Chrigel Maurer (SUI1) is still in the lead, and finished day 5 of the Red Bull X-Alps 2019 near his home in Frutigen, halfway to the Mont Blanc turnpoint, TP9.
With just 450km to go until Monaco, it looks as if it’s going to be a very quick year, as long as the weather plays ball.
The gap between the front of the field and the back had widened to 400km by the end of the day, and it was Dominika Kasieczko (POL) who faced the chop this morning. She pushed hard and made it to turnpoint 4, Kronplatz, with 20 minutes to spare before her time was up last night, and bowed out with a total of 654km covered, 275km of it on foot.
Maxime Pinot started day 6 around 50km behind Chrigel. Day 5 was tough for him – he’d had to hike up Titlis to the checkpoint board at 3,000m – that’s a 2,500m vertical ascent, in snow. He was fortunately able to fly off, but had deployed the first of his two night passes which he used to advance until midnight, when he got some much needed rest. Friday morning he was in a good position on top of a long southeast ridge, hoping for good early thermic conditions.
The weather forecast for Day 6 in the area shows high risk of thunderstorms and showers in the afternoon, so he and the other athletes will be hoping to get some flights in early. The weather further east is better. The weather on the Red Bull X-Alps live feed at 8am read:
“There currently are cloudy skies in the French Alps and in western and southern Switzerland, otherwise it is dry with sunny spells from northeastern Switzerland to Tyrol. In the evening, locally strong thunderstorms are possible in the western Alps around Turnpoints 9 Mont Blanc and 10 St. Hilaire”.
Tobias Grossrubatscher (ITA2) will unfortunately spend most of the day resting (from 5am to 5pm) – his penalty for an airspace violation near Innsbruck yesterday.
Follow live at www.redbullxalps.com
