Nick Neynens has been exploring the mountains around the Southern Lakes of New Zealand ever since he learnt to fly. His latest 200km triangle attempt (still good enough for a new national record) had him landing just down the road from home. In his words:
The previous day after getting snowed on and waiting for over four hours on take off for cloud to lift, I’d had a great flight through the boonies until I popped out at Glenorchy and realised my SPOT subscription had lapsed! I landed on a ridge and spent a frustrating few hours on the internet before calling it a night, waking the next morning at cloud base with cold toes. By 10am I was already in the air, with a quick scenic run up the Earnslaw burn to check another fast melting glacier (the snow came after a month of record heat, it looks like late autumn) as cloud swirled around in the not so mellow southeasterly. Climbing just a few hundred feet before reaching cloud base at 5500′ or so, I ran up and down Mt Alfred sniffing out a climb and then continued down the Dart valley, with a side trip into …read more
Source:: Ozone Paragliders