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Published: September 14th 2008
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The Sella
Looks pretty unreal, but gorgeous. I just came back from an absolutely gorgeous part of the Alps, the Dolomites. I went there on Monday to join Lukas and a group of pilots who were there for a flight safari. We stayed in Campitello di Fassa, which is situated at the bottom of the Col Rodella, from which we were to fly.
I joined the group on Monday night for dinner. There were, as usually, only three hangglider pilots, André, Dieter, and myself. The others were paraglider pilots, amongst them one more girl, Leonie. They all had arrived on Saturday and knew each other already, so I had to struggle to learn all the names in one evening (which I am not very good at, unfortunately).
On Tuesday, the weather was fine. So after having a quick look at the landing field, we took the cable car that runs up the Col Rodella. I waited a while until I saw the first paragliders going up, then I launched from the north launch. I flew around the mountain and caught the first thermal I could get that took me about 120 metres above launch. Then it suddenly seemed to turn off. I tried to find something
The Sella Gruppe
Covered with snow or rocks? (Picture: Lothar) else between a whole bunch of paragliders, but I was not successful, and so I had to go and land after not even half an hour. The landing field is huge, but there is a powerline running along it, and there are some bumps on the ground, so you have to be careful not to come in too low. You would not want to fly into one of them.
After de-rigging my glider, I went up the mountain for one more flight, but when I arrived there I found conditions to be quite dodgy. The wind seemed to come from different directions, turning every now and then, so I decided to leave my glider up there and take the cable car back to town. In the evening, we all had dinner together, and we watched some videos of our launches.
Wednesday was quite unspectacular. After launching from the south launch, I flew straight to where I thought I would find a thermal. There was something going up, but I was not able to center it, and there were a lot of paragliders flying around looking for thermals, too. Not wanting to end up in a collision, I flew
The Langkofelgruppe
... in the first rays of sunlight. away from the others, could not find lift and landed. I wanted to go up again, but Lukas said that the wind up at launch had turned west. There is a west launch, but it is quite far from the cable car, and it is supposed to be hard to carry the glider there as the little road is very steep. So I decided not to fly any more. Again we spent a very nice evening with good food in the pizzeria.
Thursday was a good day, then. We had a westerly wind, but thermals caused the wind to blow up at the south launch until shortly after midday. So it was important to get off early enough as later on, the south launch would be in the lee which would make a takeoff impossible. Launching was easy, but then I had to fly around the mountain and cross the cable car in order to get to the west side of the mountain where it would be soarable because of the westerly wind. Flying towards that side of the mountain meant flying against a fairly strong wind. Seeing that I would not be able to cross the wires of
View into the Grödnertal
Taken by Lothar during a flight. the cable car, I had to turn left again and head for the valley in order to cross the wires further down. Arriving at the west side of the mountain low, it took me a while to work my way up again. But once I was a little bit above launch, it was really easy to stay up. The thing that I found really challenging was avoiding a collision with one of the many other pilots - mostly paragliders, but also a few hanggliders.
I could not get any higher than about 150 metres above launch, and with that altitude, my glider, and the strong wind, it was impossible to fly away from the mountain. At least for me. Conditions were quite strange anyway. Most of the time, the air was really smooth, and I could just float around with my hands loosely on the basebar. Sometimes (we later assumed that whenever a thermal came through), there was quite strong turbulence, though. Then it was really hard work to keep the glider straight. After about one and a half hour, I felt that I was slowly loosing my concentration, so I went to land. I came in with two
The Col Rodella
This is where we launched from. paragliders, which is always very exciting for me, but I landed alright, beaming with joy.
Some of the pilots had to leave on Friday, so we had some kind of farewell party on Thursday night. Hess had written a song about the week in Campitello, which he performed for us with his guitar. The song was very funny and really good. I was pretty impressed with Hess' songwriting abilities.
Friday was unspectacular again. We had a westerly wind again, so I launched before lunchtime from the south launch, trying to get to the west side of the hill again like the day before. This time, I arrived on the other side of the cable car so low that I could not work my way up again, and after floating around for some time, I landed. Lukas in the meantime had flown to the Marmolada and back, and he only landed because it was about to start raining. André flew to the Belvedere and back in his hangglider, and Lothar even flew to Wolkenstein in the Grödnertal...
Shortly after Lukas had landed, it started pouring with rain. So we had an ice cream in a café, and then
Paragliders above the Col Rodella
... soaring on the west side of the mountain. we went to have dinner. As the weather forecast for the weekend was not good, we all decided to leave on Saturday morning. I drove over the Sellapass and the Grödnertal, where I had been on holiday with my parents almost 25 years ago.
I arrived back home yesterday in the evening and had a lazy day today - a week with lots of work is expecting me.
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André
non-member comment
Ich war dabei - yeah
Na ja, die Startfenster waren dieses Jahr etwas kurz, aber dafür war das Wetter gut!