After battling hard and walking more than 285 km of the race, Maxime has reached the final turn point and finish line of the 2022 X-Pyr.
His nemesis, the Pic de Midi de Bigorre (TP 5) again gave him problems, but he dug deep and was placed ahead of the pack on several occasions. Yesterday he spent 11 hours in the air and arrived in first place on the south side of the Canigo mountain (the penultimate turn point of the last edition), ahead of Chrigel Maurer and Pierre Remy. Once he got to the flatlands ahead of turn point 7 (St Helena de Rodes) he had to land. Chrigel Maurer then had the opportunity to overtake.
Congratulations to Maxime on getting to the finish and completing this edition of the X-Pyr.
Day 6 started slowly. We decided to wake up later than usual as we slept just below a high take off – Peña Montañesa. We got up there still far too early to fly, but that way we could escape the sun a bit. Around 1pm the thermal activity finally showed signs and we took off direction France.
What a flight it was! No clouds, wind direction quite unexpected at times, thermals rather messy and spread out… At times we managed to get up to 3300m, but most of the time we stayed around 2500m. It definitely made it easier to fly it as a group, although clearly everyone had a different approach…
On the main ridge to France, we encountered valley winds of 40km/h or more, so we had to gain a lot of altitude before making the jump to the lee side. It was a bit scary at that point, but that was it, no way back. I crossed the ridge and floated above the clouds covering the sky in the north. We made it to France!
But there conditions were completely different. As the sky was covered in clouds, we had to descend below them to gain visibility. However, there we encountered strong valley wind from the north (before it was coming from the south!) and no thermals. While the transition was smooth, it was just really hard to keep going against the wind: in places we were not moving at all.
So after an afternoon of flying, during which we covered most of the distance to Arbas, the majority of our group landed, with no forward speed. An intense experience, that is for sure!
I lost some time chatting in the landing just to realize it was already pretty late. I had to rush to the closest take off if I was still to fly one last time before 9pm. So that is what I did. I ran up and managed to squeeze one final glide at 8:40pm, despite the back wind. Landed just short of 9pm, close to a fellow pilot, Keith, for another night of party in the mountains.
Overall a very good day. Less walking, more flying and I even managed to get up a few positions on the ranking.
Yesterday was a dream day for us. The Flyingconditions on the south side were really good.
After crossing the main north/south ridge Reto had to overcome a difficult passage near Bossòst. Right after that, he managed to land high towards col de menté. After a short ascent, he could launch again and tag TP4 from the air!
Finally, we could gain some airtime and move forward on the overall ranking. Today we look forward to a beautiful last day of X-Pyr 2022 on the French side of the Pyrenees in hopefully good flying conditions.
Day 4 Kinga’s patience paid off, she hiked 1200m that morning and waiting for and hour on launch for the day to turn on as two other competitors launched and glided out. Her patience was rewarded with a windy and difficult flight, but 35km on track to TP3. The air was rough, and it was an exhausting flight. She then took to the pavement and reached the Suerio expecting a good glide to the valley. The winds however kept us parked, with a 3:1 glide she landed, packed, and met for pizza and camp.
Day 5 began with a morning hike and a hope. The weather models couldn’t agree and we decided to take the risk of climbing Nabain. Chris assisted in her launch in an incredibly tight location, barely fitting her wing and having to lay some of it on a bush. She launched at 10am, just before the winds were supposed to press her down. She made it work, crossing all the way to Peña Monteñesa by air! After landing at only Noon, we set our destination as Campo for a good forecast the next day. Based on the winds, we wanted to surf the ridge to Campo, yet somehow the winds stayed East throughout the day. This resulted in 24km on foot to Campo where a hotel and steak awaited. Prepped for a morning flight off the local site to cross to France for TP4!
In and incredible end to the day, Chrigel flew almost to the last turnpoint. The day started flying together with Maxime Pinot, in a really early take-off, but, most incredible, with awesome conditions (maybe wave).
Then they reached Pic de l’Orri, and joined Pierre Remy there. So the race started again. After some many hours in the air, Pierre and Chrigel landed at the north face of Canigó, but Maxime crossed to the south side and continued flying.
Once Maxime reached the last final of the race, which is absolutely flat, he landed.
And when all of us thought that it was impossible to beat him, the eagle from Adelsboden came, and flew over their heads. He landed almost at the final turn point.
So, Chrigel Maurer, for the 4th time in a row, is the winner of the X-Pyr.
Withdrawals: Sadly, Xevi Bonet and Sergi Claret have withdrawn from the competition.
The livetracking was out for an hour this evening because of hackers but was restored in time to see the big finish this evening. If you are looking for scores, these can be found on the web site at http://dev-x-pyr.com/score/
Only these are the official scores. The live tracking is not used for official scoring.
News!
This morning we spoke to Team Curran, Patrick Sieber, Keith Paterson, Mikolaj Kocot and Rich Binstead who were all heading up to TP 3 at Peña Montañesa. All were hiking up to get the turn point and then hoped for a good day. Yuji Emoto flew a blinder late in the evening yesterday and made up much ground on the other athletes ahead of him. He hiked a different way and he and Reta Reiser are leading the pack to TP 4.
For the second day running they were blessed with high skies, lighter winds and good conditions – which to the regular pilot means funky thermals, rough stuff and epic take offs (to quote the pilots).
Greg Hamerton has also progressed and along with Nicholas Hayes and Johannes Helleland – all left TP3 in their wake. David Liano is also close to TP 3.
The top leg of the X seems to have been not easy for almost all the pilots. After a couple of days, Lars Meerstetter made it past TP5. David Corpas and James Elliot are 2km and 6km short respectively and also almost there but Fabian Umbricht, Andreas Viehbock, Logan Walters and Thibault Voglet (who had a broken line, as did Andreas) are along the course line. Cedar Wright whom we met pounding the asphalt yesterday has joined them on the 60.9km leg.
Noe Court and Jordi Vilalta have cracked TP6 at El Corronco and are buzzing along nicely, doubtless grateful for the strongish westerly tailwinds.
Tim Alongi and Simon Oberrauner have tagged TP7 Pic del Moros and Noe Court is on his way there.
But the BIG news is that this morning Pierre Remy was in the lead by about 22km over Maxime Pinot and Chrigel Maurer. They started flying at 8 am – it’s very unusual to have the right conditions so early in the day – and have flown for 11 hours today. It was neck and neck for much of the day until Maxime Pinot flew to the south of Canigo and looked set to cross the line first. The live tracking went out and we had no idea what was happening until we contacted Chrigel’s team to be told he’d found a thermal and was heading towards ESS at 1500m with a glide angle of 12:1.
Action stations as everyone shot off to St Helena de Rodes to set the scene and to set up cameras and prepare to broadcast live. We can announce that Christian (Chrigel) Maurer is the winner of the X-Pyr 2022!
What a crazy two days! So crazy that we couldn’t even write a blog post yesterday… Oupsie!
Yesterday was a neck and neck race, with which we found ourselves at the foot of Peña Montañesa for the night rest with a whole group of 4 or 5 teams.
This morning, for a change, it was “sleep in” and we started only at 8 am to take the turnpoint.
And then it was parawaiting – patience, patience and again patience! Finally, around 1 pm the whole group took off and could fly relatively close together to Castejon de Sos. Here the field split and Patrick showed some courage to tackle the main ridge as first in the group. One of the most epic flights he ever got to do. The Pyrenees are just so amazing!
Tomorrow we attack Turnpoint 4 as the race comes to an end, who would have thought that at day 3!
