The 170 cm beds in the van turned out to be way too short, and we didn’t get much sleep that night. In addition there were thunderstorms keeping us awake. Next day was wet and showers of rain were forecasted all day. Still we were optimistic and wanted to continue the same way we did the day before: Hikes and glides.
Optimistic and ready to hike and fly!
Already at the first summit of the day we got caught in the clouds with rain. We walked further east and finally I was able to launch and fly down. The only thing was that we were now too far east and off route. I hiked up a new hill and was able to launch high enough to get around on the correct sideand back on track. So I thought…
On the first day I had difficulties with my instruments (XCTrack). I related this issue with interference from the tracker device. But now my tracker was repositioned and I still had issues with my instruments. Long story short: My XCTrack did not show the correct direction to go, it also showed that the next WPT was 2000 km away! All crazy! It ended up with me flying 90 degrees off route. Bahh… Stupid error. This could have been avoided with better preparations.
So now I had to keep the pace up on the ground for another 15 kms with the rain chasing behind. The goal was to fly one more time before the rain came. But when arriving at the next summit we had low clouds, rain, and winds from the back. We had to walk back down. No good for my knee, and no good for morale. The conditions down the trail became so bad, with slippery mud and heavy rain, that me and my supporter just had to laugh about the situation.
Finally back down on the valley floor the clouds were down to ground and we had steady rain. Some food inhaled and then a last 10k run to our base for the night.
Soaking wet after a long day in the rain…
A tough day where we lost a lot of ground to our competitors. Most of them were only hiking that day. But I cannot blame anyone but myself. Too eager to go flying instead of hiking, and not well enough prepared with regard to setup of instruments. Together with more rain than we hoped for, this made it a bad day for us.
