Another exciting day!
Maurer had more long flights. After passing TP 6 at Pedraforca the night before, he was poised to pass Canigo (TP7). He did so and flew out to towards goal, but due to the last minute notification of the cancellation of the organisation’s NOTAM, he had to be informed in the air that he could not progress in the air. The cancellation of the NOTAM was a big blow and an even greater headache for the organisers. Maurer spiralled down and progressed to the final turn point on foot, leaving himself only 16km to do the next day.
Meanwhile Maxime Pinot was having a couple of epic days. Having battled for hours to tag TP 5 in the air – and coming as close as 10m, he finally managed to get it. Landing and hiking to it was not an option due to the terrain, so he just had to battle with the low cloud until he could get within the cyclinder radius. Lots of effort and little distance. He started day 4 at the ski station of Baqueira where it was 50km/h and he battled strong head winds all day. Once he got off, the strong tailwind gave him a bonus 15 km but to get back up to a launch meant a 1400m ascent. Finally he arrived at Pedra Forca and then onwards into the Cerdanya valley. Maxime went to school there and knows the flying well, however the wind made his day hard. He crossed from La Molina to Puigmal (which means “Bad Mountain” in Catalan), and then lost the signal for both his tracker and spot. As it was getting late, his supporter Jeremie Lager hiked up and found Maxime after an hour and a half. They spent the night in an old broken shepherds hut, which Jeremie described as “just a pile of rocks full of snow”!
Standa Mayer took a different route to Pinot and others and made massive progress, leap-frogging other competitors. To show you the difference in distance covered here are some statistics on their relative distances covered during day 4:
Maurer 111km
Pinot 117km
de Freyman 130km
Garza 68km
Keller 46km
Mayer 188km!
Juraj Koren ended up the day in 7th place.
