2005 Canadian Nationals
Light and tricky conditions for the first day, most took the direct route and landed short. Taking a gamble with an indirect route, I eventually made goal. Tough day… My final glide began with a 10km/h tailwind and ended with a 50km/h headwind! Luckily the strong headwind showed up fairly close to goal and only at lower heights, so I still made it into the 400m goal cylinder… just.
Windy and light conditions on the second day kept us on launch until 5pm this day. But we still did manage to squeeze-in a task. Was especially difficult to fly the first 10km or so. Thought I’d be landing about 5km short and had only one field to land in before a stretch of forest. Had a little extra height to look around, saw a lone cloud in the middle of the valley, and wondered what it was doing there. As a last shot I tried to connect with it from 300m, looked at the cloud, looked at the ground, took a deep breath, said a prayer, and went for it. Was mainly just going through the motions for the sake of not giving up too early, because it was so late and I was so low. Unbelievably, I flew straight into a smooth 2m/s climb. In no time I was at the base of the cloud that I had been staring up to from 300m.
Had some time to kill to wait for nominal time to pass, so I drew some tracklog art with my GPS by drawing spirals around the goal cylinder, finally crossing at exactly nominal time. Still only earned 62 points!
We had a few cancelled days due to rain. After exhausting all the movies available and hours of Gran Turismo 4 on the PlayStation, my buddy Tyler decided that we should go to the cowboy pub, the OK Corral, in Vernon. He suited me up with all the cowboy-for-a-night gear that I needed. Hat, boots, and a buckle that any cowboy would be proud of.
Was a fun night, learning to 2-step, and riding the mechanical bull! This thing rose up from the middle of the dance floor. My buddies (fellow competitors) convinced me to get on. The last thing they said to me was… just don’t get hurt!
Not easy to stay on one of those things. The first lesson I learned was to hold yourself close to the front of the saddle, otherwise you’ll fall onto it… ouch! Somehow I wasn’t thrown off the thing, and felt pretty proud of myself.
Finally we had 2 good days of flying in a row. This time I made a bad choice of route and then had to focus hard to catch up before the finish line.
The last day was fast with a tricky spot. Got down to 120m in a tight leeside valley with a 30km/h headwind. Nothing but trees and rocks beneath me, but there was single field that I could reach if I dashed downwind. Convinced that I had blown it, I struggled to hang on to a distorted thermal in the leeside turbulence. Drifting for kilometers without gaining height, and getting tired, hope was fading. Eventually the thermal drifted into a spine that was more into the wind, and it was then that I started to climb more vertically. Then it switched on to 5m/s to cloudbase.
Feeling lucky to have not landed, I was sure that many had reached goal by this time. As it happened the other pilots also had a difficult time with that section of the course. Only one Climax pilot was 3km ahead of me and a little higher. With some tactics and the power-glide of the S, I managed to take 1000 points in the end.
Later in the evening I checked out Randy Rauck’s first hangglider, that he bought in 1976- an Eagle Delta 19/17. Randy said that it cost him $750 when it was new, and that it cost so much because the performance was so much better than the rest! Looking at it closely, I couldn’t find anything that was suggestive of performance! Even played with it at the training hill a little. Was happy to go back to my S, though…
The conditions in Lumby change by the minute, every valley has its own wind direction and speed. Blink and you’ll miss something that has changed. Lots of luck involved with flying this area, but it’s super technical and challenging. Tasks are often only 1.5-2.5 hours long but involve many decisions. One mistake and you’re on the ground wondering what happened.
Challenging conditions, but heaps of fun!
