With a moderate westerly wind I decided to head back to Wallberg to fly as far east as I could. Unfortunately I wasn’t feeling that well in the morning, so I wasn’t entirely sure how the flight was going to go, but thankfully by the time I took off my stomach seemed to have recovered.
The initial part of the flight went pretty quickly and I was soon high above Wallberg and ready to set off to the east and with just a few more climb I was high above the Großer Traithon and ready for the very long valley crossing over the Inntal. The view of the main alpine ridge on this first section was really wonderful, as the air was much clearer than it often is, and there were not too many clouds to block to the view.
I arrived fairly early at the Zahmer Kaiser, so it took me a while to climb back up on the shady side, however eventually I was above the Zahmer Kaiser and ready to head to Kössen. At Kössen my progress dramatically slowed as the wind was very unpleasant, it was hard to punch through the wind shear layer and it was very busy. After longer than I would have liked, I was eventually high enough to set off along the Steinplatte, which had pretty strong conditions with moderate wind and very strong thermals, however nothing to dramatic.
At the end of the Steinplatte and above Lofer, I decided to take a different route to normal and head over the Leoganger Steinberge, as this would not be in the Lee side from the Bavarian wind, this seemed to work out reasonably well, however at the end I made the decision to head back to the cliffs below the Steineres Meer.
This was a mistake as I flew into the Lee of the Bavarian wind, while also being in wind funnelling out of another valley combined with strong thermals. At this point I decided that I would go and land as I wasn’t happy with the air. What I should have done from the Leoganger Steinberge, is to head directly south and then join the south side of the Pinzgau. A number of other pilots successfully did this and enjoyed much longer flights than me.
I landed a 30min walk from a train station, which by the time I had packed up and walked to the station just gave me a 5 min wait for my long train journey back to Munich.
It was great to be out in some more challenging conditions and still manage to fly 94km.
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