Annecy Good Friday

Having arrived in Annecy on the ready from gatwick courtesy of easyjet and Joan from Maison du Moulin, I hooked up with a few of of the guys who'd driven down from the UK overnight (and I call easyjet the redeye?!).

We then planned to head to Plan Fait after erecting tents (not my tents and not my idea, but since I was hitching a lift I had to keep quiet).

Eventually we got down to plan fait to find about 60 pilots in the air and another 20 or so milling around launch. We all got ready quickly and got off without a hitch.

I then had the most exciting and exhausting 45 minutes of flight in my career so far. Plan Fait is on the top edge of a cliff with shelf that then goes back to a small (by alpine standards) peak behind (the teeth. Anyway after taking off and getting a bit of height above the ridge I tried to thermal in all three of the places where they kicking off, the left edge, the centre and the right hand end, but found myself playing a crazy version of chicken / roulette with 60+ pilots, some of whom were determined to ridge run and ignore thermals others who would fly straight at pilots thermalling forcing radical evasive maneuvers. After 40 minutes or so I saw that Dave Massie had landed and I decided that since I was incapable of getting through the inversion in the melee I would go down and join him... We then recounted numerous scare stories to each other and agreed we were better off on the ground, but would have been far better off at Forclaz with Irwyn and the rest of the Active Air course who were having a great time in totally uncrowded skies.

Conditions
Thermals strong small and broken 5up on averager and I never got a core :(
Airlaw - Ownership is the law?!
Acro - 1 spiral dive from thermal to avoid human dart...
Cloudbase 1800M
Adrenaline - off the scale
Enjoyment high after landing (joy to be alive)
Richard Barber