The last day.

Waking up to a light dusting of snow on the ground and a bitter northerly wind confirmed that winter has arrived early in Scotland. It was after 10 before a reasonable sized gap in the showers appeared and e could start launching. The wave was obviously setting up over the valley and by the time we were ready to launch the duo Discus from Portsmouth Navel GC was reporting a 6knot climb behind Morvan.

Clive and Gary launched first in the DG 1000 followed by Hugh and Ingram in the K21 and Rick in the Discus. It didn’t take long before people were reporting going on to oxygen at 10,000ft and a look at the sky confirmed that it could be a big day if the snow showers just stayed away. At around midday one of the local pundit started call back to the airfield too find out about the big snow showers that were developing to the North East. About 15 mins later we caught the edge of the first one, but looking at the weather radar it was obvious that the next one would hit us, so at that point all the gliders started returning.

A good morning flying with the DG 1000 getting to 12,000ft, the K21 10,000ft and the Discus 9,900ft. It was now obvious that the snow showers were getting more frequent and the next task was going to be de rigging the gliders in-between the blizzards. This took about 2 hrs due to having too scrape frozen snow off of the gliders two or three times.

The evening’s entertainment consisted of a blow out meal in the Ballater Pizza restaurant followed by a drive back to the House in blizzard.

Colin