13 Jun 06

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13 Jun 06


Return to the col de Carro
A late start today, so the thermals were booming by the time I launched. Today's getaway was via La Motte, Jouere and Auribeau; with cloudbase rising to 9000ft near Clot Ginoux, the crossing to the parcours at Dormillouse was easy. I had tried to tempt Martin "Big Foot" Whitehead (flying Ariane's LS6 122) to follow me to Auribeau by threading a route through the hills, but Martin confirmed his high-level piloting skills by sticking to his script - ("B*gger that, I want a big mountain on one side of me and a big valley on the other")	Auribeau


Lac Cenis - yes, there's a drought here, too...	After an "interesting" couple of minutes on a cloudless Guillaume, I abandoned the theory that "well, it should work..." and moved over to the tete de Lucy, where the huge amounts of cumulus and an 8-knot climb proved again that when it comes to soaring there is no substitute for common-sense. Over the col de Couleau and across to the tete de Peyron, my next climb went to 11,500ft and shortly afterwards, a huge high cumulus gave 14,000ft over the Queyras. There was a lot of lower level scrappy cumulus towards the col d'Etache, but it was worth popping over to find amongst the crud proper higher level flat bottomed cu, so I decided to carry on past Lac Cenis towards the col de Carro. The higher mountains still carried their winter snows and looked just beautiful, and ever-changing as various levels of cloud drifted over. At the col de Carro, a growing cu-num over Aosta convinced me that it was time to turn for home.

Solliere valley, towards the col de Carro

There was no need to worry about getting back across the col d'Etache, which I reached with an easy 2300ft margin. Another storm brewing over the Glacier Blanc led to a routing via the Queyras and the col de Vars into the Barcellonette valley. After a look at the lac d'Allos I crossed over to the parcours at the Cheval Blanc and carried on down south to see how the pedalos were getting on at the gorge de Verdon. After topping up to 8000ft on the Serre Montdenier, I flew back to base via the Vaumuse, which offered a helping hand to give me enough height to get cross the col at Trainon. The distance for today was 440km.