Hilaire-ity

Went down to St-Hilaire for a whistle stop tour of the greatest free flying festival in the world on Saturday.  The main purpose of my visit was to meet up with the XCmedia team (publishers behind cross country magazine) to discuss publishing a book I've written about my exploits in last years X-Alps.  Anyhow, no deal done yet but they seem pretty keen so watch this space as there may be more news to come in the next few months!

So, business meeting over (well it was more a chat over coffee and croissants to be honest), I had the fun of exploring the trade show.  I stopped by the Sup'Air stand to talk with my fellow X-Alper and good friend Clement Latour.  Clement has entered the race for next year as well and should have no problem getting in.  I had to drop off my prototype harness with Sup'Air for some repairs. Whilst I ran back to my car to pick up the harness I bumped into none other than Chrigel Maurer trying to find somewhere to park his van, after saying hello we were holding up the traffic so I agreed to catch up with him inside, however we never did find each other later on.  Anyhow, back in the show I spent some time talking with Mike Cavanagh, boss of Ozone, next to their balloon filled stand (yep, it really was nothing other than balloons, quite odd!).  Ozone backed me in last years race by providing me with a great wing to fly and have agreed to do the same for next years race which is jolly nice of them. 

I also met up with Max Fanderl and many many more great people too numerous to mention.  I even strolled down to the launch just as the cloud cleared and saw the first fancy dress gliders launching.  I couldn't stay long but the most impressive I saw was a tandem launching on a tandem bicycle!  No photos I'm afraid as I didn't have my camera but you can always look on the Coupe Icare website.

Back in the trade fair I saw a pretty impressive lightweight harness design from Kortel - hopefully I'll get a chance to test the prototype soon.

That was it, back to Geneva in time for tea !

Starting Early

Part of our teams success in last years X-Alps was the fact that we'd spent many, many days checking out the route as a team.  We knew where to go both in the air and on the ground and we had the route pretty well sussed out before the start gun went off.

That said, there were some interesting route choices that we'd overlooked and some of these proved very useful for those that took them. Some of the more, ahem, adventurous routes include sections over 3000m. The problem with these parts is that they become rather snowed in well into the summer, so spring reconnaisance trips are not really feasible. With this in mind, Dad and I set off for a few days of good late summer weather to check out a top secret 'haute route' between the Matterhorn and Mt Blanc. Here are some pictures from our trip: