The weather on Monday was the best for a long time (and when the weathers good you gotta go!) so with a few hours sleep under my belt, I dragged myself out of bed and headed up to San Felix again. The right decision, as a load of pilots - tandems and solos - were off for a cross country flight to Sante Fe de Antioquia, in the next valley along behind San Felix.
Had loads of time to get ready, but when it came to the get go I fluffed my launch, faffed around and by the time I got off, most of the pilots were well on their way to base. So I found myself in the all too familiar position of playing catch up. Took a while to get a good climb-out but was soon on my way and only just behind a couple of other pilots - so had someone to follow at least!
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| Going cross! |
Base was about 3200m so only 700m above the take off and the plateau behind. The first waypoint was a big hill on the other side of the plateau which I got too with a reasonable amount of height and found a climb without too much seaching. I felt a little smug at seeing my 2 flying buddies land out, however it meant I was left to forge my own way onward. Thankfully there were a few more pilots I could see in the distance to lead the way. I had fun playing with the clouds and maximising my height before continuing the journey, now on the edge of the Sante Fe valley, and hopping from spur to spur, working north and cross wind. Very sinky air between the spurs but thermals were reasonably easy to find and plenty of the gallizanos around to help out. The thermals were generally quite big (between 1-3 m/s up) but seemed to peter out well before base so getting high again was hard. Anyway, I thought was doing all right and was keeping up with the gliders in front, mostly with more height.
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| Heading towards Santa Fe |
As the day was progressing however, the sky was starting to overdevelop and looked ominously dark out in the distance. I watched the gliders ahead scratch up the ridge side before getting a great climb and then heading across the valley to what I then realised was Sante Fe. Soon after I got to the same ridge they'd scratched up with more height, but found a lot of sink and little good lift. With the sky getting darker and with less height to play with, I gave a little more attention to possible landing zones.... there are a lot of trees in this part of Colombia!
The options were certainly not abundant so I headed out towards the valley to give myself some choice. Watching a few plumes of smoke meander upwards in the middle of the valley I was surprised to then find myself stopped in my tracks by a strong and rough wind as I tried to push away from the ridge. It was definitely a squeaky bum moment as I quickly re-assessed my options, but eventually got away from the ridge and changed tack so I wasn't heading straight into wind. The wind was about 30km/h (so I was making no headway without bar) and losing height quickly, I settled for a big green clearing in the trees to land in. The landing was a little rough and as I came down I realised my nice green clearing was in fact big, shoulder height bushes! But my landing was fine and I found a bit of a clearing to pack my glider up. Then I just had to find my way out....
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| The perfect landing spot... (looked better from above) |
A few scaled fences, river crossings and an hour and half's walking got me on to the Santa Fe - Medellin road which I made just as it got dark. Another hour waiting on the roadside and I was relieved to get on a bus back to Medellin.
All in I managed a 40km flight and was only about 5km short of Santa Fe - not too bad for my first attempt!
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