Landing at LakeviewDay 2 brought us rainy conditions in the morning, and at first I thought the day would be called due to rain and high winds…
Even after the pilot meeting there was no guarantee we’d be flying, but we decided to head up to Sugar nonetheless. Once at launch, there was a funky mixing of clouds, but a nice array of cumi’s were making there way toward us, so we had a feeling it would be a good day as the gliders began getting hauled off the vehicles.
A 135km task was called taking the pilots north of Abert Rim. I actually had pretty high hopes today as the conditions were looking great for XC and less than promising for the bailout LZ where I ended up yesterday.
I was one of the last few to launch, but was fortunate enough to launch behind Scot Huber, a very experienced XC pilot…things were looking good. Scot Launched and I was in the air a few minutes behind him.
We worked a few thermals behind the ridge, but headed back to launch about 3 times before I saw Scot hook one that was getting him pretty high. I raced in below him and was soon on my way up and over Fandango Pass working Hildreth’s Heater on my way to New Pine City. At that point Scot went his way and I was on my own.
New Pine City disappeared below me in no time as I made my way on to Lakeview. Just north of New Pine I hooked a nice strong thermal that had me thinking all the more I'd make Lakeview. That thermal was good to just under 10k and I had to move on...This flight I didn't want to get too far back, so I pulled on 3/4 VG and headed further north.
What was really satisfying about this flight was almost everywhere I thought there’d be lift there was and a nice thermal to keep going further…
I came in over the gravel pit just south of Lakeview and thought there’d be something more to get me going over Lakeview and beyond. That wasn’t the case, but I had a nice glide to Lakeview and was happy with my best XC flight to date…
These kind of events are great for new XC pilots like myself. There is no better way to gain knowledge in how to fly XC well than to hang around the best for a whole week...
Site: Sugar
Time: 1 hour, 3 minutes
Altitude: 10,260' msl
Distance: 37.3 km
5 more days...