CHAMONIX 1998

This trip all began when Denis Trott came over to the UK to give a talk to the Thames valley hang gliding and paragliding club. The proposal was, that he takes 10 people into his Flyers Lodge for a mountain-flying holiday with a difference. The difference was to be that we all take a helicopter to the top of Mont Blanc and then paraglide off.

Richard Jennings, alias The Amazing Gonzales, immediately booked all 10 places on the trip and then began asking around as to who wants to go.

I said yes immediately and so did most of my friends from many other noteworthy trips. It's getting to be a bit like an old boys club goes abroad. The trip was envisaged to take place in September and the fact that it was January, the trip seemed a long way off. Slowly the plans came together as to how we were going to get there and we finally decided to drive. Gonzales hired a 16 seat minibus for the 10 of us whilst I booked the ferry crossing. The idea was to drive down through the night (sounds like a Hawkwind track) on Friday, to be in Chamonix ready for a flight in the afternoon of the Saturday. This plan almost came off; the minor changes were:-

1. Denis was refused permission to take paragliders to the top of Mont Blanc.

2. The weather was crap. It started raining about 100 miles south of Calais and didn't stop.

We knew it was going to be an interesting trip from the outset. The logistics of the whole affair was like something the army organises. Gonzales had to pick up the minibus Friday evening and then make calls around the Marlborough area collecting some of the other pilots, then go onto collect more pilots on the way to my house where Brian and Ken and myself were already waiting.

E-mails went out a few days earlier stating the pickup time of each group, the timings were down to the minute. We were due for collection at about 18:30 but ended up with a phone call saying that they were still in Marlborough because Richard no. 2 (alias The Professor) was nowhere to be found. Not at his office and not at his home either. I was not surprised since he never seems to know where he is supposed to be. 2 weeks earlier I had to remind him of the date for a BPC round that we were both in. He was going to sod off to the Isle of Wight for the latter part of the week and then dash to the peak district Friday night. The Prof. was eventually found but by this time all the timings were bollocksed. A while later, Steve started ringing to find out what time he ought to leave his house and make his way to Kings Cross station to meet 2 others for collection. These phone calls came every 20 minutes or so. Eventually he decided to go the station anyway. I said I'd phone him on his mobile when we left my house. Finally we did leave my house at just after 21:00. The boat was from Dover at 00:15. So we had just under 3 hours to get into central London, from Beaconsfield, pick up the last 3 pilots and then get out of the congestion of central London on a Friday night and end up at Dover. Our labouring bus was full to capacity. 10 bodies, loads of hand luggage and 11 canopies, yes 11 canopies. Wallis was, and still is, a BASE jumper and he had other plans, more about that later. Mark alias Pingu, which was short for penguin, had some sort of luggage fetish. He had more than anyone and still found it necessary to buy another bag in Chamonix.

We eventually got out of London and the order to engage warp factor "foot to the floor" was issued. We made the boat with 5 minutes to spare.

We left Calais at about 01:00 French time and got into Chamonix at 11:00. Denis wasn't quite ready for us so we went up the local cafe/pub for breakfast and beer. It was still raining and every now and then we got a glimpse of a pidley fart hill with snow on the top. This was a big mountain by our standards, but we were assured that there was a bigger one in the clouds.

We went back to the Flyers Lodge at Les Houches and parked all our luggage in our rooms, while one of the gang went and parked his breakfast in the upstairs toilet. God was I pleased we were out of the bus.

Still raining, so we all went into Chamonix town centre.

Denis provides an evening meal at the chalet if it's required by those staying there. The food is excellent and more than enough for a greedy git like myself. Denis also advised us that the next day would not be flyable, so we all had a good drink. I was up until about 03:00 putting the world to rights with Brian, and later Kenton, Denis's live-in (not in the biblical sense) instructor/site guide.

Next morning and quarter of a bottle of Lagavulin single malt whisky later, I was a bit hung over. We dossed around and went up to the Valley Blanche and into the glacier. On the way back out from the glacier in the cable car, the phantom farter struck and we were all pleased to get out. Unfortunately I was summarily blamed for the pollution but was in fact innocent. Had that been my doing I'd have been extremely proud and would have had to own up.

Next day was crap too and was unfortunately, Steve's last day. He had only just arrived but was recalled to work and had to fly home from Geneva the next day. He was fortunate that his company paid all his expenses for the trip. Shame they didn't pay ours as well.

Tuesday. We all got up at 06:00am to see Steve off and then some of us went about 20k down the road to watch Wallis throw himself off a 1000' overhanging cliff with canopy still packed nicely in his rucksack. We were actually at a BASE jumper's beauty spot. There was a main road with a hotel on it, a firestation just a few metres along the road and trees all over the place. Wallis went up the mountain with Gonzales, John and James, whilst 5 of us stayed below in the hotel having coffee. The morning was overcast with drizzle and occasional rain and not at all a nice day. 50 minutes later we heard over the radio that Wallis was 5 minutes from giving himself to gravity, (more Hawkwind references).

We rushed outside and looked up at this cliff face and could just about make out the bushes at the top of the cliff. They were trees! I saw a flash from a camera and that gave their position away. A second or two later, I saw a black object falling at an incredible speed with respect to the mountain face, a second later I saw the drogue chute appear and then the main. It started to turn left toward the face of the rocks but Wallis was on the ball and grabbed a handful of right back riser to correct the turn before going for the control handles. It was raining by this time and we hardly noticed the drops lashing our face. He made a few turns and lined up for a landing in a clearing in the trees about 30m down the road from us and landed at an incredible speed. He flared at just the right moment and did a perfect 2-point landing. I ran over to him, all excited, to help him sort out his canopy, but by the time I got there he was making his way towards me with a grin so wide that it was going to require the thought of Hattie Jacques sitting on his face to remove it. It was the most exciting thing I have ever witnessed and my adrenaline levels were up, his must have been off the scale. It was his 13th BASE jump. What a guy!!!!

We went back to the hotel for more coffee and waited for the minibus to come and collect us. 45 minutes later we got a call on the radio that the bus had run out of diesel and was coasting down the hill. Then another call saying the brakes were getting a tad dodgy and so would WE like to start hitching a ride to a garage for a gallon of diesel and then hitch up the hill to refill them. We started walking and several miles later we saw the bus half way down the hill and heard on the radio that James had got a lift down and was on his way to a garage. To cut a long story short (too late) we got refilled and then went back to the Flyers Lodge.

We spoke about the jump for the rest of the day and Wallis said that he saw the rain cloud coming but was so keyed up he had to go. What a guy!!!

Later that day we all went to Annecy and negotiated the local traffic. Don't the French know that paraglider pilots can't drive and look at the mountains for take-offs at the same time! The Prof. got a Frenchy broadside but no damage was done. A few choice French words were directed at us but we didn't understand them, so harm done then? We went to Annecy because it is on the edge of the Alps and the weather wasn't quite so bad. 4 of us flew a top to bottom from a poxy little take off (N45.77899, E6.20328). There was very little wind and so alpine launches were the order of the day. The landing zone was not the best, considering the very high voltage power lines on 2 sides of a triangular landing zone, and a line of houses on the other. Those of us that flew down, spotted a bar from the air and made a beeline for it then waited for the bus to come and collect us.

The next day was looking remotely flyable and so we all went to a local site, Plaine Joux (N45.95009, E6.73970). The take off was 2400 feet above the landing field. We watched a few locals take off and then argued amongst ourselves who was going to be our wind dummy. I flatly refused due to a promise I made myself, not to be a wind dummy at a new site, after the time in Crete when I smashed myself up.

The Prof. took off and floated round a while and one by one we all took to the air. The thermals were strong and were rough compared to what I was used to at home. This was the first real bit of flying that I had done with my new canopy, "the MAC Feeling". 5 minutes later after circling a few times in a thermal the whole canopy went mushy and I started to drop. I looked up and saw that the wing had gone sort of parachutal, bit like a B line stall. I raised my hands because I knew I had over-cooked the control handles on both sides. I remember Butterfly telling me "when thermaling always keep in touch with the outside of the wing to prevent a spin". Well I definitely overdid it. Raising both hands had no effect and so I pulled a little more control handle and then released them immediately. The canopy surged forward I damped the dive and I was off again looking for the thermal I'd just lost. All this was either instinct, pot luck, or sheer genius piloting (after the initial Homer Simpson flying of course). This incident didn't repeat itself and so I presumably got used to the flying characteristics of the wing compared to my Alto XM. Lets face it 1998 was a pretty piss poor year for flying and I really hadn't got the airtime on the wing to know how it likes to be flown.

I stayed up for about 1 hour 40 minutes, got to cloud base, got inside the cloud (whoops) and then got very cold fingers and had to come down. Just as well as the cloud base came down and everyone had to land See picture below). The landing field is reasonably tricky. It seemed more thermik than any good sites I've flown in England and you have to be focussed on the landing area. We all got down safely and spent the next hour or so in the bar by the landing field all telling the same story of the really big thermal that was caught.

The weather was getting better by the day now and we went back to Plaine Joux the following day. Today was to be interesting as far as I was concerned. It wasn't looking particularly stonking flying and one by one we reluctantly took off. I immediately turned right and went down to the little ridge and bowl that had previously worked quite well for me. I floated around for a bit on my own (Tennyson?) and made 500 feet ATO and so headed off along the ridge as per day one. Sink, sink, more sink, what a balls up. I stuck around over the hospital building hoping for a house thermal but it never came. Meanwhile other gliders that had taken off weren't so lucky and they were well below me. That made me feel a bit better, and it seemed that today was to be one of those, looks good but is a dog, type day. There is a sharp drop off from the gentle slopes of this site, about 1500 below TO, and is sheer in places. I hung around hoping for a thermal off this edge, and was lucky enough to see someone further along the ridge find one first. I made off in his? direction and joined the thermal. It was a steady 2 up and I made 500 feet before falling out of the bottom of it. The other glider kept going as he had found it earlier and was well inside it. I lost a couple of hundred feet and then regained 500 in another thermal. Again this process continued and as always Wallis (what a guy!!!) was there after I had marked it, which reminds me, I must invoice him for the service I provided time and time again. Then the big one came in. Not so much strong, but consistent and well supplied from the bottom. I took it back to T.O. level and kept on going. The Prof. joined me a few hundred feet below and that convinced me I had a good one. He doesn't bother unless it's worth it. Slowly the height increased and I noticed that I was actually puling away from his huge 40 foot span Alto XMX. This put a grin across my face rather like Wallis had after he went off and fell with style (Toy Story). What a guy!!!!! I eventually topped out at cloud base (with Wallis, what a guy!!!), and was very pleased to have finally passed the 1000 metre height gain, required for the Silver Eagle FAI badge. I already had the 5-hour endurance task secured and so this was the second of the three tasks completed. I even had my barograph recording to prove it. I was a happy camper! All I have to do now is fly 30k, it seems that the sky conspires against me every time I go out flying. Or maybe I'm just a crap pilot.

Next day the weather was clear enough to go up and start flying the higher peaks. We went over to Plan Praz (N45.93676, E6.85149) which is a take off between two peaks connected by a bloody big cable car thing that takes dozens of people per car. It's a daunting takeoff because this cable is right across in front of the takeoff and looks like you'd hit it if you caught a thermal on take off. Apparently (so I'm told) you would need a 10up to get close, but I was not too impressed with it as a takeoff. I took off and flew around for about 45 minutes before finally getting too nervous thermaling around beneath this beer can size cables. I flew out over Chamonix itself and saw that many of my group had landed alongside the current women's world champion and a film crew. Gonzales radioed up and said that there were a lot of cameras pointing up at me (maybe it was the brightly coloured glider made it photogenic) and that I should do something noteworthy. I went into some nice big wingovers and got them to an angle not previously achieved (by me) which set the adrenaline flowing. The ease with which the Feeling does this is incredible compared to other canopies I've flown and it was about to go into a spiral dive without my wanting it to. This sent the old nervous system into frenzy because I wasn't ready for it and my legs started to turn to jelly. I pulled out of the manoeuvre and then got the message that a big TV type camera was pointing my way, and I should do something spectacular. I was too low to do much by this time and my legs didn't feel like they would take any more adrenaline rushes. The last thing I wanted was to collapse in a heap on TV. I lined up for a landing right on top of the cameraman. I landed a foot or two from him, then ran forwards a few feet and collapsed the canopy on right over him. "Was that ok?" I asked him, and he said "yes, that was ok". Will I get on a famous pilot's video as an extra? Who knows.

The picture on the left is me coming into land at the Chamonix main landing area. The peak in the background is the Dru.

A while later we were all down and several of the lads were getting prepared to go backup again. "What???????? I deliberately came down, I'm not paying to go back up again, I don't like the site." A bit of umming and aarring over lunch and the consensus was to go to the other takeoff on the other side of the valley 2000 feet higher-up on the Plaine Aguille (N45.90260, E6.88407)

This was another pay trip for the cable car and when we got to the top it was blowy and cold. The top of the peak above us was another 7000 feet up by another cable car and that's the flight we all wanted to do. 18k top to bottom through the Valley Blanche over Europe's longest glacier, the one we went in earlier. Still, at the moment, we were here for a 5000-foot to bottom. We all got ready and I watched Ken wrestle with his XM trying to get airborne. It was sort of gusty and the take off wasn't as good as the one across the valley. I was pleased I'd left my XM at home and got a superb new glider that launches, in the words of Bill and Ted, "most excellently". Get one today from your MAC dealer. Ken sorted out his bag of washing and I took off and floated around a bit before heading out over the valley.

I took a couple of pictures of Ken and the Prof. as they launched and then set up to test the glide of the Feeling. In the middle of the valley there was no wind, no thermals, no nothing, except me. The GPS was on and in conjunction with the Davron 808gps vario, it told me that the glide was 9:1. I was happy with this figure since the technical spec. for the glider is 8.5:1. I found no thermals out in the middle and flew over to the landing field. I got there with about 2 grand left so I thought I'd try out the wingovers again and see what happens with the spiral dive. These wingovers were huge by my standards and I got higher than my wing shortly before holding on one control handle too long and setting up the spiral dive. I did a couple of rotations and then eased off early, whilst I still had height to sort out any unknown problems, it came straight out. No need to damp out any dive either. I packed up and went and joined the others on the ground and then spent the next 30 minutes watching the Prof. and Kenton stay up close into the mountain face above the tree line. The sun went down and so did they. We then went back to the Flyers Lodge for tea & buns (alias whisky and beer).

The last days flying wasn't anything really worth getting excited about, and we decided to skip the St Hilare festival and head for home.
The trip back was as exciting as the trip down. Until that is when we got to Paris and Brian, who was driving, thought he was on the Nurnburgring and went as fast as he could, whilst those that appeared to know what direction to go in, tried to read the road signs as they passed us by, all distorted due to the blue shift. Non physicists should look this term up elsewhere on the www.

London was empty of cars and people apart from those who should have been in bed and not in the Profs. way whist he was driving. The trip through London dropping off Pingu and Wallis (what a guy!) was a backseat navigator affair since we all knew the way apart from the correct one, or so it seems. Gonzales then put on a display of assertiveness that broke the mould and said that he now knew exactly where we were and where to go next and if anyone was to disagree with him was to be subject to a punch up the bracket. I was dropped off at home at 5am only to find that Caroline had left the key in the doorlock on the inside and consequently I couldn't get in. An extended press of the homemade siren doorbell got an acceptable response and entry was gained.

Ken and Brian departed and then I went to bed. It was a long day.

My photo's were all completely blurred due to a camera malfunction that I knew nothing about and so I have added photo's of this trip courtesy of the rest of the Derby and Joan club (paragliding section).

Index to flying abroad