SAFA Skysailor Magazine

17 SPRING 2026 | September-October-November SKY SAILOR Katabatic flow It is winter, the east coast gets a lot of shade in the afternoon. This generates a katabatic wind flowing down the valley. The air that cools down in the shade is denser and heavier and slides down the slopes. Once you are trapped in it, it drags you down. I knew about it, of course, I simply didn’t expect it this early in the day. However, at this time of year, mid-winter, 3pm is not early any longer. In my head, the katabatic I was aware of was down in the valley where I had encountered it a few times during landing. I didn’t expect it up high on the face. I definitely misjudged this.  What fooled me, were the other gliders staying up – I wasn’t thinking about the katabatic flow at all. Conditions were still nice and sunny in my head… Katabatic wind is often just a layer of cold, dense air flowing over the terrain. The onshore wind can simply flow over it, the gliders above were staying in lifty air well above the katabatic layer below. They had launched into one sky. Ten minutes later, I had launched into another. I launched into the lower sinking layer, never managing to climb above it.  Could I have done something to help my bad situation? Potentially. I was desperately hugging the cliffs, looking for lift, but the unexpected sink near the cliff was the katabatic announcing itself, the correct response would have been to fly away from terrain, not deeper into it, because the air improves with distance from the slope – exactly backwards from normal ridge-flying. The cold air is flowing over the cliff and slowly spreading below, forms a gradient or wedge. Typically, there should be less katabatic sink further away, and on occasions there might even be a bit of convergence where the onshore wind meets the katabatic flow. I could also have used speedbar. I was in sink with a bit of headwind (my vario was showing 30km/h ground speed). Under normal circumstances -2m/sec, is not a