A Good Day to Fly

After a couple days of not flying due to strong wind conditions, it was nice to reacquaint myself with the sky today.

I had a really good launch, which is important to note as I’ve been flying with 5kgs of ballast which sits under my flight deck. I still find it a bit tricky with the way it sits on the biners, but it’s been manageable.

Anyway, me and one of the other pilots launched at basically the same time and took some slow climbs up while being trashed around a bit. With what I thought was enough height, I made a beeline for Goldmine (the next ridge across the valley) and took another trashy climb up to about 2400m. Then I headed for Pyramid and fought with a thermal which again took me up to base…

Pyramid is the spot where if you get high enough, you make the decision to head to Mount Beauty, or not. With 7k’s of trees, it’s obviously not something you want to do low, but height wasn’t my problem today – it was wind. At 2600m, I knew I had ample height, but I was fighting a 10k headwind/crosswind but I made the decision to cross anyway.

At first I thought I was kind of dumb for being worried about not making it across until I hit some -3m/s and then -4m/s along the way. Those bits of sink can make paragliding very interesting very quickly. Without speedbar, I think I would have barely made it across, but man, regardless, my heart was racing at a couple points. Good fun!

Anyway, the rest of the flight was spent pushing through a valley wind which has screwed me over many times in the past around Mt.Beauty. I concentrated on staying high and avoiding it as much as possible, but it wasn’t easy. The other two pilots who were flying in the same general area didn’t have a ton of height either, which made me feel a bit better. At one point one of the guys who was still making the crossing looked like he hit a lot of sink and got himself into a precarious situation where it looked like he hit a lot of rotor, which is when I saw his wing go all over the place for a few intense seconds. At one point I thought I would witness a reserve toss, but he kept fighting, and somehow climbed his way out. Man, that’s dedication. I don’t know how he climbed out, but kudos to him for doing it.

As I continued at my stealth speed of something like 15kmph, I started to get low. There was a spurline in front of me which I absolutely knew would kick something off. And yup, I was so right! As I approached, my vario was letting out screams of joy and I thought “yeah, I am so taking this climb back to base!” Wrong! Half my wing went and I struggled to keep the other side open..it all happened so fast, I don’t know what I did, but I sorted it out. I spun almost 180 degrees, but thankfully with the bit of SIV training and even practicing SATs helped me stay calm and get it flying again. Weird how at one point I thought I might have to full stall my glider. I don’t know why that came across my mind as I was too low to do it, but it did, the second before it popped open again. Once flying, I could feel my glider still feel somewhat funny, so I decided to fly away from the ridge. Whack! Another big deflation, but this one came out without a major turn, and also helped top up my dose of adrenaline. I’m sure all this happened within a period of 25 seconds or something, but it was pretty intense. My altitude at the time was like 1200 meters or so, but I don’t think I was more than 300m or 400m above the ridge when I got slammed. Yeesh.

Anyway, I decided to fly the flats instead where little bits of .5m/s lift was all I ran into, and after crossing onto the other side of the valley, I landed. An A+ landing I might add, just because I had to change fields at the last second where I noticed some cattle (and possibly bulls!) in my first field of choice.

I somehow hitchhiked back, which was amazing, considering there wasn’t a lot of traffic today. Really nice people too – even though the one guy had tattoos, smoked, and had a beer in hand when he picked me up, he was a really intelligent local who I had a very nice chat with. I should start keeping track of the people who pick me up hitchhiking – it’s cool to hear people’s life stories during a short car ride.

All in all, a great flight. I flew further than I normally do the Mt.Beauty way, and yes, I was outflown as usual, didn’t get to experience base when it rose up to 3000m, didn’t fly the mountains on the far side of the Kiwa Valley, but I suppose I should stop comparing myself to others so much. When someone asked me about my flight today, I told them the shitty part first, which is again something I need to stop doing. I really did fly well today and I don't think I could have replicated today's flight 2 months ago. The progress is there - I can't wait to fly tomorrow!