I'd wanted to go flying in the Owens valley for years, and had a few spare vacation days so booked a short tripe with Kari Castle.
I loved the scenery, the smell of the sage brush, the high alpine air...but the flying didn't really deliver. We started out on the first day at Flynns, in weak crosswind conditions. No one even got up even about launch, despite a couple of trips up the hill. About 4 in the afternoon the wind was so cross that we all looked at the cliff across the valley that was orientated directly into wind, wondering if at least that might be flyable
Kari said, yeah, we fly that, so off we went. We arrived at the cliff launch only to find a college group had set up tents, sleeping bags and tables with gas burners on the launch site.
Undetered, we laid out a couple of gliders, pulled up into the laminar air, and with a helper, walked through the tables and tents to the cliff edge. Once there, the airspeed was perfect. Simply step off the cliff and fly.
Day 2 saw the long drive to Paiute, but increasing cloud cover made selection of the takeoff window critical. People that took off early scratched up from well below takeoff but eventually got up to about 10,000ft and went XC. All but one of our group made the wrong choice, and ended up scratching all the way down 4000ft, with every single thermal completely shut off.
We went up again for a sunset flight, which was utterly beautiful - the highlight of the trip. Super smooth with the views of the Sierras in the distance. But not exactly the 5m/s thermals and 15,000ft cloud base that one comes to the Owens for.
The last day of flying saw brisk winds up on launch, and a lot of parawaiting. Some very experienced pilots finally took off, flew out from the hill into the first thermal. After five or so rotations, the lower pilot took a massive 60% collapse, recovered, took another collapse, recovered again. We then realized he was flying backwards with twisted risers,and climbing backwards in the strong thermal. Everyone on launch seemed to collectively hold our breath until he finally untwisted the risers and pushed out to safety.
Eventually later in the day the winds dropped and I was able to launch, and I took off into laminar conditions with a some light thermals. Nothing much was happening and I had an uneventful flight pushing out into the wind all the way into the valley. Later the wind picked up just after I launched, and no one else flew.