Flight of the year for me! I’ve never made it across the valley before at Dunlap.
The flight started playing in the house thermal. With a lot of newer pilots I found it hard to core without putting others in some risk. Plan was to try and stick with Jason Seto again. We followed Luigi to 49917, but Seto had to turn back without the altitude. My game plan was to get high, wait for Jason, then cross the valley together. What ended up happening is Luigi outflew both of us, got stinking height at Delila. I found a couple of good thermals, but could never find the height to make it to carry on at Delila to even start the waiting game.
Looking back towards launch, Seto had skied out over on the main ridge. My plan now was to try and make it back to launch, find a thermal there and join him.
Over launch there was a great, large, strong, but kind thermal that took me right up from well below launch to 6,100ft at ~3.1m/s. This was probably one of the best climes of my life.
With this altitude, and Seto not being much below me, I radioed him with the plan to follow the terrain the house thermal kicks off from slightly to the north, and go thermal hunting. And wait for him to join.
I got some nice lifty lines on the way out, found a climb to turn a couple in while I waited for Jason to catch up, but found I was just maintaining at best and should carry on with my goal of making granny’s. I didn’t have a great deal of height by the time I made it to Granny, but, well enough to make the peak. I found a ripper of a climb over the peak, taking me to around 6k ft again, then joined Jason climbing up. It was very special to fly with my BGD buddy this flight. It’s made my paragliding trip this year. Flight was relatively short at 1 hour 40 minutes, but this one is definitely my most enjoyable for the year so far. Thanks, Jason Seto! It was finished with some spirals and wing overs, before a nice easy slow landing.
Made the perfect end to a great trip :)
Lessons:
- patience paid off massively here.
- flying with friends is amazing
- don’t follow crows. They’re jerks and will just take you into lift that’s in trashy, rotery air. Perhaps their sense of humor?