After bidding farewell to Albert – who headed
back to Nice early on Monday – I met up with Irwyn whom we had done some
training with back in April – and discussed training plans, weather forecasts
and dates for summit attempt. The weather was looking great for the first few
days, but pretty shocking for the end part of the trip – when the summit is
scheduled. Fingers crossed conditions improve.
Training and acclimatization was to start
straight away – and we headed up to the Aguille de Midi lift station – a cable
car up to 3,800m – allowing anyone to
access the amazing views of the mountains and being a great acclimatization aid.
Once at altitude and after taking in the amazing views – we had a sandwich and
then ran up and down as many stairs as we could find – being this high meant I got
out of breath very quickly and even felt a bit dizzy – but the more I can do
this the better prepared I will be for reaching the high summits.
We agreed that I’d take a rest day to give
my legs a break post cycling and I wandered around town a bit to get my
bearings before heading back to the apartment for a great curry cooked by
Jenni, and met Dan and Shane – other paragliders who were hoping to fly off the
top of Mt Blanc this summer. They’d be in the Alps for over a month and had
already summited Mt Blanc. Looking at
the mountain forecast – weather looked perfect for a summit attempt and so Dan and
Shane were planning an ascent. We decided we’d join them for the trip to the
Cosmiques mountain hut – from which they would start their final ascent at 2am
and we would try to fly from an ice shelf off near the Aiguille de Midi. So
much for my rest day!
I was pretty terrified. My first experience
with crampons would be walking down a knife edge arête with huge slopes either
side. I was roped to Jenni and Graham and we took it nice and slowly – and I
soon relaxed. It was about a 45 minute hike to the mountain hut and I enjoyed
every moment.
A good hearty meal in the hut, a beautiful
sunset, a terrible nights sleep – and we were up at 4:30am ready to go. The
hike up to the take off point was along a similar route as we had taken the previous
day, so navigation in the dark wasn’t too much trouble, and we found ourselves
on the ice shelf above Chamonix just as the sun was rising. Incredible.
Now for the flight! When flying a tandem –
my job is to be the engine – run with as much power as possible to pull the
wing up into the air and give us enough speed to take off – before we plummet
off the edge of the cliff.
First take off was a failure. Running at
full pelt but in deep snow and we couldn’t get enough speed up, and so I heard ‘abort,
abort’ shouted from behind me as we approached the cliff edge. Pretty
terrifying so I hit the deck straight away.
Second time around - we nailed it. Full speed off the cliff –
and before I knew it we were soaring up over Chamonix. Amazing feeling. I took
controls for a little while and then we had a bit of fun pulling huge spins and
descending as fast as possible – felt some serious G and a massive adrenalin
rush.
We landed around 7:30am, with Jenni
following us down, and I headed back to the apartment to meet Jam and have a
celebratory beer. A great first couple of days in the mountains!
To hear from Jenni's perspective: http://blinkandbreathe.co.uk/2013/09/07/sams-first-flight/
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