I awoke to blue skies but it didn’t take long for the haze to set in. Nonetheless, after a nice breakfast I walked to the landing zone and saw that they shuttle was about to head up the mountain. I sat in the very back, with the wings with a German guy named Iains (not sure if I have the spelling right). We chatted on the ride up and everyone got out at the launch area that I had used the night before with Paolo and Mauricio. There were a lot of pilots there and with only two, maybe three, able to set up at any given time, it was going to take a while. A couple of Swedish pilots and Iains decided to head to a lower launch, about 150 meters lower and I decided to join them. It was just the four of us at this spot and it was a nicer grassy slope instead of the steep astro-turf one.
I was the last to takeoff and it was fairly easy to find some thermals to the right of launch, over the switchback road. I followed Andres, one of the Swedish guys, to another ridge to the west as I saw that he barely lost any height getting there. It was just the two of us most of the time over there although the odd pilot came over to join us. We both got up to cloud base at different times and I tried to follow the ridge back to the north but sank down and had to reclimb the invisible ladder in the sky. I spent almost an hour over this area that was dotted with houses, trees and a few big antennas. Eventually I headed back to the launch hill (or is it a mountain, not sure what the technicalities are). There were at least 15 other pilots in the air circling around. I hoped to bench up above both launches to try and head east. I failed on my first attempt but did eventually make it. There was probably only 100 meters between the top of the ridge and the clouds and as I completed the semi-circle I found myself entering more clouds than I wanted but I simply flew away from the ridge and all was good. I then headed over the flatlands to a big waterpark, just to check it out from above and then headed towards the LZ. I decided that I wasn’t quite done with the flight, now 2 hours into it, and worked the switchback road ridge back up. Some large, nasty looking cumulonimbus type clouds started to head our way and many pilots, including myself, headed out to land. There started to be lift everywhere, and in this case, you don’t want this lift. I decided to do some spirals down even though the situation wasn’t desperate...yet. I landed and met up with the two Swedish guys, who had both had two flights in the time that I had my one so I was pretty pleased with my flight.
Checking out the launch from above:
Looking down the range:
Groovin' in flight:
Looking north down a valley:
Some kind of waterpark:
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