With 61 participants, it was a full house for this year’s race. After a two-year break, I found myself back in the competition.
On the first day, a beautiful task was set: from Baulmes, over Le Suchet and La Roche Devant, to reach the goal in Vaumarcuz. I was really happy with my performance that day.
After reaching the Suchet in a decent time I took off and went looking for the optional turnpoint to the west, which meant landing and hiking back up to Le Suchet. A new take-off from La Croix (Suchet), then heading toward the Aiguilles des Baumes. I had to land below the optional turnpoint Le Crochet and hike up to tag it.
At that landing, I ran into an angry farmer after I touched down on “his” Jura pasture. I tried to calm him down and explain the event framework, but he wasn’t in the mood to listen…
From Le Crochet, I managed to fly all the way to La Roche Devant and finally reached Vaumarcuz by air — a great way to end the day!
Day 2 was marked by a strong westerly wind, but the race committee still managed to set a task with a take-off from Mauborget, that allowed gliding down in the direction of Baulmes. From there, a long hike was required. To avoid overstretching the athletes’ endurance, the finish line was set in Croy rather than at the accommodation in La Breguette.
In that race, I lost a few places, as I can no longer keep up with the fast walking pace of the younger competitors.
Day 3: Cancelled due to bad weather. But still a walk from la Breguette to the Dent de Vaulion and down to Vallorbe (some top athletes chose to fly down in very strong wind and with upcoming rain...). At the end I am proud to rank on place 19 in that hike and fly edition (full result list).
Hiking in numbers:
Day 1 : 11km ; +1639m
Day 2 : 31,75 km ; +1288m (@ 6,9 km/h)
Day 3 : 12,44 km ; +469m (no race)
In all: 55km +3396m
Flight tracks: 1-1 1-2 1-3 2-1
More pictures on Google Photo and here the video clip from Jolan