Kossen Austrian Open June 6

123 km FAI triangle.

A fine day for big XC with nice cu's in the backcountry.  A bit of wind but not too bad so long as you stayed high.  Today's task was a 160km triangle encompassing the Pinzgau valley and then back to Kossen.

Beautiful scenery and plenty of pilots to mark thermals; we passed several other launches and saw many free flyers flying in the Pinzgau as well.  Some shade came in which made things very slow for a while and everyone had to turn on "survival mode" until we could scunge to the sun and continue the task.

The final part of the task was a bit tricky with no obvious way back to Kossen…the clouds had all dried up and it was quite late, plus the valley winds were cross-headwind.  Many of us landed out on the final glide back to Kossen, while about 15 pilots actually made goal.  I think if we had started the task a bit earlier (today the race started at 1pm, late for here) we would have had a bit more time to do the final leg and still had clouds.