XC Story I - Sir Lowry's Pass to the Apple Factory

It was a day poured from the mellow gold of xc heaven. Never before have I seen such a run of good flying in winter as I have seen in the last month in and around Cape Town. This account is intended to accompany that first cup of coffee on a Monday morning, when you're recovering from 'the meeting' and wondering how you're going to get through a whole week. Well, here's an incentive. Maybe, just maybe, next weekend will be something like the one past.

The monkeys were running around in the carpark when we arrived, playing 'frighten the tourists' and 'scratch my colourful bottom'. Very soon, there were more monkeys running around on takeof, playing 'frighten the tourists' and 'watch me fly through the trees with my colourful bottom'. But that's paragliding for you, always entertaining. ;-) The forecast was for NW 35km swinging to SW. It was already strong (but flyable) when we launched, and it stayed strong for an hour before calming off. The bulge in the ridge to the right of takeoff is a good thermal source, and Saturday was no exception. We pottered around in the sky there, waiting for something big to come through. When it did release, it was wide and healthy (about 2m/s constant) so we stayed in it and drifted over the ridge. It took us right up to cloudbase at 1200m above sea level (asl), which was where we had to scoot due to airspace restrictions as well as no visibility. There was no cloud suck, in fact the lift petered out at the cloud.

It was at this point that I noticed I had a very excited passenger with me. It's wonderful the way my friends entrust me with their wives and girlfriends, to take them up and 'give them a good time'. Maybe we could start a 'wingers club' (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Marius's wife last flew two years ago, before the surprise arrival of their first child put an end to her paragliding course. Well, there we were, at cloudbase, gliding away across the beautiful countryside. Quentin, (ex-Natal boy) on his bright yellow Edel Atlas, joined us on the glide too, and we flew in formation to improve our chances of finding a thermal we could both use.

Before the drop-off to Grabouw we found another thermal which lifted us back up to 1200m. The smoke from a fire at Grabouw was changing direction often, indicating a thermal in the vicinity, and we used that to top up again. There was a gentle glide with constant sink after that, caused by the descending air coming over the Grabouw drop-off with the following W wind. On the far side of that shallow valley, we hit a scrappy, light thermal, which was too small to work on the tandem. I did a few turns, and flew on, hoping for something better. My lesson? Don't be fussy when you're over flatlands. That was to be the last lift I encountered, and I lost 500m on the glide to land at the Kromco apple factory. 13km, my personal best over the back, and my passenger's first xc flight!

Quentin was high above our heads when we looked up. He'd worked the small\par thermal I had left, and was a good 500m up, but he decided to spiral down and join us beside the N2. He could have gone much further. After waiting for half an hour for our recovery to find us, we decided to hitch-hike, and were soon on the back of a bakkie, heading to the pass. And there, high above the mountains, were all sorts of colourful wings, hanggliders, paragliders, and fluffy white clouds. It was still flyable.