US PG Nats Day 7
The final day of the comp, and the task committee set us an 85 km task to Galena Pass and back to Sun Valley, landing at the River Run LZ.
The going was tough at first, since the inversion was quite strong, and many pilots decked it on the first glide. We were originally on the Smokey Mountain Range, and had to cross to the Boulder Mountain range at some point, and many pilots chose to do so right at the beginning, at the narrow point in the valley. I got quite low on this crossing, and was getting trashed in the lee, so a bunch of us headed out to the valley. We got a boomer thermal which took us to 16,500', and we were back in the game!
From this ridiculous height we were able to glide to the Galena Pass TP, and then turn around for Sun Valley. There were actually pilots who got higher than this; I could see some people at 19,000', and there were clouds forming in the way-back ranges at about 21,000', but no way to get to them without committing to a several day's hike out from no-man's land.
On the way back to Sun Valley I hit the south valley winds, and the thermals were dying. I'm too late! Tried to ridge-soar some bumps in the hopes of getting high enough to get out of the valley flow and back up high for the final push, but no luck, and I landed at a small helipad just outside Sun Valley.
The task committee had set things up so the speed section was finished at Sun Peak, so the final glide into goal could be done at leisure, since the final glide would be over the actual downtown. But things didn't work out quite the way they had planned, pilots were landing all over the place in downtown Ketchum: Dave Prentice landed on a roof on main street, Akira landed in the Post Office parking lot after lifting his feet to clear the roof, Andrei had a collapse and landed downwind in some intersection of main street and an alleyway. Despite all this, nobody was run over, hung up on powerlines, or otherwise hurt from the landings in the downtown. Many pilots didn't even try for the final glide, and landed at the base of Sun Peak, or at the Gun Club just outside town.
The pilots who had flown higher than 18,000' were docked 20% of their day's results since it's illegal to fly higher than this. One pilot was heard to remark that he didn't care that he got docked points, since it was worth it to get that high.
Final results:
1st Matt Dadum
2nd Brian Webb
3rd Dave Prentice
Canadian results:
Will Gadd 17th
Keith McCullough 20th
Nicole McLearn 28th
Ryan Letchford 68th
Jeremy Hanen 76th
Rob Samplonius 79th
Danny Curylo 82nd
Final results are at http://64.130.51.207/USNPC/results.html
Photos are at http://mclearn.ca/gallery/
