

I fly without oxygen today as I don’t expect to go super high. My nose is still half blocked anyway so it wouldn’t really work having a cannula up my nostrils. Above 5000 meters my hands get very cold though and even the soles of my feed, which are pointing into the airflow, get ice cold. During glides I tap my hands against the harness to get the blood flowing again but the glides are usually not long enough to get the circulation going again. A bit of oxygen would thin the blood and make it flow easier to the extremities.

The flight turns into a five hour scenic ride that ends on the cliffs behind the launch site. It is 4pm when I climb out over the limestone peaks and in the slanting afternoon light the snow covered pinnacles look like giant mushrooms.

I glide back to the valley and into the warm air. It looks like the polo ground has been flooded so I land on the new bypass under construction. I land in a cloud of dust that gets amplified by the dozens of spectators that come rushing in from all sides. I made a bit of a show off my decent with wingovers and spiral dives so I only have myself to blame for the number of spectators this time.

Grey, Dimitry and I have big grins on our faces, this was beautiful flying, Alex is happy to but is too sick to have fully enjoyed it and Glen is his quiet self.

View from near the highest point on the ridge

The track of the flight;

http://www.paraglidingforum.com/leonardo/flight/615276