Friday, May 5th
from the flyhg@yahoogroups.com :
well it started slow and cranky. 300' over was all i could get. then itgot worse. jack came back from near the gliderport ridge and we duked itout - me below launch. then ron added himself to the mix (?) and we all duked it out. i got a little something just in front of launch, long enough to wait for the "real" one in front of the low part to the leftof launch. it got me and jack outta there and put ron on the deck. i had suggested to Mark a goal of blue swan and back, during the ride down, so i took that climb til my hands froze solid, and saw that no one else was climbing at the ridge. then i just headed on a slow, indecisive glide towards blue swan. jack hung around, getting way higher than i could stand. it was shaded where we were (under a cloud- duh!) and i tried to glide into the sunshine, jack went more to the left near katydid. i just kept an eye on his progress as i went towards dan's hill. i was hanging out at around 4K over launch and even though i wasn't really thrilledwith the temp up there, i stayed as much facing the sun as i could. that seemed to help. i got right over the X at the NW end of the runway, and turned back to try to get at least to katydid, if not back to harris. jack got back near me and we just climbed and glided and followed the ridges. i was much slower and he got way above and ahead. near the prison he had a great climb with a hawk and i was too late. i tried to max it out but i had to leave. landing areas were few and i couldn't see what was over the next hill in front of me that jack was working low. so i just bagged it and landed behind the hill (nice rotor!). i left myself extra altitude to figure out what was happening in that field and it was an okay landing. except my zipper pull on the side of my harness became one with my rear wire. so it was hard to get unattached to the glider. a man came over and helped me roll the harness/glider out of the plowed field to break it down. mark said my coordinates put me six miles away from the LZ at harris. he and ron came to get me even though people were headed to the cliffs to fly. we had to break the zipper pull right off the harness to free the wire. weird! they passed jack landing nearer to harris LZ and when we went past the cliffs we saw a bunch of gliders high. i had been at 5300' over launch earlier, jack must have been over 6K. it was bulletproof up there, 600fpm avg- wrapped vario at times- not at all like what everyone else had at harris ridge. i think if i had made up my mind to get there and back and not been so hesitant, the outcome would have been better and i would have needed no retrieve. but it was a late start for such a task so i am pretty happy with it. oh and i flew for 2 hours 10 minutes. i would call that pretty epic!