Chilly day at Cliffside (almost 3 hrs) 12/7/16

We had great time and at Cliffside today. Four hangs and approx 6 bags came out to fly the chilly air and everyone soared. The paragliders session was over around 1:00pm due to the strong winds. The sky was blue with a few scattered clouds and plenty of sunshine , smooth ridge lifts and thermals .....etc. We all punch off from the paragliding launch. The ground temperatures was about 29 F and 23 F above the windmills at 3000ft AGL. I launched at 11:20am and landed at 2:00pm (almost made it to 3 hrs). I landed because after over 2 and a half hours of airtime, my legs were becoming stiff and couple of my fingers slight loss of feeling due to the cold air. All four of us (Jonathon, Nat, Mark R and myself) landed by the river in really strong and gusty ESE winds. It feel like blowing 20-30mph gusts by the river. Everyone had a good landing.

Photos by 

Jonathon Severdia 

The beautiful snow covered of Dog Mt (Glenoma, Wa) 12/6/16

Dog was beautiful today with 5-6 inches of fresh snow and sunny skies. The forecast was right about light east wind slowly turned to west in the afternoon.  We (Sunny Jim and I)  launched at 2pm in zero wind just as expected and got an extended sledder. Nice warm temperature and mellow air with few bumps. I did hike up without my gears.  

Video links 

https://youtu.be/akD8ozAXaak

Video from launch: 
 https://www.facebook.com/pdxrick.lai/videos/10154309241964285/

First flight at Cliffside 3K west launch Dec 2, 2016

I left home at 5:30am this morning made it to Bingen, Wash to watch the sunrise in the morning. It started to rain after that so I headed out to Goldendale to meet up with Mark Rabe to try that 3000ft west facing launch on top of Cliffside windmills for our first time. When I arrived the LZ by the river, it was partly sunny with high clouds ceiling. All windmills on top were facing the right direction (WSW) and spinning slowly. 

We arrived launch at 10:30am and launched at 12:00pm in front of the antennas. Mark walked down about 50 ft below because he doesn't like the shallow slop on top and trees on both side. Mark punched off in no winds so he went straight to the LZ. I launched on higher ground and winds was very light (3-5mph from straight west). I felt lifts immediately right after airborne. The air was SO SMOOTH and I got 300 ft above launch. I was thinking about land on top later but my altitude was drop down between 150-200ft above launch so I decided to landed at the bottom instead. When we went back up to retrieve Mark truck around 3:30pm. The winds was blowing very steady 15mph straight up. We were thinking about to fly again but it was just too cold (40 degree F) and too late.