Day 5, 18/7: Hunngerberg - Serfaus (10 km from CH border)

Hunngerberg - Serfaus (10 km from CH border)

After a fantastic night in a comfy bed … I woke up with no aches at all in my legs!!! I was really amazed by how good I was feeling. I walked up the 1100m of the Hunngerberg in 1′15 with my 15kg bag, Nicky took the cable car and we met at the top. The cool thing that day is we met the Slovenian, the Polish and Will Gadd at the top, as well as Michaela (a girl working for Redbull in charge of the promotion of the event) and some people from the media crew.

The conditions weren’t very good, as the previous day’s rain had made the air very damp. The cloud base was at the valley level in the morning and took a long time to go up to the take off. After some hesitation, Will Gadd decided to go and started his flight by going down slowly but surely

He eventually got something which was going up, so I decided to go and help him (start at 2′30)… I flew to him and we both got to the cloud base (200m higher than the take off). I went ahead and flew past the corner (W corner) and found out that it was in fact very good just there.

This big difference in the conditions made a crucial difference in the result as the pilots which passed this corner managed to fly far and the ones which stayed on the East of that could fly far at all (Walter Holzmuller experienced it).

The tricky bit was after 15km of flying as we had to cross the Seefeld plateau, which is quite long and the cloud base wasn’t really high enough. I managed to cross that perfectly and went to the Hohe Munde (ouahhhh). Imagine a 2000m rocky face, almost like a cliff… The rest of the flying was really easy and enjoyable. The wind valley was pushing me and the thermals were very good and easy. I flew above the Tschirgan, the mountain South of Landeck, and kept flying to the SW. I decided to top land high in the mountains to do an early start the morning after.

Luckily, the place where I landed was the top of the Ski resort of Serfaus. Nicky managed to drive up a piste and we spent the night at 2400m in the van.

Started day at 9′15. Took off at 14′17. Finish day at 18′07
Total flying 3h50, 80km
Total walking 1h30, 1100m up, 2.7km
Max altitude 3059m