With a great forecast I decided to take the day off and attempt the classic Karwendel Dreieck, a ~100km FAI triangle from my local paragliding site. It was my first attempt so all of the route was totally new for me, with some of the greater challenges towards the start with long transitions over some smaller hills. I was desperately hoping that I didn’t bomb out after the first transition.
On arriving at Brauneck it was clear that the day was already “on” and people were already heading off on the xc adventures for the day. I quickly set my gear up and was soon in the air.
The start of the flight went very well and I was soon well above Brauneck and off on my way south on the first transition. I was intentionally taking my time as I knew that there was a long day and I didn’t want to make a mistake due to rushing, especially on the first section. Thankfully in these conditions everything was working well and I was really enjoying the flying in the strong conditions, with integrated climbs of up to 6m/s.
I had soon completed what I considered the first crux of the route and relaxed into the flight as I enjoyed cruising along the ridge to the Soiernspitze, which was probably my first mistake. I then cruised along the Karwendel mountains above Mittenwald and enjoyed the brilliant views.
At the end of this range I massively misjudged the distance of the next transition and did not properly account for the change in wind direction with the transition from the pre alps to the inner alps. This would have been fine, except I decided to rush on as the thermal slowed down, rather than taking it all the way up to cloudbase.
During the transition I was sure that I was going to arrive over east facing rocks and be sent skyward in a strong thermal, however as the glide was very long I was rapidly losing height, and until about 0.5km away from the mountain it looked like I was still going to arrive in a good place. Unfortunately I then flew into the sink as I was on the lee side and was descending at over 4m/s which forced me to bail into an area known for usually being in the Lee.
As this was a new area I just kept gliding assuming that I would be able to get onto the sunny south sides before I ran out of altitude, however unfortunately this wasn’t the case, and despite some scratching I was unable to climb and made the decision to head to land.
It was very disappointing to bomb out on such a good day, but it was another good learning experience, and at least I landed next to a train station, 15mins before the next train was scheduled so I was back in Munich in very good time.
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