Update Day 4 – evening
A recap on day 4, with news from the teams .
Tag: day4
Update on Day 4 (evening)
First some bad news: Lino Coló has withdrawn from the race. This leaves us with 37 teams in the competition.
News from the teams:
Tomas Matera
Yesterday Tomas was detained by police after flying across the border. Local police officers stopped him after landing and made him wait for the Guardia Civil to arrive. They waved him on, but he lost half an hour to progress.
Simon Oberrauner
His day was really good yesterday, challenging, but Simon flew for 8 hours and did 170 km to pass two turn points. The plan for today was to reach the Pic du Midi and depending on time and weather to continue onwards to TP5. At the moment he is struggling a bit with the strong south-westerly wind, he would like to fly but it is always a question of assessing the risk correctly. Otherwise, our motivation is still high and we are fully convinced that we will reach the Mediterranean by Saturday at the latest.
Xevi Bonet
Xevi starts at 7am and finishes at 9pm. According to his team he’s a machine! He hiked up the opposite hill to Chrigel, Maxime, Simon and Noe. He flew but had to do a top landing and hike up a little more. He then flew to Pena Montanesa, Castejon de Sos, into the Val d’Aran and on and on. He flew for 7 hours and 140 km.
Today he began with some small flights before hooking up with Tim Alongi and Tanguy Renaud-Goud. Cloudbase was low, only about 1300m, so they made the most of the morning. Xevi is currently in 7th place, so the day obviously went well.
Thibault Voglet
Today he got himself into a position to get to TP 4, but during the fly Thibault broke a line on his glider – a central B line; so he had land to check if it’s only a line or also the internal structure. The team had to replace the line and then they headed for the French border for a possible evening fly …
Mikolaj Kocot
The first flight was smooth, but he first had to wait, and then come down a bit too avoid the cloud. There valley was covered with clouds and the thermals were too weak to touch the TP2 cylinder in the air. Then he launched at Accous towards the next TP, but after entering into the valley the wind was too strong. He almost made it for a third flight, but was a bit too late to take off and land before 9PM. Overall he made around 17km by air, in 1:15 h
As for tomorrow, they know the forecasts are showing strong winds, but are hoping to find a gap to fly as much as we can – as they did this morning.
Greg Hamerton
Greg says he’s not a runner, so he chose mountain paths to make progress. He hoped to get into a good position to fly, but hiked into cloud. He finally did tag TP2 this morning and is hoping to reach the border by this evening. Tomorrow the plan is to get to Jaca and take the aerial motorway to Ainsa, in the hope of staying away from thunderstorms. Once at TP 3 it will depend on the weather how he will negotiate Pena Montanesa and beyond.
Patrick Sieber
It was difficult yesterday, the others around us also had problems and all had to land and walk. But in the end it turned out to be a stroke of luck, because they were able to start the ascent to the Candanchu pass just in time. They then made a final push to get to the pass and Patrick was rewarded with a super evening glide of 30 minutes and 15 km! He landed at 8.45pm and he and his supporter were just able to jog to the car….
Patrick flew briefly this morning, but it was foehny conditions so safety was their most important concern.
Johannes Helleland
They made some tricky decisions in the first couple of days to hike and fly and they did all of the hiking but none of the flying. But today they had a good day! He had three flights today and made it past TP2 and to the border with Spain. They are in good spirits and still smiling.
Today: Chrigel Maurer, Maxime Pinot, Pierre Rémy and Simon Oberrauner made it past TP 5.
As the day ended Noe Court was 7 km from the TP and also between TPs 4 and 5 were Tanguy Renaud-Goud, Xevi Bonet, Jordi Vilalta,
Decent progress was made by pilots heading north from TP3 Pena Montanesa, helped along by a southerly tailwind
As the 9pm compulsory stop ticked by, Tomas Matera, James Elliot, David Corpas and Fabian Umbricht were all between 1.7 and 6km short. Also on this leg we have Andreas Viehbock, Cedar Wright – who looks to have had a good day, Thibault Voglet and Sergi Claret.
All pilots are now past TP2 and are heading down the southern side of the course, in small groups with Kinga Maszterlaz leading the charge.
Chrigel Maurer is staying high in a mountain refuge at 2800m tonight. His supporter Ramon Krebs carried up everything he needs, batteries, food, water, etc. His live tracker does not work there, but we can see him on his satellite tracking device.
Live tracking in the Pyrenees… this is not the Alps. The Pyrenees are wilder and less populated. There just isn’t the same GSM coverage here. All athletes must carry both our live trackers and a backup satellite tracker (Spot or inReach), so the organisation always knows they are safe. It may be frustrating for the folks at home not to have perfect live tracking and for that we apologise, but it’s the mobile signal in the mountains, not the X-Pyr website.
More action from 7am tomorrow.
Update Day 4 – mid-day
A recap of Day 3 and team news and intentions for today and tomorrow.
Update Day 4 – mid-day
Yesterday, apart from two withdrawals due to injury, Edoardo Colombo and Fred Juvaux, there were two more withdrawals due to other reasons – José Ignacio Arévalo and Rémi Bourdelle.
Penalties given to other pilots were a 24 hour penalty for airspace infringement for Giuliano Minutella and a 12 hour penalty for Keith Paterson for cloud flying.
Some news from yesterday, reports from the teams.
At the front, Jeremie Lager, Maxime Pinot supporter says:
“It was a pretty good day. 2 flights, first to glide and gain distance in the morning. The second to the turn point and to cross into France. Conditions in Spain were vey nice because cloudbase was high. 3500 max. Tricky on north side because cloudbase was much lower but still possible to cover distance. Total 170 km and eight hours in the air. Easy in the first part, tricky in the second.
Today south wind is not as strong as expected. They will try to fly from Saint Lary Soulan (the ski resort) to the Midi de Bigorre (TP5). They expect strong south wind, so it may be tricky to get back into Spain.
For tomorrow, it will be better in Spain, but with strong south winds. So it may be difficult to fly tomorrow, so they will try to make the most of today.”
Team Chrigel Maurer says: “Chrigel flew 8.5h in total and covered nearly 200km. According to Chrigel conditions didn’t play to his strengths, but as a team with Maxime Pinot they could make the most of it. He then had a really tight landing in a very small field next to a road. The plan for today and onwards: reach TP 6 and back to Spain. It’s not going to be easy, but getting back to Spain is critical.”
Report from James Elliot, team Canada:
“They flew for more than six hours and did 130km. After he landed he didn’t want to hike anymore, so he just hung out in the valley. He said the conditions were pretty insane. It was the first big flight in the Pyrenees and if that was a mellow day, he can’t imagine what a rough day would be like. Thermals were insane where all the valleys meet. He said the flying was wild and the terrain was wild. Flying from Spain into France, the layers of clouds were crazy, he was flying down to base with cumulus below him. Base was so different between the two countries and it was shaded out, so he couldn’t get up again.
Team Canada had a really good day. Objective is TP 4 and 5 and then get back into Spain. He’s feeling strong, but avoiding the road as much possible. He will fly conservatively today to avoid landing and hiking at all costs.”
Team Logan Walters “ Couple of good flights. On the second flight he got caught in the lee side and cloudbase was pretty low. He got flushed in sink. There were not trails where he landed but he managed to climb up, sometimes on his hands and feet some very steep terrain. Relaunched and did good distance. He tagged the TP flying. This morning he hiked high into some alpine terrain NW of Castejon de Sos. He’s currently heading for France. There is a fair amount of SW wind. So we will see.”
Fabian Umbricht has a bad knee and now bad feet. He has chosen mountain paths, rather than asphalt roads. It was a risky move, but it paid off and he managed to fly 70 km to the edge of the National Park. He used the last daylight to get to TP 3, so they are really happy. Conditions were “funky”.
At the back conditions remained tricky. If you didn’t get into Spain, it remained hard going. Nicolas Haynes found the conditions on the border challenging and only flew for about 10 minutes and 5 km. David Liano also did a short 25 km flight to land near TP 2 and then hiked up. Many at the back could not profit from the good weather on the south side.
Currently, at 13:00 on Day 4, Pinot and Maurer are close to TP 5. Ten pilots have passed TP 4 and are heading west to TP 5.
Keep tuned. If you see problems with live tracking, it’s not the web page, but the mobile coverage where the pilots are located.
Day 4 – Update
Another exciting day!
Maurer had more long flights. After passing TP 6 at Pedraforca the night before, he was poised to pass Canigo (TP7). He did so and flew out to towards goal, but due to the last minute notification of the cancellation of the organisation’s NOTAM, he had to be informed in the air that he could not progress in the air. The cancellation of the NOTAM was a big blow and an even greater headache for the organisers. Maurer spiralled down and progressed to the final turn point on foot, leaving himself only 16km to do the next day.
Meanwhile Maxime Pinot was having a couple of epic days. Having battled for hours to tag TP 5 in the air – and coming as close as 10m, he finally managed to get it. Landing and hiking to it was not an option due to the terrain, so he just had to battle with the low cloud until he could get within the cyclinder radius. Lots of effort and little distance. He started day 4 at the ski station of Baqueira where it was 50km/h and he battled strong head winds all day. Once he got off, the strong tailwind gave him a bonus 15 km but to get back up to a launch meant a 1400m ascent. Finally he arrived at Pedra Forca and then onwards into the Cerdanya valley. Maxime went to school there and knows the flying well, however the wind made his day hard. He crossed from La Molina to Puigmal (which means “Bad Mountain” in Catalan), and then lost the signal for both his tracker and spot. As it was getting late, his supporter Jeremie Lager hiked up and found Maxime after an hour and a half. They spent the night in an old broken shepherds hut, which Jeremie described as “just a pile of rocks full of snow”!
Standa Mayer took a different route to Pinot and others and made massive progress, leap-frogging other competitors. To show you the difference in distance covered here are some statistics on their relative distances covered during day 4:
Maurer 111km
Pinot 117km
de Freyman 130km
Garza 68km
Keller 46km
Mayer 188km!
Juraj Koren ended up the day in 7th place.
