After camping at the KingsHouse in Glencoe on Saturday night, I was standing around on Sunday morning with a slight hangover, drinking coffee, minding my own business, when some bright spark suggested that since it was forecast to be too windy at White Corries, Skye would be a good choice.
Why not?, I thought, so about 10 people headed off up the road.
Interesting day, and a bit frustrating - there were people already in the air when we arrived. I had Graham Saunders in the car. We got there last, having misplaced Ian Miskin who took the road up and over the back of the ridge to take-off. He was launching just as we arrived.
As it turned out, that extra 20 minutes made all the difference.
Take off is at the top of the Quirang towards the north end of Trottenish, at the view point where the road goes over the ridge. It’s basically a cliff edge, so the wind was swirling over the lip, making it a bit of a pain to get the glider up.
The dynamic wind had dropped a bit, and it was only very lightly thermic, so once off it wasn’t easy to get any height.
Once I had a couple of hundred feet above take off, I headed south. It was a bit intimidating flying around (and behind ) lots of jagged spurs, but apart from a couple of slight shivers felt through the risers, I didn’t have any problems with rotor thankfully.
I never managed to get any decent height - never got above the cliff tops - I think that rather than hugging the ridge, pushing out for the thermals was the answer, but you needed a bit of height in the first place for that.
Just several km down the ridge, I made the mistake of soaring around a big bowl, instead of straight-lining across the face of it. The end result was that I couldn’t push around the far side of that bowl and got decked pushing into a headwind. Looking at the map afterwards, another hundred yards would have seen me safely onto an into-wind face. Bugger.
Never mind. A good day out, and a two hour walk back to the car.
Four of the early birds had an amazing flight all the way down to the Cuillins.
It was a grand day out, in a completely primordial landscape. Amazing place, and definitely worth a return visit.
I could have done without the drive back though - Skye is not a day trip from the Borders.
Derek
