Last Flights in Golden

Well, the Willi is over and my flying in Golden has come to an end this year. I didn't have any more epic flights after my 66k out and return as conditions were, well, weird.

The typical Golden "holy shit lift" wasn't really there and if anything, conditions were tricky as they involved lots of scratching at times and being quite technical in terms of where to go to find lift, glide lines, etc. As I don't enjoy flying in rough air below peak height in Golden, I wussed out more than once and only flew 10k's or so before coming back to the main landing zone. I'll write more about this topic later. I still somehow managed to get 3rd place in my category though which was a nice surprise.

There were three big gust fronts during the Willi and in all three cases, pilots were in the air. The first gust front had about 8 pilots or so still flying (hang and para) and that one you could see from the air. I'm not sure if the other two were especially obvious as this year Golden had a lot of strange haze which sometimes obscured dark clouds...in other words, it was difficult to tell sometimes if the haze was from forest fires, was a thunderstorm, rain, or what it was. Bizarre.

It was great seeing everyone again and I had fun catching up with folks. It was especially hot this year (30 degrees Celsius almost every day) and there was a fire ban which kind of broke the party-mode pilots are usually in, but then again there are lots of fires burning out of control in BC so I think it's a good idea. Here was one I drove by on my way home that was between Merritt and Hope:

Anyway, I'm not exactly sure what my flying plans are at the moment...I may go to Invermere for the Lakeside Event, or Pemberton once the fires nearby are controlled, or who knows. In a perfect world I'd be flying in Annecy, France right now, but maybe next year I can make that happen. Until then, I'll have to have some local flying adventures only!