As getting the right conditions for a Hogmanay night flight in Scotland is not an opportunity that comes around very often, I headed out to Tinto on Thursday night to see what it was like. As you need pretty much perfect conditions for night flying, I was expecting that a cold walk and a good view could well be all that I got. I left the van in the car park near Thankerton and followed a well trodden path through the snow past the old fort and up to the main summit of Tinto. As I set out the summit was in cloud, and there were patches of radiation fog further down the valley, but luckily the cloud cleared as I climbed and the fog didn't enchroach any further. There was nil wind at the base of the hill and on Totherin Hill; it was only on the final climb to the summit that the wind could be felt, with a very cold feeling ~18mph at the indicator. The sky was mostly clear with scattered high cloud and the view over the whole central belt, the Pentlands, and the misty valleys and bonfires was incredible.

I walked about 250 yards back down to a steeper area where there was just enough wind to allow easy reverse launching and waited until about 11:45 before getting my kit ready. Unfortunately it took me a bit longer than expected to get my lines sorted in the snow and I didn't take off until about 4 minutes into 2010, much to the surprise of fellow moonlit hill appreciator Jim and his Jack Russell. The flight was a short glide down the line of the Kirk Burn gully, ending up near the small plantation. I had hoped to make it out over the shoulder of Totherin Hill to the lower slopes but the headwind and mild shear turbulence didn't do much for my glide ratio. The moonlight was strong enough to allow me to see my kit in colour and my shadow, the clearest I have seen when flying, was a useful reference for height above the snowy slope.

A magical new year adventure. [Stuart]
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Very interesting conditions on Tinto today. A walk up from the Northside with Alastair with lots of descending walkers reporting strong winds on top. We decided to launch from Maurice's Cleuch (which was a game in it's self in deep snow). Working westwards I soon started to struggle with the flat light and had trouble judging where the hill actually was, nearly flying into it once (I think). Once level with the top it became very apparent that the wind was quite strong and I had to concentrate hard on various landmarks to maintain position. It was the wierdest feeling at times I didn't know if I was at 20 or 200ft. Never before have I lost position on a hill until this flight several times I realized that without knowing it I had drifted back and needed long spells of bar to get back to the front to see Dave T wading up the front for a launch. The flight out to the car park took for ever until I dropped out of the upper level eventually landing westwards pointing back towards the hill.

All very odd but worth the slog up. [Ian]
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My, that was a fine start to 2010 with some great soaring on the north side of Tinto, though admittedly 'interesting' as Ian suggested. Just getting to launch was an adventure in itself, with access roads packed with snow and ice but still driveable on the north side. Others in 4x4s struggled up the south side track. But we all had to do some walking/trudging up the hill which was quite hard work at times with drifts of 12-15 inches fresh snow underfoot.

Winds were quite strong on top, so we dropped down 100 feet to launch. DaveT was off first to win the first flight of the year prize (unless of course you know better). I faffed for a while to attach my speed bar before launching and was mighty glad I did once I got in the air. I took off and then scratched across the bowl and along the ridge struggling to stay up, but luckily found an extra 50 feet or so on my return leg which put me in the lifty layer and I was away, following Stephen, Brendan and DaveT. Once the wing started going up the vario just kept beeping even when pushing far out from the ridge. With all that height I took a look at the crossing to Big Tinto, and even went as far as testing my speed with bar on, but decided I didn't fancy the walk out if I failed, so settled for some big lazy beats well out from the ridge.

Felt the wind start to increase and was losing penetration, so pushed on half bar and still kept going up, into the stronger winds - so went for full bar and still went up, but this time slowly edged forward enough to allow me to pull in big ears and start coming down. Landed quite low and tried kiting back up the hill - incredibly tiring in a foot of fresh snow - then followed the others (Ross, Jamie, Joe, Gordon, Nico) on a fly down back to the cottage.

All in all an excellent day out and the best way to see in the New Year and great to see so many folk out on such a very cold day. [Dave H]
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Ne'erdy at Tinto was just fantastic - stunning scenery, really interesting unusual conditions, incredibly challenging, and great fun! Dave, Jamie, Brendan, Stephen, Valerie (complete with sledge) and myself went up the N side track, while Ross, Nico, Gordon and Joe went up the south ascent. Ian and Alastair took the direct summit approach. Conditions were even harder than yesterday with a deeper layer of powder below the crust. It was flat calm at the bottom but there was a soarable breeze by the shoulder just above the stile. Immediately after launching it was clear that the air was very different - despite quite a good breeze the bowl was only just soarable and it took a while to climb above hill height, but when you did, there was good lift up to about 1800ft. And flying near the ground with almost no visual reference was a novel experience as well. I could see Ian already high above Maurices Cleuch, so I set off across the reservoir, but dropped into the static air - then into the deep snow of the steep side of the Cleuch with the glider sliding down the hill - and started an inch by inch struggle up the hill with a bundled glider. Every single step involved climbing up about 2 feet onto the crust, which then broke and buried your whole leg in the snow. There were occasional significant cross and slightly downhill breezes - "unthermals" (if thats not already a meteoroloical term, Im going to patent it). After about 9 hours, I'd gained about 100ft and got to a layer where it was cross and slightly up, so it was time for the glider to do some work. One of the best bits of the day was kiting up the hill with the glider carrying some weight - running effortlessly over the snow crust like it was short grass, till I got up to a soarable height.

It was then an easy soar up to 2100 - where above the shear layer (at hill top height) it was really strong wind (38 km/hr) - and I'd guess even stronger above that. So it was an hour of lovely soaring with amazing views with an occasional period on bar to get forward and down. Alastair had also dropped into the dead zone was experiencing the same up hill slog, so I waited till he launched (with some words of encouragement not to delay take off - as the sun set!).

A lovely glide all the way along the N side to land with the guys at the cottage - and along to Tinto Hotel for a welcome pint. Wot a great day out.

(Even the drive home was interesting with incredible variations in temperature - it was -5 C in Symington, -10.5 C in Skirling, and -3 C in Peebles - its no wonder we get fickle winds in winter!) [DT]
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Good day but very hard work. The walk up on the main path up Tinto was good with a nice path through the snow and plenty of info on how windy it was at the top from walkers coming down. After a bit of messing around launched from half way up (Maurice's Cleuch) and followed Ian over to the west with a nice smooth climb up to hill top at which point realized I was going back wards so lost some height and drifted back east and down over the bowl and had a few beats back and forth. Feeling comfortable again took a few pictures and promptly fell into the still air and landed on the hill just round from DT. The snow was above knee height on a pretty steep section of hill and as Dave mentioned earlier it is almost impossible to climb especially with a full kit. Half an hour 100ft kind of speed and after a while with Dave above, had to give up and glide out towards the main path and land in the moor at the bottom of the hill. It was a bit tricky to get launched since as soon as you put your wing down it slid down the hill past me, so after half burying the wing to keep it laid out, got off the hill. Even trying to walk across the moor was difficult with snow depth from a foot to three feet in the invisible drainage ditches. Although I was prepared for the height wind speeds at hill top I had forgotten how difficult deep snow can be. [Alastair]

Robin and I were following just behind you Terry I think. We turned back defeated by the northerly (looked even NE to us), headed for East Lomond to find (w)NW there! Soarable, though West Lomond would have offered a bit more of the face to fly on. Quite strong wind, too, especially before a snow shower past us. [Jitka]

Went for Bishop yesterday myself - as you said wind at the carpark was almost straight N, so went up East Lomond where I thought I was going for a TTB but it was surprisingly lifty ~50ft above the top and there was weak lift extending lower down away from the hill, weird as the wind lower down was westerly, but it was clearly veering as you went higher up. [Trias]