This Kiwi Flies: St Hilaire and Laragne

I got a train to Grenoble and was met by two good friends from home, Kat and Bryan at the train station... We made our way back to their campsite and woke in the morning to more good weather. A strong southerly was predicted so we got up Allevard for a short flight. Still no southerly so we went to St Hilaire where I got to fly the famous site for the first time (the southerly never arrived). It was traffic mayhem and it felt like 400 people were all flying in same place. In reality it was about 40 people flying a site not much bigger than Barnicoat. Still as soon as you got away to the next ridge it became very enjoyable.

We made tracks to another little camp site in the hills and got to Laragne to fly the next day. This was another nice site but we had a very crossed wind (straight down the ridge) and had to take off in thermal... the 300m cliff edge added some excitment to the launch. It was a nice flight but with a thunderstorm happening behind us and big sink zones I ended up on the ground after an hour of blatting around. Bryan on the other hand went for a nice tikitour to Briancon, over 100km away. It was a nice drive through scenic France to pick him up!

The weather finally packed in for flying - so we spent a day rockclimbing at a nearby village. The village had decided to become a rock climbing destination about 10 years ago - so they paid some climbers to come and set up some routes. Word got around and 10 years on the town is full of rockclimbers spending money.