When I finally launched it was as if I got on an elevator, and an industrial strength one! Over 100 meter straight up in +6 m/s lift…. Yehaa! After I got off the elevator and settled on my bucking bronco (ehmm.. into my harness I mean) I followed Pete, Tom and Tonya who were heading west. Quite a different flying experience, cruising just under the clouds which were hiding the top of the ridge and trying to identify the hidden peaks by the snowfields and gaps below. Occasionally the lift got so strong that we had to turn out to the valley and even resort to speed bar and big ears to stay out of the white room. When getting too close to the clouds previously, I usually made the mistake of getting too low and then had a difficult time reconnecting with lift. But this time, I managed to stay just at the right elevation.
There was so much consistent lift that I didn’t have to turn a single time all the way to Elk. But flying into the strong west wind was rather painful. It took me 40 minutes to get to Elk. On the bright side, when I turned around my GPS showed +60 km/h max speed and I was back at launch in 10 minutes. I will remember this flight for some time, cruising under clouds along the ridge with its peaks hidden. After we returned, Pete ventured further east, but couldn’t make it back in the strengthening wind, so he landed near Popkum Road coming straight down without forward movement. Meanwhile I flew out over the valley and then back to Bridal LZ were it was a lot less windy.
Turn-around point is marked by obvious change in flying speed at 14:58
Sunday looked quite promising, but it didn’t turn out to be as spectacular as it looked. Still, I pushed a bit beyond where I had been before, flying with Pete to Agassiz Mt, then across to Bear Mt. During the crossing on speedbar my glider took an interesting whack out of the blue (at least for me), sharply turned 90 degrees and dived maybe 45 degrees. That woke me up, but was very manageable and just what a 1/2 wing is supposed to do… made me appreciate my docile Sport4. I arrived a little below the top of Bear, scratched for a while but never got up and landed at Seabird Island. Pete arrived higher, scratched for another hour only to land on the other side of Green Hill. Next time I should land closer to the main road or call for a retrieve earlier. I decided to walk to the highway to make it easier for pick-up, but gave up after 30 minutes - it would have taken a mere 3 minutes to cover this distance by car. I called and lucked out as I managed to piggy-back on a retrieve that was in progress already. Guess I owe a few retrieves and drives up to launch with all these cross country adventures ...
