On Saturday we had great weather and a training day with all the pilots that wanted to dial in their instruments, gliders, and bump tolerance. It was blue skies and a few clouds, but on the horizon there was a storm brewing with stronger winds on the way and a forecast for rain. Since the day was a practice task we were able to download a route and launch at your convenience since there was no scoring. Many pilots launched early to beat the approaching cloud cover and winds.

I took off and had a decent climb to 6250 feet msl with start across a small valley called Burnt mountain. From there the task took us west for about 25 km to turnpoint 1 and then cross a huge valley to turnpoint 2. There was a head wind going west and pushing speed was the best way to make some distance.

From Burnt I crossed over to Rabies Ridge and found a broken climb. The thermal did not seem organized so I flew a little to the east and then found a nice climb to with 1100fpm lift to a nice height of 8600 feet msl. I was with a couple of pilots and on the transition toward the next turnpoint one pilot found a cool convergence line and we flew for about 6 km with no loss of altitude. In fact we gained some. I continued on glide for another 6 km and found another thermal which brought me to a top height of 8972feet msl.

Winds started to increase and from the first turnpoint decided to cross the big valley rather then take another tactic. The glide was smooth, but no lift was encountered on the way to the other side. Prospect Mountain was the next turnpoint, arriving there fairly low with strong valley winds the thermals were quite broken. I groveled for a little while, but ended up sinking to the valley floor and landed with 4 other pilots. It was still a great flight and I was happy enough for the training day. A few pilots made goal, but most pilots did sink around Prospect. One pilot had to throw her reserve. She shared the story with us at the morning meeting the next day. Check out her post on her blog.

www.nicolemclearn.com  . We also had one pilot that landed somewhere behind the third turnpoint and the landowner came out on his ATV and was angry the pilot landed on his property. The landowner decided to drive over his glider and do 360's ripping the wing and catching the lines on the drive shaft and axles of the ATV. The landowner then wanted to take a knife and cut the lines to disengage the glider from his vehicle. Luckily the pilot talked him out of it and was able to slowly untangle the mess. The landowner also had a gun mounted on the ATV. Needless to say there may be a price to pay for the landowner.

The retrieve bus arrived and by the time we had scoped the fields for pilots we had standing room only. Nevertheless it was a fun day for me and still some of the best flying of the year.
Cheers