Thursday, 16 August 2018

Scuol

After having recently selected several times a 'bad' or unsuitable TO, today I finally was in the right place :-))
I left home early by car and drove to Klosters, from where I took the train to Scuol; the reasoning behind this: I did not have necessarily to land again in Scuol in order to retrieve my car, leaving me with more options for my flight.
Getting to Scuol, already more than a dozen gliders were soaring above Motta Naluns.
I was finally ready to launch shortly after 1100 and after my 'usual warm-up' of about 30 minutes I started heading West, up the Engadin Valley.

looking West towards Susch
Cloudbase rose steadily and in the afternoon reached 4000m: my max Alt: 3880m.

Flüelapass
 
Samedan Airport, St.Moritz (and lake); Silvaplanersee, Bernina
Originally I had thought that I might be able to fly to Piz Corvatsch and eventually also towards Piz Bernina; but approaching Samedan, I was not convinced that I actually could get there so I turned around (42.5km form launch).

Piz Kesch (3418m), Keschhütte SAC
Zernez
Zernez looking SSE: Ofenpass, Swiss National Park
In Zernez I decided to switch to the right side of the valley: this turned out to be a major mistake, as afterwards I encountered a lot of sink in locations where I didn't feel comfortable...

Schloss Tarasp
Actually I didn't like it at all, so I didn't try to continue further East/ down the Engadin and thus extending this triangle. I was aware, that I'd needed to push East for only another 7km in order to make 100k.
Landing was a bit tricky, as the wind was changing between East and West...
But all in all still a great flight of almost 90k in 4hrs 15mins.