Steamboat Springs

I headed off to Steamboat Springs for Labor Day weekend as it seemed a good bet for the weather, plus I was invited ;) The flying was quite nice, very gentle thermals which was a surprise to me, but apparently this is common as the valley is generally quite green, and this year had a particularly wet August. My battery ran out half way through the flight, but I think the scenery is still pretty nice, I flew for a couple hours, getting to 14k and had a nice landing at the hayfield LZ.

The next day, was questionable as to whether or not there might be helicopter traffic grounding freeflight, so I opted for a town tour on the folding bike I had packed. The river trail was quite fun.

Villa Grove

A big turn-out! ~160 pilots I think I heard. From the LZ looking up at launch and the Sangre de Cristo Range

I didn't have sufficient time to do my homework for this trip. I thought the swifts fly in was a Hang Gliding class5 event -Ha Nope! Anyway I had decided to take it easy and not be too ambitious since I've barely flown in 16 months. Over launch looking south ~13k.

Over launch looking down at Villa Grove.

Over launch about 15k looking north toward Salida.

Over Villa Grove looking down on the LZ and Launch. A place I've heard about for years, but hadn't managed to visit until now.

Valley is around 8k feet MSL Peaks around 13.5k, previous day I flew down to the corner and back, flying the Freedom as I'm really out-of-practice. This glider is much easier to land and more forgiving of mistakes.

Looking south down toward the Great Sand Dunes National Park. What a great fun weekend, so nice to see (at a distance) so many friendly faces I've not seen in months/years. Somehow I was so busy catching up I didn't take a single group shot.

Flying with Carmela

I'll miss the consistency and convenience of California coastal flying.

The day was overcast, great for smooth consistent air not so much for photos. A trip over to Westlake, shows the cliff edging its way closer to the windowless church. Looks like it lost another lobe to its parking, just one unusable lobe remains. 

Camela joined me on her spiffy new sport 3.

I flew around and took in a few different angles. Here over Mussel rock.

The wind was southy and bouyant so the glide back to Funston put us pretty high.

Fun to go exploring the space over Daly city golf course.

Santa Cruz Flats 2018

Back to Santa Cruz Flats after 8 years. A good turn out from the SF Bay Area. 6 flying tasks over 7 days. And just to show how times have changed, pilots are taxiing on segways and scoring is live on the internet.

it would be a hot week, with the exception of Wednesday, where I happily would have worn a sweater and some shoes.

Wednesday was monsoonal and fairly obviously unflyable, so Wayne and I took off to Biosphere 2. Something I remember learning about on Blue Peter when I was 13 years old. It is now open to the public (guided tours), and continues to run environmental experiments.

The two experiments that caught my attention were : seeing what happened when a rainforest ecosystem had much higher levels of CO2. The thinking was the trees and foliage would photo-synthesize the CO2 back to near normal levels, and while perhaps growing a bit taller. The latter happened, but the trees them selves did not convert any more CO2 than normal. A surprise to all. 

The other was the ocean reef tank which also had increased levels of CO2 and heat, the corals had bleached and algae taken over. The current state of the experiment is seeing if certain types of crabs and snails could consume the algae and return the reef to a healthy state once CO2 and temperatures return to normal.  

The architecture and engineering is worth a visit just by itself. Climate control is so much more on this scale. Light is controlled along with heat and cooling. But the water and humidity and even wind is a closed system. The experiments would be ruined with mold, insects, seeds etc from the local environment if exposed. It is all sealed (somewhat) and 2 giant lung buildings supply the air circulation.

While on our visit the monsoon was in full swing and returning to our hotel we found the very flat town flooded, especially in our parking lot !

Here is the task on the last day. Each day was quite different from any other in the week (from a weather perspective). The area confounds me - trying to read the weather by looking at the sky. How a place can be so hot and be void of thermals? and then seem the exact same the following day and be totally different. Patience and gaggle flying is key.

We had to keep an eye out for rattle snakes after the rains. Wouldn't want to launch with one of those diamondbacks hitching a ride. The last days flight is interesting to replay, in fact a few of them are. But this is the link to do just that, you can fast forward and replay up to 10x the speed. 

Great to see some friends I haven't seen in 8 years, and make some new ones too.

Ollie Chitty made some cool videos of the event also, check them out.

practice day day1 day2 day3 task4 task5 task6 Dave Aldrich also has a nice intro to the place too.

Herd Peak

Gerry talked us into scoping out Herd peak, as Lakeview was blown out Monday. Driving toward Mt Shasta was spectacular for a good hour. The view at launch is amazing.

Launch conditions were just fine even though it seemed intimidatingly strong. Scenery WOW !

The landing averaged out my previous days' glory ... What happened was ... A string of silly mistakes, first I didn't pack my drougue very well and struggled (and failed to get it out of the pocket). Then I started with a compromised approach, not terrible, but not great either, with that distraction and focusing on the downhill landing I forgot to rise my visor. I've done this before too, the fish bowl type distortion near the ground makes my think I'm at landing height when I'm still 5 ft up.  The rest is history, no real harm done, except maybe my radio cords are unhappy. 

L for Lakeview

At Lakeview this year we chose to fly from Black Butte, instead of Sugar because of the landowner issue there. Its really too bad as the geography, prevailing wind make for a fun race back to the town that most pilots can join in with an d get back at a reasonable time, while giving the locals something to see as a number of gliders land at goal in town.

Instead we flew north along Aberts Rim which is indeed spectacular, but landed at Wagontire, back intime to find all but one diner closed.

Nevermind that though, we are there for the flying primarily and Lakeview is generally great to spectacular.

It took a while, but eventually I climbed through the inversion into the strong westerly and topped out about 13k. After missing the first climb, the westerly and higher climb actually caught me back up with Wayne and Tom.

We flew close, but completely different lines along the rim. I went high and deep, Wayne raced along at 10k, Tom took strong climbs and ridge soared. 

The rim from the ground is spectacular too.

This year the geyser was still firing on July 4th. The next day I flew way out front at 14k thinking I had shot some really cool pictures only to find the gopro had been pushed into the ground by a dust devil at launch and turned off. Still, on the flip side, I took first in the spot landing competition. 

Hat Creek

Had some picturesque flying this summer particularly around the 4th of July.

The trip started with a Friday evening glass-off at Hat Creek. Hat creek rim is about 25 Miles north of Lassen Volcano.

Conditions were perfect. Lavabeds were releasing lots of smooth lift late in the evening, which is why this site is typically flown.

It was super hot in the air, I completely overdressed. 

The scenery was great even though a little hazy.

Landing in camp is great, it seems like a while since I had a social landing. I can see why this is such a popular site, it has taken me many years to get around to flying here.

Memorial weekend -- Owens valley

For many years Memorial holiday weekend meant trying to get a few spectacular flights in the Owens Valley. Some years were great other the weather made it not worth going but it has been many years since I had the opportunity and this year really was amazing! The first day ended up being a practice day up to Bishop before the weather closed in.

Sunday was the big distance day, although I struggled a bit the first 20 miles or so. One of the key motivators to fly Memorial weekend is to see the peaks snow capped, before it melts. It really does enhance the scenery.

Every canyon has some wow factor, rock formations alpine lakes, deep green pine trees, glaciers, it is almost constantly overwhelming.

An occasional slap of turbulence keeps one focused though ;) On up to Bishop, where usually the wind turns west, and normally we would jump over to the West facing White mountains. Today was different however, prevailing was light south with a touch of east. We would stay on the Sierra, exciting because I'd never had the opportunity before to continue up the east side.

Almost when down in Bishop but got a screaming climb from the deck to 14k, right there in the valley. It was right about here my camera quit, but I carried on up over the pass to Crowley (where we launched the next day) and there it got interesting, a cloud gave up and started raining back behind McGee and Mamoth. Seeing that I figured the lift would be on the east side of the valley, so I went around over the glass house mountains, over to Mono lake, which is quite an intimidating stretch of trees and lava flows. But there are clearing here and there, and I had enough altitude to go for it. I ended the flight at Bridgeport airport, for 137 miles, the sky was turning menacing.

The next Day we flew from McGee, a mountain I hadn't launched from before. It is really stunningly beautiful.

I actually enjoyed this flight more than the previous day. The ceiling was higher, 16k I think, it was sunnier, and we took a totally different route anyway. Further west more over the Sierra. There's Mamoth ski resort, way below.

Almost decked it behind this crazy looking feature, (Wilson butte) it's some remains of a decomposed volcano. Anyway I scored and climb as I was unzipped. I was glad as I really was not looking forward to "arriving" in that field. At 8200 feet MSL and in wind shadow I'm sure it wouldn't have been pretty. 

And then the last crossing, June Lake ski resort and High Yosemite in the background. What a day Wayne and I glided into Lee Vining airport and we went back and got Paul from a nice field near by.

We were home in 6 hours as we'd landed in Lee Vining, It doesn't get much better than this ! Thanks to Ben for Driving it was great to hangout in the Owens :)