{"id":128155,"date":"2026-09-09T10:27:24","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T10:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/128155\/"},"modified":"2026-09-09T10:27:24","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T10:27:24","slug":"the-alps-101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/128155\/","title":{"rendered":"The Alps 101"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u00a0was on a \u201csecret launch\u201d somewhere outside the main Annecy basin in the northern French Alps watching as my flying buddy for the day disappeared into the distance. He had given me some vague instructions about heading left after take-off, then climbing out to a certain height (1,200m? 1,800m?) before pushing out and around the corner. By the time I was ready to launch he was already gone.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At least there were some flat fields in the valley bottom to land in if I didn\u2019t find anything. Although there were some instructions about that too \u2013 something to do with a valley wind kicking in later, venturi and \u201clanding backwards\u201d. Oh well, here goes nothing\u2026<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Twenty minutes later I was pointing my toes at a rock spire on the southern tip of the Aravis thinking \u201cthis should work!\u201d and then hanging on for dear life as the ground dropped below me, my stomach with it, and my glider and I rode a rocket to base, my fingers freezing in the cold early spring conditions.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Welcome to the Alps!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u00a0was on a \u201csecret launch\u201d somewhere outside the main Annecy basin in the northern French Alps watching as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[16],"tags":[50,1342,1001,1344,309,6451,3346,17,41298],"class_list":["post-128155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alps","tag-alps","tag-austria","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-italy","tag-mont-blanc","tag-slovenia","tag-switzerland","tag-xc266"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/117240610420121890","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}