Red Bull X-Alps 2017 – Episode 7 northern sojourn

Up high bright and early, day 8

Day 8 and 9 saw me take a large detour, some kind of nostalgia for the 2015 route perhaps. Initially, on day 7, I drifted north off the route because I could not stay on the route without landing early (in the end storm outflow got me anyway). This route added distance, risk and weather dependence, but it also made things more interesting. In hindsight the weather was better suited to glides than thermalling, and I spent a significant amount of time waiting on a hillside while other athletes made steady progress along the course line past Sondrio, to my south. Eight minute video with subtitles

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Red Bull X-Alps 2017 – Episode 6 Garda

Brenta 🙂 #redbullxalps

A post shared by Nick Neynens (@nneynens) on Jul 8, 2017 at 1:27am PDT

Day 7 saw me fly from the high cliffs of the Dolomites out to the Mediterranean air of Lago di Garda (the Monte Baldo turn point 5), and back into the deep mountains with the epic ridges and green lichen rock slabs of the Adamello massif. It was a classic X-Alps day with a variety of challenges and obstacles – time urgency ahead of building valley winds, scraping into land just above the bush line, delicate flying in some sections and just holding on in others, a beautifully stratified airmass and spectacular storms not so distant.
See the 9 minute video with subtitles

Red Bull X-Alps 2017 – Episode 5 To Italy

Landing at turn point 4 and a mad rush for my connecting flight to Italy

This next segment of the race was tough on my ego. As the pack closed in I had to settle for bumbling around with the group, or taking undue risks and pushing out on my own. The African proverb says to go fast, go alone, but to go far, go together. This wasn’t far from the truth. View the six minute video

Red Bull X-Alps 2017 – Episode 4 Zugspitze

Day five started with a pleasant walk up to one of the only grassy launch options I could see in the surrounding hills. Germany’s highest mountain, the Zugspitze, was 68km to the west and beyond lay the Lermoos turn point 4. I top landed after a short technical flight, was overtaken, and then got back in the air and raced onward to reach Lermoos in fifth place at about 3pm. See the 8 minute video

Red Bull X-Alps 2017 – Episode 3 Aschau

Day four started high in an Austrian mountain hut a short walk from the main divide. Several other pilots had managed to fly further north the previous evening, but as the day turned out I was quite happy to have started in the big mountains. It meant I could have a really early start and the big arc leading out and over Wilder Kaiser was unique among the other competitors and allowed me to catch them in Aschau. Oh, and I should mention that the scenery up there was spectacular.