My first tandem flight in 1988 was on a mountain in Southern Calif called Kagel. I started flying hang glider solo in 1990. Since then hang gliding has been my primary interest.
I went to Cliffside this morning was hoping to get a flight from the 3000ft AGL west launch. Unfortunately, all the windmills were facing NW so Mark and l decided to go to Bingen instead. We arrived Bingen launch around 1:30pm and it was a bit cloudy and no wind during the whole afternoon. Five paras arrived later and took a sled ride. Mark and I launched right behind those paragliders at 3:00pm also in dead calm condition and we all had a nice ride cruise down to the LZ. Mark did a great job on no wind launch and no wind landing.
Thanks to Ray Berger for providing such great info on how to access to the top of Cliffside's windmills (Goldendale, Wash) and also Mark Rabe for the transportation. It turned out being a very successful first time flying Cliffside with the west winds condition on top of the windmills. Mark and I found many launch spots on top of the windmills that allowed for launching at almost any direction. We arriving at the top launch (3100ft MSL/ LZ by the river 190ft MSL) this morning around 11am, the winds were too gusty for me to launch 25-35mph blowing from WSW so we drove further west and found another west facing launch spot at the lower altitude (2700ft MSL). There were plenty of room for top landing too. The launch was really flat, it more shallow than Newbreg and Oceanside launch pad. Winds later diminished to 15 mph so l decided to setup. When I ready to launch the winds were down to 5-8 mph very light from WSW (sometime coming from straight west). I was a bit nervous about the shallow launch and Mark decided not to fly. It took me 4-6 steps to get airborne and the air was buttery smooth. I didn't feel any lifts so I headed out to the river, l landed by the river in west direction. Zero wind at the LZ , no rain whole day just overcast skies. It was a fun extended sledder flying off from the top, as I was the only hang glider that flew.
Cliffside turned on around 3pm. There were 4 hang gliders (Gabe, Kory, Mark R , myself) and approx 30 paragliders showed up to fly. Mark and I went up to the top of the windmills in the morning scouted around. We found many doable launch spots as you can see from the pictures. The cloud ceiling were low in the morning so we will return next time.
pictures , Google link, video... enclosed in the below link:
From Mark property to top of the windmills (12miles):
From Cliffside launch to top of the windmills (15 miles):
