Week 2

Day 1

After a much-needed rest day and some local sight seeing it was down to business for the second week of the expedition.

The new team started in normal tradition by placing bets on how long the morning briefing would last; unfortunately they had failed to take in to account the new safety briefings, which have been added at the end of the weather brief. On a serious note the French national centre have produced these short briefings to try and reduced the accident rate in the Alps!

Thunderstorms would be the order of the day so it was get flying ASAP and make the most of the conditions. Launching at about 12:30 into a good looking sky it became obvious when we got to the first ridge that it had only just started to work and the conditions were very soft, so a very slow climb up the side of Malup. We than had a slow strole down the Crete de selles to Serres and back to La motte. Conditions were now starting to improve, but the fly in the ointment was the thunderstorm developing to the west of the airfield so it was now decision time, land before the rain or run South and know you would not be coming back. We chose at this point to return to the airfield and land just before the mass return.

The area around Sisteron and Gap then erupted in storms and we spent the next two hours watching them from our Gite. It also became obvious that if we had have gone South we could have had 2 hours of extra soaring as the conditions beyond St Auban look good. Chatting to someone latter who did land away, he described being P2 on an IFR aerotow retrieve at the end of the day as terrifying.

Colin.