From Chamonix to St. Hilare and heading south

Big thunder and heavy rain woke us up in Chamonix. At least we got a good thunder concert as we could do nothing else around Mt. Blanc.
We contacted Clement and Bruno (from Supair) if we could come for a visit to Supair's headquarters in Annecy which is just an hour from Chamonix. They had time and made us feel very welcome and wanted as much as possible feedback of the new harness. In the mean time Bruno added and adjusted small bits and peaces on the harness he wanted to do anyways. I had some issues with the shoulder straps of their backpack which resulted into pain in my shoulders and Bruno knew right away what it could be and added more padding and changed what needed to be done. Wow, what a service, thanks a lot again Bruno and to your team.
Clement (manager in Sales for SupAir) is also a xAlps competitor and was very helpful to give me valuable information of the Chamonix to St. Hilare section, thanks again Clement, it all made sense wen we saw it the last couple of days.

After the SupAir visit, we headed to Villard sur Doron stayed overnight and the next day we hiked up to Mount Bisanne. This site is known as a very popular XC starting point, but when we got up, it was still covered in clouds and once the clouds lifted, we had a good north wind which is from the wrong direction. After spending some time up there, we hiked down a couple minutes and launched in some week lee thermals and managed to fly down instead of hiking down 1200 meters.
After we packed up, we headed to St. Hilare and checked out the route Clement was telling us.
We planned to hike up Dent de Crolles (2062 meters) which is just above St. Hilare, but the cloud base was just about 100 meters above St. Hilare (900 meters) and we could watch the first para gliders playing in the morning sun (9:00am). After watching this for 20 minutes, we decided not to hike and start flying. My first flight was about 2 hours and I flew part of the route back to Les Marches and back to St. Hilare, top landed had some lunch, adjusted the harness a bit and got ready for another flight. Cloud base raised up to 1400 meters but it was still not enough to cross the valley to follow the xAlps route. After my 2nd attempt crossing the valley, I managed to thermal up some small bumps on the other side and could work all the small bumps and ridges to the south west passing by Grenoble. Cloud base never got higher then 1800 meters which made it impossible for me to follow my way-points which were leading me into the higher mountains (about 2500 meters). I ended up at a ridge soaring site on a high plateau by Lac Mort, top landed there and contemplated to hike about 10 km south to a open grassy mountain. Instead of hiking, I launched again and tried to fly east and to work myself out of this area, which resulted in a landing down in the valley. Overall I had a great flight and spend more then 6 hours in the air trying out different things.
Today we plan to hike up another mountain and head down south towards Monaco. 

May had a lot of unstable weather - Equipment review

April started out great for flying, May had a couple good days but overall it was very unstable and not many flights were happening. In the mean time we have been busy with the canoe's (incl. camping), bike rides, kids' soccer and at the Skateboard park (Erik's favorite place to ride his bike).
Penny did a lot of training and got super fit for her 25 km trail run at Nippika. They had a couple hundred participants and Penny was 3rd overall and got 1st place in her age group. Way to go Penny!!!

In the mean time I'd thought I'd share some of the questions I. have've had. Several people have asked me about the harness/backpack and the MBT's I used during the race.

The Altirando XP from Supair was the harness I used and still use. This harness is excellent and I just love it. Here are a couple remarks of what I love most about it.

• The backpack is very comfortable to carry and most outstanding is the ability to pack it flat and tall as this keeps the weight close to your body. The further you move weight away from your body, the heavier it will feel. My pack weighs about 14-17 kg depending on supplies (5.5 kg the wing, 3.9 kg the harness/backpack, 1.4 kg reserve plus helmet, clothes, GPS, Vario and water/food. 
• The harness is very comfortable to fly and allows you to assist turns with weight shifting. The Nova Triton needs a harness which allows you wight shift in combination with break-line input as it can not only be flown by break-lines. 
• The extra bonus is the leg fairing or pod you can attach (0.850 kg). This is excellent as it saves you from wearing extra pants or a flight suit (a flight suit alone is at least 1.3 kg). It is warm, streamlined and fits nice with the front-mount reserve. The front-mount reserve is also serving very well as a cockpit for your Vario and GPS.  

I am very happy with that harness as it is way more compact and with the extra packing space if needed I can add more stuff to go traveling with this pack alone.

In the video below you can see how the pack carries and a short clip about MBT sandals. MBT is not a good shoe for trails in the mountains as it an unstable shoe with far less traction than proper mountain shoes. But at the same time, I have to say that I would not have been able to walk these long distances (especially in the valley's) for this many days in a row and to be able to recover so quick with only a couple of hours of sleep a night, had I not been wearing the MBT's. I am still wearing MBT's every day as I have sandals, runners and dress-shoes.
Here are the reason what I like on these shoes the most.

• The round sole virtually makes you walk and feels very soft. 
• The MBT system forces you to have a upright posture and this is a mayor advantage as a upright posture will provide you with a good blood circulation for the organs and you will not get tired as fast as with a bend over posture. 

First I got told to use MBT only for training as it builds up your core strength but not to use them for the race. After all the experiences I had with MBT, I am training with them and would use them in the race any time again.

What did I do from Monday to Thursday?

Ok, here we go. This will be quite an update as I have done a lot the last couple of days.

Monday morning I met Laurant at www.SupAir.com. Laurant told me right away that the Altirondo I used is not the same as the new Altirondo. As I was sitting int he new one there was quite a difference. Laurant set me up with the pod, the reserve and made sure all is set up just right. He told me to use this brand new harness until they have the x-alps version ready (800 gramms lighter), thanks Laurant. I have to say, this harness feels great and with the pod it makes it very slick. I also like the attachment to add a pack on to top of the bag. All this is very well thought out.
The afternoon looked windy with rather big clouds, so I decided to find a "Herz" repair station to get the coolant hoses fixed as we constanly lost coolant liquid. It looks like an animal was biting into the hoses. As it turned out, they asked me to drive it until I get back to Germany and exchange it there. Anyhow, Frank did a good job taping it and it seams to hold the coolant for a couple of days.

In the evening I decided to head to Chamonix, stay overnight at a hotel with Internet connection for my Monday conference call and to catch up with work.
Tuesday morning I hiked up west of Mount Blanc to Col de Vosaz (850 meter elevation gain) from there you can launch and fly into the Les Contamines-Montjoie valley and head back up the mountians to continue south west to Moûtiers from where you can start heading up the first big pass I traveled with Frank a week ago.
After I got back, I decided to head east of Chamonix to Martigny. On the way to Martigny I found the trail head to Col de Balme late in the afternoon. I thought I go without my heavy bag and do the 1200 meter tour fast with a light bag and water. So I headed out after 4 pm and made it back after 8:00 pm. This was a great hike and cerainly worth it. On top on the Col de Balme there are great take off spots haeding to Chamonix (see picture, to the left is Mount Blanc and Chamonix below). I alos found some cool historc rock houses. All in rock including the roofs. After I got back to the Van, I had a great shower with the camping shower and haeded down to Martigny. In Martigny I was able to catch up with more work online.

The next morning (Wednesday) I headed up to Verbier as I wanted to try out the new harness and I knew that this is a rather easy flying site. Once I drove up there and looked for the landing site, I realized that the landing site was very small and when I was there last (22 years ago) that this is how far we only could fly unless it was a great day and we could fly over Verbier and landing down in the valley. Today you land in down in the valley except the vally winds are gettting to strong. So I parked the Van and hiked 50o meter elevation to a nice alpine grass launch site. The flight lasted about 30 minutes and was very smooth with some small thermals. I was very happy about the harness and the wing and got ready for a hot 800 meter elevartion gain hike back up to the van. With this hike I accumulated over 3400 meters elevation gain in 2 days.
Late afternoon this day I headed to Zermatt and had a good look at the windy Martigny and Sion Valley. Driving up to Zermatt (Taetsch) made me realize that I do not want to land anywhere from the Matterhorn down to Visp (town in the main valley). There are no landing sites at all. At Taetsch (5 km before Zermatt) I pulled in a campground. You can not drive any further as the last 5 km to Zermatt are only accesible by Train or Taxi.
The next morning I got a hold of Bruno (local Tandem pilot) and met him at the landing site at 10:00 am. This is a cool landing site as this is virtually on the train station. He was heading up to Unterrothorn which is at 3103 meters and just east of the Matterhorn. I was taking the gondola up with him and his tandem passenger and got a lot of information about the area. He made the whole area sound like a piece of cake. I flew off from the Unterrothorn (picture is with Matterhorn behind at cloudbase), crossed the valley and had a look at the turn point Schwarsee. The thermals where chopped up as it turned out the valley wind got stronger earlier then normal. Also the cloulds started to build up and later in the day we had a short thunder shower. The flight was great. I could thermal right under the cloudbase (at 3100 meters) and could get more comfortabe with my new harness. The landing was as expected in strong valley wind. While I packed up I met Ronny and his girfriend Karla from Holland. Ronny will be in the x-alkps and representing Holland. After I packed up we decided to hike up to the Turn-point Schwarzsee to get familiar with the trail. After 900 meter elevation gain (this brings me now to 4300 meters elevation hikes in 3 days) starting with sunshine and ending with some light rain and a thunder strom further south we had a special cheese sandwich ala Ronny. The sandwich is way to go but sitting heavely in the stommach. Ronny thinks this is best x-alps food (just kidding). After we had the meal, the thunderstorm and rain stopped and we unpacked out wings and flew down to the train station. The winds where very light and we had a great flight down. These flights are very good to get in tune with the new harness and wing. I do like it and hope the weather stays good to get more flying in. I will spend one more night at the campsite and then head to Fiesch. This is a very well know cross country fliging site. From there you should be able to fly to the Matterhorn and at least to Sierre (east of Sion).
Anyhow, this is it for now. I hope this is not to much writing as I do not want to bore you either.