High hopes.

The forecast looked good for today. High of 31 and light winds out of the north west. The soaring forecast looked good with cloud base at 14,000’ and lift at 700 – 800’/min. Some model’s calling for stronger winds some calling for moderate winds out of the NW.

With my last flight being my longest ever and a great looking forecast I had hope’s of getting another shot at the 200km out and return. Now the forecast wasn’t wrong but it wasn’t the epic day I was hoping for. I wanted to launch at 2:30 to give myself enough time to make the round trip. Only one paraglider had launched and wasn’t doing well. Some how conditions just didn’t feel on as we stood on the ramp looking at a perfect looking CU filled sky. I got ready to go at 3:00. If I waited. any longer there wouldn’t be enough time to make the flight. I took off and soon realized why we were all standing on the ramp still. I struggled to stay up for an hour before the day finally turned on. I climbed out over MT7 with Doug Keller after 4:00 and had lost a lot of my motivation. Now I thought about what I had time for and what I wanted to do. I settled on flying down just past Spilli and back for a 110 to 120 km flight. We hit about 12,000’ – 13,000’ and headed south. The wind was strong out of the west and we were drifting way behind the peaks. We made not bad time heading down, staying high the whole way. Down near peak height it was rough but the air was nice up high. I flew with Doug all the way to the 50km mark where he topped out at over 14,000’. I didn’t bother getting to cloud base as the lift just wasn’t strong enough to stick with it. I flew another 5km before I turned around into a strong head wind. I was fighting on average about a 20km/hr head wind. I let myself get low and dropped below 2700m. I hit an inversion layer at that height at the start of the day but had remained above it for the whole flight. Now it was rough and a struggle to get high again. I kept pushing forward not wanting to deal with the rough air and trying to find something better. I made the same mistake in the same spot as my last flight which kept me from making it back from Invermere. I landed in almost the same spot too. Doug stayed high and made it back easy. I still managed 97km and flew for an hour and forty minutes. A good day. Well worth the trip just a little tricky. Tomorrow looks good too. I think I launch a little later and lower my expectations a bit. The days are getting shorter and we just aren’t going to get six or seven hour flights this time of year.