Monday 16 February 2009

2009/01 Meribel Altiport with landing on top of a snowy mountain

Click on the title to see the HD video on DailyMotion

Lots of snow this year in Meribel Village, in the Trois Vallees skiing area. We went over for a week in january although the weather forecast was not as good as we hoped for. Always difficult to tell how this will really work out in the mountains. We drove up the mountain on the friday evening that the south-west of France and the north of Spain were suffering from hurricane like storms. There was snow from about 900m but we did not have any problem to get to Meribel Village.

During the week the weather proved to be much better than expected and we had plenty of time to enjoy the combination of sun and snow.

Based on our earlier experiences in september last year we kept monitoring the altiport at Meribel. Finally we decided to trade our last day of skiing against another instruction flight with Jerome in the Mousquetaire. Clear blue skies, not a lot of wind early in the morning. All set to take it to the next level.

We were not exactly sure what Jerome was up to but after a few circuits at Meribel Altiport we flew in the direction of the Mont Blanc. After a while Jerome pointed at a snowy white mountain top indicating that he had the landing strip in sight. It took us another 5 minutes to realize where he wanted us to land the plane.


Landing there was a major experience but it might be even more exciting to take off on the other side of the mountain top. After a change of pilot, this was the first thing Marijke was 'allowed' to do.







Pancake Airlines Crew is trained by Dwarf Powered Gliders (http://www.dwarf.nl/) and Wings over Holland (http://www.wingsoverholland.nl/). Information on the PH-PCA Diamond DA40 can be found on http://www.pancake-airlines.com/. You can click on the title link to see the HD video on DailyMotion.