Emberger 4

The sky cleared out nicely after yesterday’s overcast.
The sky looks good but there seems to be a bit of
north in the forecast. A large contingent of pilots
want a big task so the call is about 206k out and back
for the rigids and 189k for the Flexies. Freezy
launched at the start of the window as a wind dummy
and didn’t climb out right away. I was just zipping
up my harness when Wolfgang blew the whistle to
announce the starts would be moved back by 30 minutes.
With such a long task ahead I was disappointed about
the delay. I waited about 15 minutes and just
launched first. Who wants to stand around on the
ground waiting when you could be up there! The lift
around launch was not very good and it took me a long
time to get much above launch. I figured it was just
bad around launch so I headed towards the edge of the
start low. Freezy was doing the same thing and he is
kinda a local. Around the edge of the start circle it
wasn’t looking good for me. The last couple of
fingers gave me no love so I had to keep going onto
the other side of the start circle. Finally on the
last finger there was action. It was bad love though.
The small finger had a strong south flow coming
around the corner. Whatever lift I found was rough,
broken, surrounded by big sink and strong wind.
Nestled back in that small valley I didn’t like it so
I flew around the corner with my fingers crossed. I
was hoping for smoother lift but there was nothing.
With my tail between my legs I headed out towards the
main valley a defeated man. On the way I headed over
a small notch that was the last terrain feature before
the deck below. As I crossed over the knob I could
hear Dustin’s voice in my head….”FUCKING KABOOM” he
was saying as I got bitch slapped by some sharp lift.
This knob must have been a converging point for a few
different valley flows. The thermal was very strong
for the day but extremely hard to core. Pieces of
lift would randomly rip off in any direction. The
start time had passed and most of the other pilots
were gone. It looked like a survival day for distance
so I didn’t care. I was just relieved to finally be
close to cloud base. I backtracked to the start
circle and climbed back to cloudbase with a sailplane.

Heading out on course looked like a crap shoot. There
was a cloud line to the north or the direct route
straight west. I guess the clouds looked good because
I aimed more north. At cloudbase the wind had some
zip and crossing over the top ridge was a little
stressfull. Not much rotor but with cloubase only a
few hundred meters over ridge height I was not sure if
I would have to tuck tail at any minute. On the north
side of the ridge I meandered feeling like chump,
finally getting a really fat one to cloudbase. From
my new vantage point the north cloud line didn’t looks
so good so I headed straight west. I tried to hook up
with one last cloud before leaving the high mountains
but it didn’t work. Baffled, I trudged on. In the
air ahead were a few other stragglers taking a similar
line but lower in the valley. Crossing to the Lienz
Dolomites worries me since I have been flushed off
there so hard in the west wind multiple times. I’ve
learned flying here that the wind direction is not a
straight read. Just because it was north in one place
doesn’t mean it wont be a hard south somewhere else.
It wasn’t an issue though today, I got good lift on
the NE side of the dolimites That’s the halfway point
on my track log where it goes bright red. The lift in
this area was smooth, easy to read, and took me all
the way to base. Good clouds ahead so I picked up the
pace.

So here marks the slow and painful death. From this
point on I didn’t find any more worthwhile lift. Only
turbulence tucked in nasty places. Every time
something didn’t pan out I just bailed downwind. In
retrospect I supposed the best option would have been
to fly deeper into the finger valleys along this
mountainous ridge. At the time they looked like they
would just waste lots of time. There were nice clouds
so I wrongly assumed there would be an easy route to
them. It also seemed like the lift was working better
up high but the tops of the peaks were too close to
the clouds and too spaced out to take the easy route.

I finally bailed on the Dolomites and crossed the
valley to the north. It was shaded but I could see
some pilots scratching and it looked smooth. I had
committed too late and quickly descended into the
valley wind. At least it was tail and cruised me
towards the turnpoint. Seeing pilots scattered below
gave me a shot of morphine to ease the pain of a death
glide. Down to about 100m one of the nice fields had
a windsock and some nice soft looking grass. About 5
minutes later Shigeto came to join my party. Later,
Vladamyr scratched over us and made the turnpoint. A
couple hours later we spotted a couple of rigids on
their way back towards goal. Sir Jacques was the only
pilot to make goal.

Kev