SAFA Skysailor Magazine

14 SKY SAILOR September | October 2022 Chris helped me take off. I restarted breath- ing when I got to the place where I could clear the trees. I then took a little thermal with a vulture, then another, and slowly, with strong headwind, cruised around the ridge, crossed the valley, hooked onto a windy corner of Peña Montañesa and surfed it all the way to tagging the turnpoint in flight! I was so happy and flew so well! However, that was as far as I would go, low top of lift and strong SE wind put me in my place immediately when I tried to fly around the corner to the south side, rodeo of sink and no penetration, I flew out and landed in front. The day went way better than we expected, neither Ross nor I believed I would tag the TP in flight in these conditions, so we had no real plan now, in the weird place in front of the massive rock face with strong headwind and the sky shutting down. Ross found a second take-off on the way, only 200m and traversing – so why not go check it out? If it doesn’t feel right, I could just keep hiking around Peña Montañesa. But fatigue caught up with me, the wind was cross and very strong. Chris volunteered as a wind dummy, but I missed the memo and instead of waiting for him to probe the air, we took off together and it was all wrong. The air felt wrong, if the wind was less crossed, I could have soared the south face, but I was in the rotor of another ridge. What’s more, I got into My X-Pyr From top: Too many trees En-route under blue skies Selfie posing All photos: Courtesy Kinga