Tuesday 2 February 2010

Mountain Flying

Hi everyone! I'm just back in sunny England after a short trip in the French Alps, and what an amazing trip! Indeed, I flew to Geneva (Switzerland) on friday, met some friends in Lyon and we drove all the way up to l'Alpe d'Huez (a ski resort) under some heavy snowfall. We met there a bunch of young pilots brought together under the association Jeunes-Ailes (literally, "Young Wings").

A bit worried at first, the gloomy foggy sky went away whilst we were skiing and we could finally enjoy a nice truly blue sky, although the temperature dropped close to -30°C (about -20°F) during the night in the upper part of the station.

I got to fly twice, in the nice Jodel D-140 Abeille (F-GJHU), and made a short video from the footage I took in flight :



I hope you like the pictures, probably the most beautiful I ever got to take, thanks to the awesome scenery!
There's a bit of everything, hard to comment them all but to sum it up, I took most of them on l'Alpe d'Huez altiport (at about 6500 ft altitude), which has a runway with a 15.5% slope and allows the random skier walking by to enjoy a superb scenery, covered in snow for the most part of the year.
I also managed to take a picture of 4 F16 and a KC135 Stratotanker from the USAF (US Air Force) overflying us at quite a high altitude. This is what I call a superb week-end!














3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I LOVE the pictures, they look like they were professionaly taken. Nice job and I'm glad you had fun, even if your were a bit cold.

LJ35 said...

It was such a nice week-end, indeed ! :-)

Unknown said...

Hi

Lovely photographs here.

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