New Year's Day 2006
Mark and I got up to Bristol with Ron Letzin giving us a retreive and a hand with carrying in. Light winds and no precipitation in the forecast- at least we'd get a sledder. Mark had the PG and after a muddy walk in he was set up before I had my battens laid out. Meesha was psyched to be out on a mountain again and snarled a bunch at Ron's no-legged dog.
Mark had a scary attempted launch- thank God that PGs can abort if need be. Abort he did. Then he tried again and had a great launch and got up like 50 feet over. I went back to setting up but as I was doing so the wind really picked up at times. I watched him bobble up and down rapidly, yell that it was bumpy (duh!) and then make a beeline out to the valley, where he lost altitude at a pretty rapid rate. He landed right by the road in a SE wind. I thought maybe Ron and Bob Roth were going to give me a hand with a launch but they never showed up- just my faithful dog to help bark me off the knob. I wish I had done a hang check- getting into my harness was slow and weird and I almost wasn't able to do it. Wet muddy big boots and a too-closed zipper really put a damper on my efforts. So I was struggling with that and having a hard time keeping the glider flying in the ratty ridge lift. By the time I got my feet in I was too far south and pretty much out of it. So I made one pass and headed out to land- and found the same drilling that Mark got. I never had a chance to buzz the ski mountain where my kids were snow boarding but I did make a way low pass over the parking lot! Landing towards the south has never been easy for me and I cleared the trees low and had the ropes across the center of the grass parking lot to deal with. By the time I touched down I was flying too slow to flare and had a nice belly- in across the muddy grass..... It had been sleeting and raining pretty much the whole time to one degree or another.
Let's hope the rest of the year has more rewarding flights and a better ratio of drive/hike: flighttime! Thanks Ron for helping out and braving my snarling dog to get my bags from her at launch!
Mark and I got up to Bristol with Ron Letzin giving us a retreive and a hand with carrying in. Light winds and no precipitation in the forecast- at least we'd get a sledder. Mark had the PG and after a muddy walk in he was set up before I had my battens laid out. Meesha was psyched to be out on a mountain again and snarled a bunch at Ron's no-legged dog.
Mark had a scary attempted launch- thank God that PGs can abort if need be. Abort he did. Then he tried again and had a great launch and got up like 50 feet over. I went back to setting up but as I was doing so the wind really picked up at times. I watched him bobble up and down rapidly, yell that it was bumpy (duh!) and then make a beeline out to the valley, where he lost altitude at a pretty rapid rate. He landed right by the road in a SE wind. I thought maybe Ron and Bob Roth were going to give me a hand with a launch but they never showed up- just my faithful dog to help bark me off the knob. I wish I had done a hang check- getting into my harness was slow and weird and I almost wasn't able to do it. Wet muddy big boots and a too-closed zipper really put a damper on my efforts. So I was struggling with that and having a hard time keeping the glider flying in the ratty ridge lift. By the time I got my feet in I was too far south and pretty much out of it. So I made one pass and headed out to land- and found the same drilling that Mark got. I never had a chance to buzz the ski mountain where my kids were snow boarding but I did make a way low pass over the parking lot! Landing towards the south has never been easy for me and I cleared the trees low and had the ropes across the center of the grass parking lot to deal with. By the time I touched down I was flying too slow to flare and had a nice belly- in across the muddy grass..... It had been sleeting and raining pretty much the whole time to one degree or another.
Let's hope the rest of the year has more rewarding flights and a better ratio of drive/hike: flighttime! Thanks Ron for helping out and braving my snarling dog to get my bags from her at launch!
posted by Linda Salamone at
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
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