Wind, I Like You

Another academic year in Slovenia and another fall with frozen hands and flying the winds of West Slovenia. The first 10 days I was here it was poor weather for nice flying but this Wednesday it looked promising.

After a talk with Jean and Zoran I knew that Slovenians are in action mode. I teamed up with Luka Slak and we went to Kovk. We parked on take off, the mission was Lijak and back as it looked OK for this challenging but doable. There was West wind which would make things difficult on the way to there but easy on the return, also some shadows made the playing field more challenging.

Kovk worked very nice along the ridge like you would expect, Luka was leading the way to Caven flying the ridge on bar I was following little bit more reserved behind, we got a nice thermal I stayed and climbed to base at 1600m Luka continued and was soaring in the shadow close to Caven waiting for some sun to climb and go for Lijak.

I was high and it looked like I can connect higher close to Caven in the sunny bit and climb so I went for it. However it didn’t really work, I got there quite low and I was getting some turbulence associated with some sink along the ridge and just couldn’t make it to the west facing part to try to climb there in the windward side.

I decided to go back where it worked little bit and try to climb, I managed to climb just enough to go back to the main ridge below Kovk, I decided not to try again so I just continued to fly the ridge little bit and top landed next to the car.

Luka made it and few other guys made it over Caven to Lijak and back. I am still not flying this ridges as the locals but for sure I am getting more confident with going fast close to the terrain. Nice training before Para Snezinka, it’s nice to be back :).