Probably most people consider me an old fart. Maybe its true, - the hair is getting beyond grey, the waistline a battleground for the pounds and I don’t seem to want to stay up drinking past 2 anymore. But at 58, this year was the best year of my life.  660 Km flown; highest, furthest, longest flights and to top it all I’m a dad again. Young Theo, born last November to Frances and I, is growing through his first year with all the discovery that that entails.

Mayrhofen is the place where my flying experiences opened up this year. I’d, only a few weeks before, bought a new Airwave Mustang and discovered that I needed to get new lighter kit and get my weight down from 102kg all up to 90kg and had managed it. The new slimmed down version was a lot easier to carry and launch and felt like the right thing for an old codger.

The day I arrived in the Zillertal the sun was blazing. Having expected Alpine freshness and cool Mountain breezes what we had here was a heatwave. The fresh grassy meadows butted up again the little towns back doors and the smell of fresh mown hay was everywhere. Cow bells jangled, and church bells, not much traffic to speak of and the main transport up and down the valley was a little red ‘Zug’ a two carriage train – sometimes with a steam locomotive.

I had arrived three days before the Open Championships Comp was to start to give myself time to acclimatise and get to know the place. I checked into my hotel by the river and decided to get an afternoon flight in. There was a flying school bus going up within the hour and soon the windy road was taking us up out through forest into a patchwork of little alpine meadows clinging to the higher slopes. Being heavily glaciated valleys the first part of the climb is the steepest and the little meadows are where you just start coming out on top.

Round a few more bends on the Zillertal mountain highway, the Melchboden take off has a restaurant with great food and even batteries! The take off area just below the road is wide and easily big enough for about 30 gliders to lay out. The first day we just had a gentle evening cruise down as the sun had gone round covering the other side of the valley and on the way in I visited the cliffs near the town. The next day we thought we would set ourselves a route similar to the one Kelly Farina had set the guys on his training course the previous day and I managed about half of it before going down in an unfamiliar area near the Kaltenbach ski area when I could find no lift.

The next day, 27th May was the one. With no more than a vague Zillertal circuit in mind we set off at 12.10 from Melchboden climbed easily to 3000m and flew south across the gap to the Penken Ski Area arriving low. Photograph 1, a panorama stitched together in Photoshop with 5 shots taken on a 5 Mpx Sony Cybershot shows the Penken ridge coming up with a view towards Italy in the distance marked by the high snow covered peaks, the Tuxertal Glacier to the right and to the left of the Picture of the Ahornspitz with Mayrhofen nestling in the valley below bottom left.

Climbing back out from Penken ski area was not easy, scratching for an hour I had not realised how far out into the valley the true lift was. Eventually I got up to 3100m and it was only 1.30 - still time to get round the circuit. As usual I was on my own by now -
only a true codger could miss those mighty thermals. I decided to head north along the top of the Zillertal Ridge (west side) – there was an intermittent cloud line marking the way, very lttle meteo wind, just the peculiar valley flow seems to travel the opposite way to the rivers. It was not too difficult – once I got used to the idea of losing most of my height each valley crossing. The ridge peaks were about 2000m and the valleys about 4 – 6 kms across

It made more sense to follow the Spine Back north towards the Speiljoch - the mountain at the east side of the mouth of the Zillertal Valley. Steady progress at 50 kph. A last valley crossing to the Speiljoch is unavoidable and I arrived 200m below its peak and was very unsure as to how the valley winds would be working around it. In fact as I came round onto the sunny face it worked fine – though the confluence with the Inn valley flow meant I must be flying in the lee. It was a little bumpy briefly at one point but the wing was rock solid throughout – in fact during the whole 10 days.

 Back up to 3200m again my minimum height before planning the next move. Moving into and against the Inn valley wind flow means a quite a lot of height loss – so the best thing seems to be to accept it and fly lower anyway along the spine ridge that points across the Zillertal and cross the valley towards the south east, so taking advantage of the valley flow. I set off at 2700m but did not realise quite how far it was and arrived two thirds of the way down the eastern side of the Zillertal a kilometre to the right and below the Hartspitz. It was still scratchable and was nicely into sun and away from the valley mouth the slopes were protected and working well. At first I was facing into wind scratching but realised eventually that I could fly downwind and still climb well, steadily coming up the slopes of the valley sides and out onto the top of the Ski area by Zell am Ziller. The climbs here were 8 m/s and gnarly at times as the Pinzgau and the Zillertal valley flows are in confluence here, but the sun was on the rocks below and that seemed to have the driving force through it all. Setting off at 3400m (11,000ft) south towards the xxxxx and time for another Photo session (Photo2).

By 3.30pm the air was calmer now and it was not too difficult to get the little camera out and take quick series of 5 shots for a Panorama of the most ALP I have ever seen in my life. Some strange combination of the clarity of the air, the brightness of the light, the weather and the snowy/rocky terrain made it utterly alperly.

But still the Pinzgau valley mouth crossing left me only just 300m above the ridge I had just photographed, but as soon as I got over it a boomer hoisted me back up to 3300m.  Ahead at the top of the Zillertal Valley towering over  it lay the the Ahornspitz which at 3000m is the dominant peak around Mayrhofen. It was an easy glide away and I made my way over arriving just level with its peak. (Photo 3) Below on a flat crest coming away to the right of the peak was an area of ground you could land on with a bar and restaurant. I sailed down over it but could not see too many people there so thought I might leave that for another day and headed on back to the main landing area at Bruggerstubbe – a few kilometres to the north of the Mayrhofen. After 5 hours in the air and 79.78km I was ready for a drink and a bite to eat.
As a flat triangle of 26.83 x 26.91 x 17.18km, in the UK I could claim distance X a multiplier, and less than a third was in ridge lift but here it seemed all the flights could be like this. This was my longest flight to date, my furthest (nearly double my previous PB), and almost my highest – but the skies were improving and my highest flights were beaten each day for the next few days reaching the highest at 3845m (12,690ft).

I am grateful to Kelly Farina for hosting the Comp, and the excellent task setting of the comp committee, Calvo, the stewards
and everyone involved. However my first real flight in the high Alps was all my own before the comp had even started!