My second trip to Valle de Bravo was great proof that it pays to visit great paragliding locations more than once.
Everything just went perfectly on this trip - cheap $200 flight from Detroit to Mexico, no hassles with pickup at the airport, fun group of hang-glider pilots to learn from, same great guiding, organisaton and price from Jeff Hunt, and visiting paraglider pilots during the week.
We had two paraglider pilots join for short stints during the week - both 747 pilots with British airways. Their Mexico City layover is just long enough to sneak up to Valle to do some 'real' flying before flying the Jumbo back home to London... Talking with them really puts flying, and indeed, professions and lifestyles into perspective. Although flying a Jumbo is an elite profession and often much admired, these guys were just down to earth, safety conscious and enthuastic paraglider pilots like any of us that do this sport.
Both the El Penon launch and the lakeside landing were easier this year. The launch has had 600 truckloads of dirt added, in preparation for Paragliding Worlds in 2009. We were entertained by tales of the Valle de Bravo paragliding politics required for this to happen. However the launch is now huge and perfectly formed, and massive improvement on the rather tight, steep launch previously with the tight setup amoung the pine trees.
And finally, on the last day I was rewarded with conditions good enough to get me over the back of the plateau to land at the lakeside landing field. Well I'm no sky-god, so even though this 14km flight is no big deal in XC distance terms, it still had taken me over 10 days of flying on two separate trips to Valle to achieve it, so I was absolutely estastic.
The most difficult part of this 'milk run' is getting enough initial height above launch to fly direct toward the plateau, and not have to find a top up thermal along the way at the Pinetas, Sacamatae, or over behind the Penon. This is more difficult as it sounds, as the El Penon launch is notorious for strong sharp thermals, which can take you up fast, but are also easy to fall out into areas of strong turblent sink. Use the height, or lose it, seems to be the rule.
I left about launch at 2900m, which was more than enough height to commit to flying went straight out to the plateau. At that point, all you see is a lot of forest, with the lake not even being visble yet. Out over the Plateau, it was fairly easy to pick up another couple of thermals, taking me right up to about cloudbase at about 3200m high above the peaks of the plateau. From there I could have gone either a long way left or right, but I decided to reach goal on an effortless 10km glide out over the lake to arrive with over 1000m to spare.
I did a lazy sightseeing cruise over the entire town, La Torre launch, and the beautiful mansions of Valle. Stupidly, both my video camera and iphone were packed away in unreachable pockets for this flight, but the GPS log is in the slideshow.
Bernie, one of the lesser air-time hangies with the group, also achieved a first by reaching Valle later that afternoon. He was as excited as I was as the goal had eluded us both up until that time, and we were both on second trips to Valle, having met on the last day of his trip the year before.
The final perfect moment of this memorable trip came while flying home to frosty Detroit, when I had the amazing sight of two airlines passing each other in a air lane below my aircraft, with the sun setting behind them, and their contrails streaking out into the distance in the freezing air. With a combined speed of about 1800 km/h, it was over in a second. A fantastic, fleeting personal moment where my respect for the technology of airline travel and the beauty of nature and time overwhelmed me with wonder.