Blog Posts in Category: Austria

Schmittenhöhe Paragliding

Alastair BegleyAustria, Paragliding Short Link

With a decent forecast for the end of August I took the day off to head to Schmittenhöhe for a day of flying, with no particular objective other than to stay in the air for a while and enjoy the scenery. My thoughts were an out and back to Pass Thurn, heading onwards into the Zillertal or heading north back in the direction of Munich. Everything started working pretty late, but I was one of the earlier pilots to take off and the initial climb went well and I climbed away from take off with the fantastic views, however my transition to the next climb did not go well, and while scratching I made the mistake of turning too low and was flushed over a ridge. This meant I flew into the Lee and it didn’t feel great so I made a long glide out of the turbulent air. This lost me so much altitude that I dropped back down below the inversion layer, and despite my best fighting I could not get back above it. After landing early again, I was pretty frustrated, checked the wind and it looked. Read the full article…

Hochiss

Alastair BegleyAustria, Walking Short Link

With Martin visiting it was time to head back to do our usual visitor circuit from the Rofanbahn, as it is such a spectacular walk without being too long. While I have now seen these views quite a few times, they never get old as they are so beautiful looking over the Achensee into the Karwendel. We made good time to the summit which meant that we were back down at the lift station for a lovely lunch and beer at the Erfurter Hütte, before we headed back to Munich for a lovely dinner.

Greifenburg Paragliding

Alastair BegleyAustria, Paragliding Short Link

With another good forecast I headed back down to the south side of the main ridge for another attempt at a big FAI triangle, yet again it did not go to plan, however on this occasion I only have myself to blame. Everything was a bit of a rush as my original plan was to head to Sillian, however when we got there we found that Saturday was the rest day for the lift, I did not think to check that a Gondola which I knew was operational was running on a Saturday! We hastily made our way to Greifenburg, where Becky drove me up to the Emberger Alm which saved some time. After a quick walk up to the start place I setup and quickly launched, it was clear that the conditions were good, but not as good as forecast with a much lower cloud base. The first leg went well until I got to the valley crossing which had to be taken in order to make the route a 100km FAI triangle, for some reason, despite knowing that I was way too low to make this crossing easily,. Read the full article…

Sillian Paragliding

Alastair BegleyAustria, Italy, Paragliding Short Link

With a great forecast for the day in Osttirol, I decided to head down to Sillian for a day, hoping to manage a 100km FAI triangle. The day started later than I was hoping, however there was still plenty of time to make the triangle as I started. The first section of the flight went pretty smoothly, although I would have liked some stronger thermals, however on my first major valley crossing I realised that there was a much stronger west wind than was forecast due to Föhn over the main alpine ridge between Bruneck and Innsbruck. This resulted in two problems, firstly I had a poor glide and secondly I dropped down into the Lee at the end of the valley crossing. When this was combined with also dropping through an inversion layer resulted in thermals which were impossible for me to climb in, really strong pockets of rising air which were far to small to complete a turn in. After fighting for ages, I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t going to work and made my way to land in Italy. Thankfully getting back to Launch was. Read the full article…

Tölzer Hütte, Hölzelstaljoch and Grasberg

Alastair BegleyAustria, Walking Short Link

After abandoning a multi day hut-to-hut hochtour in the Ötztaler Alpen due to the excessive snow and terrible weather forecast, we decided to make the most of the booked holiday by heading to the beautiful Rißtal for an overnight hike. We started by heading into the Tölzer Hütte via the most direct way as we were concerned about the rain, needless to say we could have taken the longer variation as the rain came later than forecast as to start with we somehow just missed it, but when it came, it certainly came with plenty of thunder and lightening. The walk up to the hut was hot work in the humid weather, but the walk was nonetheless enjoyable with views into the Karwendel and a nice path. After not too long we arrived at the hut and enjoyed the afternoon playing games and having a few beers in the hut. We even sent Katherine for a run up the nearby peak after we had been at the hut for a few hours and before the rain came. The next day we woke up to a glorious morning and enjoyed a. Read the full article…

Mayrhofen Paragliding

Alastair BegleyAustria, Paragliding Short Link

This year the start to the paragliding season was very slow, however I eventually managed to get my first flight in at Mayrhofen at the start of April. It was very busy due to a competition which led me to make some poor decisions to try and get away from the crowds, which meant that after a short soar around take off, I just enjoyed a nice long glide down the valley.

Tiroler Scharte

Alastair BegleyAustria, Ski Touring Short Link

We had two nights booked in the Jamtalhütte for some ski mountaineering and in the week running up to the trip, the weather could not make its mind up as to if the weekend would have excellent weather or awful, what was however certain was that the day we approached the hut would be spectacular. We set off from Munich via train in the morning and after a very smooth train journey, and a slightly less smooth bus journey which made me feel rather green, we arrived in Galtür in time for some bakery lunch prior to setting off for the hut. The skin up to the hut was beautiful, with snow from the village, a good track and wonderful scenery. It wasn’t long after we left Galtür that we started to feel like we were in the big mountains and fairly remote. After a 10km skin in we arrived at the hut, where I was certainly feeling the lack of exercise from the previous few months! We didn’t really have time to head out for a tour, and by this point the cloud had started to come in. We. Read the full article…