Wow! What a day. Filled with drama and epic flying. A fitting end to a full on week.
Tracklog on Leonardo - 66km
Today's result - 17th in Race Sport
Final Result - 15th in Race Sport
I got a great start, climbing out fairly early into the main Race gaggle and got nice and high. However the milling around for half an hour defeated me again, and I found dropping steadily lower with a number of other pilots who couldn't stay with the competition wings. The whole idea that the gaggle is more efficient than a single pilot just didn't work, as 40+ people milled around going every which way and no one seemed to be able to find enough lift to stay high. Eventually we had too little height above launch to even make the first transition as the start got close. At the time of the start, I was at the lowest point since 30 minutes!
Clearly I have a lot of racing to do before I can claim to have mastered the start gaggle. Five minutes after the start, once the air had cleared a bit, I finally got a decent climb up to 5800ft, which was enough to cross to Rabies. The first crossing was the usual battle into headwind and sink into the lee side of a notoriously thermic ridge. A great way to start a race!
Battling along Rabies Ridge was more difficult than other days. The usually decent thermals weren't there as it was earlier in the day than we had previously started. So I had to pick my way along the choppy convergence line towards Mt Isabel for the next twenty minutes into wind the whole way, using speedbar where the turbulence wasn't too rough. Just hard work.... Eventually even what patchy lift there was gave out, and I dived in low onto what I hoped was the windward facing slope of Mt Isabel. The problem with this area is that you honestly don't often know from which side the wind is coming from one kilometer to the next as the ridgeline snakes left and right. Wind can come from both sides of the main ridge as wind flows from the Medford area to the east, and from the Applegate to the west.
Mt Isabel was barely working with only a 500ft climb, so I pushed along the ridgeline. When it became clear that I wasn't getting good enough glide into wind to make it round the next mountain, I thought my flight would soon be over... Sunk out in the dreaded Humbug canyon!
I dived into the canyon, which is a large valley between 4500ft mountains, with enough landing fields below to give some security, but mostly trees, trees, trees. About 500ft above the ground and over the first fields, I found a weak thermal. Work it, work it.....After seventeen agonizing 360s I was back out of the Canyon up to 5000ft again. OK, second try!
Off again on glide into the leeside of the next big mountain, hoping I was high enough to clear it. I saw another pilot on a Delta 2 sneak just over the forested ridge ahead of me with a couple of hundred feet to spare. That's not a lot of safely margin when the trees are 80ft high firs and you are flying into unpredictable headwind. I turned tail and drifted back downwind into the canyon....for the second time.
At least the downwind glide back into the Canyon was easy. I zoomed past a knob in the middle and spotted a green Delta 2 climbing out from a sunbaked face on the other side of the Canyon. Arriving there too low, I started hugging the hillside as close I dared while deciding how far down the canyon I could glide before needing a landing field. The field next to John Michael Champagne Cellers vineyard looked promising. At least I might be able to slip in some wine tasting...
At the last ridge before the vineyard, a thermal triggered. Fifteen turns this time, straight up, and I milked every last bit out of the thermal before it gave out at 5500ft. A frustratingly low top of lift, in a location where a good climb regularly take you another 2000ft more.
Extracting myself from Humbug canyon a second time. You can see the vineyard bottom left
My third attempt at crossing Humbug canyon was finally successful, and eventually I hit decent convergence lift where wind from both the Applegate and the Rogue river channel up similar sized valleys and meet in the middle. That allowed me to tag the first turnpoint....2 hours of flying to get the first 20km!
Grateful that the hardest part of the flight was over, I turned around and ran downwind back towards Woodrat. After not finding much lift on the ridgeline and seeing another pilot turn back into wind trying to find lift, I decided to keep going into Humbug canyon again based on my earlier experiences of the thermals there. This time it was easy...I arrived at exactly the spot where I had seen the pilot climb out earlier. Hot air collecting in the enclosed canyon was releasing and drifting towards the direction I wanted to go.
The air was awful over Rabies peak, so I kept running down wind until the reliable thermal right at the bottom corner of the ridge. This is the strongest thermal that I know off in the whole area, and it didn't disappoint, getting me up to 6000ft again.
The course line turned around again and went back along the ridge I'd just come down. This time was a lot easier than 2 hours before. Lift was more abundant and getting to the Sugar turnpoint was achieved all above 4500ft - out of the gusty and strong headwinds that are lower over the ridge.
At this point there was a lot of chatter on the radio about a glider that had been spotted down somewhere on the Rabies ridge. At about the same time, my radio started beeping, indicating the battery was gettting low on charge. I turned the volume down to conserve power and flew on...
I'd now been in the air three and a half hours - longer than any other paragliding flight in my 14 years of flying. I assumed by the lack of gliders around me, that either everyone else had either made goal already or landed out along the course line. As I neared Woodrat for the last time to get high for the long downwind final glide up the Applegate valley, there were three gliders up ahead. I joined their thermal 500ft lower and worked my way high again.
When they set off on final glide I did the same. I knew I might not make the goal, as it was still 16km - too far to make on a single glide. But I was so tired that the idea of a gentle glide down wind into a beautiful valley was appealing.
Going on glide was a delight...the first time in the entire day where the air was smooth enough to comfortably take my hands off the controls, get my camera out, and cruise. At one point I spotted the distinctive dark neatly laid out bushes of a pot plantation, with associated large house. Maybe the the local drug lord...
Eventually I choose the last landing field before the valley narrowed to just trees and river and executed a elegant final turn to land exhausted right in the middle of the field.
It's always a little weird landing by yourself, in an unknown location, after hours in the air. Suddenly it's all quiet, you can year birds chirping instead of wind in your lines, and the layers of clothing suddenly become stifling. I hadn't drunk anything the whole flight, so was a little dehydrated, spaced out even.
After hitching a ride back to HQ with backpackers and their two enormous dogs, the drama continued... I learnt that the task had been cancelled at around 3:10, due to the radio chatter I had heard earlier. A pilot had landed on a hill safety in low trees but got his glider blown into a small tree. He had phoned the event director to advise he was OK, but reports also came from other pilots flying high above that he wasn't moving. A pilot who is not moving in a unusual landing spot can signify a bad landing and an injured pilot.
Unfortunately, the communication from the meet director didn't sync up with the radio reports from pilots still trying to identify the location of the 'downed pilot', who had in the meantime removed his glider from the tree, packed up and started hiking down through the densely forested terrain without further radio or cellphone contact. The fact that someone had been seen on the ground not moving but was no longer visible triggered a full on search mode with everyone being told to fly down and report in immediately in order to figure out who was missing and if necessary coordinate search efforts.
Of course, I missed most of that (along with the three other pilots I had been flying towards) as my radio had gone flat.
Eventually the pilot turned up at one of the landing fields and reported back that indeed it was him that had landed out on the hillside without incident. Moral of the story: stay on the radio, and tell people you are OK and what you are doing. Multiple times!
I had missed the whole thing due to my radio battery, and battled on to my longest ever time in the air, and second longest ever flight in distance.
Unfortunately, because of the cancellation, I was scored as flying 39km, even though I went on to get within 5km of goal in a 66km task! I was a little dissapointed by this, but soon got over it....paragliding racing is about learning from every situation, including the complicated scoring system... The most important thing is that the pilot that landed on the hillside was safe, as was another pilot who got stuck way up on Sugarloaf and landed high on the hill rather than attempt to glide out over kilometers of forest.
Safety first, fun second, racing last!
Tracklog on Leonardo - 66km
Today's result - 17th in Race Sport
Final Result - 15th in Race Sport
I got a great start, climbing out fairly early into the main Race gaggle and got nice and high. However the milling around for half an hour defeated me again, and I found dropping steadily lower with a number of other pilots who couldn't stay with the competition wings. The whole idea that the gaggle is more efficient than a single pilot just didn't work, as 40+ people milled around going every which way and no one seemed to be able to find enough lift to stay high. Eventually we had too little height above launch to even make the first transition as the start got close. At the time of the start, I was at the lowest point since 30 minutes!
Clearly I have a lot of racing to do before I can claim to have mastered the start gaggle. Five minutes after the start, once the air had cleared a bit, I finally got a decent climb up to 5800ft, which was enough to cross to Rabies. The first crossing was the usual battle into headwind and sink into the lee side of a notoriously thermic ridge. A great way to start a race!
Battling along Rabies Ridge was more difficult than other days. The usually decent thermals weren't there as it was earlier in the day than we had previously started. So I had to pick my way along the choppy convergence line towards Mt Isabel for the next twenty minutes into wind the whole way, using speedbar where the turbulence wasn't too rough. Just hard work.... Eventually even what patchy lift there was gave out, and I dived in low onto what I hoped was the windward facing slope of Mt Isabel. The problem with this area is that you honestly don't often know from which side the wind is coming from one kilometer to the next as the ridgeline snakes left and right. Wind can come from both sides of the main ridge as wind flows from the Medford area to the east, and from the Applegate to the west.
Mt Isabel was barely working with only a 500ft climb, so I pushed along the ridgeline. When it became clear that I wasn't getting good enough glide into wind to make it round the next mountain, I thought my flight would soon be over... Sunk out in the dreaded Humbug canyon!
I dived into the canyon, which is a large valley between 4500ft mountains, with enough landing fields below to give some security, but mostly trees, trees, trees. About 500ft above the ground and over the first fields, I found a weak thermal. Work it, work it.....After seventeen agonizing 360s I was back out of the Canyon up to 5000ft again. OK, second try!
Extracting myself from Humbug canyon
At least the downwind glide back into the Canyon was easy. I zoomed past a knob in the middle and spotted a green Delta 2 climbing out from a sunbaked face on the other side of the Canyon. Arriving there too low, I started hugging the hillside as close I dared while deciding how far down the canyon I could glide before needing a landing field. The field next to John Michael Champagne Cellers vineyard looked promising. At least I might be able to slip in some wine tasting...
At the last ridge before the vineyard, a thermal triggered. Fifteen turns this time, straight up, and I milked every last bit out of the thermal before it gave out at 5500ft. A frustratingly low top of lift, in a location where a good climb regularly take you another 2000ft more.
Extracting myself from Humbug canyon a second time. You can see the vineyard bottom left
My third attempt at crossing Humbug canyon was finally successful, and eventually I hit decent convergence lift where wind from both the Applegate and the Rogue river channel up similar sized valleys and meet in the middle. That allowed me to tag the first turnpoint....2 hours of flying to get the first 20km!
Grateful that the hardest part of the flight was over, I turned around and ran downwind back towards Woodrat. After not finding much lift on the ridgeline and seeing another pilot turn back into wind trying to find lift, I decided to keep going into Humbug canyon again based on my earlier experiences of the thermals there. This time it was easy...I arrived at exactly the spot where I had seen the pilot climb out earlier. Hot air collecting in the enclosed canyon was releasing and drifting towards the direction I wanted to go.
The air was awful over Rabies peak, so I kept running down wind until the reliable thermal right at the bottom corner of the ridge. This is the strongest thermal that I know off in the whole area, and it didn't disappoint, getting me up to 6000ft again.
The course line turned around again and went back along the ridge I'd just come down. This time was a lot easier than 2 hours before. Lift was more abundant and getting to the Sugar turnpoint was achieved all above 4500ft - out of the gusty and strong headwinds that are lower over the ridge.
At this point there was a lot of chatter on the radio about a glider that had been spotted down somewhere on the Rabies ridge. At about the same time, my radio started beeping, indicating the battery was gettting low on charge. I turned the volume down to conserve power and flew on...
I'd now been in the air three and a half hours - longer than any other paragliding flight in my 14 years of flying. I assumed by the lack of gliders around me, that either everyone else had either made goal already or landed out along the course line. As I neared Woodrat for the last time to get high for the long downwind final glide up the Applegate valley, there were three gliders up ahead. I joined their thermal 500ft lower and worked my way high again.
When they set off on final glide I did the same. I knew I might not make the goal, as it was still 16km - too far to make on a single glide. But I was so tired that the idea of a gentle glide down wind into a beautiful valley was appealing.
Leaving Woodrat into the first smooth air in 3.5 hrs of flying
Mental note: not a landing field. Drug growers like their guns...
It's always a little weird landing by yourself, in an unknown location, after hours in the air. Suddenly it's all quiet, you can year birds chirping instead of wind in your lines, and the layers of clothing suddenly become stifling. I hadn't drunk anything the whole flight, so was a little dehydrated, spaced out even.
After hitching a ride back to HQ with backpackers and their two enormous dogs, the drama continued... I learnt that the task had been cancelled at around 3:10, due to the radio chatter I had heard earlier. A pilot had landed on a hill safety in low trees but got his glider blown into a small tree. He had phoned the event director to advise he was OK, but reports also came from other pilots flying high above that he wasn't moving. A pilot who is not moving in a unusual landing spot can signify a bad landing and an injured pilot.
Unfortunately, the communication from the meet director didn't sync up with the radio reports from pilots still trying to identify the location of the 'downed pilot', who had in the meantime removed his glider from the tree, packed up and started hiking down through the densely forested terrain without further radio or cellphone contact. The fact that someone had been seen on the ground not moving but was no longer visible triggered a full on search mode with everyone being told to fly down and report in immediately in order to figure out who was missing and if necessary coordinate search efforts.
Of course, I missed most of that (along with the three other pilots I had been flying towards) as my radio had gone flat.
Eventually the pilot turned up at one of the landing fields and reported back that indeed it was him that had landed out on the hillside without incident. Moral of the story: stay on the radio, and tell people you are OK and what you are doing. Multiple times!
I had missed the whole thing due to my radio battery, and battled on to my longest ever time in the air, and second longest ever flight in distance.
Unfortunately, because of the cancellation, I was scored as flying 39km, even though I went on to get within 5km of goal in a 66km task! I was a little dissapointed by this, but soon got over it....paragliding racing is about learning from every situation, including the complicated scoring system... The most important thing is that the pilot that landed on the hillside was safe, as was another pilot who got stuck way up on Sugarloaf and landed high on the hill rather than attempt to glide out over kilometers of forest.
Safety first, fun second, racing last!