Willi XC Challenge Days 6&7

"And so it ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper." That was written about something else, but it could apply to the Willi Week XC Challenge as well. The past two days have seen torrential rains in Golden. I bailed out yesterday and came down to Invermere, pausing to fly Eric Oddy's training hill at Brisco on my paraglider between storms.

Today, there was a good patch of sun in Invermere (along with
towering cus on all sides), so Jon Orders took off and tried to log
one more flight in the contest. He needed to fly 12 km out and 12 km
back to bump himself into first place. He managed to fly the 12 km
out, but then an approaching thunderstorm shot him down and he was
lucky to find a tight spot to land beside the Columbia River a long
way from the road. I was kayaking down the river but missed seeing
him land. (I did get heavily rained on, though).

The final awards ceremony was held as planned in an airplane hangar
at Invermere (thanks to John McIsaac and Ernst Schneider for making
it available), where PG and HG pilots mixed it up with sailplane
pilots as yet more rain fell outside. Meet-head Randy Parkin handed
out the prizes to those competitors still in attendance.

Tomorrow the 30th Annual Lakeside Splashdown starts. It should be
flyable early in the day, with cloud build-ups later. Sunday should
be even better, if we don't complete the contest tomorrow.