Day 16 - Short and sweet

Sunday 10th Sept -Short and sweet

It's 7:30am, a beautiful dawn, and I'm lying in my sleeping bag, damp with dew, at the head of a majestic hanging valley, "Aguas Tuertas", on the French border at 1500m. The sun has just tinged the tips of the peaks, bringing out the red of the sandstone and blazing the higher limestone with gold. The valley is filled with the distant jangling of horse's bells, and there is a faint pall of valley mist even at this height. The peace is a very stark contrast to the hectic flying of the last two days - but is symptomatic of the trip. Packed with contrasts, changes in speed, direction and fortune all hinging on the tiniest of decisions. To walk up this valley or that, to fly this peak or that...

We got sorted relatively early for a desperately steep slog up the mixed grass and rock of Acue. In fact it didn't take as long as we feared - perhaps two hours. Evidence that we were getting fit (640 metres in 2 hours). We spoke to a young English couple on the top, borrowed their maps to help plan our route, an then went back down to our packs at our prospective launch site. But the wind was a bit cross, and we had to find another spot higher up. It was a bit small and steep, forcing us to balance our gliders on a ledge. And with the weight and altitude the take-offs were becoming very fast. The plan was to launch and scuttle round the bowl onto the South facing spine that had been generating the vulture-strewn house thermal since mid-morning.

This had become a very important part of the day - working out what the birds were doing and were the most reliable thermals were likely to be. Again it worked, and we both started climbing in a bitty, punchy thermal over the spine. Then, as I was looking down at Simon I saw his wing go. A big front collapse that came out fast but gave another small asymmetric on the recovery. He handled it well, and we were soon up at base at about 2800m. Then I decided to go back along the ridge to some birds, whilst Simon made the crossing to a lake (Ibon des Estranes) and the SE facing cliffs beyond. In a instant we were separated, and my radio batteries had already gone flat.

Simon failed to get lift over the cliffs and blatted onwards towards the ski resort of Candanchu. My crossing was good, and I arrived in a cycle to start climbing up and back over the lake. But things were going wrong because Simon was working into a headwind and gradually lost it to land at the ski station. I followed in and got drilled behind the North facing cliffs, but then scooping a good little thermal above the sheltered flat bowl above the ski resort. I left this to make my approach over the mayhem of ski lifts and Army barracks.

At first we were a bit disappointed with the flight, at around 7.5 kms, but we had crossed difficult terrain. As we packed up we watched 2 paragliders circling over the high peaks. But we were on the wrong side of them - rubbing it in just how different vol-biv flying is, where you are forced to make slow progress through terrain normally avoided, and for good reasons.

After loading up with extra food and, finally, fresh batteries for my camera at a small complex of shops in this otherwise dead ski resort, we took the last telepherique of the season up to look at tomorrows take-off. It was simply hideous. 5 minutes before the last lift down, and we ran back realising that we would have to think again. A couple of beers in Candanchu and we opportunistically jumped on a bus down into Canfranc (there were no open refugios in Candanchu despite lurid advertising aimed at walkers on the GR11 and Santiago routes). There we found an Albergue, run by a Spaniard with fluent English and frequented by two elderly German walkers who also spoke fluent English and bored us into the evening with dogmatic talk about languages. "Bar Mati" provided steak, chips and atmosphere, then back to the Albergue for a couple of Patxarans and so to bed, pissed (again).

But we had a plan. To get the first bus back to Candanchu, and walk from where we left off up to Raca, at the start of the "Canal Roya" which had a beautiful South facing, curving ridge line.