Dirty Girl

Today I had an interesting flight at Bridal Falls. It was one of those days where you sit on launch and you're psyched and ready to go somewhere - venture into the beyond and see where you end up.

A few of us where gunning to do some xc flying and so we set a little task. It looked like there was a fair bit of wind while we looked up at the clouds from launch, but really, until you get into the air, sometimes it's not 100% certain.

The wind was quite strong but I managed to get a climb immediately after launching and slowly flew upwind towards our task direction.

Pilots in the Fraser Valley here like to fly something called a "Sammy". Basically you launch from Bridal Falls, and fly towards Elk Mountain (10 k's or so away), fly back towards Bridal, then tag Ludwig Mountain (10 or 15 k's from Bridal Falls), then back to Elk, etc. Nothing wrong with that, but it seems everyone's done it. Flying past Ludwig is tricky because towards Hope the valley narrows and therefore the venturi makes it windy and out of the question a lot of the time. Flying past Elk doesn't seem to be especially popular, as the mountains turn into a ridge and flying becomes more difficult.

I guess I like to do things a bit differently, so I followed the clouds and flew to Elk Mountain, and decided I was going to fly further and see what happened. So, off I went, upwind, hovering here and there as it was even windier in that direction, but maintaining and getting one decent climb off an antenna. Because of the strong wind, it seemed kind of pointless to turn in thermals that were .5 m/s when they'd push you so far downwind that when you were upwind again, you were at the same altitude. Regardless, it's something I should work on.

So, I mostly flew slow as I wasn't sinking much, and slowly made progress, until I realized that the end was nigh. I flew towards Highway Number 1, landed in a farmers field with 4 foot high grass, got very muddy because there was a ditch I had to cross, did a terrible pack job with my wing as it was windy and I didn't want to spend much time on the property, and then lost my hat in the ordeal. But it was SO worth it! I love flying someplace new and landing in weird and wonderful fields.

Nobody managed to fly our task, but it I think it's great when you can fly with a goal in mind. I will fly this low, but very long ridge (that gets bigger) again and some day follow it until I hit the US border! It is a ridge that has some pretty big gaps and gets low at times, but hey, that's the challenge.

And hey, if I can't make it and my gear gets wet in smelly mud again, it'll still be an awesome adventure, just as it was today.