Birthday Paragliding!
On Sunday my boyfriend and I drove to Pemberton (approximately 3 hours north of Vancouver) to do some flying. I was pretty stoked as “mini-Golden” is a site I’d been wanting to fly for a long time, and it was cool that we were finally making it happen.
Unfortunately Sunday was totally blown out but it ended up being fun anyway as we kept getting lost looking for campgrounds and did a lot of driving on roads not meant for cars which in the end was kind of comical.
Yesterday (my birthday!) looked more promising when we awoke and after a nice fancy breakfast, we met up with some pilots in the LZ and got a ride up to launch.
The launch at Pemberton is quite nice and is well-maintained. A few pilots launched but didn’t really manage to extend their flights as there wasn’t much for thermals. We waited a bit, and after an hour or so we decided it was time to go. I found a light climb almost immediately, which turned into a very smooth 4 m/s that got us nice and high. My boyfriend at that point was with me in the same thermal and yelled for me to “GO!” downrange.
The climbs after that were pretty messy, and not especially pleasant. They weren’t as strong as the first thermal we flew in, and they were just kind of annoying! I would stick in the messy climbs for a while but then decided to keep pushing forward, looking for something better a little more organized. But one mountain short of the ridge splitting, I could feel and see on gps that we were then punching a headwind and flying into the lee of the mountain ahead of me was not something I was especially interested in doing. I certainly didn’t want to have any big birthday assymetrics!
At that point I flew into the valley and my goal was to fly back to the main landing zone (about 10 k’s away). I mentally pretended that it was a competition day and that goal was at the main LZ and that I could only use thermals that were in the valley.
From the one flight I had in Pemberton, it is definitely a beautiful valley to fly in and it does draw parallels with Golden. I can’t wait to go back and do some huge XC!
Unfortunately Sunday was totally blown out but it ended up being fun anyway as we kept getting lost looking for campgrounds and did a lot of driving on roads not meant for cars which in the end was kind of comical.
Yesterday (my birthday!) looked more promising when we awoke and after a nice fancy breakfast, we met up with some pilots in the LZ and got a ride up to launch.
The launch at Pemberton is quite nice and is well-maintained. A few pilots launched but didn’t really manage to extend their flights as there wasn’t much for thermals. We waited a bit, and after an hour or so we decided it was time to go. I found a light climb almost immediately, which turned into a very smooth 4 m/s that got us nice and high. My boyfriend at that point was with me in the same thermal and yelled for me to “GO!” downrange.
The climbs after that were pretty messy, and not especially pleasant. They weren’t as strong as the first thermal we flew in, and they were just kind of annoying! I would stick in the messy climbs for a while but then decided to keep pushing forward, looking for something better a little more organized. But one mountain short of the ridge splitting, I could feel and see on gps that we were then punching a headwind and flying into the lee of the mountain ahead of me was not something I was especially interested in doing. I certainly didn’t want to have any big birthday assymetrics!
At that point I flew into the valley and my goal was to fly back to the main landing zone (about 10 k’s away). I mentally pretended that it was a competition day and that goal was at the main LZ and that I could only use thermals that were in the valley.
From the one flight I had in Pemberton, it is definitely a beautiful valley to fly in and it does draw parallels with Golden. I can’t wait to go back and do some huge XC!
posted by Veronica at 10:27 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home