Christmas Eve 2016

Merry Christmas to everyone. 

I went to the turbines farm in Goldendale, Wash yesterday (Christmas Eve) with Mark Rabe and Stas. The winds down below (pg launches and LZ by the river) was blowing WSW 8-15mph all days with sunny skies.  Mark thought his Ford Explorer with the studded snow tires was able to drive up the 3K west facing launch without a problem; however, the snow was far thicker and deeper (see photo below) than anticipated, which got us stuck a couple of times. It took us a while to dig the car out and without a shovel we had to use our hands (non water resistant gloves). We almost gave up thinking about abandoning the truck to walk the miles on snow to get to the main road with just our regular shoes on.  Mark lives 10 miles from the main road and it would've been torturous had we ended up walking.  Fortunately, we were able to get the truck moving again after all the manual digging and made it to launch, but alas, it was too cross (NW 15-25mph) and the windchill temperature approx 12 °F (-11°C) so we didn't fly.  Hopefully we can get one last 2016 flight end of this week.

https://goo.gl/photos/NcavCUe5jVmfur8t9

Video from yesterday

12/20/16 Tierra Del Mar, Oceanside and Cape Lookout report

When Gabe and I (both hang gliders) arrived Oceanside this morning around 11:15, the winds were blowing 10+ mph from west and WNW at the beach. I saw some whitecaps from the NW side of the ocean. Unfortunately, it was zero winds and at times blowing very light from behind (NE direction) at launch.  We left Oside at 12:08 to check Cape Lookout and it was too light and a bit cross from the left (SW) so we headed to Tierra Del Mar instead. The winds at TDM was stronger (maybe 10 plus mph) when we first arrived and a bit cross from the right (NW).It didn't look soarable but we decided to setup anyways.It diminished down to 3-5 mph when we were ready to launch and of course ended up with sledders, then packed up quickly on the tall dry grass field and left TDM at 2:10pm to head back up north. We stopped by CLO again at 2:28 and found zero wind with no beach for landing, so we returned to Oceanside to check on conditions.Surprisingly, not much has changed from morning conditions; still a lot of beach at Oceanside, winds coming from WNW just like it was this morning when we first arrived, it was still zero winds at launch by now it was around 3pm. That's it for today, nothing exciting. Sollie or Killchis would've been good today if we had a driver. There was a lot of blue skies at Tillamook and the cloudbase was high.

Today: 16 to 18 ft super high surf with 2.2ft Low Tides at 12:30pm    

2.5 hrs snow flght at Clffside (near Rufus, OR) 12/13/16

Once again another fun snow flight at Cliffside today. Mark R (Hang pilot)  didn't show up, so l was the only hang glider flying along with a dozen paragliders.  l launched at 12:15pm with 3-6mph light winds right after couple paragliders. We all climbed above launch immediately. It was very cold (25F) with cloudy skies and very buoyant air. Lifts was abundant and easy to stay in but nobody was able to bench up to the windmills.  Cloudbase is around 3000ft so some of the windmills were in the thin clouds.  I flew for 2.5hrs, gaining between 300 to 500ft  (reached 600ft few times) over the launch and landed by the river at 2:40pm in butterly smooth air. Wished more hang pilots could've been there today.  I'll post video and more photos later.

Video 

https://youtu.be/k-rG8Z5BgIE