Fog Flying

I was paragliding in Austria this weekend. Some low-res shots from my cam footage: http://www.gleitschirmtreff.ch/11er/

This was how it looked most of the time:

http://www.gleitschirmtreff.ch/11er/17.jpg

Well, actually it looked much worse. We had to look out for any possible hole between the fog/clouds. Once I was inside very thick fog for over 30 seconds, with just the same white all around me, it was like flying blind. All I was able to do was try to fly into the same direction and hope that I find a hole to fly through. :p

This was about the best view we got the whole weekend:

http://www.gleitschirmtreff.ch/11er/3.jpg

Oh and it was really, really cold with tons of wind through the valley. Hannibal Lector style was about the best thing you could do and it was still too cold for long flights ... not that there was any thermal effects to make long flights possible.

http://www.gleitschirmtreff.ch/11er/10.jpg

Anytime there was a hole between the fog, you could see us all run to our equipment and start as fast as possible as normaly the hole was gone after just a few minutes because of the strong wind through the valley.

http://www.gleitschirmtreff.ch/11er/18.jpg

It was cold, lots of fog, but still tons of fun. :D

Fredi

Sound like loads of fun, good thing you came back to us. :D

It really wasn't that dangerous. The wind wasn't choppy and we had a spotter on the ground that made sure that there's a way through the fog. The only crazy guy was the one that did the first flight without a spotter. While he already had lots of experience with this kind of situations, there still was some risk involved with not knowing the real thickness of the fog before start.

Fredi

I will do this somewhere before I die.

I did that in Rio and I thought I would die.